Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And your first question will come from the line of Jack Kasprzak from BB&T Capital Markets. Please proceed.
Jack Kasprzak -- BB&T Capital Markets
Thanks. Good morning, everyone.
Jim Busche
Good morning. Hi, Jack,
Alan Hartslief
Good morning.
Jack Kasprzak -- BB&T Capital Markets
Hi, congratulations on the quarter. You guys seem to be doing a tremendous job with execution and margins. I wanted to ask if you could just discuss a little bit more on the subject of the change in the project mix? How it’s affecting backlog conversion? Obviously one of the things that sticks out in the quarter is that of all of the good metrics, order intake up, backlog up, margins strong, the sales, the actual reported sales were down in the quarter. It's probably got a few people scratching their heads, I would assume. And so if you guys could just talk a little bit more about how the project mix is changing and how that’s affecting sales recognition right now? The pull through of the backlog and how you see that moving forward?
Jim Busche
There really are two contributors, Jack, to what you are talking about. One of those is the fact that both our customers' and our suppliers' commitment timeframes are extended. Customers are taking longer to get their permits, do all of their civil work, get everything set up so it’s extending the timeframe that is planned in a project from the beginning. Additionally, because of record levels of economic activities, certain components that we have two procure take much longer. So we have to quote longer timeframes for delivery to customers upfront. So both of those things are extending the time frame of our projects, thus lengthening the timeframe with which we do our percentage of completion accounting method recognition. Additionally, a very large percentage of our current projects, because our bookings have been so strong in the last six months to a year, are in fairly early stages. In the early stages, we're principally recognizing engineering in some of the lower value components. So in those early stages, we recognize a relatively smaller percentage of the revenues than we do later on in the projects.
Jack Kasprzak -- BB&T Capital Markets
Okay, great. That's helpful. Also, too, Jim in your comments about how you guys are expanding, the way you are sort of expanding your business and looking at -- looking for higher margin, the highest, I guess, margin opportunities globally not just within a specific geography. Could you explain why that implies that you might be getting -- you won't necessarily be getting the mega projects that we see some competitors announcing from time to time?
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