Olivier Leonetti
Chief Financial Officer at Johnson Controls International
Thanks, George, and good morning everyone. Let me start with the summary on slide 10. Sales in the quarter were up 8% organically above our original guidance for mid-single-digit growth and led by strong outperformance across the global product portfolio. Our longer cycle field businesses also performed well up 6% with solid growth in both service and in stock.
Price contributed to about 4.5 points of our total organic growth about a point above our expectation. Segment EBITDA increased 13% versus the prior year, with margins expanding 30 basis points to 12.3%, including a 100 basis points margin headwinds from price cost and significant operational inefficiencies related to ongoing supply chain disruptions and worsening labor constraints. This was more than offset by strong leverage on higher volumes and the incremental benefit of our COGS and SG&A actions.
Just to comment on the impact of the operational efficiencies as I mentioned, we were able to yield 4.5 points of price beyond raw materials, inflation on most of the items, freight, logistics, labor, and components increased further and absorb the benefit of the increased pricing. Additionally ongoing supply chain disruptions and labor shortages impacted our field operations where we were dealing with not only our own disruptions but those of our customers as well versus our guidance for Q1, this was an incremental headwind of 40 basis points. On a whole our underlying margin performance in the quarter was very strong.
EPS of $0.54 was at the high end of our guidance range and increased 26% year-over-year, benefiting from higher profitability as well as lower share count. Free cash flow in the quarter was just over $250 million, primarily the result of a continued focused on working capital management. Turning to our EPS bridge on Slide 11. Overall whole operations contributed $0.10 versus the prior year, including a $0.06 benefit from our COGS and SG&A productivity programs and the line segment earnings were a net $0.04 tailwind year-over-year, which we view as a significant achievement in the current environment. Excluding the headwinds from price cost underlying incremental in Q1 where approximately 40%.
Please turn to slide 12. Orders for our field businesses increased 8% in aggregate with fairly balanced growth between service and install activity. Growth in service orders is being led by a double-digit increase in our short-term transactional business, but also mid single digit increase in our contractual recurring revenue base. Installed demand continues to rebound, primarily driven by a low double-digit increase in retrofit activity globally, including mid-teens growth in North America.
Backlog grew 10% to nearly $10.5 billion with service backlog, up 4% and in-store backlog up 11%. The year-over-year increase was led by higher retrofit activity in North America and EMEALA and new construction activity in APAC. Let's discuss our segment results in more details on Slide 13. My commentary will also refer to the segment end market performance included on Slide 14. Sales in North America were up 5% organically, led by 7% growth in service.
In-store sales increased 4% similar to last quarter, supply chain descriptions and material availability negatively impacted revenue conversion in our North America business. Commercial applied HVAC, [Indecipherable] low double digits, including low double-digit growth both in equipment and service. Fire and security increased mid-single digits in the quarter. Performance infrastructure declined high single digits, given the tough prior-year comparison of plus 20%.
Looking at the two-year stack for performance infrastructure we are up double digits with an exciting pipeline of opportunities ahead. Segment margin decreased 90 basis points year-over-year to 11.6% including 80 basis point impact from lower absorption given the operational inefficiencies related to material and labor availability. We are also intentionally maintaining a higher level of sales investments, given our order activity is up more than double of revenue growth in the quarter.
The combination of these factors, will remain a headwind in the second quarter and significantly improved from there. Orders in North America were up 11% versus the prior year with high-teens growth in commercial applied, including a significant increase in HVAC equipment orders driven by very strong demand in the data center and healthcare verticals. Fire and security orders were up low-teens with strength in both installed and service. Backlog of $6.5 billion increased 12% year-over-year. EMEALA revenue increased 3% led by continued strength in the fire and security business, which grew at mid-single digit rate in Q1. This was primarily driven by a sharp rebound in our retail platform and more modest growth in our core offerings due to the material availability constraints.
Industrial refrigeration grew low single digits, while commercial HVAC and controls were relatively flat. Segment EBITDA margin expanded 50 basis points and the line margin performance improved as positive price cost and the benefit of SG&A cost savings, more than offset by modest mixed headwind. Orders in EMEALA were up 3% in the quarter with high single-digit growth in fire and security and low single-digit growth in Commercial HVAC. Backlog ended the quarter at $2.2 billion, up 12%. Sales in Asia Pacific increased 12% organically, led by mid-teens growth in Commercial HVAC and controls. China continues to outperform with revenue up nearly 30%.
EBITDA margin declined 260 basis points year-over-year to 10.1% driven by headwinds from price cost as well as unfavorable business in geographic mix. We do believe Q1 represents peak margin pressure for APAC and we would expect margins to significantly improve as the year progresses. APAC orders were up 5% with continued strength in Commercial HVAC driven by a strong rebound within the Industrial vertical in China as well as the benefit of a large infrastructure development projects currently underway in Japan, which would include a significant deployment of OpenBlue and digitally-enabled services. Backlog of $1.8 billion was up 2% year-over-year.
Global product sales increased 14% organically in the quarter, with broad-based strength across the portfolio led by mid-teens growth across our HVAC equipment platforms. Global residential HVAC sales were up 11% [Indecipherable] Q1. North Americal HVAC grew 17% in the quarter benefiting from both higher growth in our business[Phonetic] and strong price realization. We have been very successful in ramping production of our new facility in Mexico. So far we are at about 30% capacity and still on track for full run rate later in the year.
In rest of the world, the resi HVAC grew high single-digit led by strong double-digit growth in Europe as the adoption of our new Hitachi after water residential heat pump launched last quarter continues to improve. In APAC resi HVAC was relatively flat as a result of softer industry demand in Japan, related to more mild weather offset by strong growth in Taiwan and India. Although, not reflected in our revenue growth sales in our iSense JV were up low-teens year-over-year in Q1 as we continue to expand our distribution footprint in China. Commercial HVAC product sales were up high teens in aggregate, with similar levels of growth in both applied and light commercial. [Indecipherable] applied was driven by increased demand within the data center and markets for our air-cooled chillers and [Indecipherable] cooling solutions as well as our industrial refrigeration platforms.
Strength in light commercial was driven by strong performance at Hitachi which was up over 50% as well as mid-teens growth in North America, [Indecipherable] equipment and high single-digit growth in VRF. Fire and security product grew low double digits in aggregate, led by a continued recovery in our commercial fire and suppression business and mid-teens growth in access control and video solutions. EBITDA margin expanded 240 basis points year-over-year to 14.5% as volume leverage, higher equity income, and the benefit of productivity actions more than offset headwinds from price cost.
Turning to slide 15. Corporate expense was up slightly year-over-year to $70 million. For modeling purposes, we have included some of our below the line items for FY '22. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow on slide 16. Our balance sheet remains in great shape, with no major changes to highlight in the quarter. We ended up Q1 with $1.2 billion in available cash and net debt at 1.9 times, one tick higher versus year end but still below our target range of 2 to 2.5 times. On cash, which generated little over $250[Phonetic] million in free cash flow in the quarter down year-over-year due to the absence of prior-year tax credits and other COVID-related benefits as well as nearly a 50% increase in capex spend year-over-year.
We had another quarter of strong trade working capital management, down 140 basis points as a percentage of sales. With a continued focus on working capital we remain confident that we will sustain 100% conversion over the next several years. From capital allocation standpoint, we are executing our game plan. We repurchased approximately 7 million shares for just over $500 million deployed roughly $100 million towards bolt-on acquisitions and increased our quarterly cash dividend payment by 26%.
Before we get into guidance, I want to comment on two reporting changes that occurred in the first quarter. First, [Indecipherable] of the fiscal year our marine business, which was previously split across Asia Pacific and grew by products and global products and EMEALA is managed and reported in our EMEALA segment. Historical segment results have been recast for comparability. Second as part of the ongoing transformation of our service business beginning with first quarter results, we are aligning the way we report revenue associated with certain types of retrofit activity we performed in EMEALA and APAC food businesses as they have evolved to be more in line with similar offering in North America.
From a management perspective, this provides better visibility to our initiatives aimed at accelerating our higher-margin recurring revenue base. The changes are being made on a prospective basis. To [Indecipherable] with comparisons going forward, we have included recasted segment results and the table with pro forma service revenue for FY21 in the appendix.
Now let me get into guidance on slide 17. As George mentioned, we are reaffirming our full year adjusted EPS guidance range of $3.22 to $3.32 which represents year-over-year growth of 22% to 25%. Given the continued inflationary environment, we are increasing our organic revenue growth assumptions to a range of 8% to 10%, mainly driven by our increased price expectations. An additional point of price on the topline we create and incremental margin headwind of approximately 20 basis points. We continue to expect price cost, we remain positive on an EPS basis. However, the inflated level of pricing would bring our full year price cost margin headwind to approximately 60 basis points.
Therefore, we now expect 50 to 60 basis points of segment EBITDA margin expansion for the year. There was no change to underlying margin expansion of 110 to 120 basis points. Let me specifically point out that there was no change to our expectation for segment EBITDA dollars. Additionally, the strengthening US dollar has created an EPS headwind of $0.03 since we first provided guidance back in November, and we are absorbing this incremental headwind with our reaffirmed adjusted EPS guidance range.
Turning to the second quarter, we expect continued strong performance with high single-digits organic revenue growth, improved segment EBITDA margin expansion, and adjusted EPS of $0.62 to $0.64, which represents a year-over-year increase of 19% to 23%. Let me give back the call to George for some additional comments.