William Grogan
Chief Financial Officer at Xylem
Thanks, Matthew. Please turn to Slide 5. As Matthew mentioned, we are very pleased with the strong finish to 2024. The team stayed focused and consistently delivered throughout the year, exceeding on our expectations, delivering record revenue, EBITDA and earnings per share for the 4th-quarter and the full-year.
Demand remains positive with our ending backlog of $5.1 billion, essentially flat from the prior year, driven by progress executing at MCS and their past-due backlog, but offset in-part by growth across the other three segments. Our book-to-bill ratio was near one in the quarter and exceeded one in the year. Orders were healthy, up 7% in the quarter, driven by strong performance across all segments with Water Infrastructure leading the way with 10% orders growth. Revenue growth was robust, up 7% in the quarter despite a challenging comp of 9% growth in the same-period last year. The team's operational discipline delivered quarterly EBITDA margin of 21%, up 140 basis-points from the prior year. This improvement was driven by productivity, price and volume more than offsetting inflation and investments. We also achieved a record EPS of $1.18, surpassing the midpoint of our guidance by $0.05 and marking a 19% increase over the prior year. Our balance sheet remains in great shape with net-debt to adjusted EBITDA at 0.5 times.
Year-to-date free-cash flow increased by 29% from the prior year. The conversion rate of 116% was driven by higher net income, offset by higher net working capital and increased capex. Working capital efficiency in the quarter was negatively impacted by timing of sales, but our overall performance for the year was strong. Let's turn to Slide 6. In Measurement and Control Solutions, we continue to convert the backlog. Though total MCS backlog remained at roughly $1.9 billion, in-line with the prior quarter. This is a 13% organic decrease from the prior year, driven by smart metering conversion. Orders were up 6%, driven by smart metering and analytics demand. Revenue was up 6%, again, driven by smart metering demand and backlog execution. EBITDA margin of 17.1% was 120 basis-points lower than prior year, driven by mix, inflation and investments more than offsetting productivity, price and volume. As expected, there was a sequential margin headwind for mix in the quarter as energy meters accounted for a larger portion of sales. In Water Infrastructure, orders were up 10% in the quarter with strong demand in transport. Revenue increased 8%, driven by treatment and transport demand across most regions. EBITDA margin for Water Infrastructure was up an outstanding 360 basis-points.
Productivity, price, mix and volume more than offset inflation and investments. In Applied Water, orders were up 5% and book-to-bill was roughly 1%, lifted by large project wins in the US and strength in Europe. As expected, revenues were essentially flat to prior year, primarily driven by softness in emerging markets. Segment EBITDA margin increased 60 basis-points year-over-year. Productivity, mix and price more than offset higher inflation, lower volumes and other costs. Finally, Water Solutions and Services saw robust demand with orders increasing 8%, driven by strength in capital projects and dewatering. Revenue growth was up strong at 11% with strength in capital projects, dewatering and services.
Growth was also fueled by projects coming online faster than anticipated as we enter the quarter. Segment EBITDA margins was 22.8%, up 10 basis-points versus prior year, driven by productivity, price and volume, more than offsetting inflation, investments and mix. Now let's turn to Slide 7 for our 2025 segment outlook. Before I go through our overall guidance, I want to highlight that we have not factored in any impact for the recently inactive tariffs by the US administration. At this time, we do not believe that there will have a material impact on our full-year 2025 results, but it is obviously a fluid situation and we will update our guidance accordingly as we learn more. Heading into 2025, our markets remain positive and our teams are delivering on our commitment to simplify Xylem, focus on our customers and expand margins.
We are providing full-year organic revenue guidance for the segments that is largely in-line with our long-term framework. In MCS, we expect growth of high-single-digits. We are seeing some pockets of softness in Europe, but overall demand is still healthy and our pipeline is strong. Our expectation is energy meteors will drive a majority of the growth in 2025 and water meters will grow low-single digits. We expect to see sequential revenue improvements throughout the year, supported by a backlog and easier comps. In Water Infrastructure, we expect growth of mid-single digits.
We anticipate resilient opex demand due to the mission-critical nature of our applications and solid capex demand. Healthy utility end-markets across most regions, Evoqua synergies and price capture will drive strong growth in the year. However, as expected, we will see headwinds from 80/20 actions as we simplify Water Infrastructure's offerings and we do expect weakness in China's utility market. In Applied Water, we expect modest growth of low-single digits. We see growth across developed markets, particularly in the US with large projects coming online and a general recovery in their end-markets. Growth will be offset in Applied Water as well by 80/20 actions as we exit unprofitable businesses.
WSS growth is expected to be mid-single digits, driven by strength in outsourced water projects and solid demand in dewatering. This segment is supported by a $1 billion backlog and strong funnel activity across all of their businesses. Now let's turn to Slide 8 for our full-year 2025 and Q1 guidance. The growth outlook by segment translates to full-year revenue of $8.6 billion to $8.7 billion, resulting in revenue growth of 0% to 2% and organic revenue growth of 3% to 4%. This is on the low-end of our long-term framework due to the 80/20 actions we are taking across our segments that will be a larger impact in early phases of implementation. EBITDA margin is expected to be 21.3% to 21.8%. This represents 70 to 120 basis-points of expansion versus the prior year, driven by productivity and price more than offsetting inflation than our investments in the business.
We will also benefit from our simplification efforts, which help to mitigate mix pressure from MCS. This yields an EPS range of $4.50 to $4.70, up 8% at the midpoint over the prior year. FX will be a meaningful headwind in the year, and excluding those impacts, EPS growth will be double-digits at the midpoint. As a reminder, we are committed to low double-digit free-cash flow margin in our long-term financial framework. However, cash-flow will be impacted in 2025 by our recently-announced restructuring actions that may drop us slightly below our long-term goals.
Drilling down on the first-quarter, we anticipate revenue growth will be in the 0% to 2% range on a reported basis and 1% to 2% organically. We expect first-quarter EBITDA margin to be approximately 19.5% to 20%, up 30 to 80 basis-points, driven by higher volumes, price realization and productivity gains, as well as impacts from our simplification efforts. We do want to note that MCS EBITDA margin will be down year-over-year, driven by the energy and water mix we highlighted earlier, but will be up sequentially from Q4. This yields first-quarter EPS of $0.93 to $0.98. We are entering the year with momentum and in a position of strength.
Our balanced outlook reflects our strong commercial position, the durability of our portfolio and benefits from our simplification efforts. While we also continue to monitor broader market conditions and volatility, including potential new or additional tariffs and fluctuations at FX. Regarding tariffs, we are ready to take additional price actions as-needed to offset any increases and take cost actions to mitigate the impact on our margins. Overall, our expectations for the year remain positive as we build-on our strong momentum.
With that, please turn to Slide nine and I'll turn the call-back over to Matthew for closing comments.
