William Grogan
Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer at Xylem
Thanks, Matthew. Please turn to slide five. Q1 was an excellent start to the year, exceeding expectations across revenue, margin and earnings per share. I want to echo Matthew's thanks to all of our teams for remaining focused and turning in an outstanding quarter. We continue to see resilient demand with our backlog increasing 4% to $5.3 billion. Organic orders grew 3% in the quarter with book-to-bill above 1%, supported by strength across developed markets, particularly in WSS.
Total revenues grew 40%, and organic revenues rose 7%, exceeding our guidance and a healthy combination of volume and price. Our performance was led by M&CS and WSS and we saw growth in all regions led by double-digit growth in the US. EBITDA margin was 19.2%, up 290 basis points from the prior year with productivity savings, strong volume, price and mix more than offsetting inflation and investments. This reflects incrementals of 26% on a consolidated basis and 57% on an organic basis.
Our EPS in the quarter was $0.90, above the high end of our guide by $0.05, up 14% over the prior year. Our balance sheet remains healthy with ample liquidity to support capital deployment. We started the year with free cash flow conversion of 9%. This represents significant improvement versus typical seasonality of negative Q1 free cash flow conversion. This year, we delivered higher net income, offset slightly by increased capex.
Please turn to slide six. Measurement & Control Solutions had a great quarter and exceeded our expectations. Orders grew 3% on continued smart metering demand. Backlog rose to $2.2 billion, up 6% organically and book-to-bill came in slightly under one due to greater backlog conversion. M&CS revenue was up 22%, driven by smart metering demand and backlog execution.
We finished the quarter with EBITDA margins of 22.7%, up 550 basis points versus the prior year and up 440 basis points sequentially. Margin expansion was driven by productivity, higher volume and price and favorable mix more than offsetting inflation. In Water Infrastructure, orders grew 6% in the quarter, led by robust transport demand. Revenue exceeded our expectations with total growth of 40% and organic growth of 6%, driven by healthy demand across all regions and applications.
EBITDA margin for the segment was up 320 basis points driven by productivity, mix, volume and price offsetting inflation. In Applied Water, although orders declined versus a year ago, book-to-bill was greater than one, reflective of a few large project wins. Revenues were down 4%, in line with our expectations against strong growth in the first quarter last year, primarily driven by a decline in developed markets.
Segment EBITDA margin declined 380 basis points year-over-year, an unfavorable mix, higher inflation and volume declines, partly offset by productivity savings. Wrapping up with water solutions and services. Orders grew 7% organically led by dewatering and 19% on a pro forma basis with book-to-bill well above one in the quarter, driven by a large order for a 20-year outsourced water contract, but even excluding that large order, pro forma demand increased.
Organic revenue was up 6%, while pro forma revenue increased 9%, with healthy growth across most of the businesses. Adjusted EBITDA margin was strong at 22.3%, driven by favorable mix in volume and price and productivity. The outperformance across WSS is a great reflection of our team staying focused on what matters, serving our customers throughout this integration and re-segmentation. Now, let's turn to slide seven for our updated full year and second quarter guidance.
Given our first quarter outperformance and both commercial and operational momentum, we are raising our full year guidance. We are increasing our revenue guide to approximately $8.5 billion. This reflects an additional point of growth versus prior guidance. That will put total revenue growth at 15% to 16% and organic revenue growth at 4% to 6%.
We are confident about driving further margin expansion with operational productivity and are raising our EBITDA margin guidance to about 20%. That represents 110 basis points of expansion versus the prior year driven by higher volume, productivity, including cost synergies and price offsetting inflation. Our updated EPS guidance of $4.10 to $4.25 reflects an increase of $0.08 at the midpoint.
We continue to expect around $100 million of exit rate cost synergies in 2024. And free cash flow conversion for the year is still expected to be 115% of net income. The full year outlook at the segment levels remain largely unchanged from our comments in February. For the second quarter, we anticipate total revenue growth will be 23% to 25% on a reported basis and 5% to 7% organically.
We expect second quarter EBITDA margin to be approximately 20%, up 90 basis points, driven by higher volumes, continued price realization and productivity gains. This yields second quarter EPS of $1 to $1.05. We came into 2024 at a healthy pace, and we've had a strong start to the year, building further momentum.
Our diversified portfolio positions us well to address our customers' evolving needs, and we anticipate healthy demand across most end markets and applications. While we are closely monitoring the macro environment, including inflation, higher interest rates for longer, a strengthening dollar and geopolitical uncertainty, our overall outlook for the year remains positive.
With that, please turn to slide eight, and I'll turn the call back over to Matthew for closing comments.
