Guys, good afternoon, everybody, and so, thanks again for being here. Why don't we keep going? We're gonna kick it off with FIS. We're really happy to have the company with us. It's a company that we've been recommending and really constructive on, you know, much cleaner story ever since the closing of the Worldpay deal in particular, and, you know, obviously quite a bit of not only accelerating growth, but very strong capital return story as well, and so really happy to have you guys with us. Thanks for joining us. We have-
We have James, the CFO, and George from IR with us. Maybe just kick it off with a little bit about how things have gone for you, James. I mean, it's been how long since you've been here now? Six months?
Six months.
Six months.
Yeah. It's like drinking from a fire hose. So I probably should've studied more about the impending divestiture of Worldpay. So I went straight into divestiture accounting. Capital allocation was top of mind.
You started, what, four months before the actual closing, or...?
Yeah, four months before closing.
That's really something.
For anyone who's gone through Disc Ops accounting, it's pretty complicated. But I straight away highlighted that there was a lot of misperception in the market. Goals were given out without full information, so most of the third quarter call was focused on clarifying the noise that was out there. Capital allocation, because, you know, the original commitment was to return $2.5 billion. Now that's at $4 billion-
Yeah
... which has required really getting into the nuts and bolts of the transaction, what's free cash flow afterwards? And I did spend a fair amount of time on investor communication. I think there was too much noise for too long a period.
Yep.
I think Q3 kinda silenced the noise and limited the, call it, confusion in the market. Then Q4 was, "Okay, we're returning to growth." The message is much cleaner, and it's an accelerating growth story going forward.
Right.
But it has been like drinking from a fire hose because it's a complex company as well, and that's what we'll do on Investor Day. We effectively have, you know, you can simplify it, three divisions in each of the two segments-
Yeah
... but there's almost 20 different businesses in each segment-
What actually-
across the entire market.
What actually attracted you to the company, and what are you excited about?
It was actually, the three Ps. I think I said it in some forum before. It was passion, people, and potential. The passion I got from Stephanie on the first call, and I thought it was just she was trying to convince me-
Yeah
... but she's very passionate every day-
She is, yeah.
-and very focused on action, and actually, I do appreciate that. You can feel the sheer momentum in the company all the time, every day. Then the people I met, was this a team I could work with, and will they get the job done? And then finally, potential was incredible assets, you know, global presence, marquee clients. They had all the ingredients, but somehow it wasn't coming together.
Right.
Well, my personal hypothesis was, if we can turn the ship and the transformation, the share price upside is tremendous.
Right. We think so, too.
We've seen that.
Yeah.
I think I joined at $55. Now it's $68.
Yeah.
So we've seen clarity come into the story, momentum come into the story.
Yeah.
You know, I didn't want to join a company that wasn't gonna deliver positive momentum in a fairly short period of time.
Makes sense.
So.
Look, we've always said FIS is... What we thought attractive about FIS was an opportunity to have, you know, consistent, recurring revenue, kind of a low-beta story, right?
Yeah.
With reliability and, good capital return, and that's honestly what I think now, especially without Worldpay in the core, is what we can get back to, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, maybe I'll just start off with guidance. I mean, you just reported not too long ago, and so, you know, if we get before getting into all the specifics, if you just remind the audience of the key financial expectations heading into the year, just to kind of underscore that, that profile that we just talked about.
Yeah. You know, the simple version is accelerating revenue, return to EBITDA margin, and then solid EPS.
Right.
We did say on the call that it will be solid and accelerating over time. We did emphasize free cash flow conversion.
Yep.
So if you get into the specifics, you know, the company is essentially on adjusted revenue growth, going from 3% to 4%-4.5%.
Mm-hmm.
We have good line of sight to this, and margins going from a decline in 2023 of 40 basis points to +20, +40. + 20 to 40 basis points, absorbing a significant dyssynergy from the Worldpay transaction, and it's big. It's $250 million, call it 250 basis points of dyssynergy. And then finally, you know, when you do Disc Ops, you're reporting against a very low base, so the reported growth is 38%-40%.
Right.
We normalized it for transparency at 5%-7%, but it still includes dyssynergies of high single digit. So the numbers are, and, and that's what I want to emphasize, it's a return, an acceleration or a return to positive numbers across the entire income statement. And even for Q1, the, the first quarter outlook is slower on the revenue line, much faster and more aggressive on the EBITDA m- line, and EPS is growing at a similar pace to the-
EBITDA, yeah.
It's not a show-me-later-in-the-year story. Revenue is building, but the EBITDA margins are actually front-end loaded in the first half.
Okay, and maybe just remind us. You know, when you think about your segment growth rates-
Yeah
... why are we gonna see that acceleration as the year progresses for, you know, really across the business? And I think for-
Yeah
... capital markets, you talked about it being more stable, right, as the year-
Yeah, and I think capital markets, we go through it during Investor Day. It's an incredible business in that it's got a tailwind of 5%-6%. The total addressable market is roughly growing 5%-6%... and the banking, I don't have the exact numbers with me, we're still working on them, is like 3% kind of number. So if you take-
In terms of the underlying market growth?
The underlying market growth that we're operating in.
Right.
So first of all, we have, before you leave, if you can just hold your share, you theoretically should be able to get to a 4% growth-
Mm-hmm
... right, in your natural terms. Now, you've got to do weightings all the times and-
Sure
... stuff like that, so it's more complicated. And you saw last year that if you take capital markets last year, it did a 5% growth. Out of our goal for next year, which is 6.5%-7%, you take out M&A, and it's roughly grown at 5.5%.
Mm-hmm.
We're planning on a slightly faster growth in capital markets, and you could almost say it's the same growth rate in almost every quarter.
Yeah.
So we return to stability. Banking is the one that sticks out, and the first quarter, I think it's 1%-2% growth versus 3%-3.5% on the full year. We've got two things. One is our sales performance in the second half of 2023 was extremely strong, ranked on ACV. So what new contracts were signed in the second half? And that will feed into the second half of 2024-
Okay
... because the commercialization has a time lag on it. So that's the first thing. The second half is stronger than the first half, and then you probably remember, the first quarter of 2023 was very strong for banking because of this, the banking crisis or March Madness, as they call it. We got an uplift that is basically holding back last year, that's holding back the result-
Yeah
... on the first quarter. So I think the one question we did get from a lot of analysts: Well, how comfortable are you in the build of banking during the year? And we're—we have incredible visibility-
That's good
... on the rest of the year.
Even on the business that you booked, turning into revenue as the year progresses?
Yeah.
You feel highly confident on that?
We feel pretty confident on all of that. Bear in mind that a little bit, the issue last year was lapping a lot of non-recurring revenue and licenses that weren't repeating, and we're cycling through this.
Right.
It's more pronounced in the first half, less pronounced in the second. So we actually know that we have less headwinds to lap in the non-recurring and the professional services, so we have good visibility on that as well.
Yeah, I mean, and you do, just quickly, you do have some interesting compares on capital markets, but you're still calling for stability, right, in terms of growth?
Yeah.
Is that just, again, seeing the pipeline of what you have already booked?
Yeah, it is, it is in the pipeline. You know, I think as we get into Investor Day, there's a lot of questions out with investors. We did an investor survey, actually, and they said they don't quite understand the capital markets business. It's incredibly predictable. It's about, you know, a recurring somewhere in the 6%-7% range is achievable over a multi-year period, and we're likely to be able to pick up acquisitions that are highly accretive as well. So, you know, we want to bring it to life on Investor Day, the incredible asset that's in there, and it's growing at a pretty rapid clip.
Okay. That's great to see. I mean, we're looking forward to hearing more about that 'cause it's been a segment that I don't think is as well-
Yeah, it's a complex segment.
... understood as it should be.
We have best-in-class products that we sell to both sophisticated large financial institutions on everything they need, and now we're getting into insurance companies. We sell them ESG products. We sell them risk management products. We have very sophisticated treasury products, and you can think about as banking is changing and treasury liquidity is more important-
Yeah
... treasury is at the forefront, right?
Right.
ESG is at the forefront.
Not only FI, it's just broadly, right?
We're selling across broader,
End markets. Yeah.
... end markets.
Yeah.
Lending business, we have lending software that I think most of the 60% of the large car companies use it. So there's a lot of these markets we need to bring to life that we have very strong positions with superior products in each of the categories.
Just to be clear, the macro assumptions you're including in your guidance, is it for stability, or just give us a little more color on it?
It's mostly stability.
Okay.
Yeah. I think we see a little bit. We had a very strong fourth quarter in the payments business. We see that moderating a little bit because it was very, very strong, but we've planned basically for continuation of environment in 2024 versus 2023.
Okay. Can you also expand? There's been just some confusion over all the moving parts on dyssynergies in the numbers a little bit.
Yeah.
Just because it was, you know, it was raised a little bit in terms of where it was actually geographically moved a little bit also, right? In terms of what we knew before.
Yeah. We kind of made it a bit confusing. There's two types of dyssynergy. One is. It's all in banking, first of all.
Right.
That was about $50 million or roughly-
50 in banking. 50-
50 in banking. And then there were non-strategic businesses that are held in corporate, and it was roughly another 50 there, right? They're less profitable, the banking more profitable. So in reality, the adjusted growth rate is held back by about 50 basis points-
Right
... because of dyssynergies. They might build a little bit going forward. It's just in terms of... So, an example of a dyssynergy is, we may now have to give Worldpay a profit share of something that we're going to market together-
Right
...on, and previously it was all booked in U.S.
That makes sense.
So they'll get an upside. The downside is on our side, right? The whole total pie doesn't change, but we're sharing some of the revenue proceeds-
Right
... as we go to market together.
But in your outlook, you included that, and you included M&A.
It's in-
It's kind of a wash, right?
We included M&A.
Almost so.
There's a net 20 basis points-
Right
... benefit between the two.
Right.
Yeah.
It's pretty much a wash.
It's a wash.
Okay. All right, and then lastly, just regarding more normalized EPS growth, just a lot of moving parts, whether it's debt paydown or dyssynergies again or Future Forward savings... you know, I think it'd be great to just get another sense from you guys on what your view of normalized EPS growth looks like.
Well, then I'd be giving you guidance, kind of, but we did say this year is five to seven, and the future will be higher than that.
Right.
Now, you're gonna have to wait till Investor Day.
Okay.
You know, it'll be a ... You can work it out pretty quickly on our, if our long-term revenue guide is 3%-5%, and it's accelerating over time, you can figure out in 2025 what kind of revenue growth you could be expecting.
Right.
We committed to expanding margins, and if it's 20-40 basis points in 2024, it's probably higher than that going forward. Not materially higher, but slightly higher-
Right.
because you're cycling through your dyssynergies.
Right.
Right? And then you've got your capital allocation, where we've said all excess capital goes to share repurchase, and we're gonna hold the debt to EBITDA flat at 2.8 x.
Right, so you could have some capacity growth.
All of this we've said publicly on prior occasions.
Yeah, yeah.
So you can actually plug it in, and you get to a fairly attractive-
Yeah
... EPS.
Yeah, we get to a double digit.
And then we've-
Well, not a double.
The one thing we want to point out, though, is our, our dividend is quite different than our peers. So the dividend yield is over 2 percentage points, 2%, and some of our peers don't pay a dividend, and it's higher than the S&P 500. So our TSR comparative versus peers it does close some of the gaps.
Okay. Yeah, so listen, I mean, it sounds like everything you're saying is you see that... You see the actual pipeline turning into revenues or the backlog-
We do.
turning into revenues.
Yeah, yeah.
You have confidence in the, you know, guidance, given what you've already booked, right?
Yeah.
not to mention the nuances on timing factors and-
We have good control on the expenses.
Right, and we'll learn more.
And rising control. Yeah.
Your Investor Day is early May, so-
May seventh.
... we'll learn more about it.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Well, I think the way to think about it as well is, Future Forward has become a program on-
Mm-hmm
... how do you operate the company better? And the deeper we get into day-to-day operations, the more cost opportunities we see. So-
Okay.
The one thing I would say, you said, what happens going forward? You have less dyssynergies. They almost go-
Right.
There's no incremental dyssynergy in 2025.
True, on a year-over-year basis.
You probably won't get the same level of Future Forward savings, but you're still gonna get some.
Right. So there's a net positive on margins.
This underpins... Yeah-
Yeah
... it underpins margins for at least another three years, I'm guessing, maybe more.
That's great to hear.
Yeah.
All right, well, let's go into the underlying demand and the drivers of the business, right? I mean, again, it's been an area that you-- I think FIS has pivoted a little bit in the last few years, maybe four or five years, right? Whether it's large, largest of FIs to medium-size, and I think you're, you know, you're more focused on kind of the core of what FIS was, right? Regional banks, mid-size, right?
Yeah.
It's, it's really offering that plus point solutions. Where, what are you seeing in the demand environment right now that's giving you conviction?
Well, I think it's we have incredible strength because we're strongest in the LFIs, and it actually creates favorable mix over time.
Yep.
Because think about the concentration and the consolidation that's going on in banking. It gives us a tailwind. Because we're bigger in the consolidating banks, we're not losing in the smaller ones as the consolidation becomes stronger. Demand out there is, capital markets is always pretty strong. It's, as I said, we've a TAM tailwind in the 5%-6% range. In banking, we do see some slowdown in discretionary spend. So putting in core systems may be a bit slower, but we're seeing rising demand and strong demand across 3 vectors. You've got digital, which is pretty obvious.
Yep.
You've got regulatory and compliance. The world is just way more complex. And then the, the third one is payments, because the banks, as they want to attract more deposits, they actually have to attract, as well, commercial customers, and with those commercial customers, they all need ACH FedNow, a complete suite of how do you interact in the global financial system? Our advantage is we can offer them all.
Mm.
So we have a wide offering, and that's playing to our favor. So right now, you asked the question before, what's the macro assumption is? For us, we're not seeing a massive slowdown. We're seeing consistency, but it's driven by these more attractive segments. Yeah.
Do you have what you need to execute on that demand, in terms of digital banking offerings or the payment side or other assets?
Yeah, I think in digital, it depends. I think what the larger financial banks are offering is probably best in market, and that's coming from somebody who's not qualified to say it. I think on the one-to-many, we're a little weaker, but we're making very significant investments right now, really big ones. So I'd hold on for Investor Day. But we have a weakness maybe in one-to-many. We've closed that pretty quickly and a huge strength in for big banks.
Okay.
Really big banks, that the sophisticated ones, we serve them really, really well. Do you want to add something, if you want, George, by any means?
I would also just maybe add to that, Darrin. We do see a lot more opportunity in a place like payments, right? I think we can punch it up a higher weight class there.
Right.
Yeah.
What kind of examples, George, that you guys are doing in that?
Certainly, what we're doing, you know, debit processing-
Yeah
... I think there's a lot more opportunity around that. But even more bluntly, around issuer processing, B2B, a lot of these sort of alternative payment types or mediums, I should say. I think there's a long runway there, and I think, again, there's more we can do there to monetize it.
Okay.
The company a little bit lost its focus. Just going back to one of your earlier questions-
Yeah
... when they bought Worldpay, there was, I think, maybe less attention on banking and too much attention on Worldpay, not enough attention on the payments business that FIS still has, which is revenue in the billions.... right? And so what we're left with is we have an incredible opportunity going forward, is to spend more time on the core banking business.
Yep, makes sense.
which includes a big payments business, which is growing faster than the average TAM. That TAM is probably growing at 5 versus core banking, which is two.
Sure.
Right? Then the second thing is the margins in payments are far higher than the average margin of the company. So I think payments will be more of a focus going forward. So we're gonna play harder the mix of the portfolio going forward and the cross-sell across the portfolio.
How about some of the M&A in the sector? I mean, obviously-
Mm
... if Capital One and Discover go through, that's, you know, a notable transaction that, and I, I think-
Yeah
... if I remember correctly, you guys do a lot of work with them, right?
Yeah, we do a lot of work with both of them. So, we like the combination. We think it'll be really good for both of them, and we think we're here to help them, obviously. But I think we'll actually do well out of it because we're on both sides of the transaction.
Okay.
Yeah.
How could we think about, just quickly, I mean, a little more financial question, the, you know, dynamics around and the magnitude of reacceleration in the non-recurring piece of the segment? You know, it's a little bit tough to model, obviously.
Yeah, it is.
It always makes tough comps, but you know, just give us a little advice on how to think about it.
Yeah, I think, if I was—I'll do total company. I think the total company recurring revenue will outpace. We've said this publicly-
Yeah
... the total revenue growth, and it'll definitely be flat to potentially 100 basis points better. So what that implies that the combination of non-recurring plus professional services, which declined 6.5% in 2023-
Yeah
... as a combined group, that will probably go closer to flattish.
Okay.
Right? So that's what I mean. It doesn't make the plan necessarily easy, but you see the magnitude of the headwind that was in 2023 goes to... It's basically flat for the combined, those non-recurring and professional services.
Could we take it a step back on capital markets again now?
Yeah.
Just 'cause, again, I mean, banking, we kind of talked about.
Yeah.
You have demand there, and I know that you talked, you know, pretty high conviction in the acceleration as the year progresses. But again, capital markets is growing at a rate that I know a few years back we wouldn't have expected, right?
Yeah.
Especially after, I mean, the SunGard deal, a lot, there was a lot of pushback on that back in the day. And so what is going so well for that business? Maybe a little more detail if you can.
Yeah, I think it is. There was... You know, but if you cycle back three years ago, it wasn't doing that well.
Mm-hmm.
There was a huge investment in getting everything cloud native, improving the quality of the product.
Yep.
The execution within the business, there were leadership changes, and what they're ready for now is the sustainability of the, call it, the faster revenue growth is coming from... They started with a TAM, and they started launching more products. They expanded the total addressable market, and then secondly, they expanded the customers they're going to, right? So if you take lending, we served all the car manufacturers. We save,
Insurance.
We serve, sorry?
Insurance companies.
Insurance companies. So I think the split is something like 67% traditional financial institutions and the rest-
Wow!
... one third is coming from corporates or insurance companies.
Across the segment, or?
Across the segment.
That's a lot more than I realized.
And that mix has changed significantly.
That's great.
Our treasury systems are in a lot of big corporates. You know, you think about... I'll give you an example, a good one, Cargill. So they're very sophisticated. They do trading management on commodities, Forex-
Sure
... everything. They need the most sophisticated treasury systems, Forex hedging systems, commodity systems, ESG. Can you think of... And we have a product in each of the segments that's either a number 1 or number 2 product.
Right. That's really something.
And that's, that's what's underpinned their growth. It's basically you capture a customer, and you give them successfully, successively more products into each one.
I mean, who else?
Right
... is out there doing this? I mean, I know obviously you have some capital market software providers, a couple, but I don't know.
There's nobody that offers the breadth in capital markets. Actually, what we struggle with is how you guys should value the company.
Mm-hmm.
And the sum of the parts is almost impossible because we can't find direct-
Right
... competitors, not even for capital markets. Our product offering is much wider.
It's very diverse-
Right
... yeah.
Like in, what is it? Kyriba or something is in treasury, for example, but it's somebody else in leasing. It's Alfa Systems, right?
Right.
It's a different competitor in most of the segments.
Yeah.
I think it's, I think what people don't appreciate is the global nature of the business. These large financial institutions have asset management companies all around the globe. We have a global presence-
So it sounds like-
... in capital markets
... I mean, not to put words in your mouth for the investor day, but it sounds like this is a solidly mid-single-digit plus growth rate for some time. I mean, it doesn't seem like-
It is, yeah, yeah. It's, we've good line of sight to it. The TAM is behind us. We will do more acquisitions to fortify the portfolio and continue to move into different client bases.
Are there still cross-sell opportunities between banking and cap markets or?
Well, actually, what we're playing around with even more now. We almost need to finish the cross-sell opportunities within the two businesses first, because what capital markets is doing is they gain a client like Cargill with treasury, and then they go on to Forex management, then they go into ESG, then they go into this. So the number of products per customer is expanding, and then a lot of the big asset managers have... That people that need asset management-
Sure
... and, security software, they're also in the banking segment, so it opens the doors. I think that's the big advantage the company has. We can get into Citibank, J.P. Morgan, any of the four CBs, the big banks... if you're a one-shot wonder, and you've got one product you're selling, you can't get into the same company-
Right.
to sell it.
Maybe we shift to margins for a moment. I mean, in the interest of time, you know, you guys has, have historically been, you know, a steady recurring revenue story, and margins-
Yeah
-have been a big expansion over the years. You're talking about 20-40 basis points, and you just alluded to how it could be more than that after the 2024 year. Maybe just talk about the components of it for a moment and, you know, what's driving that.
Yeah, it's-
Future Forward savings is obviously a piece of it, but anything else you can talk about in terms of operating leverage?
Yeah, and Future Forward is a little exaggerated in 2024 because we're, it's $280 million of OpEx savings, and we have to drive it hard to start-
Yeah
... offsetting the dyssynergy impact. So that will tail off a bit, but it's the number one contributor to margin expansion.
For this year, yeah.
Right? I think if you look at, segment mix, within Capital Markets, because it's moving from, I think the recurring revenue is 72%, and maybe we want to get it closer to 80% over time. Every time you shift from a pure license deal to recurring revenue, your margin goes down.
Yeah.
So it's got a natural headwind. That being said, capital markets has a 50% margin. Not too many businesses out there with a 50% EBITDA, and none of the competitors have one. So our goal there is preserve the margin by driving OpEx leverage and Future Forward, or maybe slight increases over time. The banking margin has a natural tailwind, at least in the short term. The more payments and money management we sell relative to... What, what's a good example? We have a wealth and retirement business, right-
Yeah
... which is lower margin, and the margin delta is so great, that drives a favorable margin mix-
Right, the mix
... within banking.
Yeah.
But it's like, I don't know, is it 20 basis points, 30? It depends on the year and the differential growth between the segments.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's great. I mean, so it sounds like there's conviction and again, that being sustainable.
Yeah, exactly.
Why don't we shift to the capital return story, which is obviously why I know a lot of investors are constructive on FIS now.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, with the sale of Worldpay, FIS is dedicated to repurchasing, I think it's $4 billion of stock-
Yeah
... between the fourth quarter 2023 and the end of the year 2024, right?
Exactly.
Which is, let's call it a little more than 10% of your market value. And so, you know, when we consider that, and you combine that with the dividend for pretty strong total shareholder return-
Yeah
... you know, what are your thought processes? What's your thought process around go-forward capital return strategy? I mean, even post the use of the proceeds from the sale.
Yeah. Well, I think we've clarified it, that we're gonna be dogmatically at 2.8x.
Right.
Um-
Leverage, yeah.
Leverage. Could we flex up at times for an acquisition? Yeah, you could, but that's kind of what we're gonna target as a long-term measure. The dividend, we've been pretty clear, is 35% of the adjusted net earnings, so that means we're gonna grow it in line with EPS growth effectively. The one part we feel strongly about is M&A. We are very dogged in that we want to preserve $1 billion a year on cash flow-
Right
... of cash flow for M&A. It'll be... You know, we've done four in the last three months. Three, I guess. Well, one of them was done earlier last year. They're smaller. One was $70 million, just to give you a range. Now we're starting to look at stuff that's a little bigger. But the combined impact-
It's what category again, in terms of focus?
It's one of the prior ones actually ends up in banking. It was more a payments business.
Okay.
And then the other two were in capital markets.
Okay.
Both of them overseas, right?
In terms of what you want to do now, in terms of capabilities for M&A, anything in particular? Stand out?
It's a mix. I think the most attractive segment's capital markets because you plug in. Our deal in capital markets is, because we have global distribution and we've a door open for all, with all large banks and asset managers, if we plug in a new product that's from a small company that doesn't have the same access, our revenue synergies are massive, right? So the return on investment, we look at 25%-35% internal rate of return-
Right
... as a starting point.
Right.
I think we'll also stare quite a bit at the payments and money management business as well in banking, because it is, it has a faster growth profile. We have a great set of assets, but could we build it out more? The answer is yes.
And just-
Yeah.
We get this question from investors: I mean, the cadence of the buyback that your plans are for this year, is there any specific-
It's very aggressive because we basically wanted to get to the same return as an ASR, so we started buying in the quiet period. We had 10b5-1 programs in place. So what we'll do all year is 10b5-1 programs, and now we're actually buying discretionary in the market at the moment.
In the open market also, yeah.
But once we're in quiet period, there'll be a 10b5-1 in place.
Okay.
Right, so-
So you're really covering all bases.
What we said is, out of the $3.5 billion this year, $1 billion will be in the second half. That's what we said publicly. The rest is in the first half.
Okay.
We get within $0.02 of a full ASR for the year.
That's really something.
Yeah.
Okay.
But it's... We did, I think it was $490 million in January and February alone.
That's great. Guys, we have about three, four minutes left. Maybe we'll open it up to questions in just a moment. I mean, but James-
Yeah
... I mean, when we think about, and I ask this to a lot of my panels, but, you know, think about where we stand a year from now. I mean, what are you hoping to see for FIS in terms of-
Yeah
... you know, the results on the financial side and strategically?
... I think the results, I think there'll be better clarity among investors on the long-term growth profile, so we'll give medium-term guidance in May.
Yep.
I think the TSR should be viewed quite attractively. We're looking at a re-rating of the company. On the basis of most of the investor feedback is: Well, we don't believe necessarily... Can you get to the banking number? And the number two question is: Well, we don't understand capital markets.
Right.
Explain it to us.
Right.
We believe that just by giving more confidence on top-line momentum, plus bringing to light the power of the capital markets business, we would expect a differential in the multiple over time.
Yep.
Over time. We're, we're also realistic.
Okay.
Yeah.
Makes sense. Anything you want to add, George, or?
I think you said it all.
Okay. Guys, happy to take any questions from, the audience. Yeah, please.
Yep. Thank you very much. Just talking about the acquisitions, I mean, I don't know, maybe at the analyst day, this is more of a request than a question, but you got people to talk about the ability for the acquisitions to drive further EPS growth in the outer years. I think that's one of the questions people have. What happens in 2025 and 2026-
Yeah
... once the buyback runs its course?
Yeah, I think they'll be, they'll be slightly accretive. The ones we've done add up to $200 million, so they're not gonna move the needle. They're not even... Maybe they're a cent dilutive in 2024. You're typically buying a very fast-growing revenue business, and the synergies will come in over probably two years. So they'll be accretive within-- they'll probably be accretive in the second year and... But it-- you're not gonna drive $0.50 of EPS. You're driving... What's the best way to look at it? I, I think you work it, work it backwards from, take a revenue multiple that seems reasonable, I don't know, 5x-6x.
The ones we did already were 3x, 3.5x on average. The EBITDA margin, when we get them, are probably lower than our company composite, but after two years, they're probably in line with or slightly ahead-
Okay
... because of the synergies. Yeah.
Okay. So just a follow-up then. Is there a way, just a rule of thumb that we should think about acquisitions on average add a few cents to EPS on an annual basis, or you're not prepared to be able to comment on that?
Well, as I said, they're dilutive this year.
I think once the flywheel gets working, I think yes, once we're two or three years in, you're probably right, that it takes up the growth rate over time. The first couple of years, probably not. It won't register enough .
One follow-up on M&A. In capital markets, are you looking to enhance existing or add new capability? And how's kind of the valuation looking in the market?
Um-
Can you just repeat the question?
Yeah, I think one of the ones we did was, we have a competing product, and their product was by far the best in the market, and it had decent coverage in Europe, and we have better—way better distribution. So we bought a better product, and we merged the two products. That's one example. Another one was a new product segment.
I think he's trying to get at going forward. Does capital markets look like an area that you're gonna look to invest in M&A that's for new capabilities or just advancing on?
It'll be, it'll be a mix. I think it'll be mostly new capabilities or better capabilities, and the same in banking, actually. I don't think we're gonna spread all our dollars in one of the categories.
I actually had a question that I meant to ask from investors-
... for me, that to ask you, which is about the Worldpay. How you guys think about the Worldpay, let's call it stub or the minority interest, in terms of, A, forecasting from a medium-term standpoint, and then, B, you know, what is the actual ownership structure gonna look like in several years? I mean, we don't know, obviously, but is that up to you guys? Is that up to others? Can you just explain a little more?
Well, I think it's. The forecasting, they're very transparent. They're required to give us three-year plans, to give us budget updates, forecast updates. It's all built into the contract, so we'll have good visibility on when we-
Sure
... provide long-term guidance. That's not an issue. In terms of ownership, the contract is quite complex. You effectively, in the first two years, can't do anything without the approval of the other side. So even if we wanted-
Okay
... to sell some of our stake, you couldn't. They would have, they would have to approve it. Years two to four, there's a different set of rules, which effectively is, you could actually sell your stake, but they would have a right of first refusal, or tag-along right, so it's quite complex. So it would want to be a mutually beneficial exit-
Okay
... on both sides. So I think there's gonna be no short-term movement. I think the liquidity event could be an IPO at some stage, but-
Right
... you'll have to ask them about that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Any final questions, guys? All right. Thank you very much.
Great, thank you.
Really appreciate you having me.