Our first quarter was solid and ahead of our internal expectations, reflecting strong growth in Experiential Services, improvement in Retailer Services, and continued headwinds affecting Branded Services. Adjusted EBITDA of $68 million was up over 16% and up 22% on a pro forma basis, excluding divestitures, driven by strong incremental margins in Experiential Services and improved profitability in Retailer Services. Our results reflect continued progress on the growth and productivity initiatives outlined last quarter, especially our centralized labor model, which is driving improved retail execution and profitability. We recently launched the last phase of our SAP implementation, and we continue to advance the rollout of our human capital management system.
We generated $74 million in adjusted unlevered free cash flow and ended the quarter with $144 million in cash after a meaningful debt paydown in March. While we remain focused on cash generation and productivity, we have increased our efforts to drive growth across our platform. In experiential and retailer services, we are using AI tools integrated with legacy systems as well as process redesign to increase our hiring speed to better meet in-store labor needs. We're collaborating to leverage proprietary data and an alert-based model to more effectively deploy retail reps to the highest yielding in-store opportunities.
While growth is our focus, we continue to pursue several productivity initiatives. First, our centralized labor model is improving service quality and supporting long-term margin expansion, particularly in Experiential Services. We also see an opportunity to extend some of these capabilities into our Retailer Services segment as we execute product resets and store remodel work in approximately 80% of the U.S. Finally, as a scaled outsource labor provider, we are well-positioned to support clients as they seek greater efficiency and return on their investment at retail.