William Grogan
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at IDEX
Thanks, Eric. I'll start with our consolidated financial results on Slide 8. Q1 orders of $856 million were up 20% overall and up 16% organically. We experienced favorable performance across all our segments and billed $105 million of backlog. First quarter sales of $751 million were up 15% overall and up 12% organically. We saw favorable performance within each of our segments, led by strong results in HST.
Q1 gross margin expanded 70 basis points and adjusted gross margins expanded 60 basis points versus last year at 45.6%, driven by favorable volume leverage, operational productivity and favorable price cost despite rising inflation. First quarter operating margin was 25%, up 110 basis points compared to prior year. Adjusted operating margin was also 25%, up 70 basis points compared to prior year. Excluding the impact of acquisition-related intangible amortization, adjusted operating margin expanded 130 basis points. I'll discuss the drivers of our adjusted operating income on the next slide.
Our Q1 effective tax rate was 22.4%, down slightly versus our prior year rate of 22.6% due to the mix of global pretax income among our jurisdictions. First quarter net income was $140 million, which resulted in EPS of $1.83. Adjusted net income was $150 million resulting in an adjusted EPS of $1.96, up $0.34 or 21% over prior year adjusted EPS.
Finally, free cash flow for the quarter was $64 million, approximately 43% of adjusted net income. This result is driven by higher earnings being more than offset by increases in working capital due to the volume impact on receivables as well as additional inventory we strategically added to help mitigate some of the longer lead times we are experiencing.
Moving on to Slide 9, which details the drivers of our adjusted operating income. Adjusted operating income increased $29 million for the quarter, compared to the prior year. Our 12% organic growth contributed approximately $25 million flowing through at our prior year gross margin rate. We levered well on the volume increase, had strong price capture and our teams drove operational productivity to offset the profit headwinds we experienced from inflation. Additionally, we saw benefits from our FMT site consolidations and non-repeat of prior year inventory reserves associated with the COVID-19 related new product development. Mix was not a significant driver of this quarter. We reinvested $4 million, mainly in the form of engineering, commercial and M&A resources to enhance our long-term growth capabilities.
Lastly, discretionary spending increased by $4 million versus last year. COVID related constraints remained in place for a portion of the first quarter limiting our spending. As we noted in our full year guidance, we expect discretionary to continue to ramp up as we progressed through the year and restore to our normal pre-pandemic spend base, although on significantly higher sales. Our organic flow-through was a solid 35% for the quarter. Flow through was then negatively impacted by the dilutive impact of acquisitions and FX, getting us to our reported flow-through of 29%.
With that, I will provide a deeper look at our segment performance. I'm on Page 10. In our Fluid and Metering Technology segment, we experienced a strong first quarter for both orders and sales with organic growth of 14% and 11% respectively. FMT adjusted operating margin expanded by 300 basis points versus last year, driven by strong volume leverage and operational productivity, which includes benefits from our Energy and Italy site consolidation projects, non-repeat of prior inventory reserve adjustments and some offset from resource investments. Our industrial dayrates were strong. Customers do remain cautious around larger projects though, but we have seen some projects come through in the oil and gas and petrochemical markets. Agriculture continues to perform well, due to strong global crop demand and higher prices.
Our Municipal Water business is stable, though project activity is increasing. States are actively submitting applications for infrastructure bill funding and there is general optimism for funding availability in the second half of the year. We see potential for larger spending in the long term, and we are well positioned to capture this demand. Our energy business continues to improve. Higher oil and home heating fuel prices are providing support and funnel activity is increasing as global energy supply volatility is expected to drive higher U.S. production. Domestic pipeline companies continue to communicate increased capex, but there is some lag due to supply chain constraints and the Russia, Ukraine, uncertainty.
Moving on to Health and Science Technology. We experienced excellent commercial performance with orders up organically 21% and organic sales up 16%. HST adjusted operating margin contracted by 40 basis points versus the first quarter of 2021 but expanded by 90 basis points, excluding the impact of incremental amortization tied to the Airtech acquisition. This was driven by strong volume leverage, partially offset by increased discretionary spending and resource investments. HST continues to benefit from strong secular growth trends within life sciences, analytical instrumentation, semicon and the food and pharma markets. Life Sciences continues to experience strong demand due to an overall rooted focused around health care in areas such as Point of Care and Patient Diagnostics as well as increased next-gen sequencing demand as the market for cell-based therapies expands in applications like cancer research.
On the semiconductor side, we continue to see broad-based growth tied to wafer production and quality inspection. Other growth areas include optics applications in additive manufacturing as well as broadband satellite technology. Finally, turning to our Fire, Safety and Diversified Product segment. This segment posted favorable orders and sales performance with organic growth of 12% and 5% respectively. FSD adjusted operating margin contracted by 340 basis points versus last year. This was driven by higher employee-related costs and discretionary spending as well as pressure on price cost due to longer-term OEM contracts on the fire side and automotive exposure with high metal content and banded. We have taken action to address this gap and expect that price cost will improve in the second half of the year. Our dispensing business continues to experience strong results driven by North American project volume and overall positive global pain market. Our banded business performed well with industrial and energy demand more than offsetting lags in automotive driven by supply chain related customer delays. Within fire and safety, we are seeing core North American and European markets improving, but still challenged due to supply chain. North American fire OEMs continue to experience supply chain constraints slowing their order to revenue conversion cycle.
With that, I would like to provide an update on our outlook for the second quarter and full year 2022. I'm on Slide 11 which lays out our updated guidance. For the second quarter of 2022, we are projecting organic revenue growth of 8% to 9% and operating margin between 23% and 23.5%. Q2 forecasted op margins lower sequentially due to a full quarter of Nexsight, which is dilutive to our operating margin by approximately 50 basis points due to intangible amortization, as well as increased resource investment in discretionary spend. We expect GAAP EPS to range from $1.69 to $1.74 and adjusted EPS to range from $1.85 to $1.90.
Turning to the full year. Given our strong first quarter performance, both potential risk and uncertainty on the back half of the year, we are raising the low end and holding the high end of our organic growth and adjusted EPS guidance. We now expect full-year organic revenue growth of 6% to 8%, which does not imply significant sales ramp in the second half of the year. Rather, we are applying a normal seasonal pattern to our current output level. At this time, we see potential risk that further revenue acceleration may be tempered by the Russia-Ukraine, war and supply chain effects related to the China ZeroCOVID policy. We will continue to monitor the situation and reassess our guidance range in the next quarter's update. We expect GAAP EPS to range between $6.87 to $7 and adjusted EPS to range from $7.50 to $7.63. Our operating margin expectations for the full year is to be approximately 24% and is diluted by Nexsight intangible amortization of about 50 basis points.
With that, let me pause and turn it over to the operator for your questions.
