Specifically, as you can see in Slide 3, in the first quarter revenue was strong driven particularly by the strength and growth of All Access Pass and related sales, gross margins increased by 359 basis points compared to those in last year's strong first quarter, operating SG&A declined by $4.4 million, adjusted EBITDA was $3.7 million versus an expectation of between $2 million and $2.5 million, our net cash provided by operating activities increased 60% [Phonetic] or $4.1 million to $10.9 million, substantially exceeding even the $6.8 million of net cash provided by operating activities in last year's first quarter and we ended the quarter with approximately $49 million of liquidity, up from $42 million at the end of the fiscal year in August and up from $39 million at the start of the pandemic.
In our year-end conference call a little over two months ago, we reported that in our Enterprise Division in North America, which accounts for approximately 70% [Phonetic] of total enterprise sales and where all Access Pass and related sales account for 84% of total sales on the way to 90%, we reported first, as you can see on Slide 4, chart 1A on Slide 4 in the far left hand corner, we expect All Access Pass subscription sale -- that we as expected reported All Access Pass subscription sales had remained strong throughout the pandemic to date, growing 18% in North America for the period March through August and as indicated, we said that we expected All Access Pass subscription sales to continue to be strong through this year's fiscal first quarter and on an ongoing basis thereafter.
And finally, as indicated in 1D, we said that in our education division, which accounts for just under 20% of total sales, we had achieved very high Leader in Me subscription school retention in last fiscal year and that remarkably in the middle of the pandemic, we had also added 300-plus new schools, almost all of which came on during the pandemic.
First, as shown in chart 1A in Slide 6, total company All Access Pass subscription sales grew 16% in the first quarter to $17 million and grew 17% to $65 million for the latest 12 months.
In addition, as also shown in chart 1B in Slide 6, total company All Access Pass amounts invoiced which are added to the balance sheet and which form the basis for accelerated future growth in sales -- oops, we got some paper shuffling in the back here sorry somewhere, increased -- seeing our invoiced amounts increased an extremely strong 55% in the first quarter and even excluding a large government All Access Pass contract, growth was still very -- growth in invoice sales was still a very strong 32%.
Importantly, All Access Pass performance was strong across all of the key elements that we look at for All Access Pass, including sales to new logos, which increased substantially both in the first quarter and for the latest 12 months, nine of those 12 months of course took place during the pandemic and still had new logos increase every quarter.
Annual revenue retention, which continued to exceed 90% both for the quarter and for the latest 12 months as you can see in 1C and the sale of multi-year contracts, which as shown in 1D were unbilled deferred revenue related to multi-year contracts grew 19% in Q1 compared to Q1 '20 to $40.5 million.
As you can see in the chart one of Slide 7 with the beginning of the pandemic in March, bookings of live on-site services were [Phonetic] necessarily canceled, the stay-at-home restrictions and the year-over-year volume of services followed down with delivered engagements down 6.9 million in North America in the third quarter.
As a result, instead of being off $6.9 million as in the third quarter, the dollar volume of services delivered in the fourth quarter was off only $1.1 million.
This same positive trend continued in the first quarter with total bookings were up year-over-year and invoice of sales which followed were only off $200,000 compared even to last year's very strong first quarter and when you add in December results for the first four months of fiscal 2021, September through December, actual sales of services delivered exceeded those achieved for the same four-month period last year, which was a very strong period for us last year pre-pandemic.
As shown in chart 1B in Slide 7, it's important that 87% of our clients have now shifted to live online delivery of services.
This is important, with 87% of our clients now having shifted to live online, our susceptibility to the future cancellations has been reduced substantially.
At the start of the pandemic, we had to reschedule substantially all live on-site training engagements in these countries and since these countries were just starting to sell All Access Pass and therefore did not have a strong base of durable subscription revenue to cushion them, sales in these countries declined to only $4.1 million in the third quarter compared to $12.7 million in the third quarter of fiscal '19.
However, in last year's fourth quarter, while still operating well below the levels achieved in last year's fourth quarter, sequential sales in these countries increased 70% to $7 million from the $4.1 million in sales in this year's third quarter -- in last year's third quarter and we had said we'd expect that our international operation would continue to strengthen in the first quarter and we were pleased that they did.
As shown in the first quarter, international sales were $9.9 million, ahead of our expectation of $9 million and while still below the level achieved last year, this represented an increase of $2.9 million or 41% compared to the $7 million achieved in the fourth quarter and was 2.4 times the amount -- the $4.1 million amount achieved in the third quarter.
Finally, as shown in Slide 9, in the Education Division, despite an environment that continues to be very challenging, as we all know, we've seen some strengthening in trends in the first quarter, including one that the number of Leader in Me schools which have renewed or ready to renew their Leader in Me membership contracts has increased to 615 compared to 450 schools at the same time last year.
Our adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $3.7 million, exceeding our expectation of achieving adjusted EBITDA between $2 million and $2.5 million.
As shown on Slide 11, our net cash generated for the quarter of $532,000 in our -- one of our lowest quarters, was $4.9 million higher than in last year's first quarter.
This reflects almost entirely that our significant growth in new All Access Pass contracts invoiced resulted in our net deferred revenue position not going down as much -- we're pulling stuff off the balance sheet versus what you added on actually improved by $6 million versus the prior year.
As you can see in Slide 12, also our cash flow from operating activities for the first quarter was $10.9 million, which was $4.1 million or 60% [Phonetic] higher than last year's $6.8 million.
As a result, we ended our fiscal year in August with more than $40 million in total liquidity comprised of $27 million of cash and our $15 million revolving credit facility undrawn, an amount that was even higher than we had at the start of the pandemic and we're pleased that we added further to this liquidity during the first quarter and in the first quarter was $49 million of total liquidity comprised of $34 million of cash, which means no net debt and with our $15 million revolving credit facility still undrawn and available.
This strong performance was driven by, you can see on Slide 13, strong growth -- our revenue growth, our revenue was $48.3 million, was strong and a little bit stronger than we would have thought, driven by -- particularly by our North American operations, which in turn was driven by the performance of All Access Pass.
As you can see in Slide 1A of Slide 14, companywide All Access Pass subscription sales grew 16% in the first quarter and in addition to the All Access Pass subscription revenue actually recognized in the quarter as we talked about and as shown in chart 1B of Slide 14, we also achieved an extremely strong 55% growth in All Access Pass amounts invoiced and as I mentioned, even excluding a large government contract, growth in All Access Pass amounts invoiced was still a very strong 32%.
And as noted previously, also these new invoiced amounts included strong sales to new logos, a continued quarterly and latest 12-month revenue retention rate of greater than 19% [Phonetic] as you can see in 1C, the largest number of All Access Pass expansions and shown in 1D, a large volume of multi-year All Access Passes, which increased our unbilled deferred revenue, which of course will flow into sales in future quarters.
This is resulting in a strong booking pace that's resulted also then in strong actual delivered revenue where worldwide these services increased to $9 million, which was a bit above actually even that achieved pre-pandemic in last year's very strong first quarter where we actually saw very significant growth of add-on sales compared to the prior year.
The gross margin percent was 75.3%, it's up 359 basis points from the 71.7% achieved in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 and up 275 basis points for the latest 12 months.
As a result, our gross margin percentage for the Enterprise Division in the first quarter increased to 80.6% compared to 75.3% in last year's first quarter, an increase of 530 basis points.
You can see our SG&A was lower than last year, it came in at $32.7 million, which was $4.4 million lower than last year's first quarter and finally, the combination of these factors is in adjusted EBITDA as we mentioned before coming in at $3.7 million in the first quarter compared to an expectation of between $2 million and $2.5 million and just $1.3 million lower than in last year's very strong quarter despite the slower recovery in our international operations.
We mentioned again that we had strong invoice in multi-year sales in the first quarter and because most of these sales were not recognized, it built up our balance of deferred revenue, which as you can see in Slide 16, our total balance of billed and unbilled deferred revenue increased to $97.4 million, reflecting growth of $14.7 million or 18% compared to our balance of $82.7 million at the end of last year's first quarter.
As noted, last quarter, I'll just note again, approaching $100 million of deferred revenue -- billed and unbilled deferred revenue is a big landmark for subscription businesses.
As you can see in Slide 17, you've seen this before, we expect to generate adjusted EBITDA of between $20 million and $22 million in fiscal 2021 and we're pleased to be off to a strong start toward this objective.
Achieving $20 million to $22 million in adjusted EBITDA would represent approximately 50% increase in adjusted EBITDA compared to the $14.4 million we achieved in 2020.
Our target is to see adjusted EBITDA then increase by approximately $10 million per year each year thereafter to approximately $30 million in 2022 to approximately $40 million in 2023.
These targets reflect our expectation that we will achieve at least high-single digit revenue growth each year, growth that's approximately $20 million per year of revenue growth.
Then on average approximately 50% of that amount of growth in revenue will flow through to increases in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow reflecting our high gross margins -- strong gross margins and variable selling costs.
We fully expect to achieve an adjusted EBITDA to sales margin of 20% in the coming years and really to become a $1 billion market cap company in the coming years even at an adjusted EBITDA multiple that's conservative relative to our adjusted EBITDA growth rate and without relying on multiples of revenue, which we should increasingly be able to garner.
On move navigation Slide in 18, those three points are the three drivers.
You can see since 2015, annual All Access Pass and related sales have grown from really nothing to more than $90 million through fiscal year 2020 reflecting a huge compounded average growth rate and average absolute All Access Pass and related revenue growth of between $10 million and $20 million each year.
This growth in All Access Pass and related sales has generated the vast majority of the total revenue growth for the company overall during these years and in almost every individual year more than offsetting the early run-off of our legacy facilitator and onsite businesses which are now largely behind us with 84% of our revenue now in Enterprise Division in North America coming from All Access Pass and related.
Second, as you can see in Slide 21, in the first quarter, companywide All Access Pass subscription sales grew $2.3 million or 16% compared to the same period and for the latest 12 months, including nine months of the pandemic from March to November, All Access Pass subscription sales still grew 17% compared to the same nine-month period a year ago or latest 12 months a year ago.
Again, as shown in chart 1A of Slide 22, we've noted this that All Access Pass sales grew, the add-on services grew and that importantly our amounts invoiced of new sales that are put on the books grew 55%, including a large government All Access Pass contract but even excluding that, still grew 32% or $3.4 million.
That's giving us a high flow through with a combination of strong gross margins and declining operating costs as a percentage of sales, it is expected to allow approximately 50% of incremental revenue growth to flow through the increases in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow and then in terms of the visibility and predictability, the large and growing balance of billed and unbilled deferred revenue, which is approaching $100 million as we talked about and then also the predictability of the All Access Pass is key operating metrics including annual revenue retention of where the 90%.
The fact that more than a third of All Access Passes are entering into -- holders are entering into multi-year contracts and that our add-on services, which we've now proven to be extremely durable average 45%.
I just say that All Access Pass is not just another typical as we say all-you-can-eat subscription service providing unlimited access to large amounts of undifferentiated skills content, rather All Access Pass is a subscription service I'd say with a punch or as illustrated in 25 really four powerful strategic punches.
And of course, these are in addition to our historical strong things -- solutions like Leader in Me in Education, and 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, both of which continue to set all-time usage records, even though they're now a minority of our offerings.
We now got flexibility across a wide variety of modalities including digital, microlearning, live online, live on site, coaching, or any combination of thereof in almost any segment of time, which you see on Slide 27, on any device in more than 20 languages worldwide.
And as a result, again, as shown on Slide 30 -- Slide 30, All Access Pass related sales jumped as a result they've increased from zero to more than $90 million, latest 12 months, some of the revenue retention has been high, at more than 90%.
More than 35% of Pass holding clients are signing multi-year contracts.
Our average Pass size has grown from 29,800 to 40,000 in the latest 12 months.
Maybe looking at Slide 31, which is the third puzzle piece, you can see in Slide 32, Franklin Covey has built a direct sales force of 247 client partners or sales associates in the US and Canada and in China, Japan, Australia, and in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
In addition, we expect to add 20 net new client partners this fiscal year to the 247 client partners we had at the end of Q1.
If you -- as you look there on slide -- if we go to Slide 33, in addition to a growing number of client partners who continue to ramp at/or above our expectations, which they themselves represent a great revenue driver for us as company, but on Slide 33, we've also built a network of approximately 80 international licensee partner offices, which cover most of the countries in the world.
These partner offices generate gross revenues of approximately $50 million and they pay Franklin Covey a royalty that's equal to about 15% of these revenues.
And to date we've sold more than 50 million copies of books worldwide in more than 50 -- in over 50 languages.
And to put that 50 million number in perspective, the number of books that we've sold as part of our thought leadership strategy is greater than the amount sold by a large number of our top competitors combined.
To achieve best seller status, a book typically needs to sell a little over 250,000 copies and so to reach 50 million copies sold and still counting is unprecedented in the industry.
Yeah, see the navigation slide there, 36.
As to our leaders being highly trusted, in our recent Annual Employee Engagement and Culture survey all of Franklin Covey associate where asked to rate on a zero to 10 scale, with 10 being the highest, how likely they would be to recommend their Leader or manager as someone to work for.
And you can see on Slide 37, 94% rated their leader 7 or above and 83% rated their Leader at 9 or a 10 on that question.
In the first quarter, 12 of our 15 Managing Director, so each country has a Managing Director and in United States, we have 10 -- United in Canada, we have in hand and they lead our great sales teams, but each -- 12 of our 15 Managing Directors met or exceeded their quarterly revenue objective in Q1.
And the other three leaders who missed their goal, missed by an aggregate of only 1.3% of the total direct office sales goal.
And collectively, the group, all 15 exceeded their revenue goal.
In addition, as you can see there on the right of this slide 14 of the 15 Managing Directors met their EBITDA goal, with the one who missed missing by only $50,000 and collectively of course, this group exceeded -- they actually exceeded EBITDA by about $1 million collectively.
Franklin Covey associates were asked to rate on a zero to 10, with 10 being the highest again, how likely they would be to recommend Franklin Covey has a great place to work.
And we're pleased that 92% of employees gave a rating of 7 or higher and 69% gave a rating of a 9 or a 10.
So our guidance for FY '21 as discussed last quarter is that we expect to generate adjusted EBITDA of between $20 million and $22 million.
This result would be approximately 50% increase in adjusted EBITDA compared to the $14.3 million of adjusted EBITDA achieved last year.
First, the recognition to sales during FY '21 of more than $60.6 million of deferred revenue already on the balance sheet at the end of last year and the recognition of a portion of the $39.6 million of unbilled deferred revenue which we had contracted.
For our second quarter of this year, we expect that adjusted EBITDA will be between $1 million and $1.5 million compared to $4.1 million in adjusted EBITDA in last years very strong second quarter and still reflecting the expected strong performance of All Access Pass in the US, Canada and government and the same general expectations just outlined for international operations and education.
And please also remember that even $1 million of adjusted EBITDA in Q2 would be more than the second quarter result in FY '18 or the second quarter results in FY '19.
So that's guidance now.
Just a couple of thoughts related to general targets for the coming years and repeating a lot of what Bob said, building on our $20 million to $22 million of adjusted EBITDA, we expect to achieve this year and driven substantially by the expected continued growth in All Access Pass, our target is to have adjusted EBITDA increase by around $10 million per year to around $30 million in FY '22 and around $40 million in FY '23.
These targets reflect our expectation of being able to achieve as Bob talked about high-single digit revenue growth of around $20 million, 50% [Phonetic] revenue to adjusted EBITDA.

Summary:
This strong performance was driven by, you can see on Slide 13, strong growth -- our revenue growth, our revenue was $48.3 million, was strong and a little bit stronger than we would have thought, driven by -- particularly by our North American operations, which in turn was driven by the performance of All Access Pass.
So that's guidance now.