TMCnet News

FIDELITY NATIONAL INFORMATION SERVICES, INC. - 10-Q - MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
[November 07, 2014]

FIDELITY NATIONAL INFORMATION SERVICES, INC. - 10-Q - MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS


(Edgar Glimpses Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Unless stated otherwise or the context otherwise requires, all references to "FIS," "we," the "Company" or the "registrant" are to Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., a Georgia corporation and its subsidiaries.



The following discussion should be read in conjunction with Item 1: Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements (Unaudited) and the Notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. The discussion below contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements regarding our expectations, hopes, intentions, or strategies regarding the future, are forward-looking statements. These statements relate to, among other things, future events and our future results, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties.

Forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. Any statements that refer to beliefs, expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. In many cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of these terms and other comparable terminology.


Actual results, performance or achievement could differ materially from those contained in these forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to include without limitation: • changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including the possibility of intensified international hostilities, acts of terrorism, and changes in either or both the United States and international lending, capital and financial markets; • the effect of legislative initiatives or proposals, statutory changes, changes in governmental or other applicable regulations and/or changes in industry requirements, including privacy regulations; • the risks of reduction in revenue from the elimination of existing and potential customers due to consolidation in or new laws or regulations affecting the banking, retail and financial services industries or due to financial failures or other setbacks suffered by firms in those industries; • changes in the growth rates of the markets for our solutions; • failures to adapt our solutions to changes in technology or in the marketplace; • internal or external security breaches of our systems, including those relating to the theft of personal information and computer viruses affecting our software or platforms, and the reactions of customers, card associations, government regulators and others to any such events; • the reaction of our current and potential customers to communications from us or our regulators regarding information security, risk management, internal audit or other matters; • competitive pressures on pricing related to our solutions including the ability to attract new, or retain existing, customers; • an operational or natural disaster at one of our major operations centers; • and other risks detailed elsewhere, including, without limitation, the factors set forth in "Item 1A. Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013 and any subsequent periodic or current reports filed by us with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Other unknown or unpredictable factors also could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are inherently subject to uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict.

Except as required by applicable law or regulation, we do not undertake (and expressly disclaim) any obligation and do not intend to publicly update or review any of these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You should carefully consider the possibility that actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements.

Overview FIS is a leading global provider of banking and payments technology solutions, and consulting and outsourcing solutions. With a long history deeply rooted in the financial services industry and banking and payment technology solutions, FIS delivers services to more than 14,000 institutions in over 100 countries.

Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS employs approximately 40,000 people worldwide and holds leadership positions in payment processing and banking solutions, providing software, services and outsourcing of the technology that drives financial institutions. Through our Capco brand, we deliver globally a wide range of information technology consulting and transformational services to financial institutions. FIS has 22 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents topped the annual FinTech 100 list, a ranking of financial services industry technology providers, for the last four years and is a member of the Fortune 500 U.S. and of Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500® Index. We have four reporting segments: FSG, PSG, ISG and Corporate and Other. A description of these segments is included in Note 11 of the Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements (Unaudited). Revenues by segment and the results of operations of our segments are discussed below in Segment Results of Operations.

Business Trends and Conditions Our revenue is primarily derived from a combination of recurring technology and processing services, consulting and professional services and software license fees. The majority of our revenue has historically been recurring, provided under multi-year contracts that contribute relative stability to our revenue stream. These services, in general, are considered critical to our customers' operations. A significant portion of these recurring revenues is derived from transaction processing fees that fluctuate with the level of deposit accounts and card transactions associated with consumer and commercial activity.

Consulting and professional services revenues are typically non-recurring, and sales of software licenses are less predictable, a portion of which can be regarded as discretionary spending by our customers.

One of the current trends in the financial services industry from which we are benefiting is the migration by our clients to an outsourced model to improve their profitability. We compete for both licensing and outsourcing business, and thus are affected by the decisions of financial institutions to use our services under an outsourced arrangement or to instead manage their technology operations internally under a software license and maintenance agreement with us. As a provider of outsourcing solutions, we benefit from multi-year recurring revenue streams, which help moderate the effects of year-to-year economic changes on our results of operations. We believe our integrated solutions and outsourced services are targeted and well positioned to address this outsourcing trend across the markets we serve.

We believe that current market pressures in the financial services industry create an opportunity for our consulting and professional services. Many financial institutions are at an inflection point that demands that they transform their businesses to significantly reduce their cost base while also responding to the competitive pressures of innovation and to increased regulatory oversight with regard to information technology and related processes. Capco provides strategic consulting service capabilities to respond to these market needs and we believe these services provide a competitive advantage to grow our overall business. Consulting services revenue grew at an accelerated pace in 2013 and this trend has continued in 2014. However, if consulting and professional services revenue and gross margin continue to grow as a percentage of our overall revenue and gross margin, our overall gross margin percentage would be reduced, as gross margin percentage realized for consulting and professional services is lower than that for most of our other services. In addition, as consulting and professional services revenue grow as a portion of our overall revenue, we will have a lower overall percentage of recurring revenue as generally these services are non-recurring.

We see in particular a market opportunity in large global financial institutions, where we believe we can couple our Capco strategic consulting and transformation services with outsourced technology, services and solutions to help these institutions achieve their business goals. These large institutions are subject to the pressures described above that are generating revenue for our consulting services, and moreover appear poised to increase technology spending to meet competitive pressures after a slowdown during the recent financial crisis years. We are investing in management, sales and account management resources to pursue this market opportunity. We are on track to invest an incremental $30 million in this initiative in 2014.

Mobile banking is growing in popularity as consumers are becoming increasingly digital-savvy and embrace the convenience. We expect this trend to continue and grow. We continue to focus and invest in adapting and developing new mobile solutions to assist our customers with this transition.

We expect to see more demand for innovative solutions in the payments market that will deliver faster, more convenient payment solutions in mobile channels, internet applications and cards. We believe mobile payments will grow and partially replace existing payment tender volumes over time. This presents both a growth opportunity and a risk to us as the market develops. Mobile payment volume does not yet represent a significant amount of the payments market and it is unclear which technology or service will be the dominant solution.

Additionally, new non-traditional payments competitors are investing in and innovating mobile payment technologies to address the emerging market opportunity. Although we cannot predict which mobile payment technology or solution will be the most successful, we cautiously believe our customer relationships, payments infrastructure and experience, adapted solutions and emerging solutions are well positioned to maintain or grow our customers' existing payment volumes. The growing risk of identity theft and fraud has also led to an increased demand for risk management solutions and we are focused on solutions to address this trend.

23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Card transactions continue to grow as a percentage of overall payment volumes as consumers shift payments to cards from checks and cash. We have invested in our card management solutions and card manufacturing and processing capabilities to accommodate EMV integrated circuit cards, often referred to as smart cards or chip cards, so we can guide our customers through this anticipated technology transition, sustain and grow our card driven businesses. We continue to monitor the impacts of regulation on the payment card industry and the Durbin amendment in particular. To date, the impact of the Durbin amendment on our card payment volumes is insignificant. We continuously monitor the marketplace as it adapts to the Durbin amendment and its ongoing regulatory developments, but are unable to determine at this time whether there will be a significant favorable or unfavorable impact on our payment card businesses in the future.

The Durbin amendment has affected the marketplace for our EFT network business, as its rules and regulations allow merchants more discretion to determine their transaction network routing and to consider multiple alternative networks. To date, the impact of the Durbin amendment has been modestly favorable to our EFT network business as we have competed effectively. At this time, we are unable to determine whether there will be a significant favorable or unfavorable impact on our EFT network business in the future.

The use of checks continues to decline as a percentage of total payments, which negatively impacts our check warranty and item-processing businesses and we expect this trend to continue. To date, we have been able to successfully mitigate the majority of the impacts of this decline through cost and fraud efficiency actions and new market solutions, which remain our continued focus.

While we are cautious regarding broader economic improvement, we expect banks to continue investing in new technology and believe we are well positioned to capitalize as the overall market continues to recover. We anticipate consolidation within the banking industry will continue, primarily in the form of merger and acquisition activity. As a whole, consolidation activity is detrimental to our business. However, consolidation resulting from specific merger and acquisition transactions may be beneficial or detrimental to our business. When consolidations occur, merger partners often operate disparate systems licensed from competing service providers. The newly formed entity generally makes a determination to migrate its core and payments systems to a single platform. When a financial institution processing client is involved in a consolidation, we may benefit by expanding the use of our services if such services are chosen to survive the consolidation and support the newly combined entity. Conversely, we may lose market share if we are providing services to both entities, or we are not the merging parties' provider of core or payment processing, or if a customer of ours is involved in a consolidation and our services are not chosen to survive the consolidation and support the newly combined entity. It is also possible that larger financial institutions resulting from consolidation may have greater leverage in negotiating terms or could decide to perform in-house some or all of the services that we currently provide or could provide. Our standard contractual terms include provisions for the payment to us of liquidated damages in the event of an early termination of a processing agreement. We further seek to mitigate the risks of consolidations by offering other competitive services to take advantage of specific opportunities at the surviving company.

Notwithstanding challenging global economic conditions, our international business continued to experience growth across all major regions on a constant currency basis during the three and nine months ended September 30, 2014, including Latin America, Europe and Asia. We expect this growth trend to continue. New, large-scale outsourcing clients added in 2013 are now producing revenues and we anticipate opportunities for similar arrangements. Demand for our solutions may also be created in developing countries by government-led financial inclusion policies aimed to reduce the unbanked population and by growth in the middle classes in these markets leading to the need for more sophisticated banking solutions. The majority of our European revenue is generated by clients in the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Information Security Globally, attacks on information technology systems continue to grow in frequency, complexity and sophistication. This is a trend we expect will continue. Such attacks have become a point of focus for individuals, businesses and governmental entities. The objectives of these attacks include, among other things, gaining unauthorized access to systems to facilitate financial fraud, disrupt operations, cause denial of service events, corrupt data, and steal non-public information. FIS is not immune to such attacks. As part of our business, we electronically receive, process, store and transmit a wide range of confidential information, including sensitive customer information and personal consumer data. We also operate payment, cash access and prepaid card systems.

FIS, like any large financial technology service provider, is subject to attempted cyber-attacks on a regular basis. A successful cyber-attack on an FIS system that resulted in sensitive information being compromised, fraud losses or other adverse consequences could have a material adverse effect on the company.

As a Multi-Regional Data Processing Servicer (MDPS), FIS continues to be examined by and have regular interaction with the federal agencies that regulate financial institutions. These regulators have the authority to take actions they deem necessary to protect the safety and soundness of the financial institutions they regulate. Such actions, if taken, could have a material 24 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents adverse impact on our business. FIS regularly reports to its regulators and to its clients regarding the Company's efforts to enhance its information security and risk management technology, programs and procedures. We are unable to predict with certainty what, if any, communications or actions our regulators will have or take with our regulated financial institution clients with respect to our risk management and information security. We are also unable to predict the effect that any such communications or actions may have on our business.

FIS remains focused on continued strategic investments in information security to protect its clients and its information systems. This includes both capital expenditures and operating expense on hardware, software, personnel and consulting services.

Critical Accounting Policies There have been no significant changes to our critical accounting policies as disclosed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013.

Transactions with Related Parties See Note 2 to the Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements (Unaudited) for a detailed description of transactions with related parties.

25 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Comparisons of three-month and nine-month periods ended September 30, 2014 and

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]