Recurring revenues and adjusted operating income both rose 8%.
We now expect recurring revenue growth of 8% to 10% and adjusted earnings per share growth of 11% to 13%.
The net result of all these points, our strong third quarter results, our continued internal and M&A investment and our outlook for fiscal 2021 is that Broadridge is executing well and is on track to deliver at the higher end of our 3-year financial objectives, including 8% to 12% adjusted earnings per share growth.
Recurring revenues rose 11% to $586 million driven by revenue from new sales and very strong equity record growth.
Over the past two years, we've created a shareholder communications hub, linking millions of investors across the EU and with hundreds of wealth managers, winning almost 300 new clients along the way.
We are now on pace to serve almost 1,900 virtual shareholder meetings this proxy season, up from 1,400 last spring.
The second factor driving ICS was very strong equity record growth, which was 20% for the quarter.
It has also been broad-based across issuers with 20% growth across both widely held stocks and those with more medium-sized shareholder bases.
Looking forward, we expect strong record growth to extend into the fourth quarter with our testing indicating 25% stock record growth for Q4.
As we have with every chair and administration of both parties over the past 40 years, we look forward to assisting by investing in the next generation of technology, to help the SEC achieve its mandate to better inform and protect investors, all while reducing cost for registers and creating a fair return for our shareholders.
Capital markets' recurring revenues slipped by 1% as steady international growth was offset as expected by lower license revenues.
Itiviti adds more than $6 billion to Broadridge's total addressable market and will drive stronger growth, margins and earnings, as Edmund will discuss in his remarks.
To date, 10 dealers and over 40 asset managers have joined the LTX platform.
And an additional 14 institutions are signed in the onboarding process, including one of the world's largest fixed income managers.
Let's turn next to our wealth and investment management business, where revenues grew by 7%, driven by new client additions and higher equity trading volumes.
Today, after 12 long months, there remains significant challenges and thinking, in particular, of our more than 3,000 associates in India and of their families and friends.
We started the fiscal year last July expecting 2% to 6% recurring revenue growth and 4% to 10% adjusted earnings per share growth.
Fast forward nine months, and we are poised to deliver 8% to 10% recurring revenue growth, driven by a combination of strong new sales and healthy financial markets.
Last but not least, we're on the brink of closing our $2.5 billion acquisition of Itiviti, expanding our capital markets franchise and further strengthening our global footprint.
And yet even after those investments and the near-term dilution from Itiviti, we're positioned to deliver 11% to 13% adjusted earnings per share growth.
We've asked a lot of our team over the past 12 months, and they're delivering.
Recurring revenue grew 8% to $900 million.
Adjusted operating income also grew 8% to $284 million.
Margins declined 60 basis points to 20.4% as we successfully made the investments that we discussed last quarter in our technology platforms, in our products, our people.
So our adjusted earnings per share grew to $1.76 in the quarter, up 5% over Q3 '20.
As I said, recurring revenue grew 8% in the quarter, powered by 7% organic growth, and comfortably within our historic mid- to high single-digit growth performance.
As a result of that strong organic growth and an increase in our outlook for the fourth quarter, we're raising our guidance for recurring revenue growth to 8% to 10% for the full year, up from our prior guidance of growth at the higher end of 3% to 6%.
I'll start with our ICS segment, where revenues grew by 11% to $586 million.
Regulatory revenues rose 20% to $290 million driven by the 20% equity record growth, higher mutual fund and ETF communications volumes and net new sales, including from our Shareholder Rights Directive II solution that Tim highlighted earlier.
We expect strong regulatory revenue growth to continue in the fourth quarter with, our current testing indicating 25% equity record growth.
After a strong 12 months, we now have significant penetration of our VSM solution across the S&P 500, and we expect issuer revenue growth to ease going forward as we start to lap the increase of VSM activity that began in Q4 '20.
Wealth and investment management revenues rose 7%, driven by the onboarding of new component sales and higher retail trading.
Capital markets revenues fell 1% of strong growth from international sales, was offset by $6 million in lower license revenues, which declined as expected.
Let's turn to Page 10, where we show more detail on volume trends.
Over the past decade, record growth across equity, mutual funds and ETF has grown 6% to 8%.
Recently, equity record growth has accelerated to 11% in Q4 '20 and continued to increase through the year to 20% in Q3 '21, surpassing the estimates from our January testing.
As I said, we expect these growth trends to continue and reach 25% in Q4 '21.
Mutual fund and ETF record growth picked up as well to 7%, more in line with our historical growth rates.
Organic growth at a very healthy 7% continues to be the largest component of our recurring revenue growth, and new sales remains the biggest driver with strong growth contribution from both ICS and GTO.
We also continued our long track record of revenue retention above 97%.
Total revenue growth this quarter was stronger than usual, reaching 11%, with distribution revenue contributing three points due to the increased mailings that correspond with the high record growth and the increased event-driven activity this quarter.
Event-driven revenues have climbed over the past four quarters to be more in line with our historical norms of about $50 million a quarter and reached $74 million in the third quarter, well above last year's unusually low $39 million.
For modeling purposes, we're assuming $50 million to $60 million of event-driven revenues in the fourth quarter.
Adjusted operating income grew by 8%.
Our adjusted operating income margin declined by 60 basis points, reflecting the continued investments that we're making in our technology platforms and product capabilities that we highlighted on our last quarterly call.
These investments, which support our long-term growth, have a short-term impact on margin expansion, but we remain on track to deliver approximately 50 basis points of margin expansion for the full year, right in line with our fiscal year '21 guidance and 3-year growth objectives.
Our $124 million closed sales year-to-date are in line with our performance over the same period last year.
We remain on track to achieve our full year guidance of $190 million to $235 million for closed sales, which implies a fourth quarter range of $66 million to $111 million.
And I'll also note that we continue to feel good about our recurring revenue backlog, which was 12% of our fiscal '20 recurring revenues as of Q4 '20 and gives us great visibility into our top line growth.
We generated $136 million of free cash flow year-to-date, up $54 million over the first nine months of fiscal year '20 driven by higher earnings and strong working capital management.
During the first nine months of the fiscal year, we invested $205 million in building out our industry platforms and another $71 million in capex and software spending.
Our M&A investment through the first nine months of the year was 0, but that will change with our announced $2.5 billion acquisition of Itiviti, which I'll touch on in a moment.
Given our strong free cash flow, we believe that we can comfortably achieve our new 2.5 times leverage target by the end of fiscal year '23.
Turning to capital returns on the right-hand side of the slide, our dividend has grown and remains in line with our historical 45% payout ratio.
We expect Itiviti to add $25 billion to $30 billion or one point to our full year recurring revenue growth, which equates to three points to our fourth quarter growth.
In fiscal year '22, we expect Itiviti to add approximately $250 million or about eight points to our recurring revenue growth.
And we expect the acquisition to be accretive by approximately two to three points or roughly $0.10 to $0.15 to adjusted earnings per share growth.
Please note that Itiviti's results in both fiscal year '21 and fiscal year '22 will be negatively impacted by the accounting treatment of acquired revenue, which will reduce revenue recognition by approximately $30 million in total with 2/3 of that impact in fiscal '22.
We expect Itiviti to add 2.5 to three points to our 3-year recurring revenue growth CAGR and, after interest, more than two points to our 3-year adjusted earnings per share CAGR.
We are raising our outlook for fiscal '21 recurring revenue growth to 8% to 10% from the higher end of 3% to 6%, and that includes one point of growth from Itiviti.
We are raising our guidance for total revenue growth to 8% to 10% from the higher end of 1% to 4%.
We continue to expect our adjusted operating income margin to expand to approximately 18%, up from 17.5% in fiscal year '20 as we balance near-term returns with continued investments to sustain long-term growth.
We expect adjusted earnings per share growth of 11% to 13%, up from the higher end of 6% to 10%, and that includes a 1-point drag from Itiviti.
Finally, as I noted earlier, we continue to expect closed sales in the range of $190 million to $235 million.
We are on track to deliver strong 8% to 10% recurring revenue growth.
The end result is that we're on track to deliver at the higher end of our 3-year financial objectives of 7% to 9% recurring revenue growth and 8% to 12% adjusted earnings per share growth.

Summary:
We now expect recurring revenue growth of 8% to 10% and adjusted earnings per share growth of 11% to 13%.
Fast forward nine months, and we are poised to deliver 8% to 10% recurring revenue growth, driven by a combination of strong new sales and healthy financial markets.
And yet even after those investments and the near-term dilution from Itiviti, we're positioned to deliver 11% to 13% adjusted earnings per share growth.
So our adjusted earnings per share grew to $1.76 in the quarter, up 5% over Q3 '20.
As a result of that strong organic growth and an increase in our outlook for the fourth quarter, we're raising our guidance for recurring revenue growth to 8% to 10% for the full year, up from our prior guidance of growth at the higher end of 3% to 6%.
We are raising our outlook for fiscal '21 recurring revenue growth to 8% to 10% from the higher end of 3% to 6%, and that includes one point of growth from Itiviti.
We are raising our guidance for total revenue growth to 8% to 10% from the higher end of 1% to 4%.
We expect adjusted earnings per share growth of 11% to 13%, up from the higher end of 6% to 10%, and that includes a 1-point drag from Itiviti.
We are on track to deliver strong 8% to 10% recurring revenue growth.