Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Deluxe Q4 and Full Year E arnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode, and today's call is being recorded. We will begin with opening remarks and introductions. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Vice President of Investor Relations, Tom Morabito. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and welcome to the Deluxe Q4 and full year 2021 earnings call. Joining me on today's call is Barry McCarthy, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Bomar, our Chief Financial Officer. At the end of today's prepared remarks, we will take questions. Before we begin, and as seen on this slide, I'd like to remind everyone that comments made today regarding management's intentions, projections, financial estimates, or expectations about the company's future strategy or performance are forward-looking in nature, as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These comments are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks related to COVID, the risks that the company's recent acquisition of First American Payment Systems or any other acquisitions does not produce anticipated results or synergies, and the risk that any future acquisitions or divestitures will not be consummated.
Any of these risks and uncertainties could cause our actual results to differ materially from our projections. Additional information about factors that may cause our actual results to differ from projections is contained in our Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2021, and in other company SEC filings. On the call today, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. In our press release, our presentation, and our filings with the SEC, you will find additional disclosures regarding the non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable measures under U.S. GAAP. Now I'll turn it over to Barry.
Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Deluxe delivered strong and historic 2021 results. We reported full-year sales-driven growth for the first time in nearly a decade, along with adjusted EBITDA margins of over 20%. We promised this outcome in 2020 and affirmed it again last February in our 2021 guidance. Our Q4 was especially strong as we delivered sales-driven growth in all four segments. In short, our transformation into a sales-driven trusted payments and business technology company is real, and our one Deluxe sales model works. During the quarter, payments performance was driven by the positive results from First American and growth in our digital payments and receivables businesses. Importantly, for the first time in our 106-year history, we expect payments to equal checks as our largest business by revenue as we exit 2022.
First American has 13% year-over-year revenue growth in the quarter, once again exceeding our expectations. First American is clearly benefiting from the Deluxe halo, our strong reputation, solid balance sheet, and deep customer relationships. The Deluxe halo is real, and by plugging First American into our One Deluxe sales model, we're accelerating their growth. Cloud growth was driven by data-driven marketing. Promotional Solutions benefited from the implementation of key wins from earlier in the year, and checks performance was driven primarily by new competitive wins and business checks. Before I go into the highlights for the quarter and year, I want to acknowledge my fellow Deluxers for their continued hard work and commitment to our customers in what was, once again, a challenging year due to COVID and more. Our significant progress on our transformation would not be happening without their dedication and unwavering commitment.
Now to the consolidated highlights for the quarter. Revenue was $571 million, up 25.5% year-over-year. Not including the positive impact of First American, sales-driven revenue was up 6.8%. This was the second strongest quarterly performance since 2012. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.5%, which was in line with our expectations. For full year 2021, revenue was $2 billion, up 12.9% year-over-year. Not including the impact of First American, revenue was up 2%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.2%, down slightly from last year's 20.4%. In 2021, we also maintained our commitment to ongoing financial discipline and to maintaining a healthy balance sheet, which Scott will touch on in a moment. Moving on to some segment revenue highlights.
For the Q4 , our payments segment grew 114% year-over-year, driven by the performance of First American. Excluding First American, revenue increased more than 5% with growth in our other major businesses, particularly receivables, payroll, and HR. Our payables as a service offerings, which include our Deluxe Payment Exchange and Medical Payment Exchange, continue to experience strong growth. Next, Cloud Solutions had another solid quarter, growing nearly 6% year-over-year. Importantly, excluding business exits from 2020, Cloud's growth would have been nearly 11% for the quarter. Cloud's performance benefited from sales wins and positive impacts of recovering economy in our data-driven marketing business or DDM. Now on to our Promotional Solutions segment. Promotional Solutions had a strong quarter, improving nearly 9% year-over-year, positively impacted by the PNC deal we announced earlier in 2021.
PNC is a great example of the One Deluxe strategy as we're now providing multiple products to the nation's eighth-largest bank after initially only providing one. Finally, our very profitable cash-generating Check business also had a strong quarter, growing just over 6% year-over-year, which is significantly better than long-term industry trends. The performance was largely driven by new wins, solid growth from business checks, and the successful onboarding of new clients. Next, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on what was a momentous 2021 as we continue our transformation that began in late 2019. As I mentioned, our One Deluxe model works. We reported full-year sales-driven growth for the first time in nearly 10 years. We're very proud of this achievement.
This was my promise when I became CEO to grow our Deluxe portfolio of products and to sell more to both existing and new customers. As further evidence of the success of One Deluxe, in 2021, we achieved a third consecutive year of record sales performance. In 2021, we sold four of the top 10 deals in the last 10 years. Since beginning the One Deluxe approach late in 2019, we've closed 12 of the top 20 deals of the last 10 years and closed the single largest deal in the company's history. Now let me touch on some of the key wins during the quarter. In payments, during the fourth quarter, we signed one of the largest healthcare payers in the United States to our Medical Payment Exchange solution or MPX.
This company is the fourth payer in 2021 that committed to issuing payments through MPX, and our solution solved for their major strategic goal of moving to electronic payments. MPX digitizes the disbursement of healthcare payments, including explanation of benefits, saving time and expense for the customer. Another key win was with Melio, a fast-growing payments company with investments and partnerships with some of the major players in the tech world. Melio focuses on giving small businesses a way to digitally manage their B2B payments and receivables, and will be using the Deluxe Payment Exchange or DPX to send B2B checks digitally to participating lockboxes. In our cloud business, a key win was with a large real estate financing customer. Here we were able to solidify its direct marketing business through an optimization approach designed to analyze recent data-driven marketing campaign responses.
Cloud also won a contract with Pentagon Federal Credit Union. This exciting strategic partnership will help test and facilitate member retention strategies with the nation's third-largest credit union, with $25 billion in assets and over 2.3 million members. In our Checks business, we recently announced two significant value-creating developments. First, we're installing new HP printers to augment our Check and Promotional Solutions segments with digital and print-on-demand technology. These new capabilities will help manage fixed costs, enable us to quickly build new products and implement new customer requirements faster, creating new revenue opportunities. With this technology, we have already expanded premium check and overall print design options. Second, this long-term investment has enabled us to win one of the largest non-bank distributors of personal checks, The Bradford Exchange.
The Bradford Exchange provides innovative, high-quality art in a variety of collectible and consumer products, including checks with millions of repeat customers. We won Bradford away from their long-term supplier, our chief Check competitor. We are now well-positioned to win even more. Another significant highlight of 2021 and consistent with our strategy to make meaningful platform acquisitions, we made the largest acquisition in our history, First American. First American gave us an immediate leadership position in a strong secular growth market complementary to our existing businesses. First American also brought us a platform on which we can further grow and gain scale advantage, driving future leverage and positioning us for revenue and profit growth going forward. As I mentioned earlier, the Deluxe halo is real. Our strong, trusted reputation, excellent balance sheet, and deep customer relationships provide a strong foundation from which First American can grow.
We simply plugged First American into our One Deluxe model, and it works, and it's working really well. First American was historically a low mid-single-digit revenue growth business. Since it's a part of One Deluxe, First American has been growing double digits, which is better than our expectations. Additionally, First American is already successfully selling Deluxe products like HR payroll, payables, receivables, and web hosting into their banks, magnifying our success. As further evidence of the One Deluxe halo and One Deluxe success, First American closed three times as many financial institutions in the back half of the year as they would normally. Cross-selling to our approximately 4,000 financial institutions and 4 million small business customers is not limited just to First American. We achieved significant telesales success with increases in average order value and items per order across the company in addition to the enterprise-level wins I mentioned earlier.
One Deluxe works and our transformation is real. In summary, Deluxe delivered strong Q4 and full-year results, furthering our transformation into a payments company, just as we promised. To recap, during the year, we delivered the following. First, we reported sales-driven full-year revenue growth for the first time in nearly a decade, more than replacing secular check declines with profitable new and sustainable revenue. Second, we completed the largest acquisition in our history in the Q2 , First American, giving us a strong market position. First American is performing well above expectations, proving the One Deluxe model works and the Deluxe halo is real. Third, all four segments demonstrated sales-driven growth in the Q4 . Fourth, we expect that as we exit 2022, payments will equal the check business in terms of revenue, a first in our long history and a critical milestone in our transformation.
Finally, even with COVID, inflationary supply chain and labor pressures, we're driving transformation. We said what we would do, and we did what we said. We're looking forward to continuing our revenue momentum into 2022 as we add new sell-through partners in payments and cloud, continue to innovate and grow our pipeline, and actively manage the portfolio. Now I'll turn it over to Scott, who will provide more details on our financial performance.
Thank you, Barry, and good morning, everyone. Let's go through the consolidated highlights for the quarter and year before moving on to the segments. For the Q4 , we posted total revenue of $570.6 million, up 25.5% year-over-year. Not including First American, revenue came in at $485.5 million, up 6.8% year-over-year. We reported Q4 GAAP net income of $13.8 million or $0.32 per share in the quarter. Compared to the prior year Q4 , GAAP net income was impacted by $13.7 million in acquisition amortization as well as increased interest expense, both related to the First American acquisition. We also incurred increased tax expense related to the repatriation of $85.3 million of cash from our Canadian operations.
Adjusted EBITDA came in at $117.1 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.5%, down from 20.9% in last year's Q4 . Q4 adjusted EBITDA was impacted by planned technology investments and inflationary pressures, offset by pricing actions and operating leverage from strong revenue growth. Q4 adjusted EPS came in at $1.26, down from $1.38 in last year's Q4. This included an $0.11 per share impact from the previously mentioned cash repatriation. For the full year, we posted total revenue of $2.02 billion, up 12.9% year-over-year. Not including First American, revenue came in at $1.83 billion, up 2% year-over-year at the high end of our guided range.
We reported full-year GAAP net income of $62.8 million or $1.45 per share for the year. On a GAAP basis, the First American acquisition was diluted due to $29.5 million in acquisition amortization, as well as $18.9 million in transaction costs. The incremental interest expense resulting from the acquisition was offset by the operations of First American. Full-year adjusted EBITDA was $407.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.2%, down slightly from last year's 20.4% due primarily to business mix. Full-year adjusted EPS came in at $4.88, down from $5.08 in 2020.
As mentioned in the quarterly results, EPS was impacted by incremental tax associated with the repatriation of cash from our Canadian operations as well as a higher share count. First American was slightly accretive to full-year adjusted EPS. Now turning to our segment details. Payments grew Q4 revenue 114.5% year-over-year to $167.3 million, largely driven by the acquisition of First American and sales-driven growth for standalone Deluxe. Excluding First American, payments revenue increased 5.4% year-over-year. In addition to First American's strong performance that Barry mentioned, we experienced growth in our core payments businesses.
Including First American, adjusted EBITDA increased 93.8% in the quarter and adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.6%, down 220 basis points due to inflationary pressure in our lockbox business, partially offset by price increases as well as increased investments in IT, sales, and marketing. First American was slightly accretive to payment adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter. With the addition of First American, our payment segment has more than doubled in size. As Barry mentioned, this is an important milestone in our transformation to becoming a payments company. Once again, we expect payments to equal checks as our largest business by revenue as we exit 2022. For the year, payments grew 69.1% year-over-year to $510.4 million, driven by the acquisition of First American and sales-driven growth for standalone Deluxe.
Excluding First American, payments revenue increased 5.4% year-over-year. For the year and including First American, adjusted EBITDA increased 55.1% and adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.7%, down 190 basis points. Longer term, we expect the payment segment to deliver a high single-digit revenue growth rate, and for 2022, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to be in the low 20% range. Cloud Solutions had another solid quarter. Segment revenue increased 5.6% year-over-year to $62.5 million in the quarter. As Barry mentioned earlier, if businesses exited during 2020 are excluded, cloud grew 11% in the quarter. Cloud's growth continues to be driven by our data-driven marketing solutions, which is seeing a solid rebound with the recovering economy and increased marketing spend.
We continue to add new DDM clients which will benefit us going forward. As we've said in previous quarters, our strategy in our data business is to diversify beyond our core banking and mortgage verticals. We have mentioned pilot campaigns within these new markets, and these initial opportunities have been successful. These pilots have outperformed our customers' existing campaigns, leading to new ongoing programs and use cases to approach other major players within these target markets. Our Q4 wins included new customers and programs in telco and notably within the one of the country's largest e-commerce marketers. In Q4, Cloud-adjusted EBITDA margin declined 300 basis points versus prior year to 24.2% due to product mix, planned investments to drive future growth in the business and the impact from business exits.
For the year, Cloud Solutions revenue increased 3.8% year-over-year to $262.3 million. Once again, if businesses exited during 2020 are excluded, Cloud Solutions grew 13% for the year. For 2021, Cloud Solutions' adjusted EBITDA margin improved 240 basis points versus prior year to 26.8%. For 2022, we continue to expect to see mid-single digit revenue growth on a reported basis. We also expect Cloud Solutions margins to remain healthy in the low- to mid-20% range. Promotional Solutions' Q4 2021 revenue was $156.7 million, up 8.8% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the Q4 was 18.3%, up 430 basis points due to sales-driven operating leverage, merchandising optimization, and seasonal factors.
For the year, Promotional Solutions revenue was $546.5 million, up 3.2% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the year was 15.6%, up 300 basis points. We are anticipating 2022 top line growth in the low single-digit range and slightly improved adjusted EBITDA margins due to value realization initiatives and merchandising optimization. Checks Q4 revenue increased 6.2% from last year to $184.1 million as new competitive wins, pricing actions and strength in our business checks outpaced the anticipated secular declines in the business. The significant Bradford win enabled by our investment in HP digital assets had a modest impact on the Q4 revenue but will partially offset expected secular declines in 2022.
I should also note that while we are very pleased with these results, we do not expect to see this level of outperformance in 2022. Q4 adjusted EBITDA dollars remained flat year over year, and adjusted EBITDA margin levels were 45.2%, down 290 basis points. This was largely driven by expenses related to the onboarding of new customers, inflation and planned investments, including our new print-on-demand technology from HP, which should help protect our margins moving forward. Checks' full year 2021 revenue was $703 million, flat with last year, and adjusted EBITDA margin levels were 46.1%, down 230 basis points.
Based on high renewal rates and new businesses won in 2020 and 2021, we anticipate checks to decline in the low single digits for 2022, better than the anticipated industry secular declines. Turning now to our balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the year with a net debt level of $1.64 billion, up from $716.9 million last year due to the First American transaction. Importantly, in the Q4 , we retired over $94 million of debt and nearly $153 million since the First American transaction, further demonstrating our financial discipline and commitment to delever. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 4.0x at the end of the year, down from 4.3x in the Q3 . Our long-term strategic target remains approximately 3.0x.
Free cash flow, defined as cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures, was $33.5 million in the Q4 , up $2.7 million from the Q4 of 2020. We do expect overall free cash flow to increase in 2022 as the investments in our major tech platform modernization will decrease meaningfully starting in the second half of the year. For the year, free cash flow was $101.7 million, down from $155 million in 2020 due to planned IT investments as well as transaction fees associated with the First American transaction. Our board approved a regular quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share on all outstanding shares. The dividend will be payable on 7 March 2022, to all shareholders of record on 22 February , 2022.
We did not repurchase common stock in the Q4 . As a reminder, our capital allocation priorities are to responsibly invest in growth, pay our dividend, reduce debt, and return value to our shareholders. We will evaluate future repurchases on an opportunistic basis subject to the attainment of our deleveraging goals. Turning now to guidance. Today, we are providing our expectations for 2022. As a reminder, the guidance includes a partial prior year of First American, assumes a continued economic recovery, and is subject to, among other things, macroeconomic unknowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Omicron variant, as well as the anticipated continued supply chain constraints, labor supply issues, and inflation. We've added several more components to our guidance, which should help you with your modeling. For full year 2022, we are expecting the following, keeping in mind that all figures are approximate.
Revenue growth of 8%-10%, including a full year of First American. As a reminder, the transaction closed on 1 June 2021. Adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 20% for the full year. We expect 2022 to return to pre-COVID seasonal patterns. The Q1 margin rate will be the lowest of the year, with margins improving as the year progresses. Interest expense of $85 million. An adjusted tax rate of 26%. Depreciation and amortization of $180 million, approximately half of which is acquisition amortization. Average outstanding share count of 43.5 million shares, and capital expenditures of $105 million. To summarize, I'm very pleased with the Q4 and full year 2021 results.
We are executing on our One Deluxe strategy and believe the company is experiencing solid momentum that we expect to continue into 2022. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you. At this time, I'll just remind everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Lance Vitanza with Cowen. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the questions and congratulations on an important year, a great quarter. If I can, I'd like to start maybe with just one big picture question. You know, Barry, you've done a lot to really transform this business over the past couple of years. My question is, where do you see the business going from here? Do you have Deluxe where you want it to be, or will there be more improvements? I guess what I'm wondering is, are you now moving into a reap what you sow type of a dynamic, or is there more transformational work that needs to be done in your opinion?
Well, first of all, Lance, great to talk to you again. We're very proud of how the business performed through 2021, and I fundamentally agree with you that it was a very important year in our transformation. You'll recall that we have invested over the last couple of years to improve our core operating systems, our infrastructure, and more, and we will be completing all of that work in the first half of this year. That is already largely behind us, but it'll be really behind us, you know, as the middle of the year passes. We very much like the position the company is in today, which is we have a payments business that at year-end will be the largest business in the company's portfolio. That puts us in a strong position for secular growth going forward.
The payments business, you know, we have long held the belief that it will continue to grow and deliver high single-digit growth for the long term with healthy margins. We really like that profile substantially. We've made investments to ensure the success of our check business cash flow for the long term, which you saw us make announcements in the very recent past. We really like where we're positioned today. We think we're in a great spot to grow the company from here.
Our next question is from Charles Strauzer with CJS Securities. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, everybody. Can you talk a little bit more about your assumptions behind the organic growth for 2022, for both the core and FAPS Business and, maybe a little bit more granularity on the segment? I know you know, you gave some good detail there, but, you know, maybe some more about the assumptions behind those numbers.
Sure, Charlie. This is Scott. Good morning. The revenue of 8%-10%, obviously that includes a partial year for First American being included in the base for the first time. If you break that apart, we would say on the legacy business, that'll be 0%-2% growth, similar to what we had communicated for this year. As you move into the back half of the year and as First American just becomes part of who Deluxe is, you know, we'll begin to think about that as a portfolio and we'll, you know, you won't need to segregate that independently. You know, within the segments, you know, we've talked about each individual segment and what our long-term expectations are for the overall payments business.
We're thinking 2022 and beyond as being a long-term high single-digit grower with the inclusion of First American. Cloud in the mid-single digits, promo in the low single digits, and check, you know, we talk about the secular declines in that industry that we continue to resume in 2022. Had an incredible Q4 in the check business where we actually grew revenue period-over-period. While we're thrilled with that performance, we don't expect that to continue next year, and we're going to look at 2022 to deliver a low single-digit decline in checks.
Great. Thank you. If you're looking at, you know, a little bit of growth obviously on the top line, but, you know, even though our margins are relatively flat at 21%, can you talk more about kind of the factors impacting the margins and some of the things you need to offset those? Thanks.
Sure. You know, 20% EBITDA margin for 2022 consistent with what we would say is this year. You know, certainly there are some areas of pressure with inflation and supply chain dynamics that we're still working our way through. We do feel like we've got a good solid plan on how to deflect those pressures in the business and deliver EBITDA rate performance in line with what we saw this year. Now one nuance is that we are expecting Q1 to be the lowest quarter of the year. There's some seasonal patterns that have historically existed in the business that we expect to resume. You didn't see those in 2021 due to some of the one-timers associated with COVID.
We expect Q1 to be the lowest performer of the year, increasing steadily throughout the year, and deliver 20% overall across the case here.
Great. You know, lastly, if you can expand a little further on your thoughts for free cash flow. I know you said you're expecting it to grow in 2022, but, you know, maybe a little bit more granular than I already am. Thanks.
Certainly. Barry talked a lot about the transformation that was initiated several years ago regarding the internal infrastructure of the organization. Internally, we call these initiatives Six Flag. There were six specific infrastructure components that were replaced completely. Five of those projects are now complete. The final of those, which is also the biggest and most impactful, is the replacement of the ERP system to integrate all these previously unintegrated businesses. That will conclude in the first half of 2022, and that has been a significant consumer of cash in the organization. With the completion of that activity, there is a meaningful amount of incremental free cash flow as compared to 2021 that we'll expect to see next year.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Our next question is from Lance Vitanza with Cowen. Your line is open.
I wanted to start on First American and the payments business, actually. It sounds like it was accretive to EBITDA margin, slightly accretive to EBITDA margin in the quarter. Good. Yet the guidance, I think you said for 2022 is going to be for another year of low 20% EBITDA margin. It just seems like you're not really expecting to capture any operating leverage there. If I heard you right, it sounds like you're not really expecting to capture any operating leverage there. I'm just wondering if that's a temporary phenomenon. I know obviously we've got a lot of things going on in the world right now.
Should we be thinking that that's just the nature of the business and that sort of that margin profile should continue out for the next several years?
You're correct in that we have not modeled a significant amount of operating leverage in First American for 2022. There are a number of investments that need to be made in the business, and we're excited about continuing to grow that and thrilled with the performance that team has delivered over the course of 2021. We do, however, expect that in the long term, even in the intermediate term, there should be operating leverage. As we've talked a lot about the strategy of that acquisition, First American is a scaled business with a solid platform upon which additional volume should come through at higher flow-through rates.
We do expect operating leverage into the future, but we need to make some investments and continue to grow the baseline business as we further integrate that in with the balance of Deluxe.
Not to quibble with the semantics, but it sounds like the flat margin in 2022 is really somewhat misleading because there's things going on under the hood beneath the surface. There is some higher flow-through, but it's being offset by some temporary investments that you feel like you need to make. Is that a fair way to characterize it?
Sure. I think that's fair.
Okay. Cloud, it looks like the year-over-year growth, it looks like it decelerated. I'm wondering if there was anything in particular happening there, and it still is quite nice, but I also noticed that it was down quarter-over-quarter. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the seasonality that you would typically expect to see in the business. Thanks.
Seasonal. There is seasonality in the business, but I think primarily the decelerating growth is a function of the comp year and the recovery from COVID that we saw in the early part of the year. Now we're starting to trend up against stronger comp quarters in the business. As we continue to articulate, you know, we view this as a mid-single-digit grower going forward as we revert it to that level in Q4. This business is performing in line with our expectations. We're really happy with the traction we've made with new customers and the prospective opportunity to enter into new industry verticals. We're very happy with the performance we've seen there.
Now, I think it is important to note that the growth rate that you're seeing there, the mid-single-digit growth rate, is also impacted by the exits. If you exclude the exits, it would have been 11% growth in the quarter.
Right. Okay, great. On the promo side, now, there you did quite nicely, much better than we were expecting. I'm wondering actually if maybe the reverse was happening there. Was there some reason that was maybe an easier comp, maybe anything that got pushed out of 4Q 2020 or was there anything pulled forward into 4Q 2021? Clearly I'm guessing we shouldn't be expecting 9% year-over-year growth going forward.
We, you know, we saw some strong growth in that business. Certainly we do not expect that to continue at those levels going forward. We did see some improved performance in some subsections within promo, specifically promo and apparel, which is a business that was hit hard by COVID, but we saw some nice strength in that piece of the business in Q4. Also, you know, part of that business is, there's sort of a forms business that often tracks with checks, and we saw some strong performance there as well. We still think the business is healthy, gonna perform well in 2022, but we're modeling that out as more of a low single digit grower next year.
Okay. My last question, if I can squeeze one more in, is really on the balance sheet. You did a nice job there. Leverage, net debt, both a little bit lower than we had modeled. I'm a little frustrated that now apparently you don't feel is the time to be repurchasing the stock. I mean, the stock is clearly not reflecting, you know, the value proposition here. It sounds like you pretty much made up your minds that until you get that leverage down to your target, you know, share repurchases are all but off the table. Maybe it's stronger than you guys are making it. Could you comment on that a little bit?
Is there any chance that maybe, you know, the company does move in first half of this year and take advantage of the prices that we're seeing?
Lance, this is something we review with our board every single quarter. We're always evaluating our capital allocation priorities, and I would never say never. At the moment we're steadfast in our commitment to delever according to the commitments we've made at the time of the First American acquisition. We revisit that on a constant basis. We're evaluating our capital plans. We're evaluating our debt deleveraging plans as well as our share buy plans constantly. Never say never, but for the moment, we're focused on reducing our leverage.
Understood. Thanks for the color, guys. Appreciate it.
Our next question is from Chris McGinnis with Sidoti & Company. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Nice quarter. I guess if we could start just on with First American. Can you just talk about the growth rate that you're seeing there and then, you know, how long you can keep that growth rate going now that it's under your command?
Hey, Chris. Good to hear you. We're obviously very proud and pleased with First American performance. Like we said earlier, we think it's just really clear evidence that our One Deluxe sales model works and the Deluxe halo is real. You know, we think that that's going to be a great business over the long term. You know, we don't know that it's going to stay at this elevated rate of growth indefinitely. I'll tell you, we feel very good now about what we said when we acquired the asset, that we believed we could have it as a solid middle digit grower and perhaps more. We're seeing perhaps more right now in what we saw in the full year and in Q4 results.
What I would just tell you is we feel very confident that our original business case and plan is solid and is gonna deliver.
Great. Thanks for that, Barry. I guess just the second part of that around FAPS. I know you mentioned this last quarter, Barry, is that customer, you know, outreach still continuing to happen, you know, coming to you now that you have that asset in place?
You know, well, absolutely. I think, Chris, maybe the best way to think about some of this notion of the Deluxe halo and the strength of our relationship and the strength of the brand we have in the marketplace, particularly with financial institutions, is that we closed three times the number of financial institutions in the back half that then would be a normal close rate for First American. It is like the best way I can explain to you that it's real and that the fact that the relationships we have can be leveraged for growth is it's clear, it's black and white. You know, three times the number of financial institutions signed with First American in the back half than they would in a typical back half.
I just don't have a better way to dimensionalize except to tell you that because that's, I think it's really powerful and really clear.
No, I appreciate that. I guess just, you know, thinking about that with the Bradford Exchange announcement earlier this week, can you just talk about, I guess, you know, one, the opportunity there, just on the check side, and then also, you know, is there room for that One Deluxe strategy to play out, you know, to include more, you know, products that Deluxe offers?
You know, there's a bunch of questions there, so let me take them one at a time. Let me talk about The Bradford Exchange, HP, and what we're doing in our check business. We have long said that we were going to focus on, you know, maintaining that profitability for the foreseeable future. By making investments in the digital technology, like you saw us announce with HP, helps us do that. It's greatly simplifies the production process, eliminates inventory in our warehouses, and, you know, gives us many more products to sell. Part of having more products to sell mean there are other customers that we can go sell to, and The Bradford Exchange is a great example. The Bradford Exchange, their core business is that they put artwork on a variety of different products to create a custom product for a consumer.
They have a significant check business today that was being managed and delivered by our competitor, and we won that away on a variety of points, especially the fact that we now have this capability and technology that allows us to have nearly infinite variety of designs. That's important not only to Bradford Exchange, because that's a key differentiator for them in the market, but it's already allowed us to add additional check designs to our mix, which allows us to have new revenue sources. It does position us really well to go after a different segment of the market that we haven't been able to go after in the past. We think there's opportunity for us to win additional business there and continue, you know, the ability for us to grow share of the market in checks.
The second question really was around One Deluxe and the ability to cross-sell beyond just the success we highlighted on First American. You know, throughout this quarter and throughout the year, we continue to improve our cross-sell rate in our telesales centers, as an example. Our pipeline of products that we have in queue to be sold to our existing customers has continued to expand. I think it was our third consecutive year of record cross-sell performance. We don't see any reason that that's gonna slow down. The One Deluxe model that we started building clearly works. It's, you know, a machine that is working really well for us.
Great. No, I appreciate that color, Barry. Just to move on to checks and the growth in the quarter and, you know, I understand the outlook for 2022. Can you just dive a little bit more into the growth in the quarter itself? Maybe how much is from existing and then from new client wins?
Yeah. You know, look, we still think about the industry and the base business as being in that mid-single-digit secular decline, so you get a sense for how much of the volume that we delivered was based on new wins. The team has just done a terrific job in, you know, winning a very, very high percentage of renewals of our existing customers and then, you know, faring quite well when new business is up for grabs. Team just continues to do a terrific job there. You know, we don't have as many renewals coming up in the near term, so think we've got a pretty solid baseline of revenue, you know, trending into 2022.
Again, the team continues to take share and then do a good job with that business.
Thanks for that. Also on MPX, you know, it sounds like it's starting to really gain some traction. Can you just talk about the opportunity that you see and maybe the revenue growth rate? I know it's still small, but you know, it sounds like it's moving in a pretty positive direction.
We're really proud of what's happening with MPX and DPX. You know, year-over-year it's growing, you know, in the 50%+ range. It's a very material revenue growth rate. We think there's a ton of upside potential. You know, if you just look at it and you say that if you convert just a small percentage of B2B checks, you know, it's incredibly right in front of us to go make that, you know, a $100 million-a-year business. Not tomorrow morning, but over, you know, a couple of year horizon. At that growth rate, you know, we believe we can get there in a few years. It's a real business. It's a real market opportunity.
As we noted, you know, we signed the fourth major payer in Q4, which is a big deal, because it hasn't gone live yet, but because they're signed, there'll be revenue and profit that come to us, beginning in 2022 and then accelerating as we go forward.
It appears that we have no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back to you, Mr. Morabito, for any closing remarks.
Thanks, Chris. Before we conclude, I'd like to mention that management will be participating in the Sidoti Spring Small-Cap Virtual Conference on 23 March. Thank you again for joining us today. Please stay healthy and safe, and we look forward to speaking with you in May as we share our Q1 2022 results.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.