Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the FIS Strategic Transaction Conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your first speaker today, George Mihalos, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today's call is being webcast. Today's news release, corresponding presentation, and webcast are all available on our website at fisglobal.com. Joining me on the call this morning are Stephanie Ferris, our CEO and President, and James Kehoe, our CFO. Turning to Slide 3, today's remarks will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, as described in the press release and other filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Please refer to the safe harbor language. Also, throughout this conference call, we will be presenting non-GAAP information, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net earnings, adjusted net earnings per share, and adjusted free cash flow.
These are important financial performance measures for the company but are not financial measures as defined by GAAP. Reconciliation of our non-GAAP information to the GAAP financial information is presented in our press release. Now, I'll turn the call over to Stephanie.
Thank you, George, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. Today marks an important milestone for FIS as we continue to move with speed and focus to deliver on the strategic and financial commitments we set last year at our Investor Day. This includes strategically repositioning our portfolio and investing in growth areas while maximizing shareholder value. This morning, I am pleased to announce two significant transactions that we have undertaken in support of these goals. First, FIS is selling our remaining Worldpay stake to Global Payments, allowing us to monetize this asset at an attractive valuation. Second, FIS is acquiring the Issuer Solutions business, giving us access to a global credit processor, strengthening our payments offering, and further enhancing our value proposition to financial institutions and corporates. The combination of these two transactions delivers important benefits to FIS and our shareholders, as highlighted on Slide 6.
First, it dramatically simplifies and enhances our operating portfolio at attractive multiples. Next, it accelerates the monetization of our non-cash-generating minority stake in Worldpay and replaces it with a predictable flow of high-margin recurring revenue and positive cash flow, strengthening our overall financial profile. The acquisition of Issuer Solutions is expected to be accretive to FIS adjusted EBITDA margins, EPS, and cash flow in the first 12 months. Today's announcement is a significant win for all companies involved and one that will benefit clients and consumers. We are very excited to be partnering with Global Payments going forward. Now, let's turn to Slide 7 to discuss how the acquisition fits into our strategic vision for FIS. Issuer Solutions complements the key strategic differentiators we highlighted at Investor Day, better positioning FIS to capitalize on growth opportunities across the money lifecycle.
First, the acquisition reinforces our position as a scaled technology leader. The resulting combination creates a global company with $12.6 billion in annual revenue, providing an array of mission-critical solutions to the most sophisticated clients. With roughly $2.5 billion of revenue, the deal instantly transforms FIS into a scaled credit processor. Second, Issuer Solutions capabilities complement our broad suite of best-in-class solutions and strengthen FIS's position as the partner of choice with end-to-end capability across payments and banking. Lastly, it enhances our global distribution and expands our marquee set of clients, particularly among financial institutions and corporates. Now, turning to Slide 8 for a financial overview of the two transactions. We have agreed to sell our 45% stake in Worldpay to Global Payments for $6.6 billion in pre-tax value. The sale price translates to a multiple of approximately 10.5 x Worldpay's 2025 expected adjusted EBITDA.
This represents a premium to the 9.8 valuation FIS received when it sold its majority stake in 2024. It accelerates the monetization of Worldpay versus the much longer option of pursuing an IPO. Additionally, FIS will acquire the Issuer Solutions business for $13.5 billion in cash to be funded by a combination of new debt and proceeds from the sale of our Worldpay stake. The transaction multiple on a synergized basis and adjusting for a $1.5 billion tax benefit translates to an attractive multiple of approximately nine times 2025 expected adjusted EBITDA. We expect the acquisition to deliver meaningful revenue and cost synergies over the next three years and to be accretive to adjusted EPS in the first 12 months. Essentially, we're swapping out a non-cash-generating minority interest and replacing it with a highly strategic long-term flow of earnings and cash flow.
We anticipate the transactions closing simultaneously in the first half of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. In summary, the two transactions accelerate the strategic repositioning of our portfolio and simplify and streamline our operations to fulfill our goal to drive efficiency, effectiveness, and profitable growth. Turning to Slide 9 for an overview of the Issuer Solutions business. It is a recognized leader in credit processing, servicing large global banks and corporates at scale. With over 885 million accounts on file and processing 40 billion transactions globally, the business provides FIS with best-in-class credit processing to complement our existing payment capabilities. The acquisition expands our presence in an attractive market with a $28 billion global TAM. Issuer Solutions' marquee client base of blue-chip banks significantly overlaps with FIS's client base, enhancing our position with financial institutions and corporates while expanding our international opportunity.
Turning to Slide 10, Issuer Solutions boasts a highly attractive financial profile with steady, high-margin recurring revenue and strong free cash flow. Its 2024 revenue was $2.5 billion with an EBITDA margin of 45% and cash flow of around $700 million. The acquisition immediately improves our financial profile and increases our scale in one of our key growth vectors, payments. Turning to Slide 11, FIS today is a global leader in financial technology that keeps the global money lifecycle flowing. With this acquisition, FIS is now well-positioned to grow its wallet share and improve its portfolio of offerings with financial institutions by bringing together leading core and digital solutions, scaled processing capabilities across credit, debit, and network, award-winning treasury and risk management tools, and next-generation lending and asset management offerings, all under the FIS brand. We can now offer the most comprehensive product suite for financial institutions in the market.
Turning to Slide 12, the acquisition expands FIS's addressable market and cross-sell potential. For banking and capital markets, we estimate a total market opportunity of almost $2.4 billion with the 150 largest banks. Across roughly 60% of this $2.4 billion, FIS and/or Issuer Solutions already have an existing client relationship, opening the door for us to cross-sell additional solutions into this client base. With the acquisition and our comprehensive banking and payments offerings, we are better positioned to drive competitive takeaways and win new logos over the long term. Now, I'll turn it over to James to discuss the financial merits of the transaction in greater detail. James.
Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning, everyone. As Stephanie discussed, the acquisition drives greater operating scale and improved profitability. Slide 13 lays out 2024 results on a pro forma basis. Revenue increases by $2.5 billion to $12.6 billion, and adjusted EBITDA increases 27% to more than $5.2 billion. EBITDA margin improves by 90 basis points to 41.7%, reflecting Issuer Solutions' higher margin profile. Importantly, these pro forma results exclude any benefit from revenue and cost synergies. Now, let's turn to Slide 14 for a pro forma view of the banking segment. The addition of the Issuer Solutions business enhances our value proposition to financial institutions and strengthens the segment's financial profile. Banking revenue increases 36% from $6.9 billion to $9.4 billion. The pro forma growth rate is 2.6% in 2024, 40 basis points higher than before.
Recurring revenue as a percentage of total banking revenue increases by 100 basis points to 84%, reflecting slightly higher Issuer Solutions' recurring revenue of approximately 85%. We will be laser-focused on continuing to grow this high-margin recurring revenue stream. The acquisition adds $1.1 billion of EBITDA, increasing our banking adjusted EBITDA by more than one-third to $4.1 billion. EBITDA margins improve by 30 basis points to 44.3%. Both businesses expanded margins in 2024, with EBITDA growth of 4.5% outpacing revenue growth of 2.6%. In summary, Issuer Solutions adds consistent revenue growth and operating scale and will fortify banking's attractive financial profile. Turning now to our synergy targets on Slide 15, we expect EBITDA synergies of over $150 million over the next three years, with more meaningful revenue synergies over the longer term. These synergy opportunities are supported by a comprehensive set of bottom-up initiatives and robust operational plans.
Let's start with revenue synergies, where we see sizable opportunity over the longer term. Over the three years post-close, we expect to capture $45 million of revenue synergies at an approximate margin of 60%. We expect minimal synergies in the first year, with the $45 million split ratably across years two and three. The revenue synergies include cross-selling credit processing and value-added services into our larger base of financial institutions, expanding our payment offerings internationally, and integrating our Premium Payback into Issuer Solutions' current base of clients. Longer term, we see continued opportunity, and we expect revenue synergies of more than $125 million annually as long-term contracts with competitors come up for renewal, and we further capitalize on cross-sell opportunities. Turning now to cost synergies. We are targeting cost savings of $125 million over three years.
Examples here include leveraging our increased scale to rationalize duplicate vendor costs, back-office optimization, and streamlining overlapping operations and facilities. In total, revenue and cost synergies will be more than $150 million annually by year three. Turning now to the financial profile on Slide 16. The acquisition yields immediate and longer-term financial benefits to FIS, despite the sale of our EPS-accretive stake in Worldpay. The transaction fortifies our scale and growth profile and delivers higher margins and significantly higher free cash flow. In the first 12 months, we expect Issuer Solutions' revenue growth of around 4%, in line with its current growth rate and well within our medium-term growth outlook for banking. Longer term, we expect a similar rate of revenue growth, although it will be modestly enhanced by a gradual ramp-up of revenue synergies.
The acquisition will contribute approximately $1.2 billion of adjusted EBITDA in the first full year, with synergies adding an incremental $150 million by the end of year three. As Stephanie mentioned, this transaction will generate a tax benefit over the next 15 years, and despite the sale of Worldpay, we expect to maintain an effective tax rate of approximately 13.5%. The transaction will be slightly accretive over the first 12 months, with the contribution increasing as we grow the business and deliver EBITDA synergies. Assuming the deal closes at the end of the first quarter of 2026, we anticipate modest accretion relative to current 2026 EPS consensus estimate of $6.26. Turning now to free cash flow. We anticipate more than $500 million of incremental adjusted free cash flow in the first 12 months, ramping to over $700 million by the end of the third year.
As a reminder, FIS does not generate any free cash flow from its minority stake in Worldpay. Turning now to Slide 17 for our capital allocation priorities. Our capital allocation targets for 2025 are unchanged. This includes our commitment to the dividend, which we recently increased by 11%, a share repurchase program of $1.2 billion, and an M&A allocation of up to $1 billion for tuck-in opportunities. We are committed to maintaining an investment-grade rating, and we believe a strong balance sheet remains an important differentiator with our clients. Upon the closing of the transaction, we anticipate a gross leverage of 3.4 times, which we will reduce to 2.8x within 18 months. During this period of deleveraging, we will continue to target dividend per share growth in line with adjusted EPS growth, maintaining an attractive above-market dividend yield.
While our 2025 capital allocation priorities are unchanged, post-the-transaction close, we will temporarily pause share repurchases and M&A as we prioritize debt reduction. We will resume share repurchases and M&A once we achieve our leverage target of 2.8x. I'll now wrap up with an update on our expected first-quarter results. We anticipate first-quarter revenue of approximately $2.53 billion, with 4% growth for both adjusted and recurring revenue growth. Banking adjusted revenue growth is expected to be approximately 2%, modestly above our outlook range, led by recurring revenue growth of 3%. Capital markets are expected to report another strong quarter with adjusted revenue growth of 9%, including recurring revenue growth of 6%. We anticipate reporting adjusted EBITDA of $958 million and adjusted EPS of $1.21, both of which are close to the high end of our outlook range.
We will provide a full review of our first-quarter earnings on May 6. Lastly, we are reaffirming our full year 2025 outlook for adjusted revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS. In summary, we had a good start to the year, and we are reaffirming full year guidance. With that, I'll now turn the call back to Stephanie.
Thank you, James. I'll wrap up with our key takeaways, highlighting why we are so excited about this transaction. Strategically, with the acquisition, we're creating a global financial technology leader with $12.6 billion in annual revenue. The transaction complements our existing payments and banking solution suite with best-in-class credit processing capabilities at scale and enhances our value proposition to financial institutions and corporates, unlocking greater cross-sell potential across existing clients and expanding our global addressable market. Financially, the deal is attractive across multiple fronts. Issuer Solutions is accretive in the first 12 months post-close to adjusted EPS, EBITDA margins, and free cash flow, with further benefits longer term as we execute on synergy targets. The acquisition strengthens our financial profile and improves our recurring revenue. Lastly, the transaction allows FIS to immediately replace a non-strategic asset with a growing stream of durable revenue and strong free cash flow.
Looking forward, we are confident this will drive significant shareholder value and benefits to our customers. With that, operator, can we please open the line for questions?
Please, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, simply press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the candidate roster. Now, first question coming from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Congrats on this deal. Stephanie, maybe just help us understand a little bit more about what the convergence in issuer between the capabilities you already had and now having this asset really brings to the table in terms of differentiation, mainly, I mean, adding such a big credit card issuer capability to what you already have and to some degree credit, but really a lot of debit. Just help us a little more in terms of what that does for the business's growth potential and how it stands apart in the industry going forward from that.
Yeah. Thanks, Darrin. Happy to. As you know, we have a very significant payments business. When we talked to you guys at Investor Day, we talked about focusing the company back on our core banking, payments, and capital markets businesses. We highlighted three growth vectors there, in particular, payments. When you take a look at the payments TAM, we have very, very strong products in debit processing, network, value-added services, B2B, Office of the CFO, etc., where we lacked significant scale and cross-sell opportunity was in credit processing in the larger part of the market. We see financial institutions buying these payments products in a bundle.
We really needed, in order for us to continue to grow the payments business across FIS and focused in our financial institutions business, we needed to add this credit card-scaled processing business for us to be able to open up new TAM and cross-sell into our existing base. We think it's perfectly aligned. It's right. It's a product set that adds to our existing product set and sells directly into our financial institutions' customer base. We're really excited about it.
Okay. That's really helpful. One more follow-up would just be the technology transformation that I know Global's been going through with effectively its issuer business onto AWS and more modernization of that. I mean, tell us about the technology that you guys have on your issuer stack versus theirs, and what does that do bringing that on here? I mean, is that one of the major synergy potential opportunities, really just converging the technology onto one of the platforms?
Yeah. Happy to. Like you mentioned, Global has been modernizing their credit card technology. We did a significant amount of work with them to understand where they are in that journey. We feel really good about the capabilities they're building and planning to deliver to market and have seen some real proof points in terms of what those capabilities look like. I think as we think about our credit card issuing business, which is primarily focused down market, with their credit card issuing business, which is primarily focused for larger financial institutions, we do see over time merging those together, not just in technology, but more around the operations and the processing and the skills and the capabilities there.
If you think about credit issuing and debit issuing, we now bring those together, and we can think about getting some synergies really out of combining operations around the value-added services of both of those.
Right. That's great. Congrats, guys. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Dan Dolev with Mizuho Group. Your line is now open.
Oh, hi. Thank you so much. Congrats again. This is a great deal for you guys. Maybe not so much on the deal, but more about results that you pre-released, which look really strong given all the uncertainty out there. Maybe, Stephanie, can you give us a sense of what you're seeing on both sides of the businesses, both the legacy FIS business, but also anything you're hearing about trends in Worldpay? That would be really helpful given where we are in terms of all the turmoil out there. That would be great. Thank you.
Yeah, Dan, thanks for the question. We're very excited to announce our first-quarter earnings. As we said, we expected to come in pretty strong there. We've reaffirmed guidance for the full year. Feeling really good about the FIS core business. As you know, our business is quite durable. We have a significant amount of recurring revenue that is durable regardless of what happens to consumer spend. Also, as you know, with respect to FIS, we have a very large debit issuing business. The same thing goes, though, for the issuer processing business on the Global Payments side. It is also a very durable revenue business. Coming together, we think they're very complementary. We're obviously keeping a close eye on the consumer, but both of these businesses are tied less to consumer spend and more around transactions and accounts on file.
We think this increases the durability of overall FIS revenue growth, even in the light of potential recessionary activities. We are really excited to be announcing our results, and we feel really good about where we are and looking forward to our earnings call in early May.
Yeah. Just that in, our guide for banking was the midpoint was about 1%. We have come in at more than double that. We are very pleased with this. The recurring came in as well, quite stronger. That was kind of leading the way in getting to the higher result. I think the takeaway I would have from that is we are feeling way more comfortable on the full year guide in banking and have a very high degree of confidence in achieving the banking long-term growth rate.
Results look amazing, look amazing, and the deal looks fantastic. Congrats again.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Nice to see this transaction. I wanted to see if you can discuss in a little more detail or even potentially quantify just the client overlap that exists between Issuer Solutions and then just the core banking clientele at FIS.
Yeah. Happy to. Thanks, Jason. I think what we showed you on Slide 12 tried to lay that out. There's a significant amount of overlap between the FIS core banking clients as well as the issuer processing solutions clients. I think we laid out on Slide 12 that we are providing at least one product to 50% of their business, their customers. Issuer Solutions is providing at least one product to 25% of our customers. Together, we have at least one product across 60% of the base. We think this does two things. One, we think it significantly expands our cross-sell opportunity into existing customers that know us well, and we have very strong relationships with.
We also think it opens up the payments TAM for us broadly because we really did not have the opportunity to cross-sell credit issuing processing either individually or as a bundle to these larger financial institutions. For us, we think it is a win-win-win.
Great. Appreciate that. James, can you just give us a sense of how you're thinking about the free cash flow conversion profile of the business post-transaction close, both initially and now?
Yeah. As you'll recall, we have guided the base business to a 90%+ beyond this year. We're buying a really strong cash flow generation business. It's probably the singular thing that excites me most about the deal. Think about it. It's going to add on an ongoing bit. First year, it will add 12 months, add $500,000,000. Run rate, this is $700,000,000 incremental. That's a 30% boost to our free cash flow. I think one is it does open up as well our ability to be a significant player in the market. It will, as we look through this, highlight the inherent value of the company because our cash flow is boosted by 30%. We will continue to target a 90% going forward. They're running at a capital expenditure rate, roughly around our long-term target of around 8%.
Depending on the timing of the transformation of their systems and the rollouts, an 8%-9% range is more than reasonable. We do not get pressure on capital. They have strong EBITDA margins. All of this falls through. They have strong networking capital management. We are very, very confident in the long-term view on free cash flow.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for all the details. Could you give us a little bit more detail on what will drive the $45 million in revenue synergies in the first three years? Then what opportunities do you see more long-term to get to the $125 million? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks. Happy to. I think we laid this out as well. Thinking about the revenue synergies, we do have a great opportunity to cross-sell our debit network treasury capabilities into their issuing processing solutions clients. Inversely, we have an opportunity to sell their credit issuing into FIS's core banking clients. You think about it as a very significant cross-sell opportunity. Now, with that, you can think about these are long-term contracts with larger financial institutions. In the very short term, the $45 million, we were expecting to be pretty modest in terms of where we saw that cross-sell synergy happening in the first couple of years because it does take a period of time to sell those into large financial institutions. We feel very good about them.
Over time, I think we feel really good about the $150 million revenue synergies in the longer term. We also, I think we're going to be the largest loyalty player out there that is also a very significant cross-sell of our Premium Payback capabilities into their issuer processing clients. Again, feel good about the revenue synergies. Made them fairly modest in the short term, but believe in them over the long term because of the strong value proposition we'll have with these clients that know us already.
Appreciate the color.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Trevor Williams with Jefferies. The line is now open.
Great. Thanks very much. Question just on how you see this impacting the core banking asset within banking solutions. Clearly, this is complementary in that now you have credit to cross-sell into the existing base. Stephanie, how do you see this potentially helping the actual core bank processing asset? You talked about the ability to bundle together. I mean, do you think this makes the actual core processing capability any more competitive with the ability to bundle all this together? Thank you.
Yeah. Trevor, I do. I think there is a very significant opportunity, and it's being bundled together today. You think about core banking, credit, debit network. We think about that same type of opportunity. If you look at Slide 11, we were really missing this credit processing capability for the large financial institutions. We do think the bundle is very meaningful. That's how it's been competitively sold historically. We think now we have the opportunity to offer not just a consistent bundle or comparative bundle, but also add into it commercial lending, treasury trading, and processing. Remember, all of these are existing customers today. We think we can bring a lot of value to our clients in terms of selling a bundle.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Congrats on the deal here. Just one for me. Different offerings on credit versus debit, just a consolidated market within processing. Just any regulatory considerations here as we've gotten that question?
Yeah. I think that we've looked at the issuer processing business. We obviously feel really confident around it in terms of our position in it. We don't anticipate any significant regulatory issues. We feel confident about our ability to close the transaction. Not seeing anything we would flag to you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Congrats on announcing this deal. Pretty clear strategic benefits here for the company. James, I just wanted to ask one for you on the restructuring charges that may come from this and just what that might mean. Obviously, you guys have this guidance for a reduction in some of the free cash flow add-backs over the next several years. I'm sure this has implications for that. Maybe can you talk a little bit about that vis-à-vis the OpEx synergies that you guys are expecting to get and maybe just talk about how this changes the trajectory of kind of some of the earnings quality metrics?
Yeah. I think I'm not going to give any specific guidance on the call. Obviously, there'll be transaction-type costs. So debt and deal costs are probably $200 million. These are one-time in nature. The thing I would say is, and I think this is an important comment, the free cash flow post any restructuring will still be, the addition will still be positive in every single year. Where we said the adjusted free cash flow in the first 12 months is $500 million, it will still be in positive territory post any restructuring. The second thing is, as we're looking through this deal, and you're bringing up a good point on metrics, we will be taking significant reductions in our core restructuring expenses in 2026. Call it FIS standalone. Previously, we talked about reductions of 15%. They're likely to be substantially higher.
Sorry, the reduction is going to be greater. Sorry. I said it the wrong way around. Do not think about the one-time charges on the strategic acquisition as being a pure add-on top. We will be taking a hard look at our metrics on add-backs. We will be adding pure incremental free cash flow. The deal is positive, notwithstanding restructuring.
Yeah, James. Thank you.
Bear in mind.
Yeah, go ahead.
You're very well aware of this. We didn't earn any free cash flow from Worldpay. So zero. Right? What we have is we're selling a business that was contributing zero, and we're adding $700 million on a long-term basis. It will be cash positive in every single year.
That's great. Appreciate you clarifying that. Obviously, that's a better trajectory than you previously communicated on standalone restructuring charges. Just one on the macro and appreciate coming in ahead of the guidance on the first quarter. I know you previously talked about kind of an acceleration throughout the year in the core banking. We've gotten a lot of questions over the last few weeks around just what this macro environment may mean for implementation schedules in the banking business, knowing that it's a very dynamic market out there. I was wondering if you could just kind of address the implementation risk for the remainder of the year. Obviously, you said earlier that you're feeling much more confident about the outlook for banking this year.
Can you just help people kind of understand some of the risks of the outlook, just given the uncertainty, and how you think about where an implementation delay, if it did occur, what are the types of deals that would be most at risk in this environment?
Yeah. Will, I think the easiest way to answer that is we reiterated our guidance. We feel really good about where we are and do not anticipate any implementation risk. In fact, I think James said in a conference in the first quarter talking about some of those implementations had already gone live. Given the reaffirmation of our guidance, and we will obviously give more color in our earnings call, I would say very low risk to none and highly confident on the reaffirmation.
Got it. Appreciate that. Congrats on the deals. I know obviously a big lift for the team. Big congrats to everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Daniel Perlin with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning. I just want to revisit the bundling comment for a second. It sounds like by having this asset, I mean, is it a competitive advantage or a competitive necessity that you had to have it? Because as I think about it, there are not a lot of other players actually that can do bundling at scale at the level that you are describing, Stephanie. My follow-up question is how does this asset play into your kind of international ambitions as you think about the business longer term? Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. Great questions. I would say it's a competitive advantage. I mean, FIS has been very successful without the credit issuing processing business. And issuer solutions on the global side have also been successful. It is not a necessity. What I would say is it's absolutely a competitive advantage because we do see bundling in the market, and that's an opportunity that we did not previously have. We think we'll be uniquely advantaged because we have, in addition to now the core banking credit-debit network bundle, we also have an addition of commercial lending, treasury, and trading and processing. We think we're uniquely positioned and can come to market with a differentiated bundle. We really view it as a competitive advantage. In terms of international, this significantly enhances our international capabilities. It adds to the payments capabilities internationally.
The Issuer Solutions business is very well-known and very scaled internationally. It helps with growth there as well.
That's great. Thank you very much. Congratulations. It's a pretty clear opportunity here. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Great. Thank you so much. Made pretty clear that there were some pretty complementary components on the issuing business in terms of end customers, etc., and capabilities. Are there any additional capabilities or areas that you feel like you need to add to really have a complete solution in issuing, whether that be through your own internal development once the businesses are combined or even via acquisition down the road?
I don't think so. I think this is the globally scaled credit issuing processing business. We had a credit issuing processing business for smaller financial institutions. This adds it internationally and for large financial institutions. This was the missing piece of the payment story, not only in terms of having a full complemented suite, but also giving us access to TAM and growth. I think this really should complete the needs we have in the credit side of the business.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Andrew Bauch with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning. Congratulations on the deal. Makes a lot of strategic sense here. Maybe if you could kind of give us a sense on the competitive environment around value-added solutions that you've seen recently. What do you think that this asset does in kind of standing up to some of the other competitors in the space around that vector of the business?
Yeah. Andrew, great question. We think first of all, both businesses are very competitive today around value-added solutions. Both of us serve large financial institutions and small financial institutions. We have scaled in best-in-class VAS, and those have been growing for both of us. That being said, I think having competitive and really strong competitors in a market actually makes us all better. We think coming together, like I said, one of the big enhancing things we think is exciting is our loyalty Premium Payback network, which we now can bring forth to all of the credit issuing banks. In terms of VAS, we think we are very well positioned separately and even better positioned as we come together.
My follow-up was on the OpEx synergies. TSYS was in the middle of this big transformation process, migration to the cloud. Can you unpack the confidence around those OpEx synergies? What's the line of sight to those within the next three years post-close?
Yeah. On these, we're not counting on the existing. These are all incremental initiatives. Some of the examples here we've mentioned, one of the bigger buckets is vendor optimization. Obviously, we will be renegotiating based on enhanced scale. You got functional optimization. We've got a fairly sophisticated organization on both sides, but there will obviously be some functional synergies and back-office synergies. We do have similar operations in certain areas like credit card production, for example. I'll just give you one example. We will be taking a hard look at how competitive are we and the price we pay for chips across both companies. All of this is up for grabs. We have fairly detailed programs behind this. We're not counting on savings they had assumed in their base projections. All of these are new initiatives purely driven by the combination of the two entities.
Great. Congratulations again.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Jamie Friedman with Susquehanna. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Let me echo the congratulations. I wanted to ask two things. It may be early, but have you thought through yet? If not, it may be early, the investor relations disclosures on the issuer business? TSYS used to share accounts on file on a quarterly basis. They would decompose those between credit and debt and government. Any thoughts on that at a high level? Stephanie, in terms of the value-added services, but particularly the fraud, TSYS was really well-known for fraud-related solutions. I'm just wondering, did you have a chance to take a look at those yet? How do you think they stack up, and can you get those going again? Thank you.
Yeah. Jamie, I think you think we're further ahead where we were racing to get this deal done. I don't think we've quite given enough thought to incremental disclosures, but we'll come back out to you on it. No incremental information for you there. You're right, though, on fraud. We did spend a ton of time with the Issuer Solutions fraud team. It is a best-in-class fraud team. We think that what they're doing with fraud, and you add the credit issuing information with our debit card issuing information and core banking, fraud can become even more powerful. We can see everyone across the entire network. We also, on our side, FIS, are working on significantly enhancing our own fraud product vis-à-vis GenAI.
I think bringing the data together, debit issuing core and credit issuing inside the credit issuing core capabilities that they already have is going to be extremely powerful. Now, we have not done enough work to put a dollar around that. That is an incremental opportunity for us, but we are quite excited about it.
Awesome. Makes sense. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our last question on queue coming from the line of Chris Kennedy with William Blair. Your line is now open.
Good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in here. I know it's very early, but Worldpay had a pretty big role, I think, in Atelio. Any updated thoughts on kind of their role going forward with that embedded finance initiative?
Yeah. Chris, thanks. Absolutely. They, being Worldpay Global Payments, will continue to provide acquiring capabilities and will continue to be a distribution channel for Atelio. That relationship continues. We'll continue to be great partners with each other. That gives us actually more opportunity for distribution into Global Payments' broader ISV business. We think it's really exciting for the Atelio piece.
Got it. Thanks for taking the question.
You bet.
Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.