Edmund Reese
Chief Financial Officer at Broadridge Financial Solutions
Thank you, Tim. And thank you, in particular, for those comments on Bob. There is no doubt that he will be missed. Good morning, everyone. I'm really pleased to be here to discuss the results from another strong quarter and a strong start to fiscal 2024. Before reviewing this quarter's results, let me share a few key points. First, Broadridge delivered strong top line growth, led by strong recurring revenue, in line with our expectations and higher event-driven revenue. Second, and as a result, we expect to generate approximately 25% of adjusted EPS in the first half of fiscal 2024. Third, we are reaffirming our fiscal 2024 guidance.
And finally, we resumed share repurchases in Q1 as we are confident in our ability to drive 100% free cash flow conversion and return more capital to shareholders. As you can see from the financial summary on slide six, recurring revenues rose to $871 million, up 8% on a constant currency basis, all organic. Adjusted operating income increased 33% and AOI margin expanded 220 basis points to 13.9%. Adjusted EPS was up 30% to $1.09. And I'll remind you that while higher interest expense partially offsets operating income growth, the interest rate impact at the Broadridge level is fully offset by higher float income in our ICS segment.
Continuing with the results, we delivered closed sales of $48 million, up $19 million over Q1 2023. And finally, I will note again that we repurchased $150 million of Broadridge shares as part of our balanced capital allocation model. Let's get into the details of these results, starting with recurring revenue on slide seven. Current revenues grew 8% to $871 million in Q1 2024 and was at the higher end of our full year guidance range of 6% to 9%. And our recurring revenue growth was driven by a combination of converting our backlog to revenue and double-digit trade volume growth.
Let's turn now to slide eight to look at the growth across our ICS and GTO segments. We continue to see growth in both ICS and GTO. ICS recurring revenue grew 6% to $469 million. Regulatory revenue grew 5% and was led by fund and equity position growth. More importantly, physician growth remains in line with our expectations as I'll detail in a moment. Data-driven Fund Solutions revenue increased by 9%, primarily due to higher float revenue in our mutual fund trade processing unit, which we have rebranded to be Broadridge Retirement and Workplace. Issuer revenue was up 19%, driven by growth in our registered shareholder solutions.
And Customer Communications recurring revenue was up 2%, propelled by continued double-digit growth in our higher-margin digital business, which more than offset lower growth in our lower-margin print revenues. And while we do expect print volumes to pick up over the balance of fiscal 2024, we continue to expect print revenues to decline over time and be replaced with higher-margin digital revenue. As a result, over the long term, we expect our customer communications business to have low single-digit top line growth with expanding margins and continued low double-digit earnings growth as it execute on its print to digital strategy. Turning to GTO. Recurring revenues grew 11% to $402 million.
Capital markets revenue increased 9% and led by continued strong performance in BTCS, and elevated equity and fixed income trading volume growth. Wealth and Investment Management revenue grew 14%, powered by the onset of revenue recognition related to the UBS contract, partially offset by the successful transition of E-Trade to the Morgan Stanley platform, which occurred at the beginning of September. Looking ahead, we continue to have high confidence in full year GTO growth being in line with our historical 5% to 7% growth objective. Now let's turn to slide nine for a closer look at volume trends. As you can see by our results, investor participation in financial markets has continued to increase despite the market volatility.
Equity position growth was 8%, driven by continued double-digit growth in managed accounts. Our testing of position growth continues to prove reliable as Q1 was in line with our expectations. We have now extended our testing into Q2 and Q3, and those results support our outlook for mid- to high single-digit growth for the full year. Mutual fund position growth moderated from Q4 2023, but grew 3%, driven by strong growth in passive funds. Based on our testing, we continue to expect mid-single-digit growth for the full year. Turning now to trade volumes on the bottom of the slide. Trade volumes rose 15% on a blended basis, led by double-digit volume growth in both equities and fixed income, which benefited our capital markets business.
Let's now move to slide 10 for the drivers of recurring revenue growth. Recurring revenue growth of 8% was all organic and grew above our 5% to 7% growth objective for a sixth consecutive quarter. Revenue from net new business contributed five points of growth. Internal growth, primarily trading volumes, expanding client relationships and float income contributed three points. Foreign exchange had a nonmaterial teen-basis point positive impact on recurring revenue growth. And based on curate, we expect a similar benefit in full year recurring revenue growth relative to fiscal 2023. I'll finish the discussion on revenue on slide 11.
Total revenue grew 12% to $1.4 billion, of which recurring revenue, the largest contributor of five points of growth. Event-driven revenue was $87 million and added two points to growth. As expected, the bit driven revenue increased sequentially and was above a 7-year average. Event-driven activity in the quarter was particularly strong and benefited from the timing of mutual fund proxy activity and significant corporate actions. We continue to expect more normalized event-driven revenue for the remainder of the year and for the full year to be $230 million, $250 million, in line with recent years.
Low to no margin distribution revenues contributed five points to the total revenue growth. Distribution revenue was elevated and reached 14% and with half of that growth coming from postal rate increases, which have a dilutive impact on our adjusted operating income margin. We continue to expect distribution revenue to grow in the high single to low double-digit range, driven by further postal rate increases. Turning now to margins on slide 12. Adjusted operating income margin was 13.9%, a 220 basis point improvement over the prior year period, powered by a combination of operating leverage on our higher recurring and event-driven revenue, higher float income and continued disciplined expense management.
Excluding the net impact of higher distribution revenue and higher float income, which was accretive to margins in Q1, we delivered over 100 basis points of margin expansion, after absorbing the amortization from our wealth platform. This performance gives us confidence in our ability to both fund long-term growth investments and still meet our earnings growth objectives. We continue to expect adjusted operating income margin to increase year-over-year to approximately 20%, as we overcome the dilutive impact of higher distribution revenue. Let's move ahead to closed sales on slide 13. Closed sales were $48 million, $19 million higher than Q1 2023. We were encouraged by our strong start to the year with higher sales across all three of our franchises.
We saw strong BTCS sales in GTO and strong customer communications and regulatory sales in ICS. As Tim noted, our pipeline remains strong as we continue to see strong interest from clients in our technology solutions. I'll turn now to cash flow on slide 14. I'll start with a reminder that Broadridge's cash flow generation is typically negative in the fiscal first quarter and strengthens throughout the year. Q1 2024 free cash flow was negative $76 million, $142 million better than last year, driven by a reduction in client platform spend, which I'll discuss in a moment. Free cash flow conversion calculated to this trailing 12-month free cash flow over adjusted net earnings was 103% in Q1 2024.
This is consistent with our expectations of free cash flow conversion of approximately 100% for full year 2024. On slide 15, you'll see that we remain committed to a balanced capital allocation policy that prioritizes our investment-grade credit rating, internal investment, a strong and growing dividend and strategic tuck-in M&A that meets our financial criteria, with excess capital being returned to shareholders through share repurchases. Our total capital investment for Q1 2024 was $34 million, including platform investment of $20 million, down significantly from the prior year's $163 million. We returned $86 million to shareholders through the dividend and with no M&A activity in the quarter, we returned an additional $150 million to shareholders through share repurchases, our first share repurchase activity since fiscal year 2020.
Turning to guidance on Page 16. As I said in the beginning of my remarks, the strong start to fiscal 2024 gives us the confidence to reaffirm our full year guidance on all of our key financial metrics. We continue to expect 6% to 9% recurring revenue growth, constant currency, adjusted operating income margin of 20%, adjusted EPS growth of 8% to 12% and closed sales of between $280 million to $320 million. Additionally, we expect approximately 75% of our earnings to be generated in the second half of the year with 25% in the first half, in line with our performance over the last 10 years.
Finally, let me summarize my key messages. Broadridge delivered strong Q1 financial results. The demand and secular trends driving our growth remains strong, and our testing is showing continued equity and fund position growth into the second half of the fiscal year. We expect free cash flow conversion of approximately 100% in fiscal 2024, allowing us to invest for growth and return capital to shareholders in line with our balanced capital allocation model. We are reaffirming our fiscal year 2024 guidance, highlighting the strength of our business and financial model.
And with that, let's take your questions. Operator, back to you.
