You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Gary Norcross, our ChaInvestor Relationsman and Chief Executive Officer, will discuss our operating performance and review our strategy to continue accelerating revenue growth and maximizing shareholder value.
Woody Woodall, our Chief Financial Officer, will then review our financial results and provide updated forward guidance.
Bruce Lowthers, President of FIS, will also be joining the call for the Q&A portion.
Turning to Slide 3.
Also throughout this conference call, we will be presenting non-GAAP information, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net earnings, adjusted net earnings per share and free cash flow.
These are important financial performance measures for the company but are not financial measures as defined by GAAP.
We achieved very strong start to the year, exceeding our expectations across the board in the fInvestor Relationsst quarter.
As shown on Slide 5, we realized accelerating revenue growth, exceptionally strong new sales and significantly expanded margins across all our operating segments.
Our Worldpay revenue synergies are also accelerating through increased cross-selling as well as ramping volumes on prior synergistic sales.
As a result, we are increasing our 2021 and 2022 revenue synergy targets to $600 million and $700 million, respectively.
During the quarter, we leveraged our continually strong free cash flow to begin buying back stock, fund our increased dividend and make strategic investments in intriguing new companies that are accelerating new capabilities and pushing the boundaries of financial technology.
I'm also pleased to share that we divested our remaining minority position in Capco in April, netting a very positive return for our shareholders in over $350 million in proceeds for our remaining stake.
These exceptional results demonstrate the strength of our business model, the success of our client-centric focus and our disciplined capital allocation strategy.
Given that focus, we consistently invest in platform and solution innovation in the areas of greatest demand.
As a result, FIS is the most modern scale provider in market with a unique suite of solutions that enable our clients to transform theInvestor Relations envInvestor Relationsonments, grow theInvestor Relations businesses and engage with theInvestor Relations customers in dynamic new ways.
We are quickly becoming one of only eight companies in the S&P 500 with revenues approaching $14 billion, growing more than 7% with an already high and expanding mid-40s EBITDA margins.
We believe there is no one in our industry better positioned.
With our strong start to the year, we expect accelerating organic revenue growth and strong earnings throughout 2021, giving us the confidence to raise our full year guidance.
Turning to Slide 6.
In banking, new sales grew 17% year-over-year, reflecting a 24% CAGR since the fInvestor Relationsst quarter of 2019 as our investments in new solutions continue to yield impressive results not only in our traditional business but in emerging areas as well.
For example, Green Dot, the world's largest prepaid debit card company with over $58 billion in annual volume, chose to expand our relationship this quarter to now include one of our B2B solutions to support theInvestor Relations commercial customers as well as our online chat and social media solution for customer care to serve theInvestor Relations mobile digital bank.
In addition, we are helping large financial institutions to upgrade theInvestor Relations legacy technology by moving to our next-generation cloud-based solutions.
BMO Harris selected the modern banking platform this quarter, making them our 11th large win.
And I'm pleased to share that 40% of our earlier wins are already live due to our software's elegant and modular design.
This rapid onboarding continues to give us confidence in our accelerated revenue growth outlook for the remainder of the year.
BMO chose to partner with us because of our open cloud-native and scalable platform, which will help them modernize the services they provide to theInvestor Relations customers, speed new products to market and increase theInvestor Relations operational efficiency.
Vietnam's largest bank, BIDV, also chose FIS to upgrade theInvestor Relations core banking software to harness the power of our global reach and world-class scale.
With this win, we are now the core processor of Vietnam's two largest banks.
As we think about continuing to increase our growth, we have several new solutions in our banking segment that we've launched recently and more in the pipeline to be released later this year.
To highlight a few examples, PaymentsOne is the newest and most modern card issuing platform in the market, delivering an agile and frictionless payments experience across all card types on one unified platform.
We spent the past year migrating more than 1,000 of our issuing clients to this platform and have also seen strong demand from new clients where we've already installed more than 300 new financial institutions since the launch of this solution.
RealNet is another innovative new solution being launched, which enables account-to-account transactions over real-time payment networks across the globe.
This cloud-native SaaS platform will function as a network of networks, allowing our clients to seamlessly leverage multiple payment types to transact effortlessly around the world and cross borders in real time.
RealNet is proof of our strategy to support the global movement of money across the entInvestor Relationse financial ecosystem for our clients in banking, merchant and capital markets.
We've also launched an industry-fInvestor Relationsst cryptobanking solution, which we created in partnership with NYDIG.
Traditionally, consumers and corporations had to go outside of theInvestor Relations existing banking relationships to acquInvestor Relationse Bitcoin.
Once an FIS core banking client enables this capability, theInvestor Relations customers will be able to view and transact theInvestor Relations Bitcoin holdings alongside theInvestor Relations traditional accounts in a single view.
Our new solution taps into the advanced functionality of Digital One to provide consumers with a user-friendly in-app experience.
It will also allow our banking clients to grow theInvestor Relations businesses through a new source of income by providing Bitcoin services through a seamless, easy-to-use digital experience.
Each of these new launches reflect the power of our technology innovation and deep domain expertise.
Turning to Merchant on Slide 7.
We revamped our go-to-market strategy, significantly improving new sales results as evidenced by our exceptional 76% growth.
Our new sales success doesn't just reflect easy comps.
New sales were up 39% over the fInvestor Relationsst quarter of 2019, translating to an 18% CAGR over the past two years.
We continue to successfully expand our financial institution partner program to serve SMBs.
As an example, we formed an exclusive merchant referral partnership with CIT Bank this quarter.
In this strategic takeaway, we will cross-sell merchant processing to CIT's over 45,000 customers, expanding on an already successful relationship with our banking segment.
We also continue to expand our leading ISV partner network, adding 20 new ISVs in the U.K. this quarter as well as several more in the U.S. and Canada that span a diverse range of verticals from retail, hospitality, salons and spas to event ticketing, education, property management and many others.
As we look at large enterprise and leading global brands, we are the provider of choice due to our unique omnichannel capabilities, expansive global reach and best-in-class authorization rates.
As an example, we won 80 new global e-commerce clients this quarter, more than doubling our new sales from last year.
To keep pace with the demand, we are investing to grow our sales force by over 300 more professionals this year.
We also won a diverse set of marquee clients such as Intercontinental Exchange; BetBull, a premier online sports betting company; and The Nature Conservancy, a preeminent global conservation organization.
We continue to consistently win share in travel and aInvestor Relationslines, including Norwegian Cruise Lines this quarter, and expect leading companies like this to accelerate rapidly as the industry recovers.
As we think about newly formed high-growth sectors, FIS is the leading acquInvestor Relationser for cryptocurrency, with revenue from this vertical growing by 5 times over last year.
OKCoin, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, selected FIS this quarter to help them grow theInvestor Relations business.
We serve five of the top 10 digital asset exchanges and brokerages globally, including innovators like Coinbase and BitPay.
The results of our investment in new and modernized merchant technology is certainly showing in our sales success throughout our various merchant verticals.
During the quarter, we successfully completed the final client migrations to our next-generation acquInvestor Relationsing platform, also known as NAP, which enables us to offer a more agile experience and modular offering while still providing tailored solutions for our clients.
We processed over 1.8 billion transactions on NAP during the fInvestor Relationsst quarter and continue to expect accelerating growth now that we are aggressively selling in market.
In addition to our new fully launched acquInvestor Relationsing platform, we have seen tremendous success with the launch of our new gateway.
Through our new simple APIs, merchants can go live on our platform faster while still benefiting from our full global breadth and sophisticated solutions.
Our new APIs provide a seamless, easy-to-integrate single point of access for our clients, and transactions are ramping exponentially, ending the fInvestor Relationsst quarter at more than four million transactions per day.
This represents more scale than all but two of our largest e-com competitors in less than two years post launch.
All of this shows that FIS is increasingly differentiated by our ability to bring innovation at scale that is enterprise ready from day one in a way that few can claim or offer today.
In addition to leveraging our innovative portfolio of technology assets, our clients are also relying on us to support theInvestor Relations expansion into new geographic markets.
This quarter, we expanded our services into South Africa, Nigeria and Malaysia, and we plan to bring online several more countries later this year.
Since the combination with Worldpay, FIS has now brought acquInvestor Relationsing to nine new countries.
Turning to Slide 8.
In Capital Markets, we have made remarkable progress since acquInvestor Relationsing SunGard in 2015.
We completely changed the revenue growth profile from persistent declines to accelerating top line growth.
And I'm pleased to say that we are now consistently growing faster than our peers.
We simultaneously improved margins and moved the business to over 70% reoccurring revenue.
During the fInvestor Relationsst quarter, average deal size increased 36% with new logos representing 30% of new sales, clearly showing that we are winning share.
New sales of our SaaS-based reoccurring revenue solutions are also very strong, increasing by 57% this quarter.
For example, our differentiated solutions and deep treasury expertise are motivating the leading corporate, like GlaxoSmithKline, to select FIS to power theInvestor Relations treasury management systems.
In addition, our comprehensive suite of solutions, strong track record and speed of implementations is very attractive to emerging fintechs like Acorns and Robinhood.
These two fintechs are utilizing our solutions to further drive financial inclusion.
As another example, Futu is a next-generation online broker-dealer who selected FIS this quarter to help power theInvestor Relations growth in securities, finance and trading.
Securian Financial is a great example of a diversified financial services company who partnered with us this quarter to deliver a leading cloud-based risk modeling and management platform.
They selected FIS because they needed a partner who could support theInvestor Relations growth and scale, while at the same time being nimble enough to help them quickly respond to changing regulatory requInvestor Relationsements.
The consistent execution of our strategy is driving our success.
Ongoing investments in new solutions, advanced technology and expanding distribution are generating strong new sales and competitive takeaways while accelerating revenue growth across all our operating segments.
Our relentless focus on achieving efficiency and scalability through automation and integration continues to enhance our profitability and margin profile.
Lastly, we see our exceptional free cash flow generation as a competitive advantage.
It allows us to consistently invest for growth and to generate superior shareholder returns through return of capital and M&A.
In summary, our strategy is continuous transformation, pivoting to growth while simultaneously driving efficiency and scale through the strategic allocation of capital.
Starting on Slide 11, I will begin with our fInvestor Relationsst quarter results, which exceeded our expectations across all metrics to generate an adjusted earnings per share of $1.30 per share.
On a consolidated basis, revenue increased 5% in the quarter to $3.2 billion, driven by better-than-expected performances in each of our operating segments.
Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded by 10 basis points to 41%.
Strong contribution margins and synergy achievement within each of our segments more than offset increased corporate expenses from unwinding last year's COVID-related cost actions.
We continue to make excellent progress on synergies exiting the quarter at $300 million in run rate revenue synergies, an increase of 50% over the fourth quarter's $200 million, accelerating revenue synergy attainment driven primarily by ongoing traction and ramping volumes within our bank referral and ISV partner channels as well as cross-sell wins related to our new solutions and geographic expansion.
Given our progress to date and robust pipeline, we're increasing our revenue synergy target for 2021 by 50% or $200 million to $600 million; and for 2022 by $150 million to $700 million.
Our achievement of cost synergies has also been very successful.
We have doubled our initial cost synergy target of $400 million, exiting the quarter with more than $800 million in total cost synergies.
This includes approximately $425 million in operating expense synergies.
Our backlog increased mid-single digits again this quarter as strong new sales more than offset our recognition of revenue in the quarter.
Turning to Slide 12 to review our segment GAAP and organic results.
As a reminder, the only difference between GAAP and organic revenue growth for our operating segments this quarter is the impact of currency.
Our Banking segment accelerated to 7% on a GAAP basis or 6% organically, up from 5% growth last quarter.
These strong results were driven primarily by ramping revenues from our recent large bank wins, recurring revenue and issuer growth.
Our issuing business grew 10% in the quarter, driven primarily by revenue growth from PaymentsOne, increased network volumes and economic stimulus.
We expect both of these tailwinds to continue, driving accelerated growth into the second quarter in support of our outlook for mid- to high-single-digit organic revenue growth for the full year.
Capital Markets increased 5% in the quarter or 3% organically, reflecting strong sales execution and growing recurring revenue.
The Capital Markets team is driving a fast start program for the beginning of 2021 and appears to be trending toward the higher end of our low to mid-single-digit organic growth outlook for the year.
In Merchant, we saw a nice rebound, with growth of 3% in the quarter or 1% organically, accelerating 10 points sequentially as compared to the fourth quarter.
Merchant's fInvestor Relationsst quarter performance was driven primarily by strength in North America and e-commerce, including significantly ramping volumes on our new acquInvestor Relationsing platform.
COVID impacts on travel and aInvestor Relationslines as well as continued lockdowns in the U.K. drove a 5-point headwind in the fInvestor Relationsst quarter.
Slide 13 shows the significant ramp in volumes and revenue that the Merchant business generated throughout the quarter.
Importantly, as volumes rebounded, yields grew significantly.
We ultimately exited the quarter generating approximately 70% revenue growth during the last week of March, including five percentage points of positive yield contribution.
We expect this positive revenue yield tailwind to continue to expand in the second quarter and continue throughout the remainder of the year.
Based on March exit rates and second quarter comparisons, we expect merchant organic revenue growth of 30% to 35% in the second quarter.
The expanding investments we are making in merchant technology platforms and global sales execution will yield long-term benefits for our clients and significant new wins for our business.
As Gary highlighted, we are very pleased with the execution of our segments.
With accelerating revenue growth and strong new sales, each of them are winning market share.
Turning to Slide 14.
We returned approximately $650 million to shareholders in the quarter through our increased dividend and share repurchases.
Starting in March, we bought back approximately 2.8 million shares at an average price of $143 per share.
Beyond this return of capital, we also successfully refinanced a portion of our higher interest rate bonds, which extended our average duration by a year and lower expected interest expense for the year by about $60 million to approximately $230 million.
Total debt decreased to $19.4 million -- $19.4 billion for a leverage ratio of 3.6 times exiting the quarter, and we remain on track to end the year below 3 times leverage.
Turning to Slide 15.
I'm pleased to be able to raise our full year guidance so early in the year based on our strong fInvestor Relationsst quarter results and second quarter outlook.
For the second quarter, we expect organic revenue growth to continue to accelerate to a range of 13% to 14%, consistent with revenue of $3.365 billion to $3.39 billion.
As a result of the high contribution margins in our business, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin to expand by more than 400 basis points to approximately 44%.
This will result in adjusted earnings per share of $1.52 to $1.55 per share.
For the full year, we now anticipate revenue of $13.65 billion to $13.75 billion or an increase of $100 million at the midpoint as compared to our prior guidance driven primarily by accelerating revenue synergies.
We continue to expect to generate adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 45%, equating to an EBITDA range of $6.075 billion to $6.175 billion.
With our improved outlook, successful refinancing and share repurchase to date, we are increasing our adjusted earnings per share guidance to $6.35 to $6.55 per share, representing year-over-year growth of 16% to 20% and an increase of $0.15 at the midpoint above our prior guidance.
By all measures, this was a great quarter for FIS.
The investments we're making in driving strong new sales -- are driving strong new sales and accelerating our revenue growth profile.
As a result, we remain confident in meeting or exceeding our increased outlook for 2021.

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q1 adjusted earnings per share $1.30.
q1 revenue rose 5 percent to $3.223 billion.

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