Fortive (NYSE:FTV) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Fortive reported strong Q1 2026 performance with over 5% core revenue growth, 13% adjusted EBITDA growth, and over 25% adjusted EPS growth.
The company executed $500 million in share repurchases, reducing share count by over 10% since July 2025, and reaffirmed its full-year adjusted EPS guidance range of $2.90 to $3.00.
Fortive highlighted progress in its Fortive Accelerated Strategy, focusing on organic growth, disciplined capital allocation, and building investor trust.
Operational highlights include the launch of new AI-driven products in healthcare and data center testing solutions, with positive customer response.
Management expressed confidence in the company's strategic plan and financial framework for 2026-2027, with strong performance expectations in North America and improving conditions in Europe.
Full Transcript
Shamali (Conference Facilitator)
My name is Shamali and I will be your conference facilitator this afternoon. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to Fortive Corporation's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Results Conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the Speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press Star then the number two. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Christina Jones, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Jones, you may begin your conference.
Christina Jones (Vice President of Investor Relations)
Thank you and thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. I am joined today by Illumide Sharoye, Fortive's President and CEO and Mark Okerstrom, Fortive's CFO. During today's call we present certain non GAAP financial measures. Information required by Regulation G is available on the Investors section of our [email protected] we will also make forward looking statements, including statements regarding events or developments that we expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future. These forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and actual results might differ materially from any forward looking statement that we make today. Information regarding these risk factors is available in our SEC filings including our annual report on Form 10K and the subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10Q. These forward looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements. Our statements on period to period increases or decreases refer to year over year comparisons unless otherwise specified and our results and outlook discussed today are on a continuing operations basis. With that, I'll turn the call over to Illumide.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Thank you Christina. Let me begin on Slide 3. Q1 marked a strong start to the year with another quarter of solid performance. We remain laser focused on delivering on our strategic and financial plans for 2026 and continue to make encouraging progress on executing our Fortive accelerated Strategy. We have four key messages to cover today. First, our teams executed well in the first quarter of 2026, delivering solid performance in both segments. On a consolidated basis, we delivered core revenue growth of just over 5%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 13% and adjusted EPS growth of over 25%. Please note that our core revenue growth in the quarter was aided by approximately 150 basis points of tailwind from additional year-over-year selling days in the quarter. Second, we continue our disciplined capital allocation approach with a relentless focus on optimizing shareholder returns over the medium to long term. In the first quarter we completed approximately $500 million of share repurchases. We've now reduced our share count by just over 10% since we launched Neat Fortive in July 2025. Third, with three quarters of execution now behind us, our confidence continues to build in the power of the Fortive Accelerator strategy to unlock benchmark beaten returns for our shareholders over the medium to long term. I'll spend a few minutes on this in the next slide. Lastly, we are reaffirming our full year adjusted EPS guidance range of $2.90 to $3.00. Based on our Q1 performance and trends to date, we believe results are trending toward the upper half of that range. Moving to Slide 4 before we get into our Q1 results, I want to highlight some of the progress we're making in executing the three pillars of our Fortive Accelerated strategy, starting with the first pillar, delivering faster profitable organic growth powered by our Fortive business system. Amplified this quarter, we continue to increase our innovation velocity with several notable hardware product milestones and AI enhanced product launches. As discussed last quarter, Fluke launched a new data center testing solution, CertiFiber Max, with the fastest throughput in the industry. In late Q4, customer response continues to significantly exceed our expectations, underscoring the strength of Fluke's brand and the effectiveness of our broader data center strategy. We are particularly encouraged by CertiFiber Max's ability to drive meaningful pull through of other Fluke products into data center applications including power quality, battery testing, imaging and calibration solutions essential for both build out and ongoing operations and maintenance of data centers in health care. We introduced ProVision Mirror Documentation Assist, a real time AI powered voice driven documentation capability enabled by deep domain expertise and proprietary data and embedded directly into Gastrointestinal procedural workflows. This solution enables clinicians to capture structured documentation during the procedure, reducing the need to reconstruct details afterwards and enabling the clinical team to focus on the best patient care. On the commercial side, we continue to focus on faster growing end markets and regions where we've made deliberate targeted investments to capture growth. At Fluke, we continue to invest in commercial expertise across high growth verticals such as data centers, defense and distributed energy, and we're seeing solid early traction from our focus efforts and at asp, we continue to advance our made in region strategies in India and China supported by related commercial investments and we're beginning to see positive impact of this effort in our results. We're also advancing ASP's growth strategies in EMEA. With the European commercial launch of Sterizone Ultra Gastrointestinal on our recurring customer value initiatives, we continued to make progress on driving deeper customer lifecycle engagement and improving revenue durability. In Q1, recurring revenue again grew faster than consolidated revenue in both segments. Our recurring customer value progress continued in our iconic hardware brands. Fluke continues to make progress on increasing recurring revenue with double digit services growth in the quarter and Industrial Scientific continued to see strong growth and share gains in our hardware as a service product line. Moving to the second pillar Disciplined capital allocation is an integral component of our fortive accelerated strategy. Consistent with our priorities, we deployed another roughly $500 million to share repurchases in Q1. Since the spinoff, we've deployed approximately $1.8 billion to share repurchases representing 35 million shares or just over 10% of diluted shares outstanding. Our revamped bolt on M&A engine and team is in place and we will continue to evaluate opportunities for high quality accretive bolt on acquisitions that meet our rigorous strategic and financial criteria. Looking forward, our capital allocation priorities remain clear. Invest in organic growth, pursue bolt on M&A where risk adjusted returns exceed other uses of capital, return capital through share repurchases and maintain a modest growing dividend, all with a focus on best relative returns and maximizing medium to long term shareholder value. Moving to our final pillar building and maintaining investor trust, we were pleased to deliver solid performance ahead of expectations for a third consecutive quarter as new Fortive. That is a good start and we look forward to building on our momentum. We remain laser focused on executing against our 2026 financial and strategic plan and continue to have strong confidence in our 20262027 financial framework that we shared at our June 2025 investor day. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to walk through our financial results for the first quarter in more detail.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks Illumina. I'll begin with slide 5. In the first quarter we delivered total revenue of nearly $1.1 billion, up almost 8% year over year on a reported basis and up just over 5% on a core basis, benefiting from an approximately 150 basis point tailwind from the impact of additional year over year selling days in the quarter. We are pleased to see price and volume growth at both segments driven by healthy customer demand and strong commercial and operational execution leading to solid performance across the board. We were also pleased to see strong growth in software revenue reflecting the underlying strength of our businesses and robust customer demand for our increasingly AI driven new product releases from a geographic perspective we saw another quarter of solid performance in North America which continues to be our strongest region. Europe improved sequentially reflecting stabilizing conditions. Solid commercial execution. Adjusted gross margin in the quarter was just over 63%, down about 100 basis points from prior year, which is largely consistent with the year over year gross margin trends we saw last quarter and was driven mostly by the net impact of tariffs that were introduced last year. Q1 adjusted EBITDA was $314 million up about 13% year over year. This strong performance was driven by operating leverage, structural cost savings and the favorable impact from foreign exchange rates, partially offset by continued innovation and commercial growth investments. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter expanded approximately 140 basis points year over year to just over 29%. We delivered adjusted earnings per share of $0.70 in Q1 up over 25% year over year, marking our third consecutive quarter of double digit adjusted EPS growth. Strong adjusted EPS performance was driven by growth in adjusted EBITDA and the positive year over year impact of share repurchases. We generated $194 million of free cash flow in the first quarter with Q1 conversion on adjusted net income in line with normal historical patterns. A trailing 12 month free cash flow conversion remains north of 100%. Moving to our segment results starting with Intelligent Operating Solutions On Slide 6, revenue for the segment grew about 8% on a reported basis with core revenue growth of about 5% modestly ahead of our expectations based on the product mix in the segment. The year over year impact of additional selling days in Q1 resulted in a roughly 100 basis point benefit for iOS, making normalized core growth in the segment broadly consistent with what we saw last quarter. Core growth was driven by both price and volume reflecting solid performance across professional instrumentation, facility and asset lifecycle solutions and gas detection products. At fluke order volume was strong with orders growth outpacing revenue growth and our teams continued to execute with strong operational discipline while increasingly deploying investment dollars towards growth initiatives. North America continues to be the strongest growth driver and we were encouraged by another quarter sequential improvement. In Europe, growth in facilities and asset lifecycle solutions accelerated from Q4 and was again accretive to the iOS segment with particular strength and demand for multi site facility maintenance and marketplace software in North America. Our commercial investments and accelerated pace of innovation across these businesses are beginning to bear fruit. Our gas detection business continues to grow nicely, buoyed by strong demand and share gains from our hardware as a service product line in North America, Europe and the Middle East. As we begin to see our investments in the business show up in our results. Adjusted gross margin in the segment was just over 65%, down about 150 basis points year over year, which is largely consistent with the year over year gross margin trends we saw last quarter primarily due to product mix and the net effect of tariffs you want. Adjusted EBITDA in The segment grew 8% to $255 million, driven by operating leverage, structural cost savings and the favorable impact from foreign exchange rates partially offset by targeted growth investments to support innovation and commercial initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA margin for Q1 was just over 34% in iOS in line with the comparable period prior year. Moving to our Advanced Healthcare Solutions segment on slide 7, we delivered total revenue of $326 million. Revenue grew approximately 8% year over year and approximately 6% on a core basis. Our healthcare consumables and software product lines benefited from the year over year impact of additional selling days in Q1, resulting in a roughly 300 basis point benefit to growth for AHS. On a normalized basis, we saw slight acceleration in growth versus last quarter. Q1 growth was driven by solid demand for healthcare consumables services and software in North America. Low temperature sterilization capital demand improved modestly in Q1, though hospital spending pressures continue to persist. Our software products in the segment continue to deliver strong growth driven by effective execution and strong provider demand for our gastrointestinal case documentation solution. Adjusted gross margin in the segment was about 59% in line with the prior year period with modest operating leverage offset by the net impact of tariffs. Q1 adjusted EBITDA in the segment was $84 million, up approximately 18% year over year, driven by operating leverage, structural cost savings and the favorable impact from foreign exchange rates partially offset by targeted growth investments to support innovation and commercial initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA margin in Q1 expanded by about 200 basis points year over year to just under 26%. Turning to Slide 8, our balance sheet remains strong. We finished the quarter at 2.8 times gross debt to adjusted EBITDA, reflecting a modest increase in commercial paper to fund share repurchases in the quarter. We continue to have ample capacity to execute on our capital deployment priorities in 2026 and we remain steadfast in our commitment to disciplined capital allocation and an overall approach that seeks best relative returns. As noted earlier, we deployed roughly $500 million to share repurchases in the first quarter, reflecting continued confidence in our ability to deliver on our value creation plan. As a result, diluted shares outstanding were approximately 309 million at the end of Q1. In addition to retooling our process and revamping our M&A team integration and the execution of our value creation plans for the two small bolt on acquisitions we completed in Q4 are both going according to plan and we continue to be on the lookout for high quality accretive bolt on deals that meet our rigorous strategic and financial criteria. Moving to Slide 9, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 adjusted EPS guidance range of $2.90 to $3 per share. Given the trends to date inclusive of Q1 performance modestly ahead of our expectations, we believe results are trending towards the upper half of that range. This outlook assumes a continuation of the market dynamics we experienced in Q1 and reflects current tariff rates. Let me provide a few additional considerations to assist with modeling. Based on current foreign exchange rates, we expect full year reported revenue of around $4.3 billion. We continue to expect core growth in the 2 to 3% range and given strong order patterns we believe results are are trending towards the upper end of that range. In terms of the shape of the year. Based on Q1 results modestly ahead of our expectations, we expect Q1 will comprise a slightly higher percentage of total revenue than historical patterns. With Q2 and Q3 broadly in line, we would note that Q4 has four fewer year over year selling days resulting in a 15 to 20 million dollars revenue headwind. The quarter we expect FX and M&A combined to be about a 150 basis point tailwind to reported revenue in Q2 moderating to roughly 50 to 100 basis points throughout the second half of the year. We are now modeling a Q2 effective tax rate in the mid teens, Q3 in the high teens and Q4 in the high single digit to low double digit range. We are also expecting full year net interest expense of just over $135 million. Based on what we see today and based on these modeling considerations, we would expect Q2 and Q3 adjusted EPS to be broadly similar to what we delivered in Q1. As the year unfolds and we continue to execute on our fortive accelerated strategy, quarterly phasing may evolve As a final note before turning it back to illuminae for closing remarks and Q and A, we're off to a strong start to 2026 at New Fortive and we remain committed to unrelenting execution on the fort of accelerated three pillar value creation strategy and financial framework that we outlined at our June 2025 investor day. I'll now Turn it back over to Illuminate.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Thanks, Mark. Let me close with a few observations on the quarter and where we're headed. Q1 represents a strong start to the year and further evidence of the progress we're making as new fortive. We delivered solid organic growth, meaningful adjusted EBITDA growth and a third consecutive quarter of double digit adjusted EPS growth while continuing to invest deliberately and execute diligently against our fortive accelerated strategy. We're seeing early traction from our innovation, commercial and recurring customer value growth initiatives. We are methodically allocating capital in ways that we believe will generate the best relative returns over the medium to long term, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to building and maintaining investor trust. Our teams are aligned, our FBS operating cadence is strong, and our confidence in the 20262027 financial framework we outlined at Investor Day 2025 is fully intact. I want to thank our 40 team members around the world for their commitment to our shared purpose of innovating essential technologies to keep our world safe and productive and 100,000 customers for placing their trust in us every day. With that, I'll turn it back to Christina to open the call for questions.
Christina Jones (Vice President of Investor Relations)
Thanks Illumide. That concludes our prepared remarks. We are now ready for questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please. While we poll for questions, Our first question comes from the line of Nigel Ko with Wolf Research. Please proceed with your question.
Nigel Ko (Equity Analyst at Wolf Research)
Thanks. Good afternoon everyone. By the way, Mark, thanks for the call out on the selling days. It's really helpful. Not all teams do that just on the 2Q plan. Just want to make sure we think about this correctly. You mentioned 2Q 3Q EPS roughly similar to 1Q. Normally we see 2Q stepping up from 1Q, but we had the selling days impact. So I'm just wondering the the core growth in 2Q is it looking to be in that sort of mid single digit range but pretty flat with sales in the first quarter but up mid single digits and margins would also be Fairly similar to 1Q as well.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Nigel, thanks for the question. I think you're broadly in the zone. You know, again, Q2 obviously don't have the benefit of the days. We do have a slightly easier component I called it the FX tailwind. That combined with M&A being about 150 basis points and I think we're over the last couple of quarters, we're starting to see just some momentum across each of the two segments based upon our own execution with IOS a little bit ahead of AHS. And based on what we see right now, we're expecting those trends to continue through the full year.
Nigel Ko (Equity Analyst at Wolf Research)
Great. And then my follow on question, I think Illumide. You mentioned some success, early success with some of the AI driven product releases within fal. AI is meant to be a negative, not a positive. So maybe just talk about that a little bit and perhaps a little bit more color on how the FBS portfolio performed in the quarter.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Yeah, happy to take that. So I think AI is certainly a disruptive technology that's shaping the landscape. As we've discussed previously, we feel very good about the businesses we have and how our teams are taking advantage of AI part innovation to drive growth in those businesses. And I think looking at FBS as an example, it is a great case example of how we're using AI deployed on top of our mission critical proprietary data reach software solutions for customers to really deliver new value for them that's driving faster growth in that platform. Now we've talked about a few examples of ServiceChannel AI and what our team is doing with that and you see that showing up in the numbers. We're very pleased with FBS's performance in the quarter. It grew faster than the iOS segment. Core growth of 5.2%. All the operating brands contributed to that growth with Service China leading the pack with continued strength, especially in North America and the broad trends in all our key operational metrics, AR, GDR, NDR are really good and we're excited about the opportunity to see continued improvement in those metrics as we execute on our affordable archery strategy, including this AI powered use cases. So from everything we see, given the nature of those businesses and the kind of quantitative data on performance, we feel quite good.
Nigel Ko (Equity Analyst at Wolf Research)
Great. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Thanks, Nigel.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dean Dre with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Dean Dre (Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Thank you. Good day everyone.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Hi Dean, how are you doing?
Dean Dre (Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Hey. There were a number of references about data center and Fluke is right in the middle of it. You just give us a sense of what the opportunity is. And there's some newer technologies like optical switching that should also position Fluke well. But any update there and kind of what the overall exposure is would be helpful. Thanks.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Thanks, Dan. So, yeah, we are very excited about the data center investment cycle and not just the construction I've built out stage, but frankly the larger and more durable opportunity for ongoing operations and maintenance of this massive data center. So they're getting built out and like you mentioned, Fluke already participates in a tool belt for these data centers with a wide range of Mac Elite products in power quality monitoring, analytics and high voltage diagnostics and high density fiber testing, electrical ground floor detection, power calibration, health, et cetera. And I think new technologies like optical switching, to your point, will create additional demand for a lot of these products we already have. But even more exciting, frankly, is the tremendous job our Fluke team is doing on accelerating innovation that's aimed at data center needs that are not yet fully met. We talked about the certified Max product that we launched in Q4 of last year and just the incredible customer response to that and how our team is using that new product to pull through the entire suite of offerings we have for these data centers and really working hard at getting SPECT in to hyperscaler standard maintenance tool sets for how they manage these data centers. So we feel really good about the setup and the enduring tailwind that offers for us at Fluke and the exact magnitude of that is still ahead of us, but we're quite excited.
Dean Dre (Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Great to hear. And then just can you address price cost expectations for the year, ability to offset inflation and any tariff pressures at the margin?
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
If price cost was north of one in the first quarter, we would expect that to persist. You know, FBS continues to be at absolutely the core affordive and, and that is just, you know, continues to drive value engineering and cost efficiencies as we move through the year. The tariffs, again, they have been a headwind to our gross margins even though they're completely countermeasured from a bottom line perspective. You saw that headwind show up in IOS this quarter. It's going to persist through partway through the third quarter when we were fully countermeasured and then you'll see that dissipate completely as we lap over the countermeasures in the fourth quarter.
Dean Dre (Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets)
Thank you.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
You're welcome.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Julian Mitchell (Equity Analyst at Barclays)
Hi, good morning. Maybe I wondered if you could flesh out perhaps some of the commentary on the orders strength you've seen recently. I think some other companies have not exactly been shy about touting large orders in recent months. So how the order is progressing there and just wondered any Update on the cadence of demand in some of the shorter cycle hardware businesses like Fluke or AHS consumables in recent weeks or month. Any signs of pre buy or broad changes in demand, ex-stock de-stock, anything to call out there.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Great Julian, happy to take that and thanks for the question. So I think first on Q1 we were really happy with the orders growth that we saw. Orders grew faster than our 5.3% core, 7.7% total revenue growth which is a great signal about the trajectory of the business. And the other growth we saw was broad based across the two segments in iOS, fluke file isc as well as on the ehs side esp all saw really strong order growth in the quarter. So we're quite pleased with that and that's a result of just the good conditions in our markets, the strength of our operating brands and the early positive impact of our Fortive Accelerator strategy. So we quite like that. And in terms of your question on short cycle and indicators there, maybe I'll just use a couple of examples. I think if you look at Fluke that's probably the biggest indicator of that. POS trends remain solid book to Bill was over one healthy backlog to end the quarter Channel inventories relatively normal in the US continue to get better outside the US So we feel really good about the trends we're seeing on short cycle. As you know, Fluke's been a very durable business with other growth in almost every quarter the last five years despite PMI contractions on most of that time. So Fluke's continued endurance has been quite, quite impressive and that continued in the quarter as well. And for ASP on the consumable side, the same thing that continued to show to show the resiliency that you would expect and even adjusting for the extra selling days, low temperature sterilization consumables continue to grow in a very durable way. So we felt all the signals were good for us.
Julian Mitchell (Equity Analyst at Barclays)
That's very helpful, thank you. And then if we think about operating leverage or operating margins, you know there were very high operating leverage in Q1 year on year even with the tariff headwinds. Understand there was a sort of selling days mechanical impact but when we look at the balance of the year, anything we should bear in mind on operating leverage as we move through the year. I imagine there isn't a big Section 232 tariff effect for fortive. So yeah, any sort of help there you could provide.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Very happy to. So again I think just to reiterate, we are very confident in our Medium term financial framework and that calls to 50 to 100 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion over the course of this year, next year, each year. And that's the framework we're operating under. And really the way we've been managing the business is taking costs out of areas where they're not particular value added. You saw us flatten the segment structures, take out corporate costs in addition to the stranded cost reduction and reinvest that in initiatives that we believe will accelerate growth and deliver excellent returns. And that's the formula. What you will see this year though is that because we've got this day's impact in the first half of the year, we've got easier comps in the first half of the year, in the back half of the year, the comps get a little bit harder in Q3 and then you've got the days impact in Q4 and you will lap over a lot of the pretty significant cost actions that we took in the third and fourth quarter of last year. You'll see a little bit of a, you know, a shift if you will, or a little bit less margin expansion in the back half of the year than certainly we were able to deliver in the first half of the year. But we again, we feel super good about the overall margin trajectory of the business. You know, Fortive Business System is working, we're reinvesting in initiatives and that, you know, seems, it's early but it seems to be driving growth and the financial framework is well intact.
Julian Mitchell (Equity Analyst at Barclays)
That's great to hear, thank you.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
All right, you're welcome.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andy Taplowicz with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.
Andy Taplowicz (Equity Analyst at Citigroup)
Good morning everyone.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Morning Dave.
Andy Taplowicz (Equity Analyst at Citigroup)
If I could follow up on AAHS. I mean you mentioned I think slight acceleration in Q1 despite some continued hospital CapEx pressure in the US. So how would you characterize fundamentals? I know you answered Julian's question on consumables, but you know, overall equipment, does the environment continue to get better here this year? Differences between North America and China, what are you seeing on the AHS demand side?
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Great, happy to address that. So I mean we were pleased with the performance in the AHS segment and ASP's role within that in the quarter. And you know, as a reminder, the segment did benefit from roughly 300 basis point tailwind related to the additional days in the quarter. But even after normalizing for that, we saw some acceleration in the segment reflecting the strength in consumable services and software in terms of capital equipment. To your point, we've seen modest sequential improvement since Q2 of 2025. As you might recall, that was the toughest quarter with the impact of health care reimbursement and related policies on hospital kind of procurement of capital equipment. But Q1 continued to show that improvement for us. Hospitals remain cautious about capital spending when the exact timing is discretionary. But we feel really good about especially lapping that year over year dynamic as we go into Q2 here because Q2 last year is when it started and you know the underlying capital funnel we have is really strong. And as we as we lap this dynamic in Q2 we like the setup for the rest of the year for our team. Us continues to be the main pressure point on hospital budgets, but it's getting better and with some of the made-in-country initiatives we have in China and India for asp, that's adding some tailwind for us in those particular markets as they want locally made products. So we feel quite good as we look at the rest of the year and things are getting better on the equipment side even though there's still some caution.
Andy Taplowicz (Equity Analyst at Citigroup)
Very helpful. And then I want to follow up on FBS also. I mean you mentioned the strength in service channel and that FBS is stronger than core growth in iOS in Q1, but maybe you could talk about the outlook for facility asset life cycle for the year. Would you say that service channel Gordian current could all continue to be higher than that 3% core growth you're guiding? I think any more color would be helpful.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Yeah, no thanks for that. So I mean I think the leading indicators are the things we're seeing on other growth and ARR and GDR and NDR in those businesses and also the just exciting options our teams are taking with respect to the innovation funnel and commercial initiatives to invest in areas where we have momentum across the range of options and also just to drive improved customer experience. And all of those things are pointing north for us in those businesses. So we feel good about the setup for the rest of the year for foul and the role it continues to play in our mix.
Andy Taplowicz (Equity Analyst at Citigroup)
Very helpful.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Buscaglio with BNP Paribas. Please proceed with your question.
Andrew Buscaglio (Equity Analyst at BNP Paribas)
Thanks for taking my question.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks. So I just want to reiterate that
Andrew Buscaglio (Equity Analyst at BNP Paribas)
yeah, you're guiding to a similar level for Q2 and you're talking about some incremental things you're working on to drive some margin expansion. But guidance really at the midpoint does imply earnings moderating or even potentially declining in one of the Quarters.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
So maybe. Yeah. Is this just conservatism or what are you waiting to see in terms of moving that guidance higher? Yeah, thanks for the question. You know, I think net net. We feel very good about the momentum that we're seeing in the business. The early results of our execution on the fort of accelerated strategy, really across all three pillars. But I think, you know, particularly the efforts we're making on commercial acceleration and innovation acceleration. You know, I think what I would say is that it's, it's early in the year. You know, we've got a quarter under our belt, we've got a lot of exciting things going on and we like what we see, but you know, it's just a little bit too early to get out ahead of our skis. I think. Take the fact that we gave some color that we were are expecting growth near the higher end of our range and adjusted EPS on the full year near the higher, higher end of the range or the upper half is an expression of our confidence in what we see. And we look forward to updating you on the next. Next call in terms of how it's going.
Andrew Buscaglio (Equity Analyst at BNP Paribas)
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I wanted to check on, you
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
know, on the M and A front with, you know, you guys have been doing a good job managing on the cash flow side, but yeah, what's the outlook like? You got your, you got your footing post separation. At this point you have probably a better idea of where you want to go with your capital allocation priorities. So what do you see in terms of M and A as it plays out this year? Yeah, thanks for the question. Well, again, you know, capital allocation is a critical pillar to the fort of accelerated strategy and we've been pleased to deploy capital with discipline retiring just north of 10% of our share count since the time of the spin. And we're really looking to deploy capital across organic growth initiatives, M and A share repurchase and a modest growing dividend based upon best relative returns. You know, as it relates to M and A specifically, we have, we've really revamped, you know, everything. We've revamped our approach with more of a focus to bolt ons. We put in place rigorous strategic and financial criteria. We have essentially rebuilt the team. We've executed a couple of bolt on acquisitions in the back half of the year and those are going very well and the value creation plans are tracking and we think the teams are performing really well. We're also super excited that on Monday Corbin Wahlberger will be joining us to run corporate development for us. Globally and run M and A. And Corbin is well known in circles around this industry. We think he's going to be a fantastic fit and we're excited to have him join what is already proven to be a really excellent team. And I think we'll see what happens. Obviously, if multiples start to expand on a relative basis, MA becomes more attractive and we're putting ourselves in a position where we're building pipeline. The team is strong and getting stronger and when the time comes where that becomes the best use of capital, we'll be there, we'll be proactive and are ready to go.
Andrew Buscaglio (Equity Analyst at BNP Paribas)
All right, thank you. Welcome.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Quinn Frederickson with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Quinn Frederickson (Equity Analyst at Baird)
Hi. Thanks. Question on Gordian. I think June is typically a more sizable month for that business with year end government spending. You obviously didn't see that last year. Just any visibility to whether that normalized year end spend materialized this year or what's baked into the 2Q guide.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, thanks for the question. So yes, you're right. A lot of the state and local agencies, June is a year end and our team's doing a phenomenal job of being very close to customers and being there to serve them on any budgets that's left. We feel really good about the funnel that we have and, and expect to have a strong outcome. We haven't presumed anything kind of extra normal in terms of the Q2 guidance and if we get more there than we got last year, we'll get the upside. So we feel quite good about the setup and the work our team's doing to be close to customers as we go through Q2.
Quinn Frederickson (Equity Analyst at Baird)
Okay, thank you. And then second one just would be on the detection business. Any color you can share on what you're seeing in the Middle east, any disruption tied to that and then any discussions with customers about potential rebuild related orders.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, so I'll take that. So I think with respect to the gas detection business overall we're very pleased with how that in the quarter it was accretive to iOS segment growth overall demand was strong globally frankly with solid performance in North America, Europe and the Middle East. And I think with respect to the Middle east, we really are seeing to your point increased demand and we don't think the rebuild is at the peak yet. So we're excited about the opportunity to show up for customers as as that picks up in the region overall. Just keep in mind that sales in the Middle east is a small part of fordev. Overall it's low single digit percentage of our total revenues. But that team, based on the order book, is feeling quite excited. Thankfully our teams in the regions are all safe and staying close to customers, so we're feeling good about being able to help in a challenging context.
Quinn Frederickson (Equity Analyst at Baird)
Sure. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jaguza Kotoku with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Jaguza Kotoku (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I just have a quick follow up on FEL. You commented that it grew faster than iOS growth of 5% during the quarter, but can you just clarify if that's what it was adjusting for the selling day impacts and how that compares to last quarter?
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Yes. So the PFAO business did very well even if you adjust for the selling days. And so I think that statement holds even adjusting for selling for selling days. That's an indication of just the great job our team's doing on building building the order book over the last several quarters here. That's now beginning to show up in revenues as revrec kicks in for those new orders. So feels quite good. And like I mentioned, the leading indicators looking ahead are also quite strong, excluding extra selling days.
Jaguza Kotoku (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)
Okay, great. And how does that compare to last quarter? Do you have any color there?
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Overall, I think see that we're seeing steady acceleration in the platform, which again, one of the things we liked about Q1 is the broad based nature of acceleration we saw. And FAO was no exception to that compared to last quarter.
Jaguza Kotoku (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)
Okay, great, thanks. And then a follow up. But so just sorry to follow up on this point. So compared to last quarter it accelerated, correct, not decelerate.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
I think, you know, without getting to the specifics, I think we're really pleased with the progress we're seeing in the quarter, you know, including adjusted for days. And I think we'll just stay away from getting into too much specifics. But again, continued strength and foul and across the board and as Lumide said, really no exception across all of the components of the business and all the components of fortive.
Jaguza Kotoku (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)
Okay, great. And just my last question. So were the trends similar for the AHS software business?
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, AHS as well. Again, you know, continued very strong performance, you know, even adjusting for days. And again, as I said in my prepared remarks, you know, our software revenue in totality is growing nicely ahead of the overall business and we really don't, as we look across the whole portfolio, see an exception to that. You know, those businesses with the renewed focus on innovation acceleration and commercial efforts, we're seeing, we're seeing good early signs.
Jaguza Kotoku (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)
Okay, great. Thanks so much for the color.
Mark Okerstrom (Chief Financial Officer)
You're welcome.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Graham with C4 Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Scott Graham (Equity Analyst at C4 Research Partners)
Hi, good afternoon. So the old fort of talked a lot about OMX and how fbs, you know, poured productivity into that. I was wondering if you might be able to give us some type of data point on this. I know you've enhanced those programs. Just wondering is this, you know, 30 to 50 basis point goal here for productivity, is there a sustainability to whatever your goal is? Any kind of data point KPI you can give us would be helpful.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Yeah, no, thanks for the question. So maybe let me start from the foundation of our culture. So the foundation of our culture around the 40 business system and the relentless pursuit of better, including productivity. And now increasingly growth is stronger than ever. And we've got our President's Kaizen week next week. 40 teams around the world that are going to be focused on driving growth and productivity. So the fundamentals of how we operate is only getting stronger. And so you should expect good things from that. You know, secondly, I would say we've intentionally framed this 50 to 100 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion a year in our financial framework as the governing framework for productivity and the fall through on high margin incremental revenues that we drive. And that's intentional because we do want to give ourselves the space to invest productivity gains in growth that that is going to sustain and be accelerating our performance across both segments. But within that framework, productivity is as big a piece as ever. And deliberate investment in growth is a bigger piece than it's ever been because that's how if you look at the performance this quarter and 5.3% core growth across the company would like to keep investing to make, to make outcomes like that more than norm. So productivity remains as strong as ever. It's baked into that 50 to 100 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion a year. And we feel really good about the setup.
Scott Graham (Equity Analyst at C4 Research Partners)
Okay, thank you for that. My follow up is simple. It looks like foul is kind of getting back to that sort of mid single digit growth that I think you talked about at the analyst day. Is there an opportunity this year for Fluke to catch up? You know, you've got the new data center product, you're anticipating some pull through. I don't know if that's maybe later this year or next year. You know, you have Fluke connectivity going, you're adding, you know, products to the tool belt as usual. It's a terrific business. I'm wondering if it's going to, you know, potentially catch up to foul this year in your view.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Yeah, you know, it's, you know, when Mark was talking about 2 to 3% kind of modeling consideration, guide on call growth for the year and the fact that we're, we're tracking towards the higher end, top half of that range, I think all of that reflects the, the conviction we have about potential across the platform. And of course given that flukes almost 40% of what we do, you should translate that to mean we feel really good about the setup at Fluke and the chance to just given the work our team there is doing, continue to make a really great business even more extraordinary from a growth and margin performance and brand and customer loyalty point of view. So I think short answer to your question is we see Fluke as a really exciting platform. We will continue to make that great business even better from a profitable growth point of view and from a multi year basis. We see no ceiling ahead of us.
Scott Graham (Equity Analyst at C4 Research Partners)
That's very helpful. I appreciate your response. Very nice quarter.
Illumide Sharoye (President and CEO)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to CEO Illumide Sorore for closing remarks.
Illumide Sorore
Great, thank you and thank you all for your interest in Fortive. Just incredibly excited about the job our team did in the first quarter to deliver really strong results and adjusted EPS growth of over 25%, which is again our third quarter of double digit growth in EPS. And more importantly, just really excited about the momentum and excitement across our teams as we look ahead and feel really good about the setup we have for the year and for the multi year extraordinary value creation opportunity we believe we have here for our long term shareholders. So thank you all for your interest and we will see you next time.
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