Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Good morning. Welcome to the 2020 Broadridge Investor Day. I'm Edings Thibault, Head of Investor Relations and FP&A. And on behalf of the entire Broadridge management team and our more than 12,000 associates around the world, I want to thank you for joining us this morning. We have a great agenda that will lay out our clear plans for growing our business and creating value for our clients and our shareholders. Tim Gokey, our CEO, will provide an overview of our strategic outlook and highlight those clear growth plans across each of our businesses. And we'll hear directly from the leaders of those businesses across governance, capital markets and wealth and investment management as well as from the Head of Broadridge International. We'll conclude with a presentation on the Broadridge financial model from our new CFO, Edmund Reese. A few notes on logistics. We plan 2 10-minute breaks at about 9:30 and 10:40. We plan to wrap up our prepared remarks before 11:30. And we'll leave 30 minutes at the end to respond to your questions. Speaking of Q&A. Now this is a virtual Investor Day. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, let me call your attention to our safe harbor statements. During today's presentations, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding Broadridge that involve risks. We encourage all of you to refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for a complete discussion of these risk factors -- of the risk factors faced by our business. We will also be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted operating income, adjusted operating income margin, adjusted net earnings, adjusted EPS and free cash flow. We believe these non-GAAP measures provide investors with a more complete understanding of Broadridge's underlying operating results. An explanation of our use of these non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to their comparable GAAP measures can be found in the appendix of today's presentation. With that lead-in complete, let me turn the screen over to Broadridge's CEO, Tim Gokey. Tim?

Thank you, Edings, and welcome to Broadridge's fourth Investor Day. I'm coming to you this morning from my home office. We're clearly in a unique moment. But what you're going to see today is not a moment. You'll see a great deal of continuity from where Broadridge has been to where we're going, which we believe is a big advantage. Now I've met many but not all of you. I've just finished my 10th year at Broadridge. And I'm coming up on the end of my second year as CEO. And nothing has given me more professional pleasure than seeing and working with the team here to lead Broadridge's transformation over that time. And despite everything going on, I have never been more optimistic about our future than I am right now. That's why today is so timely. These investor days, which we host every 3 years, are an important opportunity for us to look back on what we've accomplished as well as to look forward to the growth we see in front of us. And that's why I'm so excited to talk to you this morning. My message today is that we are continuing to scale what is already the leading global fintech for governance and investing. Based on our market leadership across governance, capital markets and wealth, we will drive growing value for our clients and deliver top-quartile returns to our shareholders. This is also an all-virtual Investor Day, and it comes at a challenging time. The world is wrestling with surging infection rates and with the enormous economic damage done by the pandemic. At Broadridge, we've seen firsthand the impact on our clients, our associates and on their families. Despite the challenge at this moment, it's also a very good time to look ahead. The pandemic has only accelerated the long-term trends around next-generation mutualization, resiliency and digital transformation as well as the importance of data and network value that were already driving Broadridge's business. You'll hear today from our senior leaders about the opportunities they see across governance, capital markets and wealth. You'll also hear about the work we've done to position ourselves to take advantage of these trends by making critical investments in our products, platforms and people. I hope that at the end of today's meeting, you'll share my excitement about the impact that Broadridge can have on our industry in the coming years and about the growth that will create. So let's get started. Our message today is simple. Broadridge is well positioned to deliver sustainable top-quartile returns over any multiyear period and for a long time to come. Our confidence is based on 3 key building blocks. First, Broadridge is a global fintech leader with strong market positions in a large and growing addressable market. Second, we're growing 2 strong franchise businesses across governance and capital markets, and we're building a third franchise in wealth. We define a franchise business as one that delivers a truly differentiated value proposition and that creates network value for our clients. And across governance, capital markets and wealth, we are executing on clear growth plans that strengthen our core value propositions and that extend that value across the network our businesses reach. Finally, we recognize how important capital allocation is to long-term value creation. Broadridge will continue to use your capital wisely by investing in our business, growing our dividend, making value-enhancing acquisitions and returning excess capital to our shareholders in the form of buybacks. It's a simple formula, build on our market leadership, execute on our clear growth plans across our businesses and be good stewards of your capital. This approach has driven strong shareholder returns. And we believe it will continue to lead to long-term sustainable top-quartile returns over any multiyear period. My goal today is to walk you through each of these key elements in more detail, beginning with our strong market position. Broadridge is a global fintech leader with strong market positions across multiple verticals within financial services. Our technology and associates power the critical infrastructure behind investing, governance and communications. Broadridge makes our clients stronger, and through them, we enable better financial lives for millions of investors around the globe. By focusing on that purpose, we have transformed Broadridge from a trusted vendor of a few key services into an equally trusted, innovative technology and transformation partner. We're building on that momentum to do more, driving greater value for our clients, associates and shareholders while further improving financial lives for millions of investors. Broadridge provides industry solutions for mission-critical but nondifferentiating functions in financial services. That focus has put Broadridge at the heart of corporate governance, fixed income and equity trading and investor communications. A few key numbers highlight the ubiquitous role we play. We clear and settle an average of $10 trillion every day. We support proxy building for over 80% of the outstanding shares of U.S. companies, and we send more than 6 billion critical communications a year. Our important role has been highlighted since beginning of the pandemic. In governance, we've ensured that shareholder dialogue and oversight continues by keeping open the lines of communication and facilitating almost 2,000 virtual shareholder meetings. Our scalable and resilient technology platforms flawlessly processed record trading volumes during periods of extreme volatility last spring, enabling markets to settle and investors to price in the impact of a worldwide shutdown. Since then, we're proud to have continued to enable investors to react quickly and to keep global markets open. Building on that critical role, we have delivered a strong track record of top and bottom line growth. Since 2014, we have almost doubled our recurring revenues from $1.6 billion in 2014 to over $3 billion in fiscal '20. We've driven steady margin expansion by taking advantage of our scale by driving digitization. At the same time, we've continually reinvested, building new platforms, driving innovation and growing our talent. This balanced approach with consistent top line growth and margin expansion has enabled us to deliver steady double-digit earnings growth. Combined with prudent capital allocation, including a growing dividend, it's also enabled us to deliver strong shareholder returns. Our 23% annualized total shareholder returns since 2014 puts us comfortably in the top quartile of the S&P 500. As we look ahead, Broadridge is well positioned to continue to deliver on that value creation formula. As Edmund will review, our 3-year objectives again call for 7% to 9% recurring revenue growth, further margin expansion and 8% to 12% adjusted EPS growth, which, along with a growing dividend, should continue to drive top-quartile TSR performance for the long term. The long term. Let me comment on that for just a moment. The reason we talk about the long term is because of the magnitude of the opportunity we face. Our market position is strong that is matched against a very large and growing addressable market. Total technology and operations spend by global banks is over $190 billion. Asset management spend is on top of that. The total addressable market for Broadridge's current solutions across governance, capital markets and wealth is $46 billion, which continues to increase every year to both the ongoing market growth and especially as we enter new adjacencies. Compared to our $3 billion of recurring fee revenue, the future growth opportunity for all intents and purposes is intimate. So how do we capture that opportunity? The good news is that the theme of creating industry solutions for critical but nondifferentiating functions is a multi-decade trend. Beyond that, our growth is propelled by multiple financial services trends. So let's look at that. As you know, the financial services industry is undergoing significant change. The rise of passive investing is driving down margins for active managers and putting pressure on wealth managers. Wealth managers are fighting back with managed accounts, putting additional pressure on asset managers. Meanwhile, 0 commission trading is drawing in the next generation of investors, and they're demanding that critical information be delivered to their mobile device in a format they want to consume. New technologies like blockchain and AI are opening up new opportunities, but they're also adding to the pressure felt by the industry and ample private capital continues to fund new entrants' intent on driving disruption. All these factors are driving change across the financial services spectrum. And that's good for Broadridge because they're also driving long-term demand for next-generation mutualization and resiliency, digital transformation and unique data and network value. These important client needs are being accelerated by the pandemic. The pressure on financial services firms to simplify their operations and reduce cost to mutualization has only grown. Demand is also growing for the next level of resilience. Clients used to worry about losing a single facility. Now they need to worry about losing a whole country or even the globe. The investment to build the needed resilience across their entire technology and operations at stake significantly increases the logic from mutualization. Our extra time at home has been a crash course in digital for all of us. A need to adopt new technologies and incorporate AI based on additional data only continues to grow. These needs create opportunity for Broadridge in each of our 3 broad franchises, the first of which is our ICS or governance business. The strength of our governance business comes from its position at the heart of a network linking broker-dealers, corporate issuers, asset managers and tens of millions of individual and institutional investors. Our role in this network yields natural organic growth as a result, the increase in investor positions. On top of this, we're extending our governance franchise by expanding the number and value of services we deliver. We earn our trusted role at the heart of governance by driving continuous improvement for all stakeholders. We're creating the next generation of governance tools, including summary fund reports and making proxy voting easier than ever. These new capabilities will help further drive down the cost and drive up the effectiveness of our network. We're also building on our deep relationships with virtually every public company and fund manager in North America to extend our services. Specifically, we're growing our issuer solutions by expanding our product offering and investing in our shareholder meeting services. Similarly, we're helping asset managers and retirement providers with a growing suite of data-driven solutions to help them grow their business, reduce cost and manage risk. Finally, we're helping clients accelerate the digitization of transactional communications, helping drive down the costs and deepen customer relationships. Let's turn now to our second franchise, capital markets. Broadridge is the leading global provider of post-sale technology for cash securities. This $650 million business is part of our GTO segment. The growth strategy is straightforward. First, we'll continue to build on our global platform capabilities to enable our clients to simplify and improve their global operations across cash securities as well as other asset classes. Second, we'll continue to develop strong component solutions. Third, we're building new network-enabled businesses using AI, digital ledger and other new technologies. I'm particularly excited about LTX, which brings AI plus a new electronic trading protocol to significantly increase liquidity in corporate bond trading. With the value of current fixed income trading leaders exceeding $30 billion, we see potential for significant value creation as this solution scales. Let's turn to our third franchise, wealth and investment management, which is emerging nicely. The core of this $500 million plus business is built on our post-trade capabilities, serving the retail operations of leading broker-dealers. Over the past several years, we've also built or acquired a series of differentiated component solutions, serving the front and middle office of wealth managers. Next year, we're launching the Broadridge wealth platform. This platform will enable UBS and then others as a sign-on to enhance adviser productivity, create a superior client experience and drive enterprise-level efficiencies by mutualizing investments in technology, innovation and security. Finally, we are helping investment managers, a key part of the wealth ecosystem, address their need to modernize and simplify with a compelling, integrated and independent technology suite. This single platform offers portfolio and order management, expense management and investment accounting globally across a very wide set of asset classes. I hope by now, you're hearing the thread through all of these opportunities, which is compelling, modern and independent technology. Technology, including our nearly 4,000 technologists, is the engine that's driving our long-term growth. Across financial services, the pace of change is only accelerating. Our clients need to modernize their technology and they need to innovate, but they also need to prioritize. Broadridge is the on-ramp to next-generation technology for the critical but nondifferentiating functions in our space, freeing our clients up to invest in what makes them unique. That's why we are investing in next-generation technology across all of our platforms. That's why we're building API and microservices capabilities moving to the cloud and driving interoperability of our platforms. We're also delivering new capabilities across AI, blockchain, cloud and digital or the ABCDs of innovation that you heard Mike Tae discussed at our opening video. Our approach is grounded firmly in our deep domain expertise, which gives us a unique understanding of issues and solutions that no single client can match. As a result, our pipeline of new products and capabilities is richer than ever. In governance, we're delivering digitally native tools, enhancing digital communications and building a European shareholder information hub on blockchain. In capital markets, we're extending our global SaaS platforms, adding new capabilities and launching a fixed income trading platform. And in wealth, as I noted earlier, we are delivering the industry's only unified front-to-back technology platform. I couldn't be more excited about our transformation from a trusted service provider to an equally trusted world-class technology partner. That evolution is firmly grounded in our culture of associate engagement and client service, which is my next topic. Our culture drives real business results and is an important competitive advantage. You can see the impact most clearly in our strong retention rate, which hasn't dipped below 97% since we became a public company and was 98% in fiscal '20. Or as we say here, only 2 points below acceptable. It is centered on the service profit chain where highly engaged associates create very satisfied clients, leading to strong outcomes for our shareholders. Our goal is that every associate should feel empowered to do their best work for clients. We hold our managers accountable for the engagement of their teams. And the compensation of every associate at Broadridge from the person on the loading dock, to our development teams, to me is tied to client satisfaction. In fact, for most associates, that's the only metric that matters. This focus has been recognized. We're proud of winning The Great Places to Work designation in the U.S., Canada and India, and we're proud to be a best place to work for LGBTQ associates. So the combination of associate engagement and focus on client satisfaction is a key driver behind our long-term growth and value creation. The last element of our strategy that I want to focus on this morning is our commitment to balanced and shareholder-friendly capital allocation. One of the strongest features of our business model is our free cash flow generation. My role as CEO is to ensure that we put that cash to work wisely to drive long-term value. Our results over the past 2 Investor Day cycles are a great example of that balanced approach. We've invested $800 million in internal capital expenditures and platform investments to create new digital capabilities, building global post-trade and Broadridge wealth platforms and grow our global footprint among other uses. We've invested another $1.5 billion in targeted M&A, which has been an important source of new product development, of talent and technology. Recent investments have helped strengthen our offering in governance, expanded our wealth product set and added new capabilities in capital markets. Finally, we've returned more than $2 billion to our shareholders, anchored our strong dividend, which has grown every year since we became an independent company. And when we've not found attractive M&A opportunities, we've returned excess cash through share buybacks. Let me conclude the strategy discussion by bringing you back to why we're here. I said at the outset that our investor days serve as a milestone in the growth and evolution of our company. Each has come with a different theme. In 2014, the theme was all about investment, investment in our technology capabilities, in growing our product portfolio and in strengthening our sales and marketing capabilities to meet the growing demand for our solutions. We executed against that plan. 3 years ago, in 2017, our theme was Ready for Next, and we introduced our strategy of focusing on our 2 growing franchises in governance, in capital markets and building a third franchise in wealth management. And again, we executed, introducing new governance capabilities, delivering on our global platform build and strengthening our wealth business. We also delivered on our financial targets by driving a 7% recurring revenue, compound annual growth rate, expanding our margins and growing earnings at a strong double-digit rate. Today's theme is about scaling a global fintech leader. And our strategy is to continue to build on our market leadership in governance, capital markets and wealth through consistent investment in next-generation technology and innovation, supported by our client-focused culture. We will continue to put our strong cash flow to work in a balanced way to grow our business and create value for our shareholders. It's a simple strategy and a strong formula for continued top-quartile TSR. Now before I turn the camera over to Bob Schifellite, I want to share my thoughts on the speakers you'll hear today, starting with Bob himself. Bob joined Broadridge as one of the first associates in our proxy business. And there is no one that can match the depth of his experience in the business of corporate governance. Most importantly, in the more than 25 years that Bob has led our ICS segment, he has built a strong and deep leadership team, several of whom we'll hear from today, including Dorothy Flynn, Cindy Dash and Doug DeSchutter. After Bob's team, you'll hear from Tom Carey. Tom joined Broadridge as a technologist and has steadily risen over the years to run our international business first for GTO and then for all of Broadridge. Since 2019, he has led our GTO segment. You'll also hear from Vijay Mayadas, one of the main architects of our fixed income trading platform. Chris Perry and Mike Alexander will present our wealth and investment management business. As President, Chris is a key partner in leading Broadridge. Since he joined us in 2014, he has transformed our client-facing activities and helped drive record closed sales. Mike leads our wealth franchise. And with his deep [ top-notch ] background based on decades in the industry, I can't think of a better leader for that key role. Samir Pandiri will round out our business presentations. I recruited Samir from BNY Mellon 2 years ago to lead our international efforts. At BNY, Samir ran a business with revenues larger than all of Broadridge. So I hope that gives you an idea of our international ambitions. Finally, you'll hear from Edmund Reese, the newest member of our team, who joined us from American Express, where he was CFO of AXP's flagship consumer business, also many times the size of Broadridge. Now it's not completely fair to ask Edmund to present our business model 10 days after joining, but he has dived in, and we're already learning from him. Matt Connor, who has served ably as Interim CFO, will join for Q&A. It's a full agenda. And we have a strong team of proven leaders to tell you about our plans for continued growth and value creation. So let's get to it. Bob?

Thanks for the nice introduction, Tim. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Tim's introduction referenced my tenure in this industry. That tenure has given me the privilege to be part of the Broadridge journey. I'm proud of our track record. Somehow, seemingly overnight, I've become the oldest person in the room. And I'm in a lot of rooms, a lot of virtual rooms. I hope with tenure, however, comes wisdom. That wisdom says we are better positioned than ever to grow. And I've never been more optimistic about Broadridge's future. Now let's review Broadridge's Investor Communications segment, our governance franchise, which contributed $3.5 billion of total revenue and $1.9 billion in recurring fee revenue in fiscal '20. It's composed of 4 businesses: regulatory, issuer, data-driven mutual fund solutions and customer communications. This business serves nearly every bank, broker, fund and public company for annual meetings, regulatory and other critical communications. In the last 3 years, we achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 6% on recurring fees with all 4 businesses contributing positive growth over that period. There's a significant opportunity in the next few years, looking at a $19 billion, $19 billion global opportunity. We will lead and grow through technology and innovation. The governance franchise has a strong foundation with a powerful and unique network model, underlying macro tailwinds and a significant global market opportunity. Our governance franchise will grow across 4 key things: first, driving greater investor engagement by continuing to transform and expand regulatory communications content and delivery; second, growing our end-to-end corporate issuer solutions; third, helping funds and other asset managers grow and retain revenue through a data-driven solution; and fourth, driving the next generation of digital communications while optimizing print and mail services through advanced technologies. Now let me share some of the examples of success on these themes since last Investor Day. We created a proxy voting app and transformed the design and ease of use of our digital communications. It's driving higher voting. Issuer virtual shareholder meeting services grew more than 500% versus last year that increased participation at annual meetings and drove efficiencies for issuers. We implemented a distribution insight platform, helping funds and ETFs understand distribution trends across the world on one platform. We've launched the Broadridge Communications Cloud, driving higher digital adoption, lowering costs and improving engagement. Now this is my favorite slide. It's the same slide I shared with you last Investor Day. We continue to expand the network and deliver exceptional value to clients even as the number of participants and complexity has increased. This is a snapshot of the capital markets ecosystem, and it reflects the North American trading system. Separately, I will discuss our global opportunities. Broadridge's governance solutions are critical to the efficient functioning of the global capital markets. We are the hub for issuers, funds, banks, brokers and investors, enabling a seamless flow of information as well as enabling investor participation in corporate governance. We connect 9,000 issuers and 30,000 mutual funds and ETFs that interact with more than 170 million individual investors. We also support 200,000 financial advisers and more than 120,000 institutional investors connected through more than 1,000 bank and broker-dealer intermediaries. Overall, we process more than 80% of the outstanding shares in the U.S. through our proxy services. That's a mouthful. I know it's a mouthful, but it explains the hub concept and points to the depth and breadth of our business. We simplify the thousands of pathways, connections and interactions required for this process to work. We have a myriad of rules engines to accommodate different processing requirements for all constituents, proprietary technology platforms such as ProxyEdge that serve institutional investors, proxy voting apps for retail investors and databases storing communication preferences for investors. And these hundreds of millions of data records are protected through the industry's highest level of data security standards. It takes significant investments in technology and human capital as well as decades of experience to make this process work every day for every constituent. Finally, we act as a reliable information and data source to regulators, engaging effectiveness of policies and driving on initiatives like digital adoption and investor engagement. Our relationship with regulators has ensured that standards are reviewed to support a world-class governance process. These standards also need to continue to drive further efficiencies and increased stockholder engagement. Now from the powerful network I just described, we also built multiple strong businesses that provide additional services and solutions. We have a history of providing great service and value to each constituent in the ecosystem. They value our partnership and years of successful execution on their behalf. It is this track record that is extraordinarily powerful, and it provides the opportunity for Broadridge to offer more value-creating solutions. Here, are some examples of how we serve each segment of the network. We help issuers and funds reach individual shareholders through regulatory disclosures and meeting events. In fiscal '20, our network delivered more than 6 billion investor communications. That's right, 6 billion. We handle proxy, class and corporate actions, post-sale prospectus and other critical communications for brokers and banks. We enable financial advisers to serve their customers' governance needs through investor and adviser technology platforms. Broadridge delivers distribution insights derived from our data network to help funds and asset managers retain and grow their business. Our processes make it quick and easy for investors to vote and participate in corporate governance and continue to be informed about their assets. And providing more solutions is also creating deeper and richer relationships with our clients. Let's now address macro trends impacting the industry. Since our last Investor Day, macro trends have strengthened the value of our network and are acting as tailwinds for our business. And here are 4 key trends: First, the increases in managed accounts, 0 commission trades and popularity of robo advisers are driving increased investor positions, many that are focusing on important issues such as ESG. In addition, issuers are looking to capitalize on this renewed investor interest by improving and reporting on ESG metrics. Second, banks, brokers and advisers have a growing need for digital solutions to engage their customers. And investors are expecting improved digital experiences. Third, regulators across the globe are adopting best practices, leading to standardization of regulations to better protect investors by enabling access to accurate voting, processes and increased educational content. Fourth, data analytics are driving benefits to those companies using them today. There is immense value and insights that data can provide across a spectrum of areas from providing funds insights into distribution across the world to investor behavior on voting and investment choices and so much more. These trends are also causing cost pressures on our clients. They need to address each one of these trends while being more cost efficient. Now what does this mean for us? Huge, huge value. We are well positioned to generate growth by providing solutions in response to these trends. While most of our revenues today are generated from North America, we have a significant global opportunity in front of us. The core solutions we provide to global clients have significantly expanded in recent years and include annual meeting services, fund communications, data and analytics and other shareholder disclosure communications. Although requirements and regulations for governance varies substantially between the U.S., Canada and the rest of the world, we have been successful in developing solutions for all. There is a significant increase in emphasis on shareholder rights, and regulators across the world are amending rules to allow for greater investor participation and information. This market opportunity includes 74,000 publicly traded companies, 123,000 funds and over 400 million investors across approximately 100 countries. Best governance practices allow companies to attract worldwide capital, and North American investors continue to be a target of global issuers. The data I just shared is significantly more than that in North America. Think of the possibilities. We've seen real growth, and you'll hear more about it from Samir Pandiri, our international President. To wrap up the conversation on our governance franchise, let me highlight how deep financial experience, data and network value and mutualized operating model are solving clients' issues. Here are some examples: Lowering costs. We saved the industry $14 billion in paper and postage costs over the past decade through digital and other proprietary consolidation technologies. And we are not done yet. Let's talk a bit about innovations to increase shareholder engagement. Through better designed digital communications, Broadridge drove higher voting in 2020, increasing e-mail vote participation after 10 years of decline. And we intimately understand clients' needs to consistently and reliably deliver for them not just for what they need now but what they will need tomorrow. Solutions for new regulations. We've developed a solution for the SEC's rule 30e-3, which will be effective January '21. Not only does this solution service beneficial shareholders on behalf of our bank and broker clients, it has resulted in more funds choosing Broadridge to service their registered or direct held shareholders. Growing and retaining revenue. Our distribution insights platform has provided asset managers the opportunity to intelligently target fund buyers. Since last Investor Day, we have added more than 150 new asset managers utilizing various aspects of our data and analytics solutions. I will discuss the first growth theme, driving next-gen regulatory. My colleagues will then discuss the other growth themes: issuer, data-driven fund solutions and transforming omnichannel communications. Now diving into our regulatory business, the largest part of our governance business. We've seen solid growth over the past 3 years since our last Investor Day, with an 8% CAGR and stand at $792 million in recurring revenue in fiscal '20. And the key drivers are continued position growth and enhanced shareholder engagement through tech enablement. On top of our recurring revenue growth is about another $200 million in event-driven revenue, most of it in the regulatory business. Our CFO, Edmund Reese, will speak more on this topic. We also have a $3 billion market opportunity in front of us. Let me expand now on the positive tailwinds for this business, beginning with investor position growth. Equity and fund positions have grown and shown consistent growth over decades. Even during the Great Recession of 2008, between equities and funds, stock record positions grew. And we expect this growth to continue in the future, supported by the increase in managed accounts, which are driving investor positions by diversification of equity holdings. And the growth of digital brokerages, robo advisers and 0 commission trading is driving more individuals to invest in the markets. And a rise in the use of model portfolios is increasing mutual funds and ETF positions. There's also been an uptick in IPOs. As we noted in our Q1 earnings announcement, position growth in Q1 was 16%. This resulted in 2 consecutive quarters of strong stock record growth. Investor position growth is a great foundation for this business as it has proven to be resilient, and it will keep growing. And now is the time to take advantage of these strong tailwinds. We are investing in product and technology innovations to help our clients address the challenges that they face and the opportunities. I am proud of how we have helped solve the ever-changing compliance obligations that clients faced as regulations continue to evolve. We've leveraged our digital capabilities and have many successes over the past 24 months with a number of new products and enhancements, including the EU Commission Rule SRD II, SEC Rule 30e-3 and more. They are growth drivers. Building on our already successful enhanced e-delivery communications, we're taking another step further. An example is digital templates that deliver multiple regulatory communications in one e-mail. Let me emphasize that [Audio Gap] intend and enhance our technology platform. It is robust. It's resilient and scalable. Architecture that is cloud-enabled powered by AWS with robust data mining capabilities. It will provide solutions and microservices through APIs and process a robust set of data. That will drive deeper insights for clients and the industry. All in all, we are executing in the present, but we are also investing and innovating for the future. I will now show a short video highlighting our digital solutions for proxy processing. [Presentation]

In addition to proxy, you can see how we digitize all forms of regulatory communications. All of our solutions are now mobile native. As we drive digital solutions, it will enhance relationships between issuers and funds with their investors as well as banks and brokers with their clients. That is valuable, and regulators are encouraging these tools to better inform and engage shareholders. Our solutions are unique and engaging because they allow customization based on data and investor preferences we have captured over the years. That is extremely valuable. We have been solving regulatory issues for a long time. Deploying technology, we've removed over 80% of paper and postage costs. From virtual shareholder meetings to the communications cloud to our more recent blockchain initiatives, we create solutions clients are required to provide based on changing regulations and their customers' demands. The voting app, QR codes, stock recall, proxy policies and insights, these are all examples of new products we have implemented to meet the ever-changing requirements of governance. Our product team has never been stronger. Well, that covers regulatory. It is complicated, technology driven and requires deep experience and knowledge. Now I'm going to turn it over to Dorothy, who runs our issuer business. I knew Dorothy through business for several years ago -- for several years. About 4 years ago, she asked for career advice sharing 3 options. She was not here. I suggested the fourth, and I'm so glad she accepted. It was the Broadridge option. Over to you, Dorothy.

Good morning, and thank you, Bob. I'm Dorothy Flynn and I run our Broadridge Corporate Issuer Solutions business. I just love telling our growth story as we are the leading provider for corporate governance solutions for public companies. After being in the Investor Relations industry for many years, I joined Broadridge almost 4 years ago. My experience working in IR for a Fortune 50 company taught me how much the industry needed innovation to simplify the very complex task of managing our key stakeholders. I was very excited to join Broadridge and to continue that innovative thought leadership for our corporate issuer clients. Let's start with our growth. Over the last 3 years, we've seen a 14% annual growth rate in our issuer solutions, and that means I'm even more excited about our future. Our strategy of growing our relationships with our public company clients is working. I'll share a few concrete ways we have been able to do this in just a bit. But first, let me give you an overview of our key position in the public company landscape and how our end-to-end solutions help public companies solve very complex governance and communication challenges. Maintaining good corporate governance is a critical component of being a public company and achieving it is no easy task. Our issuer clients must provide key company information to all types of shareholders: institutional, beneficial and registered as well as to the regulators. Institutionally owned shares make up about 70% of shares held in public companies. The balance of shares are held by individual retail shareholders in either a beneficial account like a brokerage account or as a registered shareholder held by the company's transfer agent. But all of these constituents need to know and understand the issuer story. My team serves over 5,000 public companies that are headquartered in the United States. They all must hold annual meetings and need our corporate governance solutions in order to efficiently communicate with their shareholders. We have a service relationship with all of them because we communicate with their beneficial shareholders through our bank and broker-dealer service agreements. Then for nearly half of them, we also handle the proxy processing for the registered side of the shareholder base. So at every point in the governance process, we are there to be a strategic partner. We eliminate risk because we have solutions for all these challenges. We remove the need for multiple vendors required to get governance right. We unlock both time and financial savings for our clients. Corporate issuers pay all the bills for all shareholder communications for every group of constituents so we focus on building direct relationships with all issuers. And because issuers need to communicate with those key constituents and because we process more than 80% of the outstanding shares in the United States in the performance of our proxy services, there are many opportunities to help simplify the process. Let's talk first about our governance solutions. When public companies hold their annual shareholder meetings, the preparation involved is a long process. They have to tell their story. Find ways to make it really compelling and enable voting on certain company issues. Issuers also want to provide clear messaging to all of their shareholders, relying on them to vote their proxies on critical matters such as for say on pay votes or the election of Board directors. They must also tell their story around key topical information such as their environmental, social and governance practices. The responsibilities our clients have are ever expanding, but they become exponentially more manageable when they can rely on a trusted and proven provider, one who can help them navigate through the complexities along the way. To be effective at communications with all of those groups, you need data and analytics on who the shareholders are, when they vote and data that supports how to reach them. Reaching shareholders and building a channel with them is becoming more important because when a company's management team needs their votes, they need channels to make those shareholder connections. Now we're not soliciting for votes, but we create those channels and find creative ways to reach them. Our transfer agent business helps issuers with their registered shareholder record-keeping and providing shareholders with proper instructions during corporate actions. The books and records must be accurate, you must communicate with those shareholders, pay dividends and enable them to vote on an annual basis. Disclosure solutions is our fastest-growing offering. Our team helps issuers with their regulatory filings required by the SEC using their EDGAR reporting tool. So we take a company document, do the required typesetting and composition work and help them file it with the SEC. The filings are typically a result of their planning a merger, a spin-off, a debt offering or other capital market transactions. These events continue to occur despite economic or pandemic conditions, such as those we've experienced with COVID-19. When M&A transactions are down, typically, debt capital raising is up. We also provide disclosure solutions for annual compliance. Public companies are obligated to file annual, quarterly and periodic filings for proxies, for 10-Ks, quarterly 10-Qs and 8-Ks. I really love this business because even an IPO process, when a company is filing a registration statement, it means they're going to need our governance services down the road. Let me give you 2 quick examples of how all this plays out. First, a leading financial services firm that has been with us since 2015. Over the years, we added many of our core and adjacent services, growing the recurring revenues to over $800,000. A second, a public company spin-off, became a client of ours in 2018 using our services for compliance for their annual proxy materials and typesetting, EDGAR and print. We then added to recurring revenue, our shareholder data analytics, and this year, their first virtual shareholder meeting. We stand ready to bring new innovative solutions to the market to help our clients meet their most pressing needs. Our newly launched ESG consulting business is a brilliant example of how we identify market trends and quickly offer solutions that expand our suite of products. To highlight another way that we can pivot when market conditions change abruptly, here's an update about our virtual shareholder meetings business. [Presentation]

So there you go. We went from pioneering the VSM idea in 2009 with 4 companies to over 300 virtual meetings in 2019. As you just heard, this year, due to COVID, we will host almost 2,000 virtual shareholder meetings. Great thing about Broadridge is our scale, and we moved quickly to support over 6.5x the demand of our prior year. We can innovate and support new opportunities whenever and wherever they arise. Overall, we had more than 91,000 attendees at our hosted meetings this season. I love our stats. 282 of the S&P 500, 83 of the S&P 100 used our platform. I'm so pleased with that, but this is critical from a governance perspective. Voting participation among companies that use our VSM was at 71%, exceeding voting participation levels at companies that did not go virtual. Moreover, we continuously improve the experience for shareholders, for Board members and for the C-suite. We believe our industry-leading technology has created an environment where the vast majority of clients will continue to host virtual meetings. And in fact, most have told us they'll never go back to physical meetings because of the virtual experience we've created for them. We believe that temporary measures put in place by a few state legislatures that previously didn't allow virtual-only meetings will accept this new reality. Thanks so much for your time today. Our end-to-end value proposition means we offer clients a proven and seamless single-source solution, one that unlocks value by making it more efficient for issuers to navigate their governance needs. Now I'm absolutely delighted to introduce our next presenter, Cindy Dash.

Thank you, Dorothy. I have really good news to share today and that more growth is coming in our data-driven fund solutions business. As you heard from Dorothy, I'm Cindy Dash, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Matrix Financial Solutions and Fi360. In 1999, I was a young ambitious lawyer looking for a professional adventure. Joining Matrix, a start-up, looking to disrupt the retirement market with its cutting-edge mutual fund trade processing platform was a great fit. In 2011, Matrix was acquired by Broadridge, and it was reassuring to find the same entrepreneurial culture and a commitment to thinking even bigger for our clients. From the time I rose to Chief Operating Officer and then General Manager in 2016, we have grown our trading platform fourfold. Fourfold execution, powered by our unique data-driven fund solutions, is why we are excited to celebrate a tremendous market opportunity available to our clients. These clients include asset managers, advisers, record keepers and financial intermediaries. Now let's put the drivers into context by reviewing a snapshot of our strong financial performance. Over the past 3 years, our revenue has grown at a 12% CAGR. We achieved a strong growth by investing organically and through acquisitions to develop best-of-breed solutions by helping clients respond to market and regulatory changes. And by generating record-breaking sales with faster onboarding due to client demands. This proven track record gives us plenty of room to grow in an asset management market of $5 billion. With 5 billion reasons, our clients want our solutions more than ever. To be clear, there are major challenges impacting the asset management industry. I'm sure these challenges are familiar to you. Such as the downward pressure on fees and margins, increasing competition for assets under management and a complex regulatory environment that differs across geographies. Understanding the challenges our clients face, we partner with them to address their most pressing needs. We don't wait for an invitation to innovate. Rather, we leverage data-driven solutions to help clients think proactively about what they need to grow their business. Our capabilities span across global distribution, retirement, technology and analytics, and customer journey management. Over the next few minutes, I will take you through each one and describe our value-add for our clients. First, we have our global distribution solutions, which help clients optimize their product development and distribution strategy. Asset managers can no longer rely on generating alpha and beating their benchmarks. Achieving meaningful distribution happens by identifying the right product for the right market and the proper sales channels. This complex process requires them to devote large amounts of resources, they simply don't have. Now what does that mean? The importance of distribution efforts is reflected in how much asset managers spend. We estimate that spend for distribution-related efforts, including technology and operations, to be over $1.7 billion. How do we help? Broadridge help asset managers exceed their distribution goals through a single source of business intelligence and sales tools. Our industry experts deliver actionable insights through research reports, analysis and advisory services. Let me bring this all to life with a short video, showcasing our distribution insights platform. [Presentation]

Definitely a great video to give you a taste of the innovation we bring to the market. The scope of our solutions and the depth of our data is built on years of in-house innovation. We know it is unmatched in the industry and definitely provides us with a large runway for growth. Now I want to shift to my favorite topic, our suite of data-driven technology and analytics solutions, also known as Matrix and Fi360. In the U.S., retirement has become a massive $24 trillion market. Despite the size of the market, there is a retirement income deficit in the trillions of dollars, driving the need to save more. Clearly, the pandemic will only add to this deficit. A complex ecosystem of financial institutions drive retirement plan business. As our slogan states, clients get connected through Matrix, asset managers choose to have their mutual funds available on our platform, and we provide access to thousands of funds for our clients. Our plan level data feed service provides broker-dealer firms with asset values and investment activity for compliance oversight. I could go on with the list. But the takeaway for you is that our clients believe we are everywhere they need us to be. That is why we are a leading independent mutual fund trading platform, serving over 120,000 retirement plans. Our fourfold growth from approximately $125 billion to over $500 billion is a testament to our ability to execute for our clients. And even with that success, in 2019, we acquired Fi360 to add more tools and more data-driven capabilities. Now advisers are an important part of the retirement ecosystem. They need an enhanced data-driven experience across platforms to drive the best outcomes. For them, Fi360 is the gold standard for designations and training. Over 11,000 advisers leveraged our Fi360 accredited investment fiduciary certification or AIF, to gather and grow assets. Recently, our AIF certification was ranked 1 of the 4 best by U.S. News and World report. What we do with the AIF is simplify the complex for advisers to help them win business. And the fact that advisers need to maintain their certification results in recurring growth for Broadridge. We intend to expand these designations to help advisers and financial firms address new regulations. A great example is regulation best interest, or as you may know it, Reg BI, where 1 plus 1 equals 3 is when large broker-dealers and investment firms leverage Fi360's core software products and data solutions to drive distribution growth. And we're committed to enhancing Fi360's data solutions to benefit those asset managers and advisers certainly in the wealth channel. Let's now talk about our customer journey management solutions. Those solutions deliver personalized multichannel experiences to both educate and engage plan participants. As a major industry player, Broadridge reaches over 65 million participants and counts 23 out of the top 25 largest record keepers as clients. Leveraging data and analytics, we deliver targeted plan participant communications to educate and drive desired outcomes. A subtle digital nudging to save more encourages participant engagement and buy in versus sitting on the sidelines. In recent years, we made significant investments to enhance our new platform. And our clients have praised our new platform as a cutting-edge industry-leading experience. We are certainly well aligned to help our clients and the participants they serve, navigate their retirement journey for years to come. I hope I have given you a better understanding of our capabilities and why I'm so excited about the opportunity ahead of us. This is a large growing market in which our clients face multiple challenges that drive demand for our products. We're confident that we'll earn their business and exceed their expectations as their journey continues to unfold. Now I would like to turn this over to my esteemed colleague, Doug DeSchutter. Doug?

Thanks, Cindy. Hi, everyone. I'm Doug DeSchutter, President of BRCC, our customer communications business. I'm pleased to be able to provide an update on how we're transforming BRCC from a leading print provider into a thriving omnichannel communications business. And the very significant digital opportunity it represents. This slide frames the size and pass growth of BRCC, which is well below Broadridge's overall growth profile. I know that is raised questions and even some concern about how BRCC fits within our governance franchise and overall growth strategy. What the aggregate revenue numbers don't show is the underlying transformation of BRCC and the resulting value we're creating, both for clients and for Broadridge. Within BRCC, we have both low-margin print revenue and higher-margin digital revenue. An important part of our strategy is to help clients enhance their digital communications and help convert their customers from print to digital. This drives savings for our clients, while sometimes yielding lower revenue but higher-margin for us. In fact, while consolidated revenues since fiscal year '17 declined 2%, we've created a digital business of just under $70 million, which grew at a healthy double-digit rate in fiscal year '20. In addition, we delivered $50 million in synergies from our integration of DST's North American Communications business. These synergies powered significant investments in new cloud-based digital capabilities, which subsequently led to launching the Broadridge Communications Cloud, our next-gen omnichannel platform, all while delivering double-digit earnings growth for BRCC each of the past 3 years. And finally, we achieved record closed sales for BRCC last year. That's a direct result of our platform investments coming to life, as clients look to rationalize print and upgrade their digital experience with a trusted partner with a full breadth of modernized omnichannel capabilities. I'm proud of the progress we've made and the pieces we put in place. It's early to still project since we're still in the midst of the transformation. But I expect positive overall revenue growth now through fiscal year '23, along with continued strong earnings contributions and embedded within BRCCs overall results, a faster-growing digital business. Here's a graphical representation of the print to digital conversion we just discussed, and we originally showed this in our 2017 Investor Day. Digital transformation, even as it cannibalizes print volumes, benefits our clients in Broadridge alike. Brands have significant savings on postage and print costs. And from a Broadridge perspective, distribution revenues go away. Fee revenues can be plus or minus. Profit generally is greater given the value created with the shift to digital. And so by design, our print business and relationships helped to fuel our profitable digital business even when it compresses our total revenue. Okay. Let's talk about execution against the 3 goals we shared in our last Investor Day. I've already discussed our synergy achievements. So let's focus on our mid- to long-term goals. To capitalize on midterm expansion opportunities as the industry's print consolidation point, we built the industry's premier, high scale, high-performance omnichannel platform. We're winning in the market as a result, and as mentioned, we closed record sales in fiscal year '20. We're executing outsourcing deals across a multiple of industries, which further validates the depth and breadth of our value proposition. Of critical importance, we're making progress against our long-term opportunities to help our clients accelerate their print to digital transformation by creating a digital network with unique capabilities. And to that end, we introduced and launched the Broadridge Communications Cloud. We have recent notable wins as a result, including a leading U.S.-based bank, a global fintech and a leading U.S. insurer. While we're on it, let's talk about the digitization of communications. Digitization isn't a new theme. And my guess is that in virtually every Investor Day that you're participating in across financial services, management teams are talking about digital, including new digital services like robo advisers, stock trading apps, online banking and one-click payments. The industry is making a lot of progress and COVID significantly accelerated consumer usage of these applications. But if you ask the same management teams about the progress being made in digitizing their customer communications, you're probably going to get a very different answer. And you're going to hear something along the lines of not being nearly as far along as they thought they'd be or as far as they'd like to be. And that is specifically an area where Broadridge can help. We have and will continue to invest in omnichannel communications, and I see a huge opportunity for Broadridge to enhance the communications capabilities for our clients and the digital experiences for their customers. Here's how. First, we modernize our clients' technology infrastructure, which typically spans many siloed digital environments. Leveraging Broadridge's ongoing investments, we enable clients to move off of outdated underperforming systems and onto a unified cloud-based best-of-breed digital platform that provides end-to-end support for critical communications and reporting functions. Second, we accelerate digital adoption by making digital communications experiences more valuable than the paper they replace. In short, we help clients achieve mass digital adoption by amplifying the value of their digital communications and experiences. And third, we mutualize in, therefore, we optimize nondifferentiating client functions by consolidating omnichannel communications, both print and digital, onto a highly scaled, high performance, low-cost network. Now the platform that makes this all happen is called the Broadridge Communications Cloud. It's an end-to-end platform to create, deliver and manage omnichannel communications. It's purpose-built to help clients modernize our capabilities, accelerate digital adoption and optimize the remaining print. We have a solid foundation with the Communications Cloud today. It's live and in production supporting clients. Being best of breed means continual investment in innovation, which we're certainly committed to. And frankly, that's one of the key benefits for clients to be on our platform. So I'd like to now share a short video clip to give you an introduction to the robust capabilities of the Broadridge Communications Cloud. Let's go to the video. [Presentation]

One of the key messages I'd like to highlight from the video is that we're really simplifying the process for clients to create, manage and deliver more engaging digital experiences, not just for email, but across the spectrum of digital channels. Let's take a closer look at how we're solving for mass digital adoption by understanding what keeps consumers from going digital. First, we know that consumer behavior is hard to change overnight. Paper-based routines, in particular, are hard to break. Even during the pandemic as consumers tried more digital solutions, they didn't necessarily shut off paper. Second, e-delivery often adds friction into the experience. In fact, e-delivery, many times, is a misnomer since nothing actually gets delivered. It's just a notification of the consumer that a communication is available. The consumer then needs to make multiple steps to get access to the content. Take, for instance, this e-mail on your screen. This is an actual e-mail that I recently received. And while we've anonymized it to protect the innocent for today's discussion, it shows the multiple steps you need to take after opening the e-mail to log in and access your account and then go locate your available statement. And then there's more steps you have to manage with respect to your communications preferences with this provider. Ask yourself, if you got this e-mail, would you open it? Would you mark it as spam? Or would you just simply delete it or ignore it? It all boils down to a very simple equation, to make digital adoption a reality. Digital has to be more valuable than the paper it replaces. So let's take a look at a few examples of what we do today to make digital better than paper. We see digital as enabling highly personalized interactive communications, communications that engage consumers with visual and meaningful information. On this slide are examples of actionable communications, which can be pushed via text or e-mail and then allow consumers to immediately see an account summary without needing to log into another website or digitalized performance or patterns in the data or receive messages from their adviser or representative with relevant information. And it's a lot better than the first e-mail, we showed, right? We see digital as a way to engage consumers with accessible low friction content on the devices they use most often. For example, a text message with a link to a personalized interactive statement enables direct access to content. Consumers can access the text and interactive statements for any time anywhere viewing. We see digital adoption driven by printed digital accelerators. If you have your cell phone handy, I suggest you grab it and open up the camera app. The use of QR code has picked up steam since restaurants started using them for menus. In this example, we're using a QR code on the printed statement. Consumers can access their interactive statement online simply using their mobile camera app. And with paper in one hand and digital in the other, consumers can quickly see how digital adds to their overall communications experience. The QR code in this example is active, and I encourage you to try it. Let's help illustrate our growth opportunities using a couple of client examples. The first example references an enterprise-wide digital platform, where we're helping a large bank integrate a seamless digital experience across multiple lines of business. The second example demonstrates how we're partnering with a large insurer to create an omnichannel solution across both print and digital, and we're supporting their next-gen insurance platform. In both examples, we're helping our clients modernize our platform and improve their experience for their end customers. And these are both large enterprise applications, which is really broader to sweet spot. As we partner with providers who are looking to accelerate digital outcomes and transition print to digital, we're also leveraging our world-class print capabilities to optimize and mutualize print and mail, and that leads to further digital wins and enhancements of our digital solutions and partnerships. In the fourth quarter of FY '20, in particular, we closed 2 sizable deals, one from a large global bank for a portion of their business and the second from a large health insurer. In the first quarter of FY '21, and there is another sizable deal and this time for a large retirement plan provider. As I shared on the first slide, BRCC's digital segment is growing at a double-digit pace. What may surprise you is that our print segment is now also growing given our strong sales results, even as macro print volumes decline and as we partner with clients to suppress their print and convert their consumers to digital. And growing print is a good thing because once we have that client relationship, it leads to future digital opportunities. I'm going to wrap here. And as we did in our previous Investor Day, I'd like to leave you with a few forward-looking milestones to track so that you can gauge our progress. First, look for continued strong sales momentum as we deliver on our goal to be the industry's consolidation point for print. Critical to our success will be expanding print relationships into full omnichannel relationships with a digital component. Second, our mission, as you can clearly recognize by now is to digitize the future and help our clients accelerate digital adoption of their communications. We'll look to do that through continued investment and differentiation for the Broadridge Communications cloud and meaningful digital wins and digital partnership announcements will be important milestones for you to track. Overall, I'm very bullish on our transformation into a thriving omnichannel business and the digital opportunity it represents. We look to continue our strong sales momentum, accelerate the double-digit growth path we now have for BRCC's digital business and extend BRCC's 3-year track record of double-digit earnings growth. With digital, we're solving an important and very complex challenge for the industry. And it's a really exciting place to be. I hope you see how our mission to digitize communications is critical for our governance franchise and to bring that home, I'd like to pass it back to Bob, and have a great day.

Thank you, Doug. To wrap up on the governance franchise, let me reemphasize our key strengths and the growth themes that we discussed early in the presentation and why I am so confident about our future. Broadridge is at the center of that unique network powering governance. The business has strong growth drivers, including increasing investor positions, the need for digital and data, global regulatory changes supporting stronger governance. There is significant opportunity in extending our franchise globally. And we are already well on our way. We are incredibly excited for the future and are very focused on our 4 key growth themes: Driving next-gen regulatory; growing our range of corporate issuer solutions; building data-driven solutions for asset managers; and driving enhanced omnichannel communications. Our governance franchise has a large $19 billion opportunity, and through these themes, means we are capturing it. Thank you all for participating. I hope you are as excited for the future as we are. Up next is Tom Carey, who will speak about our capital markets franchise. Before that, we will go on a short break. [Break]

[Audio Gap] With its Global Technology and Operations segment. And I'm delighted to update you about our progress since our last Investor Day and our vision for the future, and that's backed by strong products and our super teams. Now within GTO, we've got capital markets, wealth and investment management. I will lead the overview of capital markets, while Chris Perry will take you through the wealth and investment management section. And what I'd like us to take away from today is that global capital markets really are in significant transition with technology transformation being driven by the needs for greater resiliency and modernization. And consequently, we are extremely well placed at Broadridge to capitalize upon this. I'll help us understand the critical role we play and how we're really uniquely positioned to tackle these very needs. I'll go over our key growth initiatives, including our next-gen postpaid platform and our product road map, which is where we're creating these really exciting cloud-ready API-enabled component Solutions. While Vijay Mayadas, who now leads Capital Markets, will describe how we're harnessing emerging tech to drive innovation and a next wave of growth. Vijay will be highlighting across one of the newest and most exciting initiatives, LTX. It's a market opportunity to digitize trading for the $10 trillion U.S. copper bond market. Now these are truly exciting in-flight strategies that I'm personally highly confident will drive our future growth. So with that, let's jump in. Now Broadridge is really is an integral part of financial services. And you should think about that in terms of how we've be deployed within the infrastructure of our clients. We solve those non-differentiating get mission-critical functions for our clients. And we do that by mutualizing across multiple firms, harnessing our scale, our deep domain knowledge and our product depth. And it's this depth, coupled with the march for greater resiliency and platform modernization that enables Broadridge to be positioned as a market-leading SaaS provider within Capital Markets and its position, we fully intend to grow. Now our growth is driven by 3 strategic themes that are shown here. And these are global simplification, component solutions and network value. So first up, global simplification. It's our biggest growth vehicle and our largest immediate driver. We've got a really broad and deep offering for our capital markets clients. We've enabled them to deploy this globally and across multiple business lines. So for them, they get to reduce costs and risk, to improve business performance, to increase resiliency, to modernize their tech and create what I call a sustainable base for their future growth. Now our second growth strategy is driving that technology modernization with component-based solutions. So how do we do that? Well, we've consistently brought to market new solutions. We've expanded the coverage of our existing solutions, and we've invested in creating that component-based architecture. And by doing that, we are making onboarding easier, we're providing our clients with choice and as a result, we are expanding our position in capital markets. Now our third strategic theme focuses on using innovation-led technologies, coupled with data to drive data analytics. So consider this, we hold large data sets on behalf of our clients, particularly in fixed income. We have financial service expertise in technologies such as AI and distributed ledger. And by combining these, we can drive real value, and we call this our network value. It really differentiates our overall offerings. So by continuing to deliver in these areas, I believe Broadridge is the right global fintech leader for today and tomorrow. Now really pleased to say Capital Markets grew to $650 million in revenue in FY '20 and has been growing at an 8% CAGR over the last 3 years. And please, please remember, our total addressable market is large, so there's plenty of runway for our growth. Our market competition typically varies by country and region. And interestingly, in our large opportunities, it's often in-house build that we're compared against. So here, our client has to evaluate our multi-client, highly... [Audio Gap] executing on our strategies, and in particular, global simplification. We've also launched and went live with component-based SaaS solutions, which have added to our growth. And we've onboarded major clients, including one of the very largest flow producers in the U.S. market. We saw healthy growth in trade volumes across the client base and our geographies, and we've had that strong sales performance each year. As a result, we've won new, large mandates. Grew our existing relationships, typically by asset class and geographic expansion, while also welcoming new clients to Broadridge. And importantly, that means our capital markets onboarding backlog stands today at around $100 million, giving us strong [ issuer ] to our midterm growth potential. Now turning to the market itself. And when I opened today, I said that global capital markets are in a period of significant transition. So what do I mean by that? Well, the larger firms are investing in technology to drive their future. And that's important as Broadridge's architecture and approach is highly aligned to that very thinking. While challenger firms can't maintain the multitude of legacy platforms they have, given they're now more specialized trading activities. They've got to consolidate tech. They've got to simplify and address their overall approach. Now let's couple that with demand for greater resiliency, scale and capacity. And the market volatility this year tells us precisely why that's needed. And for me, there's no better proof point for our value prop than our performance in March 2020, we flawlessly processed a new market piece, while our incredible teams transitioned seamlessly to remote working. Now remember, we are the consolidation point for multiple large clients. So our architecture needs to scale and have capacity significantly beyond any single market participant. While others may have struggled, it's great for all to see that Broadridge was fully operating. Turning to ROE. At our last Investor Day, we highlighted the pressures of ROE and cost savings. The largest firm and particularly U.S.-based banks, there's been a healthy recovery here. European banks, however, have lagged behind, and the pressure on smaller banks has definitely increased. Many have been forced to specialize activities as they seek to improve margins. And finally, regulatory. We see regulatory pressures continuing to impact our clients. Simply put, regulators are demanding more and more transparency and traceability. And these regulatory challenges will always create opportunities for us. We can provide new solutions and help our clients. All these trends are tailwinds for us. As there's a shift in spending that we're seeing, and the diagram here shows 2019 Celent research. But we can see from that, that North America firms are dedicating more and more of their total tech spend towards new investments, rising from 28% in 2016 to 40% this year. This increased investment by North American banks on initiatives such as Broadridge LTX, I feel should enable to accelerate their growth. And conversely, European banks will need to find ways to renovate to catch up. Samir Pandiri, in our international presentation, will reveal how we are helping those European firms tackle these very real challenges. Now Broadridge played a critical role within financial services, delivering scalable, resilient technology, and as a result, our foundation is very strong. We count the biggest banks and broker-dealers as our clients and we're the leading provider of post-trade solutions for both fixed income and equities. Our solutions manage the complex workflows and life cycle of the most complex financial transactions. We're tackling problems that are typically nondifferentiators to our clients but must be performed perfectly. We make our clients' lives easier, and the clients also benefit from our scale through our client community. Our core services focus on the efficient clearing and settling of trades and by numbers, we're processing almost $10 trillion in value each day. These activities then trigger further complex life cycle events. I want you to think about corporate actions, margin pricing, tax statements, collateral management and securities financing, really complex workflows and processing that our technology and operations enable every day. We also operate across multiple asset classes, geographies and for a wide range of client types. And it's that combination of our breadth and depth that creates real value. And with such a foundational presence with so many clients, we are strongly positioned then to bring our innovation and new products to market. Now I'm sure you would like to understand more about our 3 growth themes. So let's have a look at each. So going a little deeper into our first growth strategy of simplification. As I've highlighted, this remains our largest growth driver. And importantly, we've built that next-gen post-trade platform. Our clients get to reduce costs and risk, improve business performance. And in that area, if you can think about collateral optimization as an example. They get to increase resiliency, modernize their tech while creating that sustainable base for their future growth. So how do we achieve that? Well, we're enabling them to turn off legacy applications, streamlined workflows and achieve consolidation across multiple entities and multiple business lines. And it's interesting, I think, we then become their on-ramp for future innovation for the new solutions we bring to market and through far more open access to analytics and data. Now I'm really proud of our recent successes for our next-gen platform, and these include a British multinational who operates primarily in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, one of France's universal banks, and an American multinational and top 5 globally by market cap. These are large global businesses, joining other notable names on our platform. That on that journey results to modernize achieving business advantage, greater resiliency and a consistent operating model. Imagine how powerful that can be for them. Now we've been super busy with these clients in 2020. And coming up in the international segment, there's a really important showcase covering the impressive rollout with one of these clients. I really think that will bring all to life for you. Now a common theme for our selection is that these clients want to consolidate their tech and operating model. They are often already existing clients of ours in a major market, particularly the U.S. And so as you can imagine, it's a very natural decision for them to expand with us. Now turning to our second growth strategy theme of Component Solutions, and I wanted to let you know our next-gen platform can also be offered as components. We've built our solutions in tech, that means they're easily deployable, cloud-ready, API-enabled and compliant with all that best-in-class architectural thinking. To my point, well, we've created more flexible ways to sell into firms. And critically, it allows us to expand our market position and access new prospects. We've also been busy expanding our solution set across capital markets. Or put another way, we've been filling in our capital markets road map. Now first off, expanding our asset class coverage has been an important focus for us. While expanding coverage, we create a higher value prop for our clients. Why? Because they can shut down more of their existing estate. Our marked major expansion here has been into extraneous credit derivatives. This has been a result of client demand. As a recognized leader in securities, our clients have been asking us to find ways to further consolidate their platforms and relationships. And we were delighted recently to announce our first futures clearing merchant in R.J. O'Brien. Their CEO with the press, saying that they took an early adopter approach in the 1990s with another vendor. It led to that platform becoming the market leader in ETDs. They're now on that journey with us. We continue to add new solutions, 2 highlights here of many. At our last Investor Day, we talked about starting to work with a major global bank on corporate actions. And I'm delighted to say we've done just that and created a live, cloud-enabled global corporate action solution. We now have 4 marquee clients committed and a strong pipeline. Another highlight is we've launched our Securities Financing SaaS solution and have already attracted a number of high-profile clients. I'm really pleased with our progress here and it demonstrates our strong product leadership. Complementing our tech-driven solutions is our specialist managed service. It offers regulated operations to 45 clients. This group forms the operational work on behalf of our clients, bringing scale and most importantly, industry standardization. This group operated flawlessly for the pandemic, beating group's SLAs, and as a result, was awarded new business from several large clients. We continue to expand the capabilities to provide operations across all major business lines. This team is also the powerhouse in researching how we automate operations through tech. This group has designed and led the design of new AI components that reduce the cost of back-office processing by improving efficiency and reducing risks, a really exciting use of tech. Now let's move to our third strategic theme, our network value effect, which will be part of powering our future growth. And I'm delighted to introduce Vijay Mayadas, President and Head of our Capital Markets Group. Vijay joined Broadridge in 2013 as Head of Corporate Strategy and in 2016, transitioned to lead our fixed income business. We appointed Vijay as President of Capital Markets in September this year. So with that, Vijay, it's over to you.

Thank you, Tom. I'm thrilled to be here today to discuss how Broadridge drives network value for our clients. In the fixed income markets, our network value is based on the scale and scope of our post-trade business. And this is where we focused our efforts. I'll talk about 2 products we've developed. LTX, our AI-driven corporate bond platform, which I'll talk about in some detail. And our distributed ledger repo platform, where we are applying the transformative power of DLT to the repo markets. I'll talk about that at a high level. First, on LTX. We believe the fixed income markets are in the early innings of electronification. Our initial focus is on the U.S. corporate bond market. This is a large market with $10 trillion of outstanding debt. And of this $10 trillion, only $30 billion to $40 billion gets traded every day. The amount that gets traded electronically is even smaller, with about 70% of investment-grade bonds still traded via legacy channels like voice or messaging. These channels make it very difficult for the buy side and the sell side to trade larger blocks of corporate bonds. LTX digitizes corporate bond trading, empowering dealers and their buy-side customers to connect and trade more efficiently. LTX enables Broadridge to extend our footprint into the front office, building on our market position in fixed income post-trade. Before I discuss an LTX in more detail, let me just share a brief video with you. [Presentation]

Great. Well, now you've seen the video, let's dive into LTX in more detail. So back in 2016, a number of our dealer clients asked us whether we could utilize our network value and data sets in fixed income to help them better intermediate larger block trades for their buy-side customers. We partner with Jim Toffey, founder and former CEO of Tradeweb to create LTX. In developing LTX, we were able to leverage the corporate bond trade data we have, and this is the foundation behind the platform. It's important to note that we only use this data when we have explicit permission from our dealer clients. The platform leverages powerful artificial intelligence built by a team of data scientists at Broadridge to identify natural buyers and sellers of corporate bonds. The corporate bond market is fast and complex with tens and thousands of securities with many different attributes. This scale and complexity enables AI and data science to generate novel and highly actionable analytics. And these analytics power our next-generation protocol, RFX, which aggregates liquidity across natural counterparties in seconds and enables them to bid for their desired amount. Together, the LTX AI, RFX protocol and liquidity cloud enable dealers and their buy-side customers to trade more efficiently, increase revenue and deliver improved best execution. LTX has received very positive feedback from the market, and we executed our first production trade earlier this year, and we are onboarding clients ready for the official launch next quarter with over 10 dealers and 35 buy-side clients. The combined market cap of the 2 largest fixed income marketplaces, MarketAxess and Tradeweb, is over $30 billion. Yet, the fixed income markets are still in the early stages of electronification. The opportunity for Broadridge to create value, driving the next level of electronification of the corporate bond market, is significant. The second innovation that leverages our network is our distributed ledger repo solution. Broadridge was quick to grasp the long-term potential of distributed ledger technology to transform our industry. And we've been the thoughtful adopter of DLT in select use cases. The bilateral repo market is a $2 trillion market, where we process trades to over 40 fixed income dealers and 19 of 24 primary dealers. Our repo solution uses DLT to increase efficiency, reduce cost and risk in bilateral repo transactions. Bilateral repo trades are trades a dealer does to move cash and collateral across their own firm for funding requirements and also trades dealers do with their buy-side customers, providing buy-side firms with liquidity and collateral. It's a fairly inefficient process, which is well suited to reap the benefits of distributed ledger technology. We've got very good momentum around Phase 1 of this initiative, which is focused on helping dealers reduce the costs of moving collateral between their own legal entities. We've signed client contracts and have a deep pipeline with our first client [ go live ] targeted for next quarter. So to wrap up, I'm very excited by the potential of LTX in our distributed ledger repo platform to use innovative technologies to transform corporate bond and repo market structure, creating winning outcomes for all participants. I'll now hand back to Tom for some final thoughts on capital markets.

Great. Thanks, Vijay. Really interesting and differentiating work that you and the team are doing. So I hope this has provided you with the insights into how we believe this really complex world of capital markets is transforming and why Broadridge is ready and leading that transformation. We'll continue to be at the forefront in this growing market through our strong position, our client relationships, our deep solutions and those tech-driven investments. Now I open today saying that global capital markets are in significant transition with that technology transformation has been driven by the needs for greater resiliency and modernization. And my belief is that Broadridge is really uniquely positioned, given our approach. And I say that because we've continued to evolve our strategies from our last Investor Day to enable us to win on multiple fronts. You now know those 3 strategies are: global simplification, component solutions and network value. Our global simplification strategy has seen key wins with globally recognized firms. The pressures on firms to address resiliency, modernization and the underlying cost structures makes our solutions compelling. And in parallel, we've continued to add new cloud-ready API-enabled Component Solutions both for organic and inorganic investments. And finally, our focus on emerging tech and data analytics is bearing fruit. We started creating real network value through our special ability to couple innovation with tech with the data we hold. It's powering offerings like LTX. Now these 3 strategic initiatives are in full flight. I'm confident in our path, we're establishing Broadridge as the leading global fintech for today and for tomorrow. Now with that, thank you for your time, and it's now my great pleasure to introduce our next segment, which is wealth and investment management. Chris Perry, our President, will lead you through the exciting opportunities that we have here. However, we're going to begin with a video that showcases the wealth platform we've been building and the power of this is bringing to the market. And introducing this is Donna Bristow, our Head of Wealth Product Management and a key member of the team that's building this wonderful platform. Do enjoy and thank you again.

We are laser-focused on growing our wealth franchise so we can capitalize on the opportunity and growth potential of the wealth management marketplace. Our existing solutions give us a strong foundation that we continue to build upon. We've made significant progress integrating and expanding our capabilities. The Broadridge Wealth Platform is a modern front-to-back office, cloud-based technology solution. Here's a glimpse of how our platform is helping transform our clients' businesses as well as the industry. [Presentation]

Good morning. I'm Chris Perry, President of Broadridge Financial Solutions. I joined 6 years ago as Head of Global Sales and Client Solutions. Prior to that, I was at Thomson Reuters and was very active in the wealth management space. At Broadridge, I'm very proud of the fact that we've delivered 6 years of record recurring sales. And I feel both honored and privileged to now serve as our company's President. Broadridge is not just a company. We're a group of incredibly engaged associates who work tirelessly to serve our clients and solve industry challenges every day. After seeing that video, I'm sure you understand why I'm so excited to share with you the progress we've made on our wealth management strategy. We have so many exciting opportunities across Broadridge. Wealth and investment management is just one of many impressive growth sectors for our company. During our Investor Day 3 years ago, we highlighted wealth as a significant growth opportunity and announced that we planned to make it our next franchise. Our strategy is resonating in the marketplace. Today, I'm going to share with you why it is not only resonating but also why it's so compelling. I'll touch on the rapidly evolving trends that are impacting our clients, accelerating industry transformation and driving demand for our solutions. Then I'll cover the market landscape and give you a view into our large and growing North American client footprint, including some recent client wins, and walk you through the progress we've made on our journey to build our newest franchise. Next, we'll review our strategy that aligns to these market trends and our clients' needs. After that, Mike Alexander, President of Wealth, will provide an update on our component-based solutions and next-generation wealth platform, including our powerful strategic partnership with UBS. I can't express how exciting it is to watch this work come together over these past 18 months. And lastly, I'll describe why our solutions in the investment management space are bringing double-digit growth. We have a lot to cover, so let's get right to it. I'd like to highlight a few trends motivating wealth firms to reimagine how they power their businesses. Since 2012, North American wealth client assets have grown almost 80% to $59 trillion. That growth is fantastic to see, but wealth firms can't remain complacent and assume asset growth will ensure their success. They must continue to evolve to stay relevant, to be competitive with disruptors and stay at the forefront of change. The rise of Gen X through Z is shifting investor expectations, as millennials challenge the status quo. These younger, tech-savvy investors expect a highly digital and exceedingly personalized advisory experience. They want to be active participants in their financial plan, not just passengers on the journey. And the pandemic is causing accelerated digitization and an unprecedented rate of adoption of technology. This transformation offers advisers the ability to deliver personalized advice and be more connected with their clients than ever before. Now given low interest rates and regulatory compliance, firms also continue to face tremendous fee pressure. To compete, they must scale and modernize their business and efficiently deliver across multiple segments, from providing relevant solutions to mass affluent investors while at the same time, serving the bespoke needs of ultra-high net worth clients. We're also seeing consolidation across wealth management firms where M&A is being used to acquire assets, expand scale and market reach. To address these trends, organizations must simplify and modernize their complicated and interwoven legacy systems. Broadridge is at the forefront of this transformation. As a trusted partner and thought leader with an ever-expanding wealth portfolio of solutions and services, we are really well positioned to capitalize on these market trends while driving value for our clients. The complex and large wealth landscape is made up of providers that approach the market differently. Some offer pure technology, others package it with content or tied to services. Only Broadridge is positioned to serve and connect to the entire wealth ecosystem. Let's take a closer look. In some cases, great financial services firms, such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Bank of New York Pershing provide technology solutions among other critically important services to independent advisers and fully disclosed broker-dealers. Most of these great firms are also valued Broadridge clients. They provide custody or clearing solutions and build their buy tech to serve their customers. Ultimately, they are financial institutions rather than technology firms. Then we have the niche companies with disparate products. Think of them as specialist firms, large and small. This includes firms such as Envestnet and Orion, who focus primarily on managed accounts and financial wellness. Then we have the traditional market data and legacy technology vendors offering monolithic solutions. Here, we're talking about the likes of Refinitiv, FIS and SEI. While broad, their offerings are often proprietary and lack any flexibility. And let's not forget, given how large the wealth management space is, that there are many small hyperspecialized fintechs. They have good niche products, and we partner with some of them. In fact, some of these types of firms have been great Broadridge acquisitions and now contribute to our portfolio of capabilities. Broadridge is a global fintech leader. And we differentiate ourselves by providing both pure technology and broad capabilities regardless of where assets are custodied. We solve problems across the wealth landscape and connect the entire ecosystem. We have a best-in-class digital platform built on modern architecture that delivers the full breadth of capabilities and services. Better still, we can bring them all together into one unified user experience, and we're not done. We'll continue to invest, innovate and integrate to serve the ever-evolving needs of wealth management firms. But don't just take it from me. UBS surveyed the wealth fintech landscape and chose to work with Broadridge because of our technology, scale and experience. Let's take a look at the progress we've made to grow our business and talk a little about the market opportunity that we're pursuing at Broadridge. In 2017, we shared our intent to build the wealth business into Broadridge's third franchise. Since then, we've grown by almost 50% and now generate over $500 million in recurring revenue, which doesn't account for our recent UBS agreement. Our growth has been driven by a combination of organic and inorganic activities. Since the last Investor Day, we've closed over $150 million in recurring sales and integrated 4 strategic acquisitions that have expanded our reach. We're happy with these financial results. Given we sell into a large and growing $12 billion market, there's plenty of runway and significant demand for our solutions, which creates opportunities for further growth. It's no secret that we're a market leader in post-trade settlements and investor communications. As you heard from Bob Schifellite, our market-leading global governance and communications business delivers over 6 billion statements, proxies and confirmations annually. This positions us well to accelerate digital adoption, drive innovation and help our clients move forward every day. That kind of scale means we have relationships with 100% of the largest North American banks who provide wealth management services and many firms of all sizes, ranging from wirehouses to independents, including RIAs. Our wealth solutions service more than 75 million retail accounts. And our client base custod has $11 trillion in assets, a 40% increase compared to 3 years ago. It is this penetration that has given us a seat at the table. Many clients have asked us to help them meet their most pressing needs across the front, middle and back office, some of which they've struggled with for decades. We're proud of recent wins we've garnered with the prestigious firms you see here. We've assisted these companies by delivering capabilities, including brokerage processing, adviser compensation, adviser websites, and many more things. Today, more than 30% of U.S. financial advisers rely on our front office solutions to prospect, sell their service, acquire, retain and deepen client relationships. We've come a long way expanding our position, and we'll continue to build, integrate, acquire and partner. Next, we'll cover our strategy. As you can see from the numbers and the companies we're doing business with, our strategy has been very successful. We will continue to execute on the plan by doing the following: we will continue to invest in our component solutions like goals-based performance reporting, and managed accounts, sub accounting, sometimes called sleeves. We'll leverage state of the art open architecture to better serve investors, advisers and their firms. We'll continue to build out our wealth platform, which is a next-generation shared industry utility, providing comprehensive capabilities across the entire ecosystem. We'll continue to expand our best-in-suite investment management capabilities and market presence. We'll also partner with complementary and even competitive offerings to ensure our platform meets our clients' very needs while providing unparallel access to positions, performance and special householding capabilities. I'm now pleased to ask Mike Alexander, President of Wealth, to give you a closer look at our component solutions and update you on our wealth platform initiative. Mike is a well-known industry veteran with experience at firms, including Schwab and Merrill and has served on numerous SIFMA working committees. A true thought leader, Mike has recently been featured as an expert in Barron's, U.S. News & World Report and Business Insider. We proudly appointed him to this role earlier this year to bring our wealth solutions together into an integrated, market-leading business. His great contributions to Broadridge over the last 14 years, his many years of overall broker-dealer experience and his relationships on The Street confirm that he is the right person for the role. Mike?

Chris, thank you very much for that kind introduction. It's been exciting to be part of the journey. We've evolved from being a primarily back-office provider to offering a full portfolio of wealth capabilities. I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to help take this to the next level. Let me walk you through our wealth strategy, starting with our foundational component solutions. As we work with clients to address their growth opportunities and most pressing challenges, we continue to focus on expanding our capabilities in the front, middle and back office. In the front office, we provide investor and adviser portals. We also empower advisers to provide frequent and personalized client communications, including educational content, across their entire client and prospect base. Additionally, artificial intelligence delivers smart insights and data aggregation provides a holistic view of client assets. These capabilities are highly valued, especially in the current environment, and most importantly, support our clients' ability to grow assets under management. In the middle office, where we're digitizing manual but important tasks such as adviser compensation and securities-based lending. We are further expanding our portfolio into banking, advisory services and retirement plans to better address market needs. And we are launching new capabilities like adviser surveillance and alternative investment processing to create practice efficiencies. In the back office, we offer a robust and resilient end-to-end platform that supports all asset classes. Our back office is a key differentiator as it serves as the backbone for many of our clients' wealth businesses. It provides them with mission-critical capabilities such as asset servicing, regulatory and client reporting and so much more. For clients looking to outsource functions, we provide a highly acclaimed managed service solution, which drives further efficiencies and improves the client service experience. As we look ahead, we will continue to deliver value by integrating our solutions and adding new capabilities that include emerging technologies. Now let me outline our second strategic focus, which is our next-generation wealth platform that was highlighted in the video you saw earlier. Wealth management firms have various business models. Many have built their platforms in different ways over the course of decades and continue to spend scarce investment dollars, cobbling together disparate systems. Our wealth platform addresses these challenges, and we believe it will become a transformational industry utility. The true differentiator and secret sauce of our platform is the totally open architecture powered by a state-of-the-art API and microservice communication layer, which we call EASL. The EASL's ability to translate data across various use cases allows firms to connect to existing apps or quickly onboard best-in-class third-party apps. But regardless of how a client chooses to customize our platform to meet their needs, we are confident the outcomes will be the same for all; increased adviser productivity and enhanced investor experience and a scalable cost-efficient back office. Less than a year after our last Investor Day, we announced our strategic partnership with our anchor client UBS. Working together, we have made tremendous progress building the platform. We are roughly 2 years into the project, which is targeted to be delivered in the second half of 2021. Onboarding is underway and progressing well with some components already live, including digital marketing and monthly billing. The platform is having a positive impact on UBS' business, which they recently discussed during their earnings call. UBS is an important first step on our journey. But this strategic partnership is just the beginning as we advance our vision of delivering a complete and fully integrated system. From a sales perspective, we continue to see strong market interest. And are in many active discussions with bulge bracket, regional and independent firms. And I'm sure you realize these are large and complex sales. The bottom line is this: we have made a tremendous amount of progress and are actively and responsibly investing across our portfolio to meet our client needs. Now I'll turn it back to Chris.

Thank you, Mike. We have just covered our approach to advancing our wealth business. It's really exciting to see that progress. I now want to give you some insights on what we're doing to address the needs of the investment management industry. Wealth and investment management are interconnected as investment managers manufacture the products that wealth managers distribute to their investors. This is an important part of our strategy and allows us to bridge the 2. Investment management continues to be a growth market despite tremendous change, commoditization and consolidation, causing the need for firms to relook at their technology stack. If this sounds familiar, it is. Because it's a classic problem that Broadridge helps our clients solve. Alongside the changing industry, existing providers have also changed, and many are no longer pure technology players. Many are bundling technology with fund administration or other ancillary services. We believe this creates a real opportunity for Broadridge as we aren't encumbered by a legacy position. We go to market with an integrated suite that simplifies our clients' operations, supports their product growth and helps them reduce costs. Also, while other companies are busy integrating their own platforms, we already have a single best-in-suite platform, meaning our clients don't need to buy multiple point solutions from different providers. Our offerings include portfolio and order management, the industry's leading solution for revenue and expense management, investment accounting and extensive private debt portfolio management capabilities. And we've added advanced data visualization capabilities, which give our clients tremendous insight. As a result, we've established a substantial client footprint across our product line, which includes 17 of the 20 largest global investment managers and more than 500 firms globally. We won 6 awards over the past 12 months from prestigious organizations like Alt Credit, HFM and Fund Intelligence Group. We are focused on increasing our penetration of existing clients, and we're also targeting other adjacencies, including pension funds and sovereign wealth managers. Further, we are building our global footprint through sales in EMEA and APAC. As you can see, we have a lot going on here, and our strategy will power us to grow by harnessing the potential of our best-in-suite platform and expanding services. The wealth and investment management industry is rapidly changing, and we are excited to be at the forefront of this evolution, helping our clients get ahead of today's challenges. We are well positioned to accelerate our growth and gain market share. We will continue to invest in capabilities across the wealth ecosystem. We will continue to win additional wealth platform clients, and we will grow our investment management business in the near and long term. As a global fintech leader, we will have a relentless focus on mutualization, next-gen digital transformation and network value. We'll continue to partner with our clients, utilizing emerging technologies to develop innovative products. Our solutions are reshaping the wealth experience. They are resonating in the marketplace and transforming the industry while driving shareholder value. We are truly delivering tomorrow's tools today. Now I'd like to introduce you to Samir Pandiri, who is President of Broadridge International. Samir joined us 18 months ago from Bank of New York Mellon, where he ran their global asset servicing business. We hired a heavy hitter because we believe that our solutions can and will solve industry challenges globally. I'm happy to say that Samir has proven us right. Under his leadership, we've experienced substantial growth, which he will share with you now. Samir?

Thanks for the kind introduction, Chris. Good morning. I'm Samir Pandiri, President of Broadridge International. Today, I'm delighted to talk about our journey and how we'll accelerate our growth by helping international clients transform their businesses. Before joining Broadridge 18 months ago, I was Global CEO of BNY Mellon's Asset Servicing division. Throughout my career, I have developed a deep technology and operations expertise and a strong record of growing and launching successful growth initiatives, especially in international markets. I'm very excited to be a part of the Broadridge team in this growth journey. Our international business is anchored and fueled by the strength of our North American capabilities. We are expanding globally on the strong foundation of our capital markets and governance franchises detailed by Tom and Bob. Specifically, we are pursuing 3 attractive strategic opportunities: Capital markets, next-generation governance solutions, and fund communication solutions. For capital markets, our large global clients are investing to consolidate technology, globalize operations, increase transparency and manage risk. Regional firms look to leverage next-generation technology through mutualization to minimize investments, operational complexity and improve agility. These dynamics create significant partnership opportunities between capital markets clients and Broadridge. In governance, regulators are seeking to improve transparency and shareholder engagement for better corporate governance practices. This trend creates unique opportunities for Broadridge to expand its solutions globally. As asset managers face margin pressure and increased cost of regulatory compliance, Broadridge is building the leading pan-European fund communications platform to enable asset managers fulfill important regulatory and investor disclosure requirements using the latest technology and data solutions. As a global fintech leader, we are building on our strong North American foundation and creating exciting new pathways for growth into new markets with new products and new clients. In the past 3 years, we have experienced an 18% revenue CAGR through a combination of organic growth and tuck-in acquisitions. Building new relationships and deepening existing ones with over 800 clients contributed to strong sales growth of 3.6x over the same period. Our international business has evolved from a U.S.-centric model to a growing global business. We are partnering with clients to help them access new markets, consolidate technologies, globalize operations, meet regulatory requirements while leveraging the latest digital and data solutions. In Europe, we have seen a gradual harmonization across institutions, laws and regulations to create a more integrated and efficient financial market. At the same time, economic growth in APAC has accelerated. These macro changes, coupled with the market dynamics of globalization, mutualization, regulatory changes and corporate governance improvements will continue to create opportunities for international growth. Now let's dig a little deeper into each of these market dynamics. So first, globalization will drive firms to shift from regional or asset silos to adopting global solutions. As clients continue to mutualize to focus on mission-critical activities, they will partner with us for help dealing with rising cost pressures and replacing legacy technology. Regulatory changes continue to be a challenge by demanding transparency and capital optimization and driving needs to improve risk management. In corporate governance, regulators continue to promote shareholder transparency and engagement. The Shareholder Rights Directive, or SRD II, is a major step towards improving corporate governance practices. In short, the market dynamics aren't just favorable for us. We are truly responding to market demands for solutions that Broadridge is uniquely qualified to provide. Our execution plans are centered around 3 attractive growth opportunities: capital markets, next-generation governance solutions, and fund communication solutions. We are helping clients reach new markets, navigate the complexity of regulatory changes, modernize obsolete technology, mutualize capabilities, reduce costs, enhance risk and resiliency, and get better data and insights through a modern, multi-cloud digital approach. We are helping them focus on their clients and their businesses by partnering with Broadridge for mission-critical, non-differentiated functions. Let's look at each of these 3 growth opportunities in a bit more detail. In capital markets, we are helping clients globalize operations and optimize costs. With access to over 100 markets, our geographic reach is unparalleled, and clients can rely on us as a trusted partner. Here is a tangible example of a client success story in Asia. Our relationship with this leading Asian investment bank started with a reconciliation and matching technology solution. We then extended our offering to include trade and transaction reporting. This was followed by a post-trade solution for their U.S. fixed income business. Building on these successes, the client embarked on a modernization journey with Broadridge to consolidate their operating model, improve efficiency, resiliency while reducing risk. In early 2019, we added the first go-live for an international market. Currently, we are live in 29 markets and successfully migrated 90% of their trading activity onto our platform. At the end of this program, we will have added equities for 4 markets, fixed income in 44 markets with new opportunities for additional expansion. What was a modest beginning, we are now the financial technology solutions partner of choice that the client relies on us for globally. And that is our model in the years ahead: start from a position of strength, provide great solutions, develop the partnership, expand the relationship globally and invest in new capabilities and services, and then repeat. I'll now move on to our second growth opportunity. Across next-gen governance solutions, the Shareholder Rights Directive, or SRD II, is creating the biggest change in the European governance and proxy industry in many years. SRD II has created a significant growth opportunity for Broadridge that I'll talk about more in a moment. In Japan, we have a 15-year strong joint venture with the Tokyo Stock Exchange for Japanese domestic electronic proxy. Client adoption is growing and as they continue to benefit from a digital voting service. In 2019, we signed the 1,000th client, and we continue to expand our market footprint. We continue to solidify our position as a market leader in international. Now let's view a video highlighting SRD II. [Presentation]

"The revised shareholder rights Directive, in effect since September 2020, dramatically impacts financial intermediaries who deal in European equities. Annual General meeting and proxy materials and shareholder disclosure information must be sent quickly and securely with all requests, responses and authentications passed through multiple parties. Broadridge digitizes your compliance efforts with a shared industry solution that enables you to navigate complex regulations. Our innovative solution for the Shareholder Rights Directive, SRD II, delivers complete coverage connecting every market and intermediary, providing a single communication chain for all your retail and institutional proxy voting and disclosure requirements. Meet your new governance obligations for SRD II, reduce risk and streamline workflows with a complete solution tailored to your needs. As the trusted industry leader, we enable billions of investor communications each year, helping you meet required deadlines in all EU markets. Now you can deliver a seamless shareholder experience, taking advantage of the most advanced voting platforms, mobile apps and the latest technologies, such as blockchain and cloud, while achieving unrivaled security, operational control and economies of scale. Proven, trusted and transparent, our SRD II solution transforms shareholder communications so you can comply with confidence. Broadridge, ready for next." SRD II requires financial intermediaries who deal in European equities to facilitate the exercise of shareholder rights. For the first time, SRD II creates an obligation for intermediaries to distribute proxy materials to shareholders so that they can be fully informed and vote at general meetings. With our in-depth experience and strong track record of delivering proxy solutions globally, Broadridge is uniquely positioned to solve this regulatory challenge. Our innovative SRD II solution uses blockchain to provide a single communications chain for shareholder disclosure, connecting every market and intermediary. SRD II is providing strong tailwinds to our growth in governance franchise. We had record sales in FY '20, and the sales momentum is continuing into FY '21 as we continue to add many new clients. As a trusted global fintech leader, clients are turning to Broadridge for help to achieve unrivaled economies of scale, operational efficiency and strong regulatory compliance while using the latest technologies. Now let's look at our third growth opportunity. Our Fund Communication Solutions directly helps the European asset management industry, which continue to face fee pressure and increased regulatory compliance costs. As asset managers focus on creating alpha, driving growth and client engagement, the trend to outsource is accelerating. However, historically, providers offered niche solutions addressing only discrete portions of the fund distribution value chain. At Broadridge, we are building the most comprehensive cloud-native digital platform supporting the entire life cycle of fund data, documents and regulatory reporting for the global investment industry. Our solutions encompass multiple jurisdictions in a larger part of the fund value chain so that our clients can reduce cost and consolidate disparate point solutions with a single vendor. We are committed to continue our investment and introduce more solutions that meet our clients' needs and drive our future global growth. In conclusion, I am confident about the future. First, we are successfully extending our capital markets and governance franchises internationally. Second, market and regulatory trends are creating new opportunities for Broadridge to partner with and help clients meet their technology, regulatory and data requirements globally. Third, our continued investments in our people, processes, technology and acquisitions will create new pathways for geographic, product and capabilities expansion. Lastly, we are pursuing 3 strategic initiatives that will support sustained growth across our segments. I'm truly excited about the journey ahead. Thank you. And now let's watch video with our Chief Diversity Officer, Naadia Burrows, and pause for a short 10-minute break. Thank you.

Our unique culture is critical to our financially sustainable business model. Guided by the service profit chain, success is mutual, directly connecting our associates' actions with client satisfaction and stockholder value. We strive to improve both our and our industry's environmental impact by partnering with clients to decrease their carbon footprint in digitization, data and innovation while embracing sustainable practices and supply chain management for our facilities. Our highest priority is our people with a commitment to social responsibility. We develop and maintain a diverse and inclusive culture that empowers our associates to be their best, to better serve and strengthen the communities in which we and our clients live and work, to share in collective success. We believe our corporate governance is integral in fostering a culture of integrity that creates a stronger company and serves our industry. Our ESG policies and programs align with our 4 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that advance education, work and growth, inequality reduction and responsible consumption and production to better the world we live in. What we've accomplished in our industry to lead change matters, but what we all do next matters most. We are ready. [Break]

Good morning. I'm Edmund Reese, Broadridge's new Chief Financial Officer. Less than a month in, I have new perspective on what it means to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool. Though I have to say that the enthusiasm that I had to join Broadridge has been strengthened, as Tim and the leadership team helped bring me closer to their growth strategy. I'm now even more excited to be on board. This is my first time meeting many of you, so let me start with a brief introduction. I joined Broadridge after spending more than a decade at American Express. That's a $40 billion-plus revenue company, and I had responsibility for its largest business unit as the CFO of the $24 billion Global Consumer Services Group. My plan this morning is to walk you through our simple financial model connected to the strategy that my colleagues just presented and to introduce our next set of 3-year financial objectives. But before I jump in, I want to acknowledge our Interim CFO, Matt Connor, for his leadership over the past few months. Matt played an important role in Broadridge delivering strong first quarter results, which have enabled us to begin to ramp up our planned investments and positions us for continued growth. And he's been a great partner to me coming on board. He'll remain a key part of the GTO business. So let's get to it. Our financial model is simple. And this is an important statement: we are focused on driving steady and consistent revenue and earnings per share growth. That's the model. It starts with sustainable recurring revenue growth, anchored in our long-term client contracts. That growth is sustained through consistent investment in new products, in tech and platform innovation, in our people and through targeted M&A. Next, we've leveraged our scale and changing revenue mix that steadily expand our margins. And finally, we have a balanced approach to capital allocation, leveraging our strong free cash flow to fund growth investments and return capital to shareholders. This simple model, sustainable growth, consistent investment, margin expansion and balanced capital allocation, has served Broadridge well and helped drive strong S&P 500 top quartile total shareholder returns, or TSR. At Broadridge, we manage our business to drive long-term growth. So it's helpful to look at the results over the past 2 Investor Day cycles to really understand the consistency of the performance. These multiyear views are the best way to measure our results against our objectives. And looking back over the last 6 years, it's also important to look at the 2 events which have a meaningful impact on the reported results. The first of these events was the acquisition of the high revenue, low-margin customer communications business of DST, NACC, which we acquired at the end of fiscal 2016. Broadridge reported a 3-year revenue CAGR of 14% from '14 to '17. Excluding the benefit of NACC revenues and the corresponding impact on our margins, the growth rate was 7%, and core operating margins expanded 53 basis points. The second event was the passage of the Tax Act at the beginning of calendar 2018, which lowered our corporate tax rate. So while we reported adjusted EPS growth of 17%, if we backed out the impact of those lower tax rates, our adjusted earnings per share would have been 12%. Looking through these 2 events, our performance has been remarkably consistent in each of the past 3-year cycles. We averaged 5% organic recurring growth in both periods. M&A, again, excluding NACC in fiscal '17, has added an additional 2 points of growth over the past 2 Investor Day cycles, pushing our 3-year recurring revenue CAGRs to 7% in both periods. We have steadily increased margins by more than 50 basis points in the first cycle and most recently by 80 basis points. The bottom line results, an adjusted EPS CAGR of 12% from '14 to '17 and 12% again from '17 to '20. That combination of steady growth, expanding margins and double-digit adjusted EPS growth over the last 2 Investor Day cycles has helped drive top quartile, 20-plus percent annual TSR in both periods. And when we share our next set of Investor Day objectives, you'll see that we have set objectives for similar levels of performance for the fiscal '21 to 23 period. So let me walk you through each of the 4 drivers of the Broadridge financial model, starting with revenues. Broadridge reported fiscal 2020 revenues of $4.5 billion. 65% of the revenues were recurring, with another 31% coming from distribution revenues and 4% from more cyclical, event-driven revenue. This revenue mix has steadily improved since 2017 when recurring revenues comprised 58% of the total. By now, you're familiar with the fact that our low to no margin distribution revenue will decline over time as we focus on increasing higher-margin digital revenue across our governance business. Our 4% of event-driven revenues are high quality but more cyclical. As a result, the best measure of our long-term growth is recurring revenue growth. And at $3 billion of recurring revenue, we have a long runway for growth compared to the $46 billion market opportunity that Tim described earlier. And Broadridge has delivered both strong and sustainable recurring revenue growth, driven by a combination of organic growth and targeted acquisitions. Over the past 6 years, even adjusting for the 29% fiscal '17 growth from NACC, recurring revenue has grown by at least 6% every year. Our recurring revenue growth has been driven by our diverse business mix across both our ICS and GTO segments. In ICS, we benefited from strong growth in our core regulatory products, from our issuer services and from our data-driven mutual fund Solutions products. As Doug noted, customer communications revenues have lagged. We expect growth here to be lower than the other businesses as we help clients drive savings by accelerating digital adoption, which I'll remind you is higher-margin business for Broadridge. And on the right, GTO has grown at 11% with both our capital markets and our wealth and investment management businesses growing at a healthy clip. Before I discuss the drivers of recurring revenue, let me pause and highlight that we'll be changing our product line reporting from the current format to the categories on this page to be more aligned with the growth strategy and how we manage the business. You can find more detail about these categories, including 5 quarters of historical performance, on our Investor Relations website. So let me highlight the drivers of recurring revenue growth over the next several slides. First, Broadridge's recurring revenue growth benefits from strong underlying volume growth trends, including position growth. Position growth is a measure that's change in the number of shareholders for equities, mutual funds and ETFs. Over the last 10 years, equity and mutual fund record growth has averaged 6% to 8% and has been a key driver of our regulatory revenues. The biggest driver of our recurring revenue growth is closed sales. Our ability to sign new clients and expand our services to existing clients is the lifeblood of our growth. Closed sales, which represent the annual revenue value of new business, have grown at an 11% annualized rate since 2014, boosted by long-term demand trends, product innovation and a growing product portfolio. Our sales growth is also the product of significant investments into our sales teams, processes and technologies around the world. Strong sales have helped drive a revenue backlog to $355 million, equal to 12% of fiscal '20 recurring revenue. And that backlog gives us great visibility into our top line growth. Finally, key to the recurring revenue growth is our ability to retain our clients. This is a boring chart, essentially a flat line, but it clearly reflects the value of the services we offer and our commitment to client service, demonstrating a consistent track record of 97% to 98% retention rates. And as Tim mentioned, this is a tangible outcome of service profit chain culture. So to round out the review on key revenue drivers, I want to give some additional insight into our event-driven revenues. Both our issuer and mutual fund clients as well as investors want to ensure that there's perfect execution when there's a corporate action or a merger or a vote for Board seats. These are the types of events that drive event-driven revenue. They're more episodic and difficult to forecast, but they are a core component of our complete governance offering. Event-driven revenue growth over the long term should rise in line with position growth. And you can see that on this slide that even with the underlying cyclicality, these revenues have increased over time, averaging over $200 million over the past 7 years. Looking forward, our fiscal '21 guidance calls for event-driven revenues to be flat with fiscal '20. And while we don't have great visibility into future event-driven revenues, our 3-year objectives assume event-driven revenues will rise to that recent 7-year average. After revenue growth, the second key component of the Broadridge financial model is consistent investment. Broadridge has been and will remain committed to ongoing investments that support future growth. Our investments cover both internal investments and external or M&A investments, which we view, in many cases, is a buy-versus-build decision. As Tim noted, a key part of the Broadridge success story has been our evolution from a legacy service provider into an equally trusted technology and innovation partner. That evolution was fueled by investments in new product capabilities like digital proxy voting and exchange-traded derivatives. We've invested in new platforms, including our global post-trade platform that Tom discussed and, of course, our Broadridge wealth platform. We've also invested in our people, bringing in new, diverse talent and growing our sales and technology teams across the globe. These investments may result in short-term margin compression, but they're critical to our long-term growth trajectory. And that's a great segue to the next element of our financial model: margin expansion. Broadridge has a proven track record of expanding margins. Since 2017, we've grown our adjusted operating income margin by an average of 80 basis points a year, well above the 3-year objective. There are 3 key factors that drive our margin expansion. First, we have natural scale in our franchise businesses, where adding new clients to our existing platform drives attractive incremental margins. Second, as we convert from print to digital, we benefit from the transition to higher-margin digital revenues away from low to no margin distribution revenues. And third, Broadridge continues to drive efficiency through technology. And a great example of that is the shift to the private cloud to streamline our costs. Balancing out the drivers of margin expansion, Broadridge has been a serial tuck-in acquirer. And while many of these businesses are SaaS-based with higher contribution margins, their lack of scale means that the acquisitions are dilutive to margins in the first year of ownership. But later, as these acquisitions scale and grow, they typically contribute to our margin expansion. Now let's turn to free cash flow, the last element in our financial model. As a capital-light business, Broadridge generates strong free cash flow. Our capital spending as a percentage of revenues has averaged 2% over the past decade. Free cash flow conversion has hovered around 100%, but dipped in fiscal '20 to 85% as we increased our platform investments. We feel good about allocating capital to investments like the Broadridge wealth platform that Chris mentioned. These type of investments are tied to long-term contracts, like UBS, and help position us for long-term growth. Our strong free cash flow conversion puts us in a great position to execute a balanced capital allocation plan, investing in our business, growing our dividend and repurchasing shares, all while maintaining an investment-grade credit rating and staying within our 2x leverage target. Our capital allocation model begins with investing for growth. Since 2017, Broadridge has invested heavily in the combination of new platform builds, CapEx and software. But targeted M&A is another key investment activity, and Broadridge has invested over $800 million in a series of targeted acquisitions to add new capabilities and to grow our global businesses. And you can see how those investments have helped build our businesses. Over the past 3 years, we've invested heavily to add to our wealth capabilities. These acquisitions have strengthened our business in Canada, added new capabilities, including securities-based lending and enhanced adviser compensation tools. We've also made investments to grow our regulatory solutions and data-driven fund solutions and governance. We set a high bar for M&A to ensure that our acquisitions to drive shareholder value. And our M&A investments contribute to recurring revenue growth. And with an IRR of 19%, we are driving returns well above our cost of capital. Next, we're committed to driving a strong and growing dividend with a 45% payout ratio. In fact, Broadridge has raised its dividend every year since becoming a public company. And finally, share repurchases are an efficient vehicle for returning excess capital to our shareholders, especially in those periods where we don't find the right M&A opportunities. So let me put this cash flow discussion in perspective. As we look forward over the next 3 years, we expect to generate over $2.1 billion of free cash flow. Holding our leverage target flat at 2x will enable us to borrow up to an additional $700 million for a total of $2.8 billion in available capital. At a 45% payout ratio, we estimate we'll distribute $900 million in dividends, which would leave $1.9 billion of capital for value-enhancing M&A and share repurchases. So in summary, our strong free cash flow generation enables us to fund investment, including M&A, grow our dividend and add return excess capital to shareholders, all of that while maintaining our investment-grade credit rating. That wraps up our review of the simple financial model. Now let's look forward. We'll start with fiscal '21. We are reaffirming our full year guidance for fiscal year '21 across all key metrics, including recurring revenue and adjusted EPS growth. And given what we've seen through the first 5 months, we've increased confidence in our full year outlook. Looking further ahead to FY '23. You probably saw the press release we issued this morning laying in our latest set of 3-year objectives. If you compare our 3-year outlook with our guidance for fiscal '21, you'll see that we expect our recurring revenue and adjusted EPS growth to accelerate modestly over fiscal years '22 and '23 as we drive growth in a post-pandemic environment. Our objective for the next 3 years is to grow our recurring revenues by a compound annual growth rate of 7% to 9% from fiscal year '20 to fiscal '23. Organic growth will be the biggest driver of that 7% to 9%. Much of that growth will come from new sales powered by our $355 million backlog and continued strong $200 million-plus sales results, combined with our 97% to 98% retention rates. We also expect M&A to be a contributor. Given the inherent uncertainty in M&A, the impact of this growth is likely to vary from year-to-year, but we expect the cumulative impact to contribute 1 to 2 points to our 3-year growth rate. So in all, 5% to 7% organic growth, plus 1 to 2 points from M&A, driving 7% to 9% recurring revenue growth. With strong recurring revenue growth, additional margin expansion averaging 50-plus basis points per year and a flat tax rate, we're targeting an adjusted EPS growth rate of 8% to 12%. If that formula sounds familiar, it should. These 3-year targets are essentially in line with our targets and our performance over the past 2 Investor Day cycles. And as I noted earlier, those results have generated top-quartile TSR over both periods. So let me end where I began. Broadridge has a simple financial model that has delivered steady and consistent revenue and earnings per share growth. That model starts with a focus on consistent and sustainable recurring revenue growth. It includes consistent investment to sustain our long-term growth. Strong and consistent recurring revenue growth, combined with the benefits of our scale and focus on efficiency, has driven steady margin expansion. And we take a balanced approach to capital management, funding internal investments in M&A, driving a strong and growing dividend and returning capital to shareholders in the form of buybacks. This is the simple financial model that has historically resulted in top quartile TSR. With that, let me now turn it back to Tim for some closing thoughts. Tim?

Thank you, Edmund. I hope it is clear that Broadridge is stronger and better positioned for growth than we ever have been. We are investing through the pandemic, and we are executing on clear growth plans across governance, capital markets and wealth. We're innovating to drive scale solutions and meet our clients' demands for new technology. And we have the culture and the strong leadership team, many of whom you just saw, to drive sustained growth in recurring revenue and earnings. So I want to conclude by coming back to where we began this morning. Our message today is simple. We are scaling what is already the leading global fintech for governance and investing. Broadridge is a global fintech leader with strong market positions in a large and growing addressable market. We are growing 2 strong franchise businesses across governance and capital markets, and we're continuing to build a third franchise in wealth. And finally, we're putting your capital to work to invest in our business, grow our dividend and drive shareholder value. This simple formula has driven and will continue to drive strong shareholder returns. Today, Broadridge is better positioned than ever to continue to deliver more value to our clients and continued growth for our shareholders. I'm confident that when I'm standing in front of you again in 3 years, we'll be looking back at another 3 years of strong growth. And we'll be looking ahead to continued revenue earnings growth and we'll be highlighting again strong, top-quartile shareholder returns. Thank you very much. And now let's take your questions. For the Q&A, I will be joined by Bob Schifellite, Tom Carey, Chris Perry, Edmund Reese and Matt Connor as well. [Operator Instructions]. And we look forward to you questions now.

All right. I think we're back. We're just gathering here for a second. I'm waiting to see everyone's icon light up at the bottom of the page here. And I think we're almost there. So I'm going to ask Edings, if you agree that we're all here, to read us the first question.

Perfect, Tim. The first question comes from Darrin Peller of Wolfe. And he asks, "When thinking about the long-term guidance today versus 3 years ago, what would you point to today, which gives you more or less confidence in this algorithm? Across segments, should we expect the historical delta between GTO and ICS growth to be consistent to what we have seen in the past? Or which do you see accelerating or decelerating? If we try and risk weight the guidance, what do we need to see come through to reach the low end versus the high end?"

Great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Darrin. Let me take the first part of that, and I will ask Edmund to comment on the headwinds and tailwinds part of it. So first of all, in terms of our confidence, I think for me, it's really the very different place we're in through investment on product and technology. When you look at our product road map the past 12 months and the next 24 months and compare that to where we were 3 years ago, it's a very different place. And so I really like that way that we are in control of our destiny in terms of really creating new things for the industry. If you're talking about what might be our concern relative to 3 years ago, clearly, it's just the very uncertain environment we're in right now, which seems to be turning out more benign than maybe we expected 6 months ago, but still is a lot of uncertainty. On this question about where the growth will come from. We really like the opportunities in both the segments, as I think you will have heard today. I'm hoping that the new business [ process ] we're providing today and that we'll be tracking to going forward will provide a lot of clarity, and we'll track against that. On the ICS side, we really like the continued organic growth in regulatory. We do see continued strong growth in issuer and data-driven solutions. And we think we'll see less of a drag from communications. And on the GTO side, we really like the good growth, both in capital markets and in wealth. And across both, I think we're going to see a nice contribution from international. So we really like that. Probably a higher growth percent on the GTO side, but in terms of absolute dollars, about equal across the 2 segments. So that's sort of the way we're thinking about it right now. But in terms of what could be a plus or a minus to that scenario, Edmund, why don't you add in?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Tim. And thanks for that question, Darrin. I think the 3-year objectives that we set out are very much aligned with the objectives that we had over the last 2 Investor Days and, as I pointed out, the performance for the last 6 years, as Tim mentioned. We probably do expect in those objectives some acceleration in '22 and '23 over '21. And just to be very transparent about the math here, if you think about the 3-year earnings growth objective there and think about that midpoint, hitting that midpoint, meeting that midpoint, you'd expect that the '22 and '23 performance is very much aligned to the performance I just showed over the past [ 6, 3 ] years when you think about the earnings there. And I think we have a strong head start. I mentioned some of these in my opening remarks with the $355 million revenue backlog, that's a good indication of future revenue growth, and that's over 12% of the recurring growth that we have and strong continued sales. Fiscal year '20 was $200 million, and that's been growing, as I said, at 11% over the last 6 years. I couple that with even the most recent performance in Q1, where both the ICS and the GTO business had contribution to recurring revenue at 5 points of growth. Both of those businesses did. I think the confidence is further increased as we think about the M&A performance as well, recurring revenue contribution from new acquisition. Again, in ICS, that was 3 points in Q3 and 2 points in the GTO business as well. And we have mentioned in the earlier calls, event-driven revenue in '21 probably being more in line with fiscal year '20, but in '22 and '23 more akin to that 7-year average. You add that to the margin expansion that we continue to feel confident about, and there's great confidence in being able to attack the 3-year objectives that we've set forth. In terms of headwinds and tailwinds. From a headwind standpoint, I think the team pointed out in the Q1 earnings call that the event-driven revenue probably beat expectations a little bit in Q1, being 13% higher year-over-year. But as I just said, for the balance of the year, we probably expect that to be a bit more muted and in line with what we saw in full year '20. And the other item I'd call out as well is continued volatility in the markets, which could impact the position growth and the trade growth. And maybe one other headwind, in '21, I don't expect to see this in '22, '23, but you heard Cindy earlier talking about our matrix business, that business is impacted by interest rates. That should have an impact in '21 but should dissipate as we go into '22 and '23. As I went through -- from a tailwind standpoint, as I went through '22 and -- the '21 to '23 objectives, we have not included any revenue from the LTX business. And so if there's strength there, we'll see that be a catalyst for growth, particularly as we go to '23. And if we see performance on the wealth management platform as well, as we bring that online, that could be continued catalyst that we don't have baked into the projections as well. So all in all, I think the business model and the financial model that we've been driving over the past couple of years, we have strong confidence in being able to hit those 3-year objectives.

Great. Edmund, thank you very much. That's terrific. And I like you bringing out some of those things like LTX that are not really in the base scenario that we have here, even though we're very excited about them. So I like that and the sort of -- we have the expense, but we don't have the revenue, so that's a good place to be. Edings back to you.

Terrific. Thanks, Tim. Our next question comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. The question is, you mentioned the rise in managed accounts, growth in self-directed investing and the shift to model-based trading as tailwinds for your regulatory business. How impactful do you think the rise in direct indexing could be over time?

Good. Well, Patrick, thank you very much for that. And I'm going to ask Bob Schifellite to comment on this in a second. Let me just say broadly, this is obviously about position growth broadly. And certainly, that's something just -- the big messages there are this tends to be very stable, there's a long track record of upper single-digit growth, and then a reminder because just a few months ago, we were talking about real downside scenarios, and it tends to be at least positive even in significant downside scenarios, which I think is relevant. Just the last little bit of context here, as we think about direct investing, it's clearly is a part of managed accounts. And what -- in my mind, what it really does is it brings a passive component to managed accounts. And that's a very interesting phenomenon. But Bob, why don't you give us some more flavor on what we're seeing in direct indexing so far?

Thanks, Tim, and thanks for the question, Patrick. To reiterate, you did hear the last couple of quarters, first quarter of '21, last quarter of '20, we definitely had good, strong growth, 11% -- excuse me, 16% in the first quarter, which again is a smaller volume quarter. We had 11% in the fourth quarter of '20, which is strong, and that is a bigger volume. And as Tim noted, and I've mentioned earlier, we had the resiliency even during the financial crisis. If you look at equity growth and fund growth, net-net, we were still positive during the financial crisis. So it is incredibly resilient. And we typically -- so the numbers I just shared with you and the percentages that I just shared with you are equities. I think the other item of note is funds. So funds continue to grow. We're seeing an uptick versus last year -- in this fiscal year versus last year. So we're seeing fund growth as well as really strong equity growth. And when you think about fund growth, those percentages of [ SOG ] drive pretty much the same economics as equities. So it's very powerful. And of course, you all have heard there's still a lot of money on the sidelines in low, no interest type instruments, et cetera. So we feel good about what we shared with you during the first quarter, which is mid- to high single-digit growth from these phenomenas. I do think the model portfolios are definitely driving some of the mutual fund and ETF, ETF growth that we're seeing on the fund side. So I'll stop there, Tim, and turn it back to you.

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Bob. And I think, Pat, just to leave you with one last thought, which is the direct indexing is clearly -- we haven't seen an impact yet. And to the extent that it becomes a significant phenomenon, that will be a tailwind. It is -- I think it's too early to tell how that product will take off as it brings sort of the idea of path of investing 2 separately managed accounts. I think the tax benefits aren't nearly the same as they are on the active side. So I think there's some nuances there in terms of how big that product will be. But to the extent you believe that, that is a trend that will come, then it will certainly be a benefit. So with that, I'm going to ask Edings to bring us to the next question.

Thanks, Tim. Our next question comes from David Togut of Evercore ISI, and it's regarding capital allocation. And the question is, within your new 3-year capital allocation framework, how do you view share repurchase or potential acquisitions as being more accretive for investors, given both the current valuation of Broadridge stock and the acquisitions that may be in our pipeline? And more broadly, what is your financial framework for evaluating this critical capital allocation decision?

Yes. Thank you very much, David. Let me comment on this. I'll ask Edmund to comment as well. I think the first thing I want to say is that we don't have a new capital allocation framework. Our -- the way we think about capital allocation is very consistent with the way we have thought it in the past. Second broad point I want to make is that M&A, we really see in fintech as an evergreen strategy because there's always change. There are always new things being created. There are people rolling out of banks or asset managers creating new solutions, scaling it to a certain size, and we can look around and really adopt sort of some of the best pieces of technology and bring that in-house and bring it to our clients. And so we see that as a strategy that really will go on for a long time, despite whatever market cycles there might be at any given moment. My last sort of broad point is that we like the fact that based on organic growth, M&A for us is a choice, it's a make and build versus buy choice, but it's not a necessity. We don't need to do M&A to deliver growth. It's a small part of the growth that we think is coming. So then coming back to the capital allocation framework, just to reiterate, it is as it has been, invest in our business first with internal investments, look for good M&A that meets strict return criteria, and then if we don't see that, buy back shares. And it's definitely true that M&A targets are priced very high right now. And now a caveat to that is we tend to focus on the smaller build versus buy M&A, and the prices there are much more reasonable. So with that focus, we can still see very good returns there. We would look at larger deals. But just know, given where prices are, if you see us executing on something larger, it's because we have real confidence that we are really the right owner and can bring extra value to that. I think that proof is in the pudding on this approach. When you look at the portfolio return on our M&A on an unlevered basis, it's about 20%. When you look at what our TSR has been, it's also about 20%. So really nice returns on both sides of that. But let me put Edmund on the spot here just a little bit. So he's coming into this, just looking at our M&A portfolio, brand new. Just what is your impression about what we've been doing?

Well, It's a great question, David. And Tim, I really want to emphasize some of your points, bringing this back to what I see is a very strong capital allocation plan. This business, David, I've witnessed, and the team has taken me through that, is a strong free cash flow generating business. And I showed you the stats where we've hovered at that 100% range. Tim just talked about the complete capital allocation plan. He mentioned M&A and other investments. I'll also emphasize the commitment to the dividend, which has been growing over the past couple of years as well as our commitment to being at a 2x leverage ratio. And I guess I'll only emphasize the points that Tim mentioned, which is it is not a requirement for us to make these M&A investments for the choice that we have. We have a huge market opportunity to continue to grow organically. And so we only make these M&A decisions when we see an opportunity for Broadridge to have unique value and drive the growth. And I showed some stats that I'll reiterate: CAGRs of 10% on revenue growth after owning the new acquisitions for 1 year; a targeted IRR that Tim just mentioned in that 20% range, and I see that coming through in the investments that we make. So I do think that, that will be an ongoing part of our capital allocation plan. And I'd just add one other point to it, that I actually already mentioned, it contributes to the revenue growth real-time as well to the tune -- when you look at our 3-year objectives, to the tune of 1 to 2 points as well when we think about the recurring revenue growth contribution. So that would be a part of our plan going forward.

Great. Thank you very much, Edmund. Edings, the next question.

Next questions comes from Puneet Jain of JPMorgan, and it's a question regarding the GTO business and how we think about modernizing some of the platforms there and what kind of investments might we need, might our clients need in terms of how do we continue to push the modernization of our platforms, and I'm guessing, the platforms of our clients.

Yes, great. Puneet, thank you very much for asking that question because we do see this as really a major source of differentiation for us. So I'm going to comment, and I'm going to ask Tom Carey to comment as well. I think what I really like about where we are is this -- is that this continual reinvestment is part of our model already. And so we've seen us do that. And we're investing more in these platforms in our spaces, not everywhere but in the spaces that we're in, more than any of the proprietary players, more than any of our competitors. And that gives us real advantage over time. So I really like that position. And you see that in GPTM. You see that with what we're doing in wealth. I see that with what we're doing in cloud, so really across multiple areas. And I know this question is about GTO, and I'm going to turn it to Tom, but I can't fail to mention that we're doing the same thing on the ICS side. When you look at the investments in virtual shareholder meetings, in the shareholder rights directive, in the re-platforming and bringing to the cloud of our core ICS platform. So a lot of things on both sides of the house that is really keeping this fresh and moderate. Tom, can you just talk a little bit about how you think about investment on the GTO side and how you see that playing into our competitive advantage.

Sure, Tim. Look, Tim, so I'll start with, we've been modernizing over the last 5 years to create this compelling modern technology architecture. So we have the capability already. Probably worth reminding, sort of the key message from today around the fact that we've been building out our next-gen post-trade platform. We've been building out our wealth platform, as Chris and Mark showcased. We've been launching these new innovation-led products such as LTX and DLT repo, and that's a lot of efforts internally to research the market and understand these technologies and use them in really compelling ways. Very key, we've built out the infrastructure that made us so resilient today and allows the whole managed volumes well in excess of any single client. And finally, as Edmund mentioned, we've acquired new products and talent as well to add to our tech capabilities. So very strong, I think. And it's a journey, though, and we're going to continue investing in these areas into FY '21 and beyond. And I think a really strong example is from today on the wealth side because there, we're creating these next-gen solutions for wealth managers, but we also have a really strong product road map of things we want to look at and start developing and launching as well, so a very strong area for us. So look, my belief here, Tim, is that these investments and our product leadership, that's what's allowing us to have these really powerful conversations with industry tech and business leaders and is powering our journey. So that's my conclusion. Back to you, Tim.

Great. Thank you, Tom. And just to finish this off, I just want to mention that I think this investment, on one hand, I think it makes us competitively differentiated. Just as an investment, I think it makes us a bit differentiated as well because those investments are talking about whether they are -- whether they're on the expense line or they're on the capital line, those are in the model already. You're seeing that today in our margins and in our cash flows. And that continual investment is just -- is a part of the model that you're already seeing. And so I think from an investment standpoint that we're investing to, to keep that organic growth going, make an attractive model. Edings?

Thanks, Chris. The next question comes from -- sorry, Tim. Next question comes from Chris Donat of Piper Sandler, and it's really about consolidation in the industry. It's really a 2-part question. One, consolidation of asset managers appear to be accelerating. Does this have any near-term impact? And over the long term, it seems like a more concentrated asset management industry might be able to put more pressure on pricing for distributing documents. Is this a reasonable view? And then as a part 2 on that, does consolidation of the brokerage industry, most recently demonstrated by Schwab acquiring TD Ameritrade, have any impact on your global tech and ops segment.

Great. Thanks, Chris. Let's tackle the asset management side of that first. I'm going to comment on the direct financial impact, and I'll let -- ask Bob Schifellite to comment on the dynamics around the pricing aspect. First, just to say that I think we do all expect to see continued consolidation in the asset management industry. It's sort of logical that, that is going to happen. And when you think about how that impacts us, of course, in the very near term, there's an event that, that creates. So that's a bit of a positive. But thinking about the long term, this is -- we largely serve asset managers through our ICS business. And largely, the way we get paid there is based on the number of physician, and physicians don't go away when asset managers merge. So it's largely neutral to us in sort of the first-order effects. Chris, you had a very interesting question in terms of what the second-order effects in terms of impacts on pricing. So Bob, maybe you could just add a little bit on that.

Sure, Tim. Thank you. And Chris, thank you for the question. Just to again reiterate what Tim said, we don't lose investors, clearly, when there's these consolidations emerges and, of course, there's the ETFs that are now driving new ETFs, like semitransparent ETFs, et cetera. So you have that phenomenon as well. But as it relates to regulatory, going back to my tenure comment at the very beginning of today, these fee reviews do not happen that often, but I have been involved with a few. And it really is an opportunity for us to clearly demonstrate the complexity and the value that we bring. And if you look at the overall value that we've brought, and I shared with you earlier the $14 billion that we've taken out in cost. So that's really compelling when you look at the overall fee versus cost. So we take out significant amount of money in postage and paper. When you look at the Street process and you compare it to the registered process or direct help process, you find 2 things consistently, 2 really compelling data points: one is that costs are lower on the Street side for what we've done on digital and some of the other technologies that we utilize to take, again, paper and postage out of the process; and the other thing that you see is better engagement through our process, which I shared some of that with you in terms of how we're making those trends improve in terms of investor engagement. A couple of other things. So when we go through these fee reviews, and you think about what's in front of us right now, I mentioned 30e-3, which is the SEC rule, about distributing fund reports. It's going to start in January '21. And just by virtue of that process, we're going to take out another $100 million plus in costs from funds again for paper and postage. And it's really compelling when the industry looks at this and so as you hear all the things that Broadridge is doing, we do generate and earn through the broker, again, a fee for making that a reality. And as you look forward, there's another new proposal out there, not approved yet, which is about streamlining shareholder reports. We will play a big role if that were to happen. So all of that, I think all of it bodes well from the complexity and sharing the complexity, the results that we continue to get and any fee conversation, I think we have a very strong proposition.

Great. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bob. Just very briefly, the second part of the question was about consolidation on the GTO side, and I'll just hit that briefly. First of all, as this is on the broker deal -- excuse me, consolidation on the broker-dealer side. And it was the question about GTO, but I'll just answer briefly. But first of all, a big part of our business is on the ICS side, which has the same dynamics around physicians and isn't really affected. On the technology side, I think there are pluses and minuses. The pluses are there's always the chance to win a client and people need to get into new levels of scale. And they realize, when we look at some of the challenges people had handling the volatility in this year, that their platforms don't have the scale for some of these consolidations. And our platform that has nearly 100 million accounts on it, is able to go to those levels of scale. So there are some pluses. And then the negatives are -- we could lose a client, and sometimes it delays conversations that we're having because people get distracted. But all in all, I think it is sort of a fairly neutral on that. So with that, I'm going to turn it back to Edmund (sic) [ Edings ].

Terrific. The next question is from Pete Heckmann of D.A. Davidson, and it's a question regarding DLT. It says, with the benefit of a couple of years of experience with the technology, what type of transaction or record-keeping processes are most suited to distributed ledger blockchain technologies, and how is Broadridge ensuring they can continue to hold an important seat at the table.

Great. Well, thank you, Pete. And I think you know this is an area that we said for a long time, we'll have a very important place in financial services technology. We remain as an investor in Digital Asset Holdings, for example. But I think you've point out a really key point here, which is that the use case really does make a difference. And the places where -- when you think about what the benefits of blockchain, it's immutability, it's the lack of reconciliation between many parties, it's really knowing, sort of instantaneously knowing that something is where you say it is. And those are some real benefits. But to get those benefits, the parties have to be on the chain. So that network is really important. And so if you think about the use cases where those benefits are key, but also where is it possible to bring a network together. Now what we like about the role that we play because we're not going to be a fundamental technology provider, we're really at the application level. But what we -- I think about, for our strategy is, well, where the places -- where those benefits are real but also where we can bring the network where we have to leverage our strong market position to bring a lot of actors together. So that's why you see us going after fixed income repo. We're very big players there. That's why you see us playing in proxy, both domestically and internationally, building, for instance, the shareholder hub for SRD II. And those very targeted use cases where there's clear benefit and we can bring people together are places where we can really leverage this technology for the benefit of our clients and our shareholders, and we'll continue to look for use cases like that. Edings?

Terrific. The next question is really around LTX and it comes from an investor. How is the LTX platform designed to appeal to dealers who may have a vested interest in maintaining phone-based market-making?

Yes. I'll just give a quick overview of this, but Chris has really been helping drive this. I think when you -- the dealer market is -- there are lots of different segments in there. And so it's not clear to us at all that dealers have a vested interest in phone-based marketing. I think the challenge with existing forms of electronification is that, in many cases, has worked to disintermediate the dealer. And the vision that we have is to really keep the dealer at the center. And then with greater liquidity, volumes will go up. And we think this could actually be very, very good for the dealer community. And obviously, we serve dealers. So we're only going to do things that we think benefit the dealer community. But Chris, can you comment on this?

Yes. Thanks, Tim. And you covered a bit of the dealer piece, so I want to speak a little bit more about the bigger picture, LTX, and then I'll come to the dealer dynamic and where we are. And by the way, we have 10-plus dealers signed on. So I think that in this window of time where COVID has really disrupted the activities, it speaks to the dealers are bought into this. I mean I'm really excited about this, overall. Maybe the most excited I've been -- since I've been involved with the new initiative. And you heard Vijay mention about the market caps and market access in Tradeweb, and I was very fortunate to have a front-row seat with Jim Toffey back in those days as he built that. And that was 20 years ago, and it electronified the on-the-run market, which is really only 25% to 30% of the marketplace. So with Broadridge's great reputation and the data set that we have, novel and unique data sets that we can bring with intelligent -- artificial intelligence to all that, we will make the dealers smarter about where they will aim their ability to have a successful transaction. The model that was built many years ago was principally an all-or-none model. It doesn't provide much flexibility to the buy side at all, and it narrows the sell side to where it's an all-or-none model. So we might lose a few sell side, lesser successful salespeople in the equation, but we will, in our view and what we've heard from the 10-plus dealers signed on and now 35 buy-side clients signed on, we will -- we believe we're going to get much more efficient in that process, and they've been very excited about all that. We are doing stage trades now. And in Q1, we will have life rates. So Tim, that's where it stands.

Perfect. The one thing -- other thing I'm going to just add about the dealer community is that the future of fixed income is AI because when you look at the number of CUSIPs that are out there and the number of counter-parties, unless you're using AI, you're not really going to get to the full opportunity. And so the AI piece of this is super important. And for the Tier 2 dealers, for instance, they can't afford to invest in this. Having a platform allows them to stay competitive. But even for the Tier 1 players, as we've compared sort of our AI with their AI, we're definitely adding value. And it's a layered approach because you have a core platform, even if your a Tier 1 player, you add your own information and models on top of it, and will still be differentiated by build to save and focus your investment on what makes it truly differentiated. So we like that AI piece of things.

And Tim, by the way, one thing I want to add on is we have patented the cloud-based AI-driven liquidity scores, which I think is a really important aspect of how the dealers can aim at the right counter-party.

Right. Exactly. Edings, back to you.

Tim, we're coming up on 12 noon, which was our promise to folks that we would let them go. So I'm going to make this the last question, and it's really a question regarding wealth. And the question is, to scale your wealth management franchise beyond UBS, do you need to dislodge third-party technology providers? And if so, in what ways is Broadridge Solutions superior to the competition?

Great. Okay. Well, thank you for that question because it's really to be able to talk about the wealth platform. And just some context, first of all, remember that our wealth strategy has components and has planned the platform, and we're excited about both of them. On the platform side, as I think we said, our target here is really all of the top 20 broker-dealers. And if you look into that, say, if you look at the top 10 to 12 broker-dealers, it's about half and half between proprietary and third-party solutions. So there is a lot of opportunity in the proprietary side of things. And all of those owners of proprietary solutions need modernization. They need more scale. They need all the things that we are investing in. So those are very interesting conversations. And what we're bringing there, in particular, is this really open approach that allows a far easier integration. And wealth is always evolving, so being able to integrate new components to APIs and others is a real advantage. So I think whether that's versus a third-party versus proprietary, it's a big advantage. In our positioning relative to the third party, so Chris, I know you've been working that really hard. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

Well, thanks, Tim. I mean I think for us, we have a very flexible client choice model, and I think our competitive advantage is that this open architecture and this technology that you heard from Michael Alexander about, which we call the [ ISO ], but it's a sophisticated open data layer -- integration layer, and it allows for interoperability between multiple data sets. And the platforms that are out there, and many have been around for many, many years, provide unique capabilities, but they can't integrate things. It's very expensive to integrate them. And Broadridge has fully integrated, and it has open architecture to put the best-of-breed on it. So I think that, that is a big dimension. The second dimension is that we provide in Broadridge critical, essential services, but they're pretty nondifferentiated, in some cases, settlements of trades. And what we can do is help a firm take spend that they have and put it on differentiated services like client experience as they compete for assets to retain them or to gather them, especially as there's such disruption in the wealth space. And we can provide them a very confident platform that's open so that they can focus their spend on the differentiation.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Chris. Edings, I just wanted to ask who's going to wrap up if that was our last question.

It is. Well, we promised we'd get folks out at noon. So I want to try and keep our word and keep our reputation for being client focused. So I'll turn it over to you for some final remarks.

Yes. I just, first of all, want to thank everyone for being on. We have nearly 300 people who have made it all the way to the end here. So thank you for being with us and for your care in our company. And just to leave you with the message that we are excited about what we think we're going to be doing over the next 3 years to scale what is already the leading global fintech serving governance and investing. And I think you heard us talk about what we believe are a lot of growth opportunity where we have a leading position, but the market is very large in our different markets. You heard us talk about what we think are very compelling growth strategies across each of our franchises in governance, in capital markets, in wealth and that we have the right capital allocation behind that in order to drive top-quartile TSR. So we think about -- we think we make a lot of impact for our industry, we can create a lot of opportunity for our associates and create a really nice return for you, our investors. So that's what we're on about. We're -- I hope you saw our excitement about that today, and we really look forward to staying in touch as you have additional questions. And again, thanks for being with us today.