Good morning, and welcome to the Broadridge fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by 0. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Edings Thibault, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, welcome to Broadridge's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 earnings conference call. Our earnings release and the slides that accompany this release may be found on the investor relations section of broadridge.com. Joining me on the call this morning are Tim Gokey, our CEO and President, our CFO, Jim Young. Before I turn the call over to Tim, a few standard reminders. We will be making forward-looking statements on today's call regarding Broadridge that involve risks. A summary of these risks can be found on the second page of the slides, a more complete description on our annual report on Form 10-K. We'll also be referring to several non-GAAP measures, which we believe provide investors with a more complete understanding of Broadridge's underlying operating results.
An explanation of these non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to their comparable GAAP measures can be found in the earnings release and presentation. Let me now turn the call over to Tim Gokey.
Thank you, Eddings, and good morning, everyone. Broadridge delivered strong fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results. Our outlook for fiscal year 2020 calls for yet another strong year, including high single-digit growth in recurring revenue and 8%-12% adjusted EPS growth. This morning, I will provide a brief review of our 2019 results, including the strong close to another record sales year. Talk about the acquisition of RPM Technologies, which was announced after our last earnings call. I will give an update on our progress against the priorities I laid out in my first earnings call as CEO earlier this year. Jim will provide a closer look at our financial results and give you more details regarding our 2020 guidance. We'll close with your questions. Let's get started.
I'm really pleased with both our strong fiscal year 2019 results and with how well we're positioned to deliver sustained growth in fiscal 2020. FY 2019 recurring fee revenues rose 6% to $2.8 billion, more than offsetting a decline in low to no margin distribution revenue and lower event-driven revenues. Total revenues rose 1% to $4.4 billion. Adjusted operating income rose 8%, thanks to strong margin expansion, and adjusted EPS rose 11%. After a strong fourth quarter and the landmark UBS Wealth Management deal, full-year closed sales rose 9% to $233 million, marking another record sales year. We hit those marks while continuing to fund investments in new products and technologies. We also made three tuck-in acquisitions that will strengthen and grow our business, especially in wealth management. 6% recurring fee growth, double-digit earnings growth, record sales, continued investment.
That's why we feel so strongly about 2019. Based on these results, we're announcing an 11% increase in our annual dividend to $2.16. Broadridge has now increased its dividend every year since becoming a public company in 2007, and 2019 marks the eighth consecutive double-digit increase. Looking ahead, we expect higher growth in 2020. Specifically, we expect recurring revenue growth of 8%-10%, including 5%-7% organic revenue growth, and factoring in lower event and flat distribution revenues, 3%-6% total revenue growth. We further expect continued margin expansion, with adjusted operating income margin to be approximately 18%, which will drive adjusted EPS growth of 8%-12%. Lastly, we expect another year of strong closed sales in the range of $190 million-$230 million.
Based on our 2019 results, together with our outlook for continued growth in fiscal 2020, put us in a very strong position to deliver the three-year targets we shared at our last Investor Day, including recurring revenue growth, margin expansion, and adjusted EPS growth. I'm particularly pleased to note that the midpoint of our adjusted EPS guidance range implies an 18% three-year CAGR, right at the high end of our 14%-18% three-year target. Let's turn to slide five for an update on our business. Keep in mind that when I discuss our ICS and GTO results, I'll be referring to growth rates that better represent the underlying business trends by excluding the impact of the ASC 606 accounting change. I'll start with closed sales, where we ended a record year on a strong note.
$72 million of closed sales represents our third strongest quarterly result, trailing only last year's Q4 and the second quarter of this year, and propelling us to a full-year record of $233 million. Especially pleased with the breadth of our sales results, with two-thirds coming from ticket sizes of less than $2 million. While large deals are as critical, the most important driver of our sales in recent years has been these core deals, literally hundreds of them every year. Our success in making these kinds of bread and butter sales, most of them upsells to existing clients, is a direct result of the breadth of our product offering and the quality of our client relationships. I'm also pleased to note that our fourth quarter acquisitions contributed to these results, with RPM notching a nice strategic sale of wealth management software to a major Canadian bank.
Our ICS segment continued to perform well in the fourth quarter, with 6% recurring revenue growth on an underlying basis. Excluding customer communications, ICS recurring revenues rose 8% in the fourth quarter, driven in part by solid stock and interim record growth of 6% and 5% respectively. For the full year, stock record growth was also 6%, and interim record growth was 9%, in each case, slightly stronger than the average growth of the past 10 years. The long-term trend towards greater portfolio diversification, coupled with the growing number of managed accounts and more recently, model-driven investment, shows no sign of easing. Our ICS business also benefited from continued momentum from our data and analytics products and strong growth in our corporate issuer business, where we are seeing strong demand for our disclosure solution services.
Customer communications and fulfillment revenues declined 1% in the fourth quarter and 3% for the year. While the growth trajectory of our customer communications business has been disappointing in recent quarters, we expect revenue declines to narrow as we complete the off-boarding of a large customer over the balance of the calendar 2019, and as recent sales wins are brought online. Our GTO segment performed well in the fourth quarter. GTO revenues rose 8%, driven by a rebound in organic growth to 5%. We expect this organic re-acceleration to continue in FY 2020 as GTO returns to stronger growth, especially in the second half. Much of this growth will come from new client onboardings, where our strong revenue backlog gives us good line of sight on FY 2020 growth. GTO revenue growth also benefit from the acquisitions of Rockall, which closed in May, and RPM, which closed in early June.
Speaking of M&A, I'm pleased we could be as active as we were in the fourth quarter. We acquired three businesses for approximately $400 million. The largest of these was RPM, which we acquired for CAD 400 million or about $300 million. The acquisition of RPM broadens and deepens our business in Canada by extending our product offering for Canadian wealth market. Much of the market in Canada is served through the bank channel, and RPM extends and deepens our already strong relationship with several leading Canadian banks and brings newer relationships as well. RPM has been growing at low double digits, and with the acquisition off to a promising start, we expect continued strong growth going forward.
The acquisition of RPM, together with Rockall and TD acquisitions, are great examples of how targeted tuck-in acquisitions broaden our product lineup, deepen our relationship with key clients, and drive attractive long-term returns. Looking ahead, our strong balance sheet means we are well-positioned to pursue additional tuck-in opportunities that will strengthen our governance, capital markets, and wealth management strategies. We'll also stay disciplined in ensuring that any transactions meet our financial and strategic hurdles. With that overview complete, let's turn to slide six for an update on the progress Broadridge has made against the priorities I discussed on my first earnings call as CEO. At that time, I identified three key priorities, all of which are aligned tightly with our Investor Day strategy. To continue to transform Broadridge, and to build world-class franchises in governance, capital markets, and wealth management.
The first priority I outlined in February is to deliver on our near-term financial objectives, both our FY 2019 guidance and the FY 2020 expectations embedded in our Investor Day targets. The second is to execute against our multi-year growth objectives across our governance and capital markets franchises and in building our wealth franchise. My final priority is to continue to strengthen the long-term foundations of our growth by continuing to build on a strong culture and world-class capabilities in product and next-generation technology. Across all three priorities, I said we will maintain a keen focus on strong and balanced capital management. Let's take each one in order. The first one is straightforward. With 2019 in the books, we delivered 6% recurring revenue growth, 110 basis points of margin expansion, and 11% adjusted EPS growth, all in line or above our guidance.
We also achieved another year of record sales, giving us further visibility into future growth. As I noted earlier, our FY 2020 guidance puts us on track to meet our three-year Investor Day objectives for recurring revenue growth and margin expansion, and to deliver at the high end of our adjusted EPS growth range. A key part of our financial and growth strategy. Our first use of cash remains our dividend. The 11% increase we announced this morning further reinforces the importance of a strong and growing dividend. In 2019, we continued to balance investments in our products and technology with returning additional capital to shareholders, investing approximately $400 million in M&A and $367 million to repurchase shares, ending the year on track with our leverage targets. You should expect us to continue to take a balanced and long-term approach to our capital stewardship.
The second priority I discussed was multi-year growth execution. In governance, our strategy is simple and clear. We're building the next generation of regulatory communications and extending the complementary web of services to all parts of the network we serve. Over the past year, Broadridge has rolled out innovative new digital capabilities, including a new voting app that can be accessed standalone or through an API. We are working with more than 130 mutual funds to put them in position to take full advantage of the new Rule 30e-3 notice and access regulations in 2021. Last but not least, we began work with our clients to ensure that they will be able to fulfill the requirements of the EU's Shareholder Rights Directive when it goes into effect in late 2020. These are all important steps forward in building the next generation of regulatory communications.
We're also extending our services across the governance network. Thanks to the disclosure capabilities we acquired in 2017, our recurring revenues from corporate issuers grew almost 20% in 2019, as we handle more and more of our clients' critical governance needs, from annual meeting services to regulatory filings. Our data and analytics offering, where we are marrying our own proprietary data with other sources to give mutual funds critical information on worldwide fund flows, also generated double-digit growth. Finally, our acquisition of TD Ameritrade's retirement plan custody and trust assets will help us continue to link our mutual fund clients and financial advisors who administer independent 401 plans and fund additional platform development. In capital markets, we continue to make progress in onboarding new clients, including to our new GPTM global platform.
That strong backlog and our visibility in terms of bringing these clients online is a key driver behind our expectations for accelerated growth in our GTO business. Included in that backlog is a significant GPTM sale to a leading Asian bank, another sign that our global growth strategy continues to pay off. In addition, we signed a multi-million dollar deal in the fourth quarter with a large U.S. bank to extend the reach of our DPTM platform. Finally, we made good strides in developing enhanced network benefits for fixed-income market participants. 2019 has been a big year for our wealth management business. During the second quarter, we signed a large deal with UBS to build a technology platform linking front, middle, and back-office capabilities. Six months later, we are making good progress against our product roadmap. We also strengthened our wealth management capabilities via the acquisition of Rockall and RPM.
I feel good about how we're executing our growth strategy across governance, capital markets, and wealth management. My third focus is on securing the future by continuing to transform Broadridge, building on the world-class capabilities that make us the right industry partner now and for the long term. That means strengthening our client-focused culture, building on our world-class product and technology capabilities, and investing in talent. On culture, I'm pleased to note that our revenue retention rate has remained a strong 97%, and that Broadridge was again awarded multiple workplace awards, including being identified as a great place to work in the U.S., Canada, and India, and receiving a perfect score on a recent ranking of best places to work for LGBT equality by the Human Rights Campaign. We're proud of these accomplishments.
At the same time, we've increased our focus on product development, and we continue to make strides in integrating next-generation technologies across artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud, and digital. During 2019, Broadridge rolled out enhanced digital communications, accelerated our push to the cloud, continued to invest in blockchain, and advanced our work on AI for our fixed income business, among many other accomplishments. These achievements are not going unnoticed by our clients. Finally, the market for world-class talent is fierce, so I'm especially pleased with some of the recent additions to our senior management team. Samir Pandiri joined us from BNY Mellon, where he ran the asset servicing division, a business larger than Broadridge by revenue. He will lead Broadridge International. Fred Duden joined us from JP Morgan, and previously Charles Schwab, to lead our global product management team.
Fred has led the build of some of the most innovative digital wealth products of the past few years. I'm convinced that our ability to increasingly link our individual products to form more powerful solution suites will drive our success. I'm delighted to welcome both Samir and Fred to the company, and their choice to align their careers with Broadridge is emblematic of the opportunity we all see ahead. Speaking of additions, I'm also excited to welcome Amit Zavery to our board of directors. Amit is a seasoned technology leader with experience building leading technology businesses at both Oracle and Google, and he will be a tremendous value to our board and to our management team. Broadridge is making progress against all three of our key priorities: financial, strategic, and foundational. Let me sum up.
Broadridge delivered strong financial results while continuing to invest even in a lower event environment. We have real growth momentum across our two strong franchises and in building a third. We continue to make the investments across product, technology, and talent that further strengthen our position as a trusted partner. As a result, Broadridge has never been better positioned for growth. The financial services industry's need to leverage next-generation technology to reduce costs and increase differentiation continues to increase. Broadridge has the unique capabilities, deep experience, and ability to invest to accomplish these goals. The combination of strong underlying demand, continued execution, and continued investment puts us in position to deliver another strong year in 2020 and to sustain continued growth over the long term.
For my part, I'm as excited as ever about Broadridge's prospects to create value for our associates, shareholders, and the millions of people all over the world who rely on our clients to help them meet their financial goals. Before I turn it over to Jim for a review of the financials, I want to pause, and I want to thank the more than 11,000 Broadridge associates around the world who are enabling better financial lives for millions and who are making our vision of transformation a reality. Jim?
Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone. I'll begin my comments with a few call-outs. First, closed sales and backlog. Another record closed sales performance pushed our recurring revenue backlog up to $330 million at the end of fiscal 2019 from $295 million at the end of fiscal 2018. Second, Q4 revenue growth under ASC 606. Once again, we are providing in today's presentation revenue growth rates on both an as-reported basis in fiscal 2018, adjusted for ASC 606 to provide a more meaningful view of our top-line performance. On an ASC 606 adjusted basis, recurring fee revenue grew a healthy 6% in the fourth quarter. Full-year recurring fee growth was also 6%, right in line with our guidance.
Importantly, while the ASC 606 change did have a big impact on our quarterly recurring revenue recognition, especially in our third and fourth quarters, it had virtually no impact on full-year result comparisons. Third, capital deployment. Acquisitions. We invested approximately $400 million, including deferred payments in the fourth quarter for three acquisitions that will strengthen our growth profile and broaden our product lineup, especially in wealth management. We expect these acquisitions to contribute approximately three points of recurring fee revenue growth in fiscal 2020. The earnings contribution in fiscal 2020 is expected to be modest after accounting for the financing cost. Share repurchase. We also deployed $270 million in the quarter to repurchase shares for a total of $367 million in fiscal 2019. As a result of this capital deployment, we exited the year just below our long-term target leverage ratio. Fourth and final, guidance.
Our fiscal 2020 guidance calls for organic recurring fee growth of 5%-7%, plus three points of growth from M&A for a total of 8%-10% recurring revenue growth. We expect this to result in 8%-12% adjusted EPS growth. Let's move to slide seven. On a reported basis, recurring revenues were down 6%, and total revenues were down 8%. However, as I noted, the implementation of the ASC 606 accounting standard in fiscal 2019 shifted a significant chunk of equity proxy revenues out of the fourth quarter and into the third quarter. The fiscal 2018 results are reported under the old ASC 605 standard. Therefore, the most meaningful comparison is to fiscal 2018's Q4 revenue results under ASC 606, as shown on this page. Using this like-for-like basis, recurring revenue grew a healthy 6%, and total revenue grew 1%.
Slide eight provides the same view on a full-year basis. As you can see, the impact of ASC 606 on full-year revenue results is negligible. In both cases, recurring revenues rose 6% in fiscal 2019 to $2.8 billion, and total revenues rose 1% to $4.4 billion. With ASC 606 now fully implemented, fiscal 2020 results starting with the first quarter were reported on the same basis as fiscal 2019. Let's turn to slide nine to dig a little deeper into our quarterly revenue growth. Keep in mind that the numbers in this slide are presented on the ASC 606 adjusted basis I just talked about. I'll start with recurring revenues on the bottom half of the slide because those are the revenues that are the biggest driver of our overall economics. Recurring revenues rose 6% in the quarter, including organic growth of 5%.
The biggest driver of that growth came from the onboarding of new business or closed sales, as shown here. As expected, internal growth rebounded nicely in the fourth quarter after a lull in Q3, contributing two points of growth, driven by higher stock record growth and higher GTO revenues. Acquisitions contributed only one point of growth in the fourth quarter as the RPM acquisition did not close until early June, and the TD deal closed at the end of June. As I noted earlier, these deals will contribute more meaningfully in fiscal 2020. Total revenues grew 1% to $1.2 billion in the quarter, as the growth in recurring revenues was offset by lower event-driven and distribution revenues. Event-driven revenues came in at a healthy $51 million, but were down from a year ago.
The continued decline in low to no margin distribution revenues contributed a two-point drag, and the strength in the U.S. dollar versus the Canadian dollar and British pound lowered revenue growth by one point. Next, I'll cover the performance of our ICS and GTO segments on slide 10. ICS recurring fee revenues declined 11% on an as reported basis, as the accounting change shifted approximately $100 million of mostly proxy revenue to the third quarter. Adjusting for ASC 606, recurring revenues rose 6% in the fourth quarter. Looking at the growth drivers behind that 6% increase, steady net new business gains kept pace even with the ongoing runoff of a known client loss in customer communications. Solid equity and interim position growth and excellent issuer performance helped to drive two points of internal growth in the fourth quarter.
The acquisitions of FundAssist and MackayWilliams in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 also contributed a point to growth. Turning to GTO. GTO rebounded nicely in the fourth quarter with 8% total revenue growth and 5% organic growth up from flat in Q3. Contributing to GTO's return to healthy organic growth levels was two points of internal growth compared to a negative three points last quarter. That rebound was driven by a combination of modestly higher trading volumes and better licenses and other revenues performance. Let's turn to profits on slide 11. On a reported-to-reported basis, adjusted operating income declined 8% to $267 million. Adjusted EPS declined 8% to $1.72 per share. The decline in fourth quarter earnings was the result of the ASC 606 shift of proxy fee revenues and related earnings from the fourth quarter to the third quarter.
These results were right in line with the guidance we gave on our May earnings call. Now for the full year on slide 12. Looking through all the noise around the timing of revenue recognition caused by ASC 606 and typical seasonality, Broadridge delivered another strong full year, with adjusted operating income growth of 8% and adjusted EPS growth of 11%. Moving to capital allocation on slide 13. Broadridge generated $544 million of free cash flow in fiscal 2019, approximately $20 million below our guidance range as a result of higher working capital, a slightly lower excess tax benefit or ETB, and higher client onboarding investments, which should serve to drive future growth. We invested approximately $550 million back into our business. The biggest use of cash was for acquisitions, which as Tim noted, will extend our product breadth and strengthen our wealth management business.
In total, we invested approximately $400 million to buy RPM, Rockall, and the TD assets with $350 million of an aggregate purchase price coming out of cash in fiscal 2019, another $43 million that will be paid in Q1 of fiscal 2020. Given our typical reinvestment in newly acquired businesses and deal financing costs, we expect modest EPS contribution in fiscal 2020 from these deals, although we expect all three to generate very attractive returns over time. We also invested more than $70 million in CapEx and software. Another large area of investment for us, approximately $70 million net of client reimbursements, was in the client-driven work we are doing to build our global GPTM post-trade technology platform and our new wealth product.
Linking these product development efforts to long-term client contracts gives us the confidence and ability to accelerate our product development efforts. We expect this area of investment to pick up further in fiscal 2020 as large efforts accelerate and push the investment to greater than $100 million. In conjunction with our revenue backlog, we view this spend as a positive sign of our growth and future cash flows. Given this increase in investment, we expect fiscal 2020 free cash flow to be equivalent to that of fiscal 2019. In fiscal 2019, we also balanced those investments with returning capital to shareholders. In total, we returned $578 million, equivalent to about $5 per share to our shareholders in fiscal 2019.
$211 million was in the form of dividends, a figure that will climb to greater than $240 million in fiscal 2020 as a result of the 11% increase in the dividend that we announced this morning. We also deployed $367 million, net of option proceeds, to repurchase 3.2 million shares, including 2.3 million shares in the fourth quarter. We closed fiscal 2019 with an EBITDAR debt leverage ratio of 1.9 times, in line with our long-term target of 2.0 times adjusted leverage. Our free cash flow and balance sheet position Broadridge well for continued balanced capital allocation in fiscal 2020 and beyond. Before I give some additional insight into our guidance, I want to touch on our recurring revenue backlog on slide 14.
As a reminder, our recurring revenue backlog represents an estimate of first-year revenue from closed sales that has not yet been recognized. Our recurring revenue backlog grew 12% to approximately $330 million from $295 million at the end of fiscal 2018. Our record closed sales more than outstripped revenues onboarded over the course of fiscal 2019. This equates to 12% of fiscal 2019 recurring revenues. The not yet live portion grew to $240 million. We believe that backlog is a good indicator of our ability to generate ongoing revenue growth. Let's look ahead into fiscal 2020. Our full year guidance can be found on slide 15. We expect recurring fee revenue growth to be in the range of 8%-10%, which includes organic growth of 5%-7%, and approximately three points of growth coming from our fourth quarter acquisitions.
The midpoint represents acceleration from fiscal 2019, driven mostly by acceleration of growth in our GTO segment. We expect GTO's recurring revenue growth to be in the mid-teens as a steady stream of new client onboardings should push up GTO's full-year organic growth rate to mid-to-high single digit levels. RPM, a $40 million-$50 million revenue business, and Rockall, a $10 million-$15 million revenue business, will contribute the balance. In ICS, we expect another year of mid-single digit organic growth driven by continued healthy mid to upper single digit position growth and growth in our data and analytics product lines, partially offset by a flattish top-line performance in customer communications. We expect total revenue growth to be in the range of 3%-6% as we expect low margin distribution revenues to be roughly flat or contract in the low single digits, thus weighing down total revenue growth.
Rounding out total revenue growth, we expect an approximate 5%-15% decline in event-driven revenues, and we expect FX loss to widen at a rate greater than recurring growth with the addition of more non-U.S. revenue, including from our recent acquisitions. Third, we expect adjusted operating income margin to be approximately 18%, up from 17% in fiscal 2019, which is more or less in line with our target of a 50-plus basis point per annum increase. The margin expansion is being driven by higher recurring revenues and modest expense growth, offset in part by lower event-driven revenues. This means we are targeting high single-digit or better growth in adjusted operating income. Moving down the income statement, the increase in leverage should result in higher interest expense.
Our overall tax rate should be steady at 21% as our core tax rate, which excludes the excess tax benefit, remains unchanged at 24%. We are projecting ETB of $20 million in fiscal 2020, in line with fiscal 2019's $19.3 million benefit. We also expect a modest benefit from lower share count as a result of our fourth quarter share repurchases. As a result, we expect adjusted EPS growth to be 8%-12%. Last, we expect closed sales to be in the range of $190 million-$230 million. Finally, a word on Q1 fiscal 2020 in earnings seasonality. If you think about the quarterization of your estimates, please recall that our event fees were up 30% in Q1 fiscal 2019, and represented the largest quarter for event-driven fees in fiscal 2019.
Consequently, we expect event fees to contract in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 by approximately 30%-35% to a more normalized level, which will also have an impact on first quarter EPS. With event-driven revenues at this level, we believe fiscal 2020 Q1 EPS is likely to be consistent with the approximately 13% of full year adjusted EPS that the first quarter typically represents. In closing, we maintain our strong business momentum exiting fiscal 2019 and are positioned well for another good year, marked by healthy mid-single digit organic recurring fee revenue growth and double-digit adjusted EPS growth. We will now go to questions. Rocco?
Yes, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please also note that we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and a single follow-up. Today's first question comes from David Togut of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Jim and Tim, and good to see the strong finish on closed sales. Just to dig into the 2020 closed sales target of $190 million-$230 million, could you drill down a little bit on what you expect to be the main drivers of that closed sales target? More ICS, more GTO? Any thoughts by product?
Yeah. David, it's Tim. Thank you very much for the commentary. We are really excited about the continued momentum that we see in the business and as reflected in sales and as reflected in our pipeline. In 2019, we obviously had the very large wealth win. When we think about 2020, this target that we're putting out represents a nice growth above where we were in 2019 when you exclude that big wealth win. I think that's just a sign of the confidence and momentum that we see in the business.
It's really across the board, and if I were to try to focus in on any one area, there's not some giant big deal that is baked in here. We continue to see really good momentum in our various ICS solutions that fit all around the regulatory communications business. We continue to see really good underlying momentum in the GTO areas, both in capital markets and in wealth and investment management. We don't see another UBS type thing in this next calendar year. That is something that will take longer to develop, but we have a lot of other wealth solutions that have a good head of steam on them. We're having really good results in the areas serving mutual funds as well, with a good head of steam there around our data analytics products. We're really seeing very balanced growth across all of our product lines.
This growth, we think will carry us to a very good result in 2020, without any specific large deal driving that. Frankly, we are planning in terms of how we believe that we can continue to grow sales in the years beyond, because we see a lot of demand for what we're doing. Let me just take a minute on this, because over the past seven months, I've met more than 20 CEOs of our clients. As I'm introducing myself and really talking to them about what are the issues driving them and the themes that we've been talking about, and I'll come back to this as we go through other questions, but are really resonating. We see good demand across each of the growth themes that we're pursuing.
Appreciate that. Just as a quick follow-up. Jim, what are your assumptions on share repurchase for 2020? I don't think you called out any share repurchase in your 2020 EPS guide.
No. We don't really have any explicit assumptions for 2020. As you know, all of the share count implications are coming from our FY 2019 activity. We were happy that we were able to deploy almost $370 million against share repurchases. No really additional contributions in 2020.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Our next question today comes from Darrin Peller of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks guys. Look, we're happy to see the re-acceleration in GTO in the quarter. If you could just help us understand, I know you had a few large clients that you've been working towards. Are you starting to see the actual revenue roll onto that now? I think you were alluding to a couple in your prepared remarks. Then perhaps just think about the cadence for GTO as we look forward to the fiscal 2020 year.
Darrin, it's Tim. As you know, these large projects are complex, and some of them come in right on time. Some of them take longer, and sometimes that's due to us, and sometimes that is due to them. The acceleration that we saw in GTO in this last quarter was not the result of any major client onboarding, and that's something that is still to come. We like the fact that we're seeing acceleration even though some of the stuff is taking a little bit longer than we like. It definitely will be one of the things driving us as the year goes on. That 8%-10% that we're seeing in recurring revenue for the company takes all this into account, and we feel very good about it.
Darrin, this is Jim. On the cadence for GTO, obviously, as we said, we're pretty excited about mid-teens growth that we're targeting for GTO. At the moment, it looks pretty even in terms of the growth across the quarters. What you'll get is a bit of a mix between the organic and the acquisitions over the quarters. Acquisitions obviously will be a bit heavier in the early quarters as we annualize, then organic, we would expect to start more modestly and then ramp over the year as we start working through the big backlog and get the onboardings going.
Okay. All right. Guys, your business performed well, pretty broad-based. I'd be curious to hear more about the newer, it's not even new anymore, but one of the areas you've been growing in on wealth. First of all, you've done deals there. M&A has been more pronounced there. Can you just help us understand the split, first of all, between GTO and ICS? More importantly, what do you expect the growth profile of that overall of wealth management to be? Is that something worth splitting out as a separate business or almost a separate line item for modeling purposes?
Yeah. Darrin, thanks for asking that question. Just as a reminder for everyone listening, the opportunity here is that firms are having to really evolve their business model due to commoditization of asset management, all the other trends in wealth management. There's no real scale technology player serving wealth management firms. They have to either build it themselves or they have to buy a plethora of point solutions and try to integrate them together. We think that's a big opportunity. One of the things that I've been talking to the CEOs that I just mentioned, as we talk about our vision for creating something that if you buy part of it works, but the more you buy, the better it is. That vision is really resonating with them. That's just I think the big picture.
We do see this as something that is going to be an ongoing growth engine for us. It is recognizing that regulatory communications has a lot to do with wealth management. It's really in part because of the regulatory communications business that we do serve the top 20 wealth managers today. Some of this growth, though, is probably more on the GTO side than the ICS side. We do have some good products in ICS, like advisor websites, data aggregation, and some other offers, but it's a bit more on the GTO side. This is something that, in the near future, you're going to see the impact from the M&A that we've done. Just as a reminder, Rockall's a really good securities-based lending platform. Previously did advisor compensation.
With RPM, we're really bringing on the ability to integrate the banking side with wealth management in Canada now and maybe more than that eventually. All the digital communications conversations we're having really resonate well with wealth managers. There's a lot there. We'll see, I think, initially the impact on the M&A. We'll see the impact from our existing point solutions, and then probably not in 2020, but beyond 2020, we'll begin to see the impact from some of these larger transformative deals.
On the reporting side, Darrin, obviously we'll be excited to showcase our results in the area, and we'll give that some thought as to when the best time to break that out is. Obviously we're really excited about the progress in wealth.
Our next question today comes from Peter Heckmann of D.A. Davidson & Co. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. This is Alexis Huseby on for Pete. Thanks for taking our questions. Could you just remind us of the annual revenue contribution of the three recent acquisitions?
Yeah. We talked about the business in Canada, RPM, which in U.S. dollars is about $40 million-$50 million. The Rockall business based in Ireland is about $10 million-$15 million. The TD assets represent a business that's approaching about $20 million in fee revenue. Good contribution. That's where we get the three points of growth next year from acquisitions.
Great. Thank you. Are you aware of the timing of any proposed rule changes on mutual fund interim distribution or any other regulatory changes pending that we should be monitoring?
Let me grab that one. Really two areas on regulatory. There is the implementation of Rule 30e-3 and what is the next generation of client experience for fund companies. As context there, over the past 10 years, we've reduced the overall cost per transaction by 40%, saving the industry $400 million. We feel really good about the impact that we've made here, and we're pleased that more than 130 funds are adopting our solution for implementing Rule 30e-3. We think that there is a future opportunity to make those notices that will be sent even more valuable by having enhanced content on them. That's something that we continue to discuss with players in the industry. The implementation of this, which is in 2021, as we said before, is a modest positive for us.
For us, we really see it as more of an investment in the ecosystem. That's the 30e-3 piece. There is ongoing, I'd say, research by the SEC in terms of how to further enhance the client experience, and we are certainly giving input into that, which we think can help the investors' closure be at even a higher level. I think both ourselves and the Investment Company Institute have talked about the idea of summary documents and making these documents much more legible and easy to read for investors. The other big area is proxy plumbing and the discussions there that have followed from the roundtable last fall. There's good momentum there, really around the notion of end-to-end confirmation.
That is something we wrote a letter along with the Council of Institutional Investors, Society of Corporate Secretaries, and SIFMA this past winter, all supporting the idea of end-to-end confirmation. We currently tabulate for about half of the industry, and we're going to introduce end-to-end confirmation for the part where we can make it happen beginning next year. There is an industry working group around how to bring that to the other half of the industry. Again, we think this is something that will just continue to increase investors' confidence in the current system and allow, through end-to-end confirmation, to eliminate any possibility of things like omnibus proxies that don't transfer and things like that. There's some sort of edge cases that will be surfaced through end-to-end confirmation that will really improve the integrity of the entire process.
Our next question today comes from Oscar Turner of SunTrust. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys.
Hey, Oscar.
Hey, Oscar.
First question is on customer communications. Just wondering if you can give some color on the pipeline in that segment. I think Tim discussed a couple recent wins. Are those anything that you think would move the needle?
Hey, Oscar. It's Tim. I think the thing on customer communications. First of all, I'm going to come back to sales. One thing, we always talk about the revenue, but I also want to take us back to our thesis and the strong synergies, and we have achieved two times on the synergies. While we've had declining revenues.
that has not been affecting earnings, and I think that's just something to have out there. We right now are seeing lots of small and medium sales, and we have a nice backlog of business to onboard. That amount of business to onboard is probably not enough to sort of significantly accelerate the growth. This is enough to sort of move it to what we're talking about for next year, which is sort of roughly flat. We have been moving through this large client that has been off-boarding. It's an interesting one because the fact that it's been off-boarding more slowly than expected has meant we've been talking about this decline for a lot longer than we expected. If we personally owned this business, we'd be happy. The longer it stays, the better it is.
As a public company, it means we're talking about it a lot longer. We do expect to be finally done with that sort of at the end of the calendar year. At that time, we would expect the rate of sales we have to sort of get us to even balance. Beyond that, then it's really looking forward to, are there larger conversations that could make a bigger difference? We do think things like that are out there. There are large players, but those are long, complex conversations. You can't really tell with the timing of those, but they would be meaningful when they occurred. Of course, in the longer run, yet is the whole digital idea.
Definitely in the conversations that I have with CEOs of wealth management firms, when we talk about what the future of communications is and how this all needs to be delivered through a mobile experience with abilities to drill down and to take action, that is a vision that people really see as what the future is. Our thought is really about how do we focus all of this in terms of helping our clients transition to that future, timing of which is indeterminate, but important.
Okay. Thanks for that color. Second question, just on M&A. Seeing a pickup in the deal pace recently with the tuck-ins that you mentioned. Just wondering how we should think about your appetite for a larger transformational deal in any of those spaces you mentioned. I think you talked about governance, capital markets, and wealth management.
Absolutely. First of all, just tuck-in M&A in fintech is an evergreen strategy. There are always new solutions. There are always management teams getting things to a certain size, wanting to take it to the next level and wanting to partner with someone like us. We have a strong track record of doing that really for growth and making growth accretive, and it's something that we view as an ongoing piece of our business. We were fairly active in the last quarter. I'd say our approach hasn't changed. We continue to have the same criteria that we always have in terms of good returns, that we're the very best owner.
We've been active in the fourth quarter, and we have a very active pipeline right now because there are a lot of properties for sale because it's a good time to be a seller, which also means you have to be careful as a buyer. Our criteria around are we really the best owner and do they align with our strategic theme. When we think about larger transactions, there's a version of that that's an extension of what I just talked about, where it's still sort of tuck-in, but bigger tuck-in. We would have definitely appetite for the right thing that met all those criteria around strategic fit and around the ability to have a good financial return over time.
When one thinks about something that is even more transformative than that, I think it becomes pretty opportunistic in terms of are there any situations that make sense? It's not something you can really analyze ahead of time, and we just are really focused on what we can control and which is a steady pipeline of things that are very visible looking at 100 deals a year. We think we can be very repeatable for the long term.
Our next question today comes from Chris Donat of Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to follow up on that last one as it relates to your share repurchase activity in fiscal 2019. Is it fair to say that when you're more active on the share repurchase side, that's like your last alternative to investing in the business and M&A? Is that the right way to think about your priorities?
Hey, Chris. It's Jim. We continue to be very focused on the balanced capital allocation. We look over a long period of time, and not necessarily formulaically, but we certainly arrive at a pretty good balance between M&A and share repurchase. In a given year, clearly we keep an eye on what our M&A pipeline looks like. Obviously, we also look opportunistically at our share price, and clearly there's some opportunities this year to jump in and get some shares at good prices. It helps when it's towards the end of the year, we've got better visibility into high free cash flow quarter for us, it helps us align that, still finishing the year, just below our target leverage ratio.
This is going to continue to be part of our MO and we're pleased with sort of what we accomplished, both good M&A goals as well as sort of meaningful share repurchase in the year. As Tim said, the pipeline on M&A remains strong. Timing is always a fool's errand to figure out exactly the timing.
Okay. One question about your guidance for event-driven revenue, and I recognize that it's event-driven, so it's hard to predict. First, just do you have, at this point, being August 1st, pretty good visibility into your fiscal first quarter? Second, what are the big swing factors for the full year on the difference between down 5% or down 15%? Is it mostly on the mutual fund side or is it more contest specials? Like just what would you expect would be more likely to move the needle?
Yeah. Chris, event, as a reminder for others, remember this is about 5% of our revenue. Clearly, we like it when it's there. I would just highlight before getting to your question, I think one of the things that we're very pleased with is, look, we had some good event years where we had chances to reinvest significantly. In a year like this, events down and it wasn't much of a ripple, even in our guidance we're expecting to be down again and still teeing up similar earnings growth targets. Obviously, we always keep an eye on it. There's not a lot to manage with it, our goal is to sort of manage through that, whether it's up or down. As we look at the given year, we have decent visibilities.
We've always said as we look out 90+ days, we always feel pretty good about what we can see. We've got one decent size fund in the queue for the year. As you get out into the second half of the year, much harder to determine where it's going to come from. That said, we've been at this for a while, we have pretty good analytics on understanding some base level of event to recognizing the forecasting challenges in this area. We feel pretty good. On the funds, I would say, more chance for upside coming from equity contests and specials than on the fund side. As you know, those are certainly hard to handicap, but we don't have any heroic assumptions in there on that.
Obviously we get a lot of little contributions across a lot of small deals and occasionally some larger deals. We feel good. I mean, we're focused on delivering on the things we've got plans to deliver and some good visibility on a good base level of event fees.
Our final question today comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Hey, Patrick.
Normally, I think as we look at your deals, you guys pay maybe around three times revenue for the company that you're buying. I think you paid around six and a half times for RPM. What were the characteristics that you saw with RPM that justified that price in your view?
Patrick, it is Tim. RPM has a really strong growth trajectory and is a really good strategic fit, and it has good profitability. When we look at, we model all this out, obviously, like everyone does in terms of what do we expect is going to happen over time in terms of its future revenues, how those are going to translate into contribution for us and what the return we're going to get. The revenue multiple can definitely vary on those. This is one that is something that we think is going to be a really nice fit for us, really help us grow our wealth management business in Canada. Also give us some optionality over time because it has a really nice technology architecture that can do some other things for us too.
Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to the management team for any final remarks.
Great. I just wanted to thank everyone for participating in the call. Just want to reiterate that really the significant opportunity that we see ahead and how well-positioned we think Broadridge is to really help make a difference for the industry. Just look forward to talking to you next quarter when we have more progress to report. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Today's conference has now concluded, and we thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.