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: We continue to be in various remote locations today.
We may have some audio quality issues and we appreciate your patience should we experience a disruption.
A replay of today's call will be available via phone and on our website.
To be fair to everyone, please limit yourself to one question, plus one follow-up.
And now, I'd like to turn the discussion over to Phil Snow.
I'm pleased to share that we delivered strong fourth quarter and full year results.
We ended the year with record organic ASV plus professional services growth of $68 million for the quarter, crossing the $100 million annual ASV threshold for the first time and soundly beating the top end of our guidance.
Our year-on-year organic ASV growth rate accelerated 200 basis points to over 7% and we delivered annual revenue of $1.6 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $11.20.
Our outperformance was driven by two years of planned accelerated investments in content and technology, which is paying dividends.
FactSet's goal to be the leading open content and analytics platform is resonating in the marketplace and increasing our wallet share with clients.
Our targeted investment in new content sets was a significant ASV driver in fiscal '21 and fueled our workstation growth.
The continued development of our deep sector coverage improved sell side retention and expansion with our largest banking clients and help secure a new business.
Content and technology were both key to our expansion with wealth management firms where we landed important wins, including with the Royal Bank of Canada and Raymond James, Canada.
These wins were due to our market leading data and the launch of FactSet's Advisor Dashboard.
We are also expanding our addressable market by increasing our content and delivery capabilities across the front, middle and back office.
Cloud delivery coupled with the strength of our DMS in concordance as a service solutions enable our clients to centralize, integrate and analyze disparate data sources for faster and more cost-effective decision making.
This has been a major driver for our CTS business.
As we look ahead to 2022 and beyond, we remain focused on three things: scaling up our content refinery to provide the most comprehensive and connected set of industry, proprietary and third-party data for the financial markets; two, enhancing the clients' experience by delivering hyper personalized solutions, so clients can discover meaningful insights faster; and third, driving next generation workflow specific solutions for asset managers, asset owners, sell side wealth management and corporate clients.
We added new data and capabilities to further these goals by acquiring differentiated assets over the past year.
The addition of Truvalue Labs has grown our ESG offering; BTU Analytics advanced our deep sector content for the energy markets; and Cabot Technologies will better support the portfolio analytics workflows of asset managers and asset owners.
The progress we have made on our investment plan along with these acquisitions and our award-winning products give us a distinct competitive advantage.
Turning now to our financial results.
We accelerated our organic ASV plus professional services growth to 7.2%.
Our strong performance was driven by stellar execution from our sales and client-facing teams throughout the entire year and especially in the fourth quarter.
Our buy side and sell side growth rates increased 100 basis points and 400 basis points respectively since the third quarter, reflecting higher sales across our key clients.
On a year-over-year basis, we saw an increase in ASV growth rates from high-single digit to double digits across banks, asset owners, hedge funds, data providers, wealth managers and corporates, including private equity and venture capital firms.
We capitalized on the strength of our end markets, particularly in banking and landed several large deals in our wealth and CTS businesses.
Turning now to our geographic segments, we saw acceleration in every region.
ASV growth in the Americas rose to 7% in the fourth quarter, driven primarily by increased sales to our banking, corporate and wealth clients.
We also had a large data partner win this quarter in CTS.
Asia-Pac had a record ASV quarter and delivered a growth rate of 12%.
We saw wins across many countries with global and regional banks as well as our research management products.
CTS and analytics also contributed to growth with wins across asset managers and data providers.
EMEA accelerated to a 6% growth rate, driven by strong performance with data providers, asset managers and banking clients and CTS had the highest contribution to this region, followed by Research.
Now turning to our businesses.
Research was the largest contributor to our ASV growth this year with a growth rate of 6% driven by very strong growth on the sell side at 12%.
We increased Research workstation users by 86% this quarter versus a year ago with growth across both sell-side and buy-side clients.
Increasing our workstation presence and footprint with our largest clients positions us very well for cross-selling opportunities in the future.
Analytics and trading accelerated in the second half in fiscal 2021 versus the first half, ending the year at a 6% growth rate.
We saw wins across performance in reportings, front office and core analytics solutions.
Within the front office solutions, we are really pleased to see larger wins with our trading platform and believe this will be a contributor to analytics going into next year.
CTS grew 16% driven by core company data and data management solutions sold through an increasing number of channels.
CTS had robust sales to data providers this year and expanded their footprints across multiple workflows within middle and back office functions at asset management and banking clients.
Additionally, while all Truvalue Labs ESG sales are excluded from our organic numbers, I'm pleased to report that ESG data sales were a contributor to CTS' overall growth this quarter.
Wealth ended the year with a 6% growth rate.
Wealth workstations grew 24% year-over-year and they alongside FactSet's Advisor Dashboard have been the biggest contributors to winning new clients.
We've seen a combination of large and medium-size wins as existing clients continue to expand their Advisory businesses and we are equally pleased with our new business wins.
We are also seeing cross-selling opportunities with analytics products as wealth managers increasingly look to advance the sophistication of their offerings.
Moving forward with fiscal '22, we will report three workflow solutions.
We are combining the desktop portion of the Wealth business with Research into one business to be known as Research and Advisory.
We believe this is the right strategy to further our goals to holistically manage our desktop solutions, accelerate the build out of differentiated front office solutions and facilitate the global expansion on the adoption of StreetAccount news in FactSet Web.
We have also taken the wealth digital business and combined it with CTS to better align our digital solutions.
In summary, we are entering fiscal '22 with strong momentum and a solid pipeline as reflected in our Annual ASV guidance.
The need for more differentiated content and analytics is at an unprecedented high and we are perfectly positioned to capture this demand and poised to deliver best in class workflows and a hyper personalized experience for our clients.
I'm proud of our Company's strong performance in fiscal '21.
We have advanced our digital platform, executed at a high level and strengthened our relationship with clients.
And I'm confident that as our Chief Revenue Officer, she will bring a disciplined growth-oriented mindset and the same rigor to the sales organization as she did leading finance, enabling us to continue our success going forward.
I'm happy to be here with you today and I hope that we will continue to engage even after I fully transition to my sales role.
Like Phil, I want to congratulate FactSetters around the world for achieving outstanding results in fiscal 2021.
While we have continued primarily to operate remotely, I am so impressed with the resilience with which our FactSet teams are able to serve our global clients.
Our 7% top line growth this year is a testament to the hard work of our teams and validates our strategy to invest in content and technology, capitalize on market trends and address client needs.
Throughout this fiscal year, we accelerated our growth rate in ASV plus professional services through consistent conversion of our pipeline, delivering over $100 million in ASV growth and surpassing our most recent guidance for the year.
Full year revenue also exceeded our target as we realize more revenue from ASV booked early in the fourth quarter.
We generated solid earnings through disciplined expense management and operating leverage.
Driving sustainable long-term growth requires continued investment back into the business, as reflected by our increased spend on differentiated content and cloud enabled technology, we executed our plan well and our operating results are in line with expectations due to higher revenue and productivity gains with higher adjusted operating income and growth in adjusted EPS.
Let me now walk you through the specifics of our fourth quarter.
Before I explain the quarterly results, I want to remind everyone that our prior year fourth quarter GAAP results were impacted by one-time non-cash charge of approximately $17 million, related to an impairment of an investment in a third-party.
Thus any year-over-year comparison of GAAP operating results for the fourth quarter of 2021 should take that into consideration.
As you saw on the previous slide, our organic ASV plus professional services growth rate was 7.2%.
This increase reflects the higher demand for our solutions as clients execute on their own digital transformation.
Our success in solving the workflow challenges has resulted in higher levels of both client retention and cross-selling activity.
For the quarter, GAAP revenue increased by 7% to $412 million.
Organic revenue, which excludes any impact from foreign exchange, acquisitions and deferred revenue amortization also increased 7% to $410 million.
Growth was driven by our Analytics, CTS and Research Solutions.
For our geographic segments, organic revenue for the Americas grew to 6%, EMEA grew to 7%, and Asia-Pacific to 12%.
All regions primarily benefited from increases in our Analytics and CTS solutions.
GAAP operating expenses grew 3% in the fourth quarter to $293 million, impacted by a higher cost of services.
Compared to the previous year, our GAAP operating margin increased by 320 basis points to 28.9% and our adjusted operating margin decreased by 150 basis points to 31.6%.
As a percentage of revenue, our cost of services was 10 basis points higher than last year on a GAAP basis and flat to last year on an adjusted basis.
The increase is primarily driven by growth in compensation comprised of higher salary expenses for existing employees, new hires to support our multiyear investment plan and higher bonus accrual in line with stronger than anticipated ASV performance.
SG&A expenses when expressed as a percentage of revenue improved year-over-year by 330 basis points on a GAAP basis, but increased 170 basis points on an adjusted basis.
The primary drivers include higher compensation costs, reflecting the same factors as noted in the cost of services.
Moving on, our tax rate for the quarter was 15% higher than the prior year's tax rate of 7% primarily due to lower tax benefits associated with stock-based compensation in the current quarter as well as a tax benefit related to finalizing the prior year's tax returns.
GAAP earnings per share increased 15% to $2.63 this quarter versus $2.29 in the prior year.
Again, this improvement is primarily a result of the impairment charge we recorded in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share remained flat year-over-year at $2.88.
Adjusted earnings per share was driven by higher revenues offset by higher operating expenses, and an increase in the tax rate.
Free cash flow which we define as cash generated from operations less capital spending was $171 million for the quarter, an increase of 18% over the same period last year.
This increase is primarily due to higher net income, improved collections and the timing of certain tax payments.
For the fourth quarter, our ASV retention remained above 95% and our client retention improved to 91%, which again speaks to the demand for our solutions and excellent execution by our sales team.
Compared to the prior year, we grew our total number of clients by 10% over 6,400, largely due to the addition of more wealth and corporate clients.
And our user count grew 14% year-over-year and crossed the total of 160,000, primarily driven by sales in our wealth and research solutions and in particular in the number of banking users.
For the quarter, we repurchased over 265,000 shares of our common stock at a total cost of $93 million, with a average share price of $348.
For the year, we repurchased $265 million of our shares and increased our dividend for the 22nd consecutive year.
With share repurchases and dividends on an annual basis, we have returned to shareholders almost 70% as a percentage of free cash flow and proceeds from employee stock option.
We remain disciplined in our buyback program and committed to returning long-term value to our shareholders.
Turning now to our outlook for fiscal year 2022, we delivered outstanding results in the back half of 2021, and believe this pace will carry into our next fiscal year.
For organic ASV plus professional services, we are guiding to an incremental $105 million to $135 million.
The midpoint of this range represents a 7% increase, which is equal to this year's organic growth rate, reflecting continued momentum in our business.
We are confident in our ability to perform at the high standard we demonstrated in fiscal '21 with underlying drivers to include disciplined execution and continued benefits from our investments.
We expect growth to be driven largely with existing clients through high retention and cross-selling.
In addition, we expect our ability to successfully sell new business in this virtual environment to continue.
Our recent investments in digital and content, are providing us with more opportunities to sell direct solutions tailored for specific workflows.
Drivers of future growth would include, first, the retention and expansion of our sell side client base through our deep sector strategy as we launch new targeted industries in addition to new private markets offerings.
Second, new wins with wealth managers who have been responding well to our web-based workstation and personalized Advisor Dashboard.
And third, growth with institutional asset management clients who benefit from our data management solutions and enhanced capabilities in front office and ESG workflows.
We are mindful about the global environment and potential future market disruptions.
But we believe we have the right offerings and strategy to maintain our high performance and growth rate into fiscal 2022.
From an operational perspective, we plan for continued labor productivity and operating leverage.
In addition to our multiyear investment plan, new investments will be made in content and front office solutions funded in part by ongoing cost discipline, including permanent savings related to the pandemic and additional efficiency actions.
As a result of higher growth in revenues and continued cost discipline, we are guiding to an expansion in our operating margins.
Combined with our consistent use of capital for share repurchases, we expect to accelerate growth in our diluted EPS, both on a GAAP and adjusted basis.
We are seeing the results of our investments take hold in both technology and content.
As we look to fiscal 2022, we are focused on delivering more value to clients, prioritizing our resources and ensuring execution excellence.
As I transition to my new role, I am seeing firsthand experience and skills of our sales team in adapting to meet the needs of the market.
Our client-centric mentality combined with our expanding data universe and digital advances provide me with the confidence that we have the people, strategy and product to build the leading open content and analytics platform in our industry, all while generating long-term value for our shareholders.

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qtrly earnings per share $2.63.
qtrly adjusted earnings per share $2.88.

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