Black Knight, Inc.

8%. Diluted EPS was $0.35, an increase of 3% reflecting the higher depreciation amortization resulting from purchase accounting, particularly related to the acquisition of Optimal Blue. Net earnings margin was 13% compared to 17.2%. Turning to slide four, I'll now discuss our adjusted results for the first quarter. First quarter adjusted revenues were $350 million, an increase of 20% compared to the first quarter last year. Organic revenue growth was 9%. Adjusted EBITDA was $174 million, an increase of 24%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 49.8%, an increase of 160 basis points. Adjusted net earnings were $87.5 million, an increase of 26%, and adjusted EPS was 56 cents, an increase of 19%. Turning now to slide five, I'll discuss our software solutions segment results. First quarter revenues for the software solution segment increased 21 percent to $296 million, and organic revenue growth was 9 percent. Our servicing software solutions revenues increased 4 percent. The growth was driven primarily by new clients and higher usage-based revenues on MSP, partially offset by the transitory headwind in specialty servicing resulting from the foreclosure moratorium. In origination software solutions, revenues increased 90 percent, driven primarily by the acquisition of Optimal Blue, new clients, higher consulting revenues, and higher origination volumes. First quarter EBITDA increased 23 percent to $171 million, and EBITDA margin was 57.8 percent, an increase of 80 basis points. Turning to slide six, first quarter revenues for the data and analytics segment increased 17 percent to $54 million, primarily driven by strong sales execution across nearly all business lines, higher origination volumes, and revenue from an acquired business. Organic revenue growth was 11 percent. EBITDA increased 35 percent to $20 million. EBITDA margin was 36.5 percent, an increase of 480 basis points. Adjusting EBITDA for the corporate segment in the first quarter was a loss of $17 million compared to $14 million in the prior year quarter. Turning to slide seven, I'll walk through our debt structure. At the end of March, we had cash and cash equivalents of $45 million. Total debt principal as of March 31st was $2,282,000,000. We had revolver capacity of $883 million, and our leverage ratio was 3.3 times on a net basis. On March 10th, we completed the refinancing of our senior secured credit facility. We replaced our Term Loan A and revolving credit facilities with a new $1.15 billion Term Loan A facility and an expanded $1 billion revolving credit facility. Both facilities have a five-year tenor. During the first quarter, we repurchased 621,000 shares of our common stock for $47 million, or an average of $75.19 per share. As of March 31st, we had approximately 9.4 million shares remaining under our share repurchase authorization. Before I walk through our outlook for 2021, I'll go through the details of our investment in Dun & Bradstreet shares. Turning to slide eight, We own 54.8 million D&B shares. The market value of this investment was $1,306,000,000 based on the $23.81 closing price of D&B on March 31st. Our invested capital is $493,000,000. That puts our unrealized pre-tax gain at $813,000,000 and our unrealized after-tax gain at $608,000,000. Turning now to slide nine. I'll walk through our outlook for the full year 2021, which we have raised from the guidance we gave you in February, based on a strong first quarter and robust outlook. It also reflects the effect of the next spring acquisition, which is effectively pre-revenue, but will reduce adjusted EBITDA this year due to its early stage nature. For the year, GAAP revenues and adjusted revenues are expected to be in the range of $1,407,000,000 to $1,428,000,000. which represents raising the bottom end of the range by $13 million and the top end of the range by $6 million. This represents reported growth of approximately 14 to 15 percent and organic growth of approximately 6 percent to 8 percent. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $695 million to $711 million, which represents raising the bottom end of the range by $6 million and maintaining the top of the range in light of the $3 million headwind from next spring that was not included in our original outlook. Adjusted EPS is expected to be in the range of $2.16 to $2.24, which represents raising the bottom end of the range by 5 cents and the top end of the range by 2 cents. This is considering a nearly 2 cent headwind from next spring. Additional modeling details underlying our outlook are as follows. We continue to plan for incremental foreclosure revenues to be delayed until at least the first quarter of 2022. We expect no incremental headwinds outside of the $11 million headwind we experienced in the first quarter. With the origination volume outperformance in the first quarter, we continue to expect a full year headwind of approximately $12 million compared to 2020 with a higher than planned decline in the remaining quarters of the year. In addition, We expect interest expense of approximately $82 million to $85 million, depreciation and amortization expense of $143 million to $147 million, excluding the net incremental depreciation and amortization resulting from purchase accounting. Earnings attributable to non-controlling interest are approximately $20 million to $22 million. This relates to the portion of optimal blue that we don't own. An adjusted effective tax rate of approximately 23% to 24%. and full-year weighted average shares outstanding approximately 156 million. Although we do not provide quarterly guidance, I want to provide you with some color as to how we expect to progress through the year. We expect to see sequential revenue growth over the course of the year from new client revenue partially offset by origination volume headwinds that increase sequentially as the year progresses. And we expect operating expenses in the second quarter to step up from the first quarter by a couple of percentage points, as we bring on next spring and staff our professional services teams due to strong demand we are seeing. We then expect a small sequential increase from Q2 to Q3, and then another couple of percentage points increase from the third quarter to the fourth quarter due to typical seasonality. That concludes my remarks. I'll now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.

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Hey, guys. Good morning, and congrats on a great start to the year.