Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Amadeus intention to acquire IDEMIA Public Security conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question- and- answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference over to Luis Maroto, President and CEO of Amadeus. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us at such short notice today. Today, we are pleased to announce our intention to acquire IDEMIA Public Security or IPS. This is a complementary and travel-centric acquisition aimed at creating seamless end-to-end travel journeys of the future. Decius, Carol, and I will walk you through the strategic and financial rationale for this acquisition, as well as our timeline to obtain regulatory approvals. Let's begin. Please turn to slide five. Let me start by explaining why this acquisition is strategically important for Amadeus. IPS is a world-class market leading end-to-end biometric technology platform with a strong global blue-chip client base. IPS fits naturally within our strategy. We already connect airlines, airports, hotels, and border systems today. By bringing together the Amadeus travel platform with IPS leading biometric and identity capabilities, we deepen our own capabilities and also strengthening our offering.
We link a larger part of the travel journey, enabling Amadeus to deliver more connected end-to-end travel experiences in a more seamless, consistent, and trusted way. We operate in a fast-evolving AI world. The ability to connect physical and digital identity is becoming increasingly important. Trusted identity links the traveler across each stage of the journey, from booking to airports, borders, boarding, and beyond. This acquisition is about extending trusted traveler identity across more touch points, reducing friction, and improving the traveler experience. All this while the traveler remains in control of their personal data. It reflects our long-term commitment to biometrics as a core component of our platform strategy, and it also builds on the progress we have made already with Vision-Box. IPS brings Amadeus scale today and expansion potential for tomorrow.
It adds a large and growing addressable market, a resilient and diversified revenue base, and a geographic and commercial footprint that reinforces our ambition to become an orchestrator of the travel ecosystem. Beyond passenger processing, IPS capabilities also extend security, secure identity into adjacent, complementary, and regulated environments, such as access control and government-grade biometric identification and data solutions. In each of these areas, trusted identity and privacy by design are critical, and operational reliability is paramount. The combination will strengthen and expand Amadeus capabilities in secure identity, while also naturally extending the breadth and reach of our offering across the travel ecosystem and beyond. IPS employs 3,300 people worldwide. It serves over 600 public and private sector customers globally, bringing scale and depth in secure identity solutions.
In addition to the strong strategic alignment, there is also a strong cultural fit between the two companies. Additionally, IPS has a highly skilled management team and employee base. This is an all cash acquisition for EUR 1.2 billion, which reflects both the quality of the asset and our confidence in the long-term strategic value, including synergies of bringing these capabilities together within Amadeus. With this combination, we see a strong opportunity for incremental revenue as well as for cost synergies. Cost synergies, we believe, can reach in the range of EUR 50 million annually in the midterm. Overall, we see a compelling business case. The transaction is immediately EPS accretive and reflects an effective and disciplined use of our balance sheet, supporting sustainable value creation and enhance shareholder returns.
Let me give you a few last points on the transaction before I hand over to Decius and Carol to tell you more. IPS generated EUR 711 million in revenue in 2025, with an estimated adjusted EBITDA and EBIT of EUR 112 million and EUR 70 million respectively. On a stand-alone basis, we expect IPS to grow into the future at a high single-digit rate with expanding operating margins. Our valuation of EUR 1.2 billion represents a 9.8x 2026 EBITDA multiple. We have also agreed to an earn-out structure of up to a further EUR 150 million. Finally, in terms of timing, completion is expected in mid-2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
We are excited about the acquisition of IPS. The complementary and travel-centric acquisition combines a strong strategic fit with disciplined capital allocation and clear shareholder value creation. I will now hand over to Decius, who will go into more detail about the strategic alignment and the opportunities this combination creates.
Thank you, Luis. Hello, everyone. We move to slide eight. As Luis mentioned, Amadeus is on a mission to create seamless end-to-end travel journeys of the future. We are reinforcing our broader ambition to be an orchestrator of the travel ecosystem. Today, identity sits at the heart of the travel journey. As you can see on the slide, from inspiration and booking through the airport, border crossing, delivery at destination, travelers are repeatedly asked to enter their personal information or to prove who they are. This process is fragmented, manual, and often frustrating, requiring the same actions to be performed again and again across multiple touch points and stakeholders. Our vision is of seamless travel and to remove friction entirely.
As digital identity and biometric technologies rapidly gain adoption worldwide, they create a unique opportunity to fundamentally redesign the travel experience, making it simple for travelers, more secure for governments, and more efficient for the industry as a whole. This is where Amadeus is uniquely positioned. Over recent years, we have deliberately expanded beyond our traditional travel verticals into adjacent and complementary domains such as biometrics, payments, and corporate IT. The broader reach give us privileged position in the travel ecosystem, longstanding and deep customer relationships, mission-critical platforms, and the ability to connect stakeholders across the travel journey. Our technology roadmap in this space is therefore focused on one clear ambition: orchestrating the travel experience across stakeholders using secure identity as its backbone. Let me turn on to the size of the opportunity and the current revenue split on slide nine.
The combination of Amadeus and IPS materially expands our addressable market to EUR 50 billion. Let's start with borders and travel. This market is underpinned by strong structural tailwinds, rising global passenger volumes, increasing pressure on infrastructure, and growing demand on automation. Regulation is playing an important role here, with initiatives such as the Entry/Exit System in Europe accelerating adoption, as well as airlines and airports themselves pushing for frictionless travel models to improve efficiency and passenger experience. If we turn to law enforcement, it represents a different but highly attractive profile. This is a stable, resilient, and profitable market characterized by long-term contracts, high renewal rates, and strong customer retention. Demand is driven by advanced biometric technology, strict certification requirements, and mission-critical use cases, making it structurally defensive and complementary to travel. Access control, the third segment, is the fastest-growing segment.
Growth is driven by modernization cycles across both public and private infrastructure, contactless access, zero trust security models, regulatory compliance, and replacement of aging systems. This segment benefits directly from the same biometric innovations we deploy in travel, creating clear technology and go-to-market synergies. Turning to IPS current revenue profile. Borders and travel and law enforcement each represent around 40% of the revenues, with access control accounting for the remaining 20%. This mix provide immediate scale in core travel adjacent segments while also giving us exposure to fast-growing the access control segment. IPS significantly complements Amadeus' existing footprints. The business has a strong presence in North America and Asia Pacific with highly strategic customers such as the TSA, the FBI, and Singapore's Immigration & Checkpoints Authority. This only strengthens our access to strategic market.
This not only strengthens our access to strategic markets, but also deepens our relationships with sovereign and government stakeholders globally. Turning to slide 10, let me highlight what makes IPS such a compelling business. First, it's a world-class, market-leading, end-to-end biometric technology platform. IPS operates one of the most advanced biometric platforms in the market, consistently delivering best-in-class performance in fairness, accuracy, speed, and robustness. Their technologies are independently validated and regularly rank highly on international benchmarks. This is underpinned by sustained innovation with more than EUR 70 million invested annually in R&D, over 1,000 patents granted, and a portfolio coverage covering face, fingerprint, and iris recognition. Second, a strong global blue-chip client base. IPS serves more than 600 public and private sector customers globally, many of whom operate mission-critical systems.
These relationships are deep and longstanding, and the market requires significant technology investments through long development cycles. Contract visibility is strong, with an average contract length between five and 10 years. 70%, 75% win rate for new contracts and a contract renewal above 90%. Third, strong expertise and operational depth. IPS brings over 3,300 employees operating across 29 countries, supported by eight global R&D centers. The average tenure of the talent employee base is almost eight years, reflecting deep domain expertise and strong talent retention in a highly specialized field. This depth matters in regulated high stakes environments where trust, certification, and operational reliability are essential. These strengths demonstrates that IPS is a trusted, reliable partner with a secured order backlog of approximately EUR 2 billion, providing multi-year revenue visibility and resilience through the cycle.
This combination of technology, technological leadership, long-term contracts, and strong backlog underpins a robust and predictable business profile. Now let's go on slide 11. Here, we try to show you the combination of Amadeus and IPS drives further digitalization of core travel processes. Building on our mission and ambition stated previously, let me share how this acquisition accelerates our path to seamless travel. Over the past years, Amadeus has been executing a deliberate and consistent strategy, bringing biometric identity capabilities directly into our core travel platform, rather than relying on fragmented third party integrations. The acquisitions of Vision-Box in 2024 and WCC HERMES border control solution in 2025 were important milestones in that journey. The IPS acquisition is the next and most transformative step.
IPS brings critical mass, depth, and technological leadership to some of the most important identity touch points in the traveler journey. Together, this reinforces our ambition to become an orchestrator of the travel ecosystem around trusted digital identity. Trust digital identity. Let me highlight this through four key dimensions. First, technology leadership and journey coverage, enhancing and complementing our existing technology. IPS is a global leader in biometric technologies, consistently ranking high in independent valuations, such as the American National Institute of Standards and Technology. By acquiring IPS, we significantly strengthen our coverage of the border control segment while extending identity use cases across the end-to-end journey. Just as importantly, we add best in class face, iris, and fingerprint technologies to our portfolio, giving us extensive modality breadth and performance across travel environments.
Second, strategic customers and geographic expansion, expanding our presence commercially and regionally, adding new travel use cases. IPS brings a highly diversified and strategically important customer base into our footprint. This includes a strong presence in the U.S., one of the most critical markets for aviation, borders, and government technology, as well as exposure to adjacent travel verticals such as rail, land, and sea borders. This meaningfully broadens both our market access and our ecosystem reach. Third, new growth opportunities across the travel ecosystem. The combination of IPS' biometric expertise with our deep travel and platform capabilities create a powerful foundation for growth well beyond today's use cases. We see biometric identity rapidly expanding into new travel touch points, such as hotel, car rental, check-in, and mobility hubs. With our joint capabilities, our Amadeus will be uniquely positioned to bring secure, scalable identity orchestration to these markets.
Finally, extension into new adjacent customer segments. Beyond passenger processing, IPS also extends our role into adjacent complementary and regulated environments such as access control and government-grade biometric identification and data solutions where trusted identity is critical. This would deepen our capability in secure identity and naturally extend the breadth and reach of our offerings. These expansions ensures that our biometric and digital identity offering remains relevant for the customer segments that value it most. IPS accelerates our strategy on multiple fronts. Stronger technology, broader journey coverage, deeper customer relationships, and expand growth optionality, ensuring that our ambition of orchestrating the travel ecosystem remains at our core. With this, I now hand over to Carol for a financial review of the transaction.
Thank you, Decius. Hello, everyone. Let's turn to slide 13. Firstly, I echo what both Decius and Luis have said. We are excited about this potential opportunity, this potential acquisition and the opportunities it brings Amadeus. It is a complementary acquisition that delivers on our growth ambition and long-term commitment to biometrics as part of our broader platform strategy. It increases the breadth and scale of our offerings and makes us more relevant in one of the most transformative technologies alongside AI for delivering fast, convenient, and secure end-to-end traveler journeys. The IPS transaction is a compelling business case with enhanced shareholder returns. At a purchase price of EUR 1.2 billion, we believe it is a fair valuation for a high quality asset representing 9.8x FY 2026 EBITDA multiple.
We have agreed to an earn-out structure of up to an additional EUR 150 million. There is also an attractive opportunity to produce revenue and cost synergies not reflected in the economics I have just mentioned. IPS is complementary to Vision-Box, which was acquired in 2024, as Decius has said. Integration planning will identify potential product alignment, operational efficiencies and corporate integration initiatives which will produce cost synergies that we estimate in the range of EUR 50 million annually in the midterm. Not fully quantified yet, we see high synergies on the revenue side. Decius was saying, under our ownership, we expect to generate benefits from the combination of Amadeus and IPS by joining IPS' technology with our touch points across the traveler journey.
IPS' best in class technology will enhance our offering, open cross-sell opportunities of IPS solutions to Amadeus customer base and the possibility for Amadeus to further expand biometrics and digital identity into travel adjacencies. We expect IPS to deliver midterm high single-digit revenue growth with expanding operating margins, and the transaction will be immediately EPS accretive to Amadeus. The long term contractual relationships coupled with the high win rate and renewal rates and a significant order backlog gives us confidence in underpinning a robust and predictable business profile. Regarding IPS' contribution to our organic outlook, which we announced in February this year. As I have just mentioned, we expect IPS to deliver revenue growth at a high single-digit pace into the midterm.
This is pre synergies and it is in line with our organic midterm revenue outlook, growth outlook for Amadeus, supporting our growth ambitions and maintaining our midterm guidance. IPS' EBIT margin is lower than Amadeus' EBIT margin. When we consolidate IPS in 2027, we will experience a one-time EBIT margin dilution. However, we expect IPS EBIT to grow faster than its revenues, delivering EBIT margin expansion annually and supporting the consolidated group positive EBIT margin evolution in the following years. We expect that with this acquisition we will be accretive to our adjusted diluted EPS growth, organic outlook and its free cash flow generation is consistent with our organic growth outlook. Overall, IPS is a strong cultural fit with a talented management and employee base. We are confident that this is a disciplined use of capital that will result in the delivery of enhanced shareholder value.
On slide 14, talking about the debt financing arrangements. The IPS transaction will be fully financed through a combination of existing cash and debt facilities. Our year-end 2025 leverage pro forma for this acquisition would be 1.3x net debt to EBITDA. The cash generation capabilities of both companies give us confidence that we would rapidly deleverage following completion. With this, I'll hand back to you, Luis.
Thanks, Carol. To finish, let me describe the expected transaction timeline we are working towards. Amadeus has signed a pre-agreement to acquire IPS with the seller in the form of a put agreement while we await IPS workers council opinion. This is standard practice when acquiring French companies. We expect to go through this process over the coming weeks and then proceed to sign the share purchase agreement. Following signing, the transaction will be subject to a comprehensive regulatory review process. This will include foreign investment approvals in the United States, non-U.S. foreign investment reviews and applicable antitrust clearances, as it is customary for a transaction of this nature. Given the scope of these processes, we expect completion in mid-2027 and we will continue to keep the market updated on any key developments.
With this, we have finished the presentation and will now open for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. Should you wish to cancel your request, please press start followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please mute it before pressing any key. Your first question comes from the line of George Webb from Morgan Stanley.
Yeah, hi, Luis, Decius , and Carol. Congratulations on the deal. I've got a few questions if I can. Firstly, just on the border and travel side of the IPS portfolio, could you just lay out in a bit more detail where you see IPS sitting alongside the portfolio you already had from the likes of Vision-Box from a technology perspective? Whether this fill in on that piece a bit more strongly than what you already had. Secondly, just as you look to build on where IPS has reached and digging a bit more into some of the areas you've laid out, what are the kind of top immediate priorities with regards to IPS once the deal closes?
Where are the kind of areas you think you're looking at where you can accelerate the business? Just lastly, clearly IPS brings pretty significant scale exposure outside of the travel domain around those law enforcement and access control areas you flagged. Sounds like those are still strategically important to you, even if they're slightly more adjacent than they are core to where Amadeus has historically been. How do you think about the investment you maybe continue to make into those areas and the strategic importance? Thank you.
Okay. All right, let's just start. Let's just start with the, let's say, areas in common and the differences that we have between what was Vision-Box and what we have now with IPS. Essentially, IPS has trusted traveler programs. It adds other types of borders. We're talking about land and sea instead of just air that we have with Vision-Box. We're talking about complementary in terms of geographies, because Vision-Box was very much focused on Europe and Middle East, and we are talking now about bringing U.S. and Asia-Pacific. I think that all in all, it creates, let's say, a true, full global business, and we believe that IPS then can benefit on our side from manufacturing capabilities, from the fact that we are servicing many customers together.
It means that we can be more productive in that area. It means that both of the companies will be able to invest on the same biometric capabilities, which means we believe we will produce a superior product for our customers. I think for me, that's where differences and complementary on the border forces and travel space. As we move into the other two segments, access control is essentially a licensing of the biometric information through third parties. Essentially is a servicing, more horizontally, let's say the biometric capabilities, but not necessarily being a high touch business for us.
We feel that this is very complementary because we will continue developing the biometric capabilities, and we think we can leverage not only IPS' set of partners, but as well Amadeus set of partners in what is going to be the journey moving forward, accelerating growth. Law enforcement, as we have described, if we simply take the headline, this can be a very, very vast market. If we look at the capabilities of what this company does in law enforcement, essentially is about biometric and trusted identification. We feel that that is an interesting business for us because it leverages the capabilities that we're gonna be investing.
We count with a team that is experienced, that has had leadership in this space. We feel that with our partnerships, with our global reach, with all of the synergies that we can bring, this not only de-risk the management case, but we feel that there is an opportunity for us accelerating into this vertical. We find, based on the nature of law enforcement, long contracts, high investment, very sticky business and so on and so forth, this is very much similar to other types of sales motions that we have on the travel sector. We feel confident that we can take that business and expand it.
I might complement Decius, because I guess I've had some defense and security experience prior to joining Amadeus. I think the qualities that you mentioned, why we like this part of the business, it's a unified tech platform play. It ensures that we maintain our relevance in terms of our capabilities across biometrics. I think it enhances our value proposition across into new regulated environments. The structural market conditions of that type of industry are similar to what we're experiencing, right? They're low risk, cash generative, you know, long-term contracts, customer relationships, as you were just saying. We're excited about this. We see that that business is attractive. I agree with you on access control. It extends the travel ecosystem.
You know, beyond there, you can, you can think about, you know, stadiums and things like that. All in all, I think this is a very complementary acquisition for Amadeus whilst maintaining travel at the core.
That's really helpful. I appreciate it. If maybe just throw one last one. I mean, I guess as you think maybe longer term, and this, I suspect, is not a near-term consideration, but when you think about the product architecture where there is a bit of an overlap between Vision-Box and IPS, is there an intention longer term to converge them to a more of a single platform, or would you kind of maintain parallel solutions for different customer segments?
We can take the experience of what has been Vision-Box with Amadeus. We have launched within 12 months what is a single portfolio to customers, and I think that would be the same approach, is to say, especially, specifically in travel and borders, is for every vertical, we would like to have a single offer. I think that on law enforcement then it's a different offer, and thus, it is us learning from IPS what needs to be done and how we're going to be evolving that.
That's great. Thanks very much, and congrats again.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Irving from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, Luis, Decius, Carol. Hope all is well. Congratulations on the deal. First off, could you help me understand how the high single-digit growth algorithm fits together? Is there leverage to passenger volumes? How much is it pricing? How much is it penetration or market share from incumbent competitors? Maybe within that, what share of passenger volumes are currently processed by biometric technology at airports? How is that penetration trending? Is there an annual price uplift? Second question, to what extent is this investment in part because you see IATA's One ID program accelerating? Is that not a meaningful part of your own M&A case here, that it stands really on its own merit as a deal? Thank you.
Okay. Let me start with the last one because I think it's important to do a clarification. Our strategy is to orchestrate IDs. It means that we're not gonna be prescribing IATA ID or a Google ID or a country ID. We'll be treating individuals, and we're gonna be matching whatever number of IDs they have with their biometric information. That is the value we believe that we can bring in term of orchestrating. It is like all of these initiatives are compatible with our strategy. Meaning we hope that all of these ID rollouts are successful, and we can support on orchestrating, making them available on the touch points, and helping enrolling.
Because the big thing about biometrics is making sure that we can match the face to the ID that is going to be on the phone of the person. We feel that, with our footprint, we're gonna be able to accelerate the adoption and the enrollment of biometrics across the globe. When we go into what is gonna be the growth equation, I think we have mentioned here about the backlog that this company has. This means that a lot of the growth that we expected is based on realizing contracts with the same existing customers. We do have some pricing effect on it because these are long-term contracts that have adjustments in terms of price. We have discussed that.
The fact that we see some overlaps within the product structure, we believe they're gonna be able to grow, but not necessarily having to grow cost and investment at the same pace as revenue. Thus, creating the expansion. It is like I think these are the three main hypothesis. We leave a little bit on the open for the future, which is we do see a potential upside on selling more IPS portfolio within Amadeus customers and vice versa.
We do feel that we can look into further synergies in terms of cost, but these remain as upsides as well as what is going to be these future use cases once we have the full end-to-end chain, and what we're going to be able to deliver in terms of innovation, once we have the biometrics, not only within the airflow, let's say this way, but going into overall travel flows.
Yeah. To complement that, I think the structural conditions of the market, you know, with the addressable market also indicate growth and running into that space and filling that in. I think the combination of the Amadeus customer relationships, proven track record, brand, market trust, coupled with the talented individuals and the technological prowess of IPS also gives us very good confidence and ability to achieve the revenue growth here. As Decius' last point, revenue synergies, and I think I mentioned this as well. Revenue synergies, we believe exist, we have not quantified that yet. We do think that there's an opportunity to further enhance on there. We are confident in the delivery of the high single-digit revenue growth for this asset.
Just to maybe follow up quickly. There's no explicit, the industry-wide penetration growth assumption for biometrics that forms part of that would come on top, if I'm understanding your answer correctly?
I think what Carol has mentioned is we believe that penetration will continue to expand, and that is part of the acceleration that we'll see because of the backlog, as I was mentioning, of orders. It is like the intention of the current customers that will continue investing and replacing, let's say, old infrastructure by new infrastructure with biometric capabilities.
Yeah. If you believe the addressable market growth as we do, you know, just fulfilling that addressable market without increasing market share gets you to high single- digits. Of course, we've had a track record of improving market share in the, in the verticals that we serve. I think there is structural room within the market conditions to enable us to deliver high single- digit growth.
Clear. Okay. Thank you both.
Your next question comes from the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays.
Great. Thank you for taking my question. Hi, Luis. Hi, Decius and Carol. Congrats on the deal. I just wonder, maybe start by diving a bit deeper into your ambition to become an orchestrator of the travel ecosystem here. Would be particularly interested in your views where covering the complete travel process end to end is really driving network effects and becomes really strategic rather than just covers individual kind of use cases, and how IPS really fits into that. It would be also great if you could speak a bit about the EBIT margin profile of the business. The company has been in private equity ownership for a while, so how much has the margin been optimized already? What would you consider a mature margin profile for the business? Thank you.
Okay. Let's start a bit with the, with the strategic part, and then Carol follows on on the, on the margin question. On the, on the strategic side, we believe that the network effects come from the if we are able to provide convenience to travelers and that we're gonna be able to tie all of these touch points, we become an interesting execution layer.
Because for all of what is going to be the strategies and the preferences of travelers. Essentially is this is a fragmented world. On a typical trip, you are talking about two airports that are gonna be involved, multiple airlines, different ground transportation. It is like who can be the player that can unify and take friction across all of these touch points. We believe that then we create a benefit that as Amadeus grows, more touch points are gonna be available for travelers and more possibility of us removing friction.
It creates this flying wheel and positive spin, let's call it this way, on the adoption of biometric technologies and a preference from providers in counting on our technology to provide convenience to travelers in airports, airlines, lounges, trusted traveler programs, so on and so forth.
On the EBIT margin profile, I guess you don't want to take that one, Luis.
Yeah, no.
On the EBIT margin profile, just to remind, we already have a business within our portfolio that performs this way. It's our airport ops business that sits within the airline IT business. It is true that this type of business is structurally lower in terms of margin, EBIT margin, than the Amadeus Group. We know that. What we can see is that the IPS asset has been performing profitably better than our current airport ops business. Again, we're quite encouraged by that. This asset has been under the ownership of private equity and has been as a result of a carve-out.
I guess there are still some synergies that we think we can leverage off as we've committed EUR 50 million cost synergies within the midterm, predominantly on manufacturing and procurement, that we think that we could materialize. I've also mentioned that we're expecting that EBIT will outgrow the revenue. We're expecting that there is going to be margin expansion similar to our organic outlook at the Amadeus level. In short, it is a structurally lower EBIT profile, but we feel confident that we can both drive out the cost synergies, which will be in addition to that, and also continue to expand EBIT margin of this asset under our ownership.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael-
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From UBS. Please go ahead.
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Michael Briest from UBS, please go ahead.
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I mean, Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry, there was some problem with the audio there. Yeah, just a couple sort of connected questions from me.
Yeah.
I think Fitch downgraded the debt outlook for the group in November last year, and I appreciate there's more parts to the business than what you're buying. They mentioned the DOGE headwinds from procurement. Can you say something about revenue growth in 2025? As we look out to next year, do you think the growth will be sort of high single- digit for the next two years? We should be looking at revenues approaching EUR 850 million when you buy the business. Carol, I mean, are you taking on any of their debts? Because I assume they're paying quite a high interest rate. Will there be any stranded costs that come across because it's part of a group or transfer pricing from them?
Can you say something about the means by which they achieve their earn-out? Luis, just one on the slide there you showed of the many steps in a traveler's journey. Do you have any ambition in things like hotel check-in, biometric onboard payments, logging in or identification for OTAs? Because they were part of the journey. Thank you.
Let me start, even if Decius' covering detail. Again, I mean, we feel biometrics is going to extend in general, and in travel, this is a reality. Digital identity is becoming, as you know, something that people are talking about that is a must in the way it will operate. Therefore, yes, we are not just thinking about in general, even when we acquire Vision-Box in the specific use cases that we have a lot, but we are convinced it will extend to other parts of the traveler journey because it makes a lot of sense that the combination of digital identity, our capability to orchestrate and our biometrics capabilities should give us a way forward where we expect to really bring additional revenues to the company.
Part of that is not part of the business case that we are managing today. Yes, there is, clearly, the trend and the idea that this can be played in other segments such as the one that you mentioned, hotels or other parts of the traveler journey.
Okay. Then I would take the historical performance and the earn-out debt questions. It is true in late 2024, some parts of this asset did experience some commercial headwinds. An example of that was the TSA offering, where it lost its monopolistic position and was introduced to competition. It also is true that this company has been suffering from some, let's call it headwinds as associated with, you know, preparing this asset for sale. There's been some management changes and things like that. The performance to date has been a little less than what we are expecting and predicting moving forward. However, having said that, I go back to what we were saying previously, that we are buying for the future, not for the past.
We feel that there is a structural condition, the combination of our brand, market trust, our relationships, the technical capabilities of the asset, will all contribute to the high single-digit revenue growth that we have committed and Decius has shared previously. In terms of the earn-out structure, we have introduced a two-tiered earn-out structure. There is a revenue threshold and then an EBITDA metric on top. This is incremental to the business case and the base case and any benefit on earn-out is shared between both Amadeus and IPS. We feel that with that earn-out structure, we are also aligning the two intentions of both parties, particularly through this close period, around protection of revenue and also delivery of profitability.
Your final question on debt, this is an all cash transaction. We will not inherit any debt. We will take this asset debt-free when we complete in mid 2020.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Nooshin Nejati from Deutsche Bank.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the deal. I'm wondering about the capital-intensive nature of some of IPS' offerings, hardware and borders and travel and the R&D spend of EUR 70 million. What is the expected capital expenditure profile for the combined entity post-acquisition? How might this affect the pace of deleveraging or future dividend policy? Thank you.
Okay. I think they're both financial questions, so I'll read those again. In terms of capital intensity, this asset is less capital intense than we are at Amadeus. I think in the presentation we mentioned EUR 70 million R&D, and it has about a similar relationship or ratio than what we have at Amadeus. 50% runs through the P&L and 50% runs through CapEx, more or less, broad terms. That would equate to a 5%-6% CapEx on revenue profile. There is a hardware component to this asset, 20%. It's largely a software play, but a less capital intensive than what we are, we are today. The question on dividend policy. I mean, we are expecting that we maintain the Amadeus dividend policy.
I think it's a very attractive dividend policy of 40%-50% of a distribution through to shareholders, of which in FY 2025 we announced 50% dividend payout. We don't feel that this asset or this acquisition will cause to question our dividend policy.
Thank you. Very clear.
Your next question comes from the line of Toby Ogg from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Hi. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to just come back on that on that 2024 dynamic, where there were commercial headwinds linked to the TSA offering and the sort of losing of that monopolistic position. Could you just expand on that a little bit more just in terms of what the drivers were that led to that? Then perhaps just expand on, you know, who really are the key competitive players in the market that IPS is serving. Just what differentiates IPS' offering relative to those players, and just how you see the competitive intensity evolving going forward. Thank you.
Okay. Let's start with travels and borders as we're discussing about the TSA contract. Majority of the revenues around the borders are related to airports or border forces themselves in long-term type of contracts. It is like we participate in bids. Typically, competitors in there, we have SITA, ourselves, Collins, Thales. It is like, it's a competitive market where we are competing for service and for features. The fact that we are with make a combined entity, we believe that we're gonna be coming out of this process with a value proposition that is gonna be richer, both in terms of features as well, in terms of services, and coverage, geographically.
That's, I think that's what we have already tried to illustrate. Thus, we believe that today, we're having the performance of growing this business, in fact, above what is the average of Amadeus. It is like we feel that by the combined entity, we're gonna be able to keep the revenue growth on the travel and border element with the performance that we're having today, but the fact that we're gonna improve it moving forward. No. Access control, the profile of the growth it is strong. It should continue to be strong because it is pulled by the trend, meaning more and more companies are moving into trusted identity, biometrics, and so on and so forth.
The fact that travel is a leading investor in biometrics and the fact that this is government-grade allows simply to be a component that can be used horizontally. It's like we feel that there we are on the trend, it will continue. I think that the question mark is always around the law enforcement, that within our plans will have a lower growth than what these other two segments that we have represented. It's like we feel that that's where we're hedging our bets, even though as we discussed, trends regarding defense and the digitalization of governments in general leads us to believe that with the proper investments and those trends materializing, that that can be another vertical that we can accelerate.
That's a bit the hypothesis that we have on the, on the revenue side.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Ted Wang from Exodus Point. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me? Hello?
Hello.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, we hear you. Go ahead, please.
Oh, great. Thank you so much for taking the question. I'm just curious on the financing side, you have put on a chart of pro forma leverage calculation. I'm just wondering, is that a reaffirmation of your full- year guide? Second of all, I have a question on just in terms of the customer overlap. Do you have any customer overlap in terms of the existing customers of IPS and your own solution? Just in terms of like any cross-sell opportunities, where do you see the most? Is it like into more the governments and authorities in Europe, or is it more related to commercial side with airlines and airports? Thank you.
Okay. Shall I take the financing leveraging, then, Decius, you can take the other one. We will come back to you on the 8th of May with our Q1 results. This transaction, just what we were trying to illustrate here, this transaction generates or adds about 0.5 x turn on our leverage position. What we were trying to do from that slide is demonstrate based on our pro forma results at December 2025, we would be if we had done the transaction then, we would be at a leverage of 1.3x , which is well between our targeted leverage range of 1x- 1.5x . We'll give you more on our guidance expectations next Friday or Friday week.
That's how you should interpret, that slide on leveraging.
Yes. If we go, let me go a little bit more in detail how typically the dynamics on a customer work on this kind of market. Airports will tend to bid and to tender terminals. It means that you may have multiple vendors or multiple terminals within an airport. Border forces typically will tender Entry/Exit Systems in parallel. You may have a biometric solution for you to enter into the country and another one for you to exit. It is like when we look into the combined footprint, we see an opportunity with presence in airports and with border forces is, if both, we are servicing the same physical location, we see the possibility of synergies.
When we are talking about cross-sell and up-sell, for any customer that we have only part of the terminals or any customer that we have only, either an Entry/Exit System, we have the opportunity of trying to consolidate that. It is like, we feel that there are these two sides. Number one, there is synergies on how we're going to service airports and border forces. Second, we believe that there is opportunity for both on expanding what we can sell to these customers, not to mention the richness of the offer. As I was saying, here we're adding iris, we're adding fingerprints, we're adding back-end systems, we're backing customization. It is like, I would say we have a much greater up-sell path that we can do for the customers.
All of these are potential that we can use in order to perform the outlook that we have mentioned.
Any further questions?
Your next question comes from the line of Nicolas David from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. First one, could you help us understand better the revenue model of IPS, that be the revenue split between what is software, hardware, and services? Within that, what is the share of recurring revenue between what would be contractually recurring or what is de facto repeat business that comes every year? Second question, sorry to come back on that, regarding the growth profile, it's clear that you are aiming for high single-digit mid-term growth. What would be the growth profile for 2026, 2027, for instance? What was the profile for 2024, 2025? Was it more mid-single-digit or even low single-digit? What are we talking about? Thank you.
I can start on that. The revenue profile of IPS, I think Decius has mentioned, 40% borders and travel, 40% law enforcement, 20% access control. Within those different segments, and we've included actually a slide in the appendix to articulate the business model around that. Some of it is implementation costs, some of it is a servicing cost. I'd refer you to the appendix for further details on that. In terms of hardware/software split, hardware represents about 20%, software services related represents 80%. Again, very similar to some things that we've been comfortable with in Amadeus. In terms of the question around repeat business, I think I'd point to the backlog. The backlog is quite healthy.
Decius mentioned EUR 2 billion covering already contracted contracts for delivery of revenue in the period 2025 to 2030. I mean, it's not linear clearly, because it's probably more weighted to the front. You can imagine it's probably about $500 million a year in the early years of revenue coverage, meaning that these contracts are already secured and inverted commas, all that is left is to execute on the, on the, one contracts. Of course, our dedicated sales teams will continue to fulfill out the revenue on new order wins. That's kind of the revenue profile that we're describing in this deal.
All right. Thank you, Carol.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call back to Luis Maroto to closing remarks.
Thank you very much for attending the call. We are very excited about this opportunity that we have shared with you, and we are looking forward to next week as we present our first quarter results. Thank you.
The conference has now ended. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect your lines.