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Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the FIS Fourth Quarter Year-end 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Pete Gunnlaugsson. Please go ahead.

Pete Gunnlaugsson

Analyst

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2015 earnings call. Turning to slide 2, Gary Norcross, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will begin with a business summary. Woody Woodall, Chief Financial Officer, will continue with the financial results for the quarter and full year. Today's news release and the supplemental slide presentation are available on our website at fisglobal.com. 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. Today's remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures in order to provide more meaningful comparisons between the periods presented. These non-GAAP measures are outlined on slide 3 as well. Reconciliations between the GAAP and non-GAAP results are provided in the attachments to the press release and in the Appendix of the supplemental slide presentation. Turning to slide 4, I will turn the call over to Gary to discuss the business highlights. Gary?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Thank you Pete. Good morning everyone and thank you joining us on today’s call. I am pleased to report that we exited 2015 with solid momentum as the team’s focused on execution and driving further improvements in our cost structure and overall performance, delivering continued earnings growth. We were in the right markets empowering our clients of all sizes, whether here in the US with community and regional banks or globally. Our long term strategy has consistently driven year-over-year performance results, and we remain committed to our strategy. Turning to slide 5, we continue to build global scale in 2015, finalizing our acquisition of SunGard and finishing the year with revenue increasing 7% on a constant currency basis to 6.6 billion, growing adjusted EBITDA 8% on a constant currency basis to 2 billion, and producing adjusted earnings per share of 6% on a constant currency basis to $3.22. We generated 921 million of free cash flow in return to 605 million to shareholders. Strategically, we are investing in the business to deliver long term growth and superior shareholder returns. We are entering 2016 focused on three growth drivers; first, the acquisition of SunGard broadens our solution portfolio allowing us to expand and renew in adjacent markets and provide deeper value to our clients. Second, we will continue to capitalize on our expanded scale, operating leverage and our disciplined integration to drive earnings growth. Third, our strong cash flow generation allows us to invest for growth and return capital to shareholders. Turning to slide 6, our SunGard acquisition which closed on November 30 is a meaningful value creator for FIS. As we have discussed in the past, the industry is continuing to move towards fewer providers due to the complexity of solutions and regulatory oversight. As a result, our strategy has…

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Thanks Gary. I’ll begin with slide 11 with a summary of our consolidated results for the quarter and then for the full year of 2015. The fourth quarter and full year results included the impact of the SunGard transaction, which closed on November 30. Those results are reported in the GFS segment. Today unless otherwise specified, I’ll be referencing percentage changes in our metrics on a constant currency basis. Also reconciliations of non-GAAP measures can be found in our press release and our earnings deck which is posted on the investor relations page of website. In the fourth quarter, revenue increased to 1.9 billion or 18% and adjusted EBITDA increased 21% to 624 million. Adjusted net earnings from continuing operations increased 13% to 278 million and adjusted earnings per share was $0.93. In the quarter, foreign currency translation negatively impacted revenue by 63 million, EBITDA by 12 million and earnings per share by $0.02. For the year, revenue increased 7% to 6.6 million and adjusted EBITDA increased 8% to 2 billion. Adjusted net earnings from continuing operations increased to 930 million, a 6% increase and adjusted earnings per share was $3.22. For the year, foreign currency translation negatively impacted revenue by 243 million, EBITDA by 45 million and earnings per share by $0.07. I will now continue on slide 12 for segment results. In the fourth quarter, Integrated Financial Solutions grew 4.4% on a normalized basis to 1 billion. EBITDA increased 3% to 405 million compared to the prior year period. We are pleased with the results of this segment and the underlying business continues to perform well. For the year, IFS revenue on a normalized basis increased 3% to 3.9 billion and EBITDA increased 2% to 1.6 billion. Turning to slide 13, our IFS growth was driven by our…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] our first question today comes from the line of David Togut with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

David Togut

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Glad to hear that the SunGard integration is running ahead of plan. Can you provide details around your cost stakeout assumptions for SunGard for calendar ’16, in other words, what’s embedded in the guidance for the full year and then to the extent you have a target for calendar ’17 that would also be helpful?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

David, again we’re exiting at 100 million or more, I want to tell you for planning purposes, I’ll use the 100 million exit run rate. If you think about the flow of the operating plan, we’re trying to get some color around 15% to 18% each quarter. If you think about how the synergies will flow, I would lean towards the 15%; moving towards the 18% over the course of the year as the synergies come through and interest cost are reduced as we pay down debt. For 2017 David, we are still targeting a 200 million exit run rate and we will have that at least ratable at this point of time.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Yeah David, this is Gary, obviously at this point we are highly confident in achieving that. And as I said in my prepared remarks, when you compare it to the really last big transaction we did which was Metavante back in 2009, we are ahead of where we were at this point in that process. So we’re going through a number of already very significant milestones with the restructuring, the conversion of payroll and benefits and the other things we mentioned, and now we’ve just got the line of sight in implementing the plans over the course of the year. So we’re in really good shape on the integration and it’s gone very smoothly at this point.

David Togut

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Any color on the demand environment for SunGard, they have a very strong capital market focus and clearly seeing a lot of volatility now in capital markets. Is demand holding up in this environment?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

You know that was my point I was trying to make in my prepared remarks. I was real pleased with the month of December and our SunGard execution. When I look, forget every opportunity to really take the foot off the gas. I mean they could have gotten distracted with the combination; we had a lot going on at that time. The teams stayed very focused through year-end and executed very well. So that was positive. When I look at the pipeline, going in to this year, the same thing exists. The pipelines are growing, the teams are executing, they’re very excited about being a part of FIS and I think that’s translating in the client base. I can’t tell you how many comments I’ve gotten over the last 60 days from clients just talking about being up under FIS, our ability to invest and focus for the long term. And so the customers are receiving it well, our sales teams are receiving it well, and that’s projecting in to the results. So we feel really good about it. The secret’s going to be, as now since November 30 as we’ve started to put or sales teams together and they’ve started to have some conversations about joint selling in to the account. We’re also seeing some good tractions, not only in the global financial institutions, but as i said when you look at treasury and wealth and many other products that SunGard have that are applicable for regional and community banks, we are starting to see strong traction there as well. I mean, of course as you know, our consulting groups started in the capital markets area of the industry and so being able to ramp that kind of consultative engagement around product is going to be differentiating for us going forward.

David Togut

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

And then if you could give a little more color on Capco. You had mentioned towards the end of last year, Lance Levy taking over the business, repositioning it to focus more on high-end transformational consulting. What’s the current growth for Capco and then why do you think it could be exiting ’16?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

We sold mid-single digits growth on Capco for the full year last year, which was obviously substantially less than what has been done in the prior years. As you mentioned, Lance has taken over the helm of the consulting group. We really rallied the partners around, engaging more in to the transformational consulting side which drives a higher margin, and also is more complimentary to help differentiate some of our product IP. The back half of the year was slow as we retooled it. We’ve actually seen growing in to the first half of this year a nice ramp in the pipeline and we’re starting to see some results of that early on. I do think with the first half of 2016 is going to be slower from a growth standpoint, but then when we get in the back half of the year as that continues to ramp, we’ll see capital to start returning back to a more normalized double-digit growth rate for us.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

To be clear Dave the organic 3% to 4% for the consolidated company, we’ve got Capco for the full year in a mid-single digit zone.

David Togut

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Just two quick final housekeeping questions, what FX impact you have built in to the 2016 guidance and then what is your forecast for termination fees?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Yeah, if you look at the assumption package there are some details on slide 20 that’s further in there. Right in here we baked in about 150 million headwinds that are really driven primarily as a Brazilian real but still having some headwind in the Euro right now. With regard to term fees, we exited 2015 with about 40 million. We’ve got less than that in 2016 that would bear you probably 20% less.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead.

Brett Huff

Analyst · Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead

Just a little bit more detail on the guidance, I think that we’ve been trying to figure out and I think others have been trying to make sure we understand and then guide. Can you give us a little more detail or ballpark on what your SunGard assumption is for revenue and maybe even profitability and I know going forward there’s probably not going to be as much detail. But I think we and others are just trying to make sure we’re modeling this right here on this first year out. So any help on that would be helpful.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead

If you think about the revenue growth profile Brett I would tell you probably in the 3 to 5 zone on the SunGard from the revenue growth standpoint. In terms of margin contribution, our GFS margins without them are about 22% or so, with the synergies we think the GFS margin growth of 26% plus in 2016. That will continue to grow with the 2017 as we get full run rate synergies out of it, but that’s what we are looking at in’16 in terms of profitability contribution.

Brett Huff

Analyst · Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead

So the 22% for the fourth quarter was GFS ex SunGard, but the 26% plus is with SunGard in the synergies.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead

Let clear, GFS around 22% would be a sort of a full year GFS without SunGard. Adding SunGard and the synergies in to 2016 we think the GFS segment growth profile or EBITDA margin profile would be 26% for us.

Brett Huff

Analyst · Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead

So both of those numbers are for ’16. And then you mentioned specifically Gary and I just want to make sure I heard you right that slower growth in the Capco portion of consulting and I’m assuming that’s probably the low single digit that we’ve been seeing the last couple of quarters. And then you said, may be double digit growth in the back half. Can you give us a sense of the drivers, first of all is that correct? And second of all, give us a sense of the drivers? There were some questions of whether or not there was a systemic sort of industry wide big bank slowdown and uptick of professionals’ services or whether there were some specific things that were just your business. Can you give us some color on that?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Brett Huff with Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead

Yeah, just to be real clear, you hit the nail in the head in the first half of the year, you’re going to see flat growth in Capco, may be even a little declining over prior year periods. And then you will see it ramping up to Woody’s point for the full year getting to up mid-single digit, and then going in to 2017, we do expect Capco to recover to more of that double digit growth rate. But as you know in the consulting business, that’s all about building your pipeline and filling it. And that’s in fulfilling it. That’s one of the things that we changed significantly. What we have done in Capco historically is we’ve gotten to a very large transformational engagement and we took our eye of the ball or off the base business of consulting in my opinion. And so we’ve retooled the leadership there, got them refocused on executing more of the thought leadership consulting engagements. We’ve seen nice uptick of pipeline. We’ve actually seen strength coming in to Q1 with deliveries. So we got to continue to that obviously and continue that growth. But it’s going to be much more back to what we picked in the original Capco acquisition which is more transformational consulting, where we are doing engagements more short term in nature around thought leadership and how to transform various functions of financial institutions and then allow us to pull in more product IP instead of some of the large lower margin body shop type deployments that we’ve gotten in to. Lance has excellent experience on that, from his prior life with his former company. He’s bringing a great discipline to that process and we’re seeing a lot of improvement early on under his leadership.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead.

David Koning

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

First of all on the IFS segment, it looks like that might have accelerated to around 5% growth if we exclude the gaming business from the prior year, and the strongest growth of the year looks like. I’m wondering first of all if that’s right, and secondly if there were term fees in the quarter and how much those were and then finally if that higher level of growth is sustainable through 2016?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

It’s a good comment. I think if you normalize of it the gaming and other pieces, we got about 4.4% growth in the quarter which we did see as an acceleration. I think the level of no ease in ’15 was high compared to ’16. `16 should be clean and which is a very good line of sight around it. We did have about 8 million of term fees in the quarter that flowed in to the IFS Group. So and you saw the exact way around. We did see some level of acceleration and it’s a relatively clean number.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

But you are thinking about it right David. I mean the team’s done an excellent job of cross settling and filing in frankly as we’ve described in the past from these whole set of created firm, from these clients that are leaving due to being acquired, right. So we saw a nice acceleration in growth and we’re confident about where that’s going to come in 2016.

David Koning

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

Okay, and then just turning t GFS, you made a lot of comments around some guarding capital. But you declined about 3% normalized in Q4. Are we going to turn to growth again in Q1 and maybe if we look through the year is that low single digit growth in the first couple of quarters and mid or maybe even a little better in back half. I just want to know if it going to grow throughout the year or if Q1 is still a down quarter.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

Yeah, Q1 will not be a down quarter, we will see growth. What you’ve got is a compliment of SunGard continuing to grow the base product or solution set business continuing to grow with Capco having some headwinds still in the first quarter. But yes we’ll see growth and anticipate growth in these quarters.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

SunGard brings an increase in our product lab or product focused IP sales in that group as well, and so those are more sticky in nature and they’re also more reoccurring in nature and so we think that’s going to help with the growth throughout ’16.

David Koning

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

And finally just a real quick one on the definition; with organic growth through the year, are you going to include SunGard in the prior year quarter or are you just going to exclude SunGard from the current quarter as we look through the rest of the year?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · David Koning from Baird. Please go ahead

We would include it in the prior quarters, similar to how we have done organic growth in the past. We exclude acquisitions, divestitures and FX very similar to how we did in 2014 and prior.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

Just want to follow-up on Dave’s question on GFS, its first half and second half there’s a lot of moving pieces across the Capco piece. What are the other big puts and takes that we need to consider? It sounds like the Bradesco conversion is a big one, anything else?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

Yeah I think the win for Bradesco was definitely a nice win for us. We’ll do some services around that conversion in the first half with the actual conversion taking place mid-year on that portfolio. Excited there; we do anticipate good growth in Asia Pacific again. Clear2Pay is going to grow well and then we’ve got some softness in Capco in the first half. SunGard’s growing relatively ratably over the course of the year.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

Also Tien-Tsin keep in mind as we talked about in the prior March, you got Sainsbury coming on, Woody mentioned Bradesco, you’ve got the Digital Bank that is being launched in both the US and also in the UK that’s two separate contract but both of them will be driving revenue as well throughout the year.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

So summer is a pretty important conversion period then?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

That’s right, but we don’t have the same curve that we had. It’s much more ratable over the course of the year.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

Right, because you’ve got some informational work here. And then just my follow-up, just the SunGard retention, I know that had gotten better towards the better part of ’15. Have you seen any chance, sounds like it’s doing well, but how the conversation has been going around retention? What are you assuming for 2016?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead

We’re continuing to see an improvement in retention throughout 2016. As you pointed out, they’ve had a very nice slope of improving that over the last several years and we think that will continue. Frankly the conversations with the clients have been extremely positive and I’ve had an opportunity to have a lot of those over the last several months. And what we’re finding is they are very pleased that FIS was the acquiring company, they are very pleased with how our overall size of relationship has grown through the combination because we would have already a strategic relationship with those clients. So it makes us that much more scaled and so it’s all positive. But we are planning for a continued improvement and retention and we think the evidence of that won’t occur.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

Just want to touch on starting off with guidance once again just as a follow-up. You came off a year where obviously there are some unforeseen things that had occurred and so I know that the intention hopefully was to come in to this year with more of a conservative guidance assumption, and so here with 3% to 4%. Our first quarter run rate was decent on the IFS segment and obviously like you mentioned for a lot of different reasons slower on the GFS. So when you look going forward, can you just give us some confidence if there is anything that would lead to that guidance being either below that or what are those variables and potentially is that already conservative. Is this sort of the low end of the range? Inherently what you’re giving with upside to that from other variable, I guess there’s some contact around the conservatism and the nature of how you really thought about guidance here this time.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

As you might imagine coming out of ’15 and looking at the macro backdrop, we definitely took a more conservative approach particularly on the revenue growth lines, and specifically on the revenue growth lines that are more discretionary in nature. Across the board, we think we’ve got lower sales execution risk in the various [play-ins] and then we’ve got a larger component of the earnings per share that will rack on more controllable things, synergies for example, things that we can go and execute on regardless of macro backdrops. So, yes, we think we got a conservative plan here both in top line and in earnings per share growth in 2016.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

And then on the cross-selling side, I am curious to know, is there anything included in your outlook around SunGard and are you seeing any evidence so far of cross-selling in terms of revenue synergy opportunities, whether it’s the wealth business you’ve talked about in the past or its Capco or others.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

Yeah Darrin, we were very conservative when we looked at cross-selling. But we are as I’ve shared in my prepared remarks; we are very excited about what we’re seeing in the conversations that are occurring. There are a lot of opportunities as we are looking at the wealth, we’ve taken wealth and combined with our existing wealth business and gives us a substantial scale in that space and allows us to push in to the regional community banks and seeing good progress there. We’re seeing great uptick in some of our regions around world, Europe, Asia, specifically where we are able to bring out of sales resources and SunGard sales resources augmenting with Capco and seeing some nice early engagements. So we do think there’s going to be some upside, but to Woody’s point we were conservative in our modeling of that.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

And just last question from me, when we looked at - when we heard your prepared remarks you did list off a number of if what sounded like pretty decent size deals. I know Bradesco is one, but also I think you’re investing $100 billion in a bank for direct banking and some others. It seems like there was a lot that was announced and still sort of slowly but surely rolling on through this year, whether its Sainsbury, you mentioned testing or Credit Agricole or others that are still to come. Can you give us a little more color on the timing of some of the larger implementations? Sainsbury sounds like it’s in testing mode now and it’s going to ramp through the year I imaging. Anything else we can just sort of hold on to in terms of similar larger deals?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

I think you’re right; we’ve got a lot of large transactions that we signed. The sales team executed well throughout last year. Frankly to your point, it does on board over time because these are big projects and it takes time to get them onboard. But when you think about Sainsbury, it becomes a mid-summer deployment for what we’re calling phase two of that project. The final phase will launch in early ’17, so very good progress there. We have high confidence in that and the relationship can’t be better and the teams are working very well. We also mentioned a UK Digital Bank that will launch in Q2 as well, and then the Digital Bank that you mentioned [credit] of 100 billion, that will drop a lot of services, but that will be onboarding throughout ’16 and in to ’17, so that’s a little later, because we didn’t sign that till Q4 and those tend to run about anywhere from 12 to 18 months of deployment time. The Bradesco talk about the large card portfolio that will also come on in mid-summer.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

And would you say those four are the top four that are sort of yet to be implemented that you have in the pipeline or now that’s [reassigned]?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Darrin Peller with Barclays. Please go ahead

Those are some of the key ones that we’ve highlighted. Of course obviously in the company [outside] we’ve always got a lot more large implementations going on. And so the team that was a nice job of deploying those and typically they come on without any excitement which is always the thing we’re looking for. So we’ve got to continue to not only execute on our delivery pipeline but also our sales pipeline, we got to keep filing those delivery buckets, and the team’s done a nice job doing it.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead.

Ashwin Shirvaikar

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

Just want to start IFS, when I look at sort of low level of term fees in 2015 and you signed several new core processing clients, shouldn’t that result in a higher normalized top line growth? And when I look at the overall IFS [team mates], maybe that’s the offset. But how much of an offset is that going to be? Any kind of prognosis on IFS by the various pieces?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

And when you look at it, I think Ashwin a couple of things, one, conservative about our revenue growth guidance for 2016 first of all. Secondly as we talked we do have a broad set of payment solutions business, some of them are growing faster, some of them are growing slower, which is a headwind to overall growth in to the IFS Group. What we did see was good growth in the banking group and good growth in the business solutions group and EMV card production. So we’ve got some growth but we definitely still have some level of headwinds. Again the macro backdrop here is conservative overall guidance as well.

Ashwin Shirvaikar

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

Can you comment on the nature of some of those headwinds, the timing aspect of it?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

Well if you think about our check business for example, check volumes continue to decline, that environment continues to be a headwind overall for us. We seek some price compression in payments group that we’ve talked about before. So that’s a bit of a headwind in terms of overall growth. Some of these wins are obviously coming on and they’re implementing growth or improving growth as we forward. But you’ve got a combination of headwinds and tailwinds in that business that we think is still driving that 3% to 4% range in to 2016.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

If you think about it, and we keep mentioning it on the calls, but it’s been a significant growth with all these acquisitions, and so that’s just a natural headwind that propels in to 2016. While the term fees are coming down and I always point to, that’s a great indicator of the launch for. They are continuing, they are still not down to zero, right, so we still got to deal with acquisitions. To Woody’s point, it’s a very competitive market, we continue to see the price compression as an issue, but the team continues to sell through that, where they had a great year last year in sales and I would tell you in 2016 we see no indication that’s not going to continue.

Ashwin Shirvaikar

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

Got it. Now none of those factors sound like the check processing payment price compression I think is new there, that’s good. As you look at the overall portfolio of business that you now run are there pieces either within SunGard or within FIS old curve that does not make sense that does not belong?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

There’s always going to be. We’re always sort of going to evaluate what are the right assets for us going forward and also what meets and fits with our strategy. As you’ve seen historically at FIS we’ve divested up assets that don’t our strategy but are very good company. So I’ll point to healthcare, I’ll point to the gaming business. And we’ll continue to look and evaluate that. If we have assets that don’t fit our overall strategy, but would be better served under a different ownership structure, we would certainly pursue that.

Ashwin Shirvaikar

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

Last question, investors obviously care a lot about leveraging, I am hoping you can comment cash used, might you lean a little bit more debt towards debt pay-down as oppose to buyback, any thoughts there?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead

We would lean very heavily to debt, [quit] repayment there. In fact we don’t anticipate any share buybacks in 2016. We will close the year round at about four times leverage. We’re targeting to get [bad debts] of 2.5 times by the end of 2017. But all of our excess free cash flow will generally be used towards debt pay downs Ashwin over the course of ’16 and through ’17 until we de-lever back to the targeted level.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank.

Bryan Keane

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

(inaudible) on a constant currency basis in 2016?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

2015 during the third quarter which they reported was about a 5% growth rate. We only picked up the month of December which was a $300 million contribution; their full year growth rate was just under that number.

Bryan Keane

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

Okay, so more kind of in line than the 3 to 5 you guys were thinking about for SunGard going forward?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

That’s correct, probably more in the 3 to 4.5, 3 to 5 zone.

Bryan Keane

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

And then just a clarification on GFS, just trying to think about the pieces on the minus 3% constant currency organic growth in the fourth quarter. Telling through is tough comps and then you mentioned also of course professional services. Any details you can give us on those numbers on how to think about the drop there of minus 3%. May be what Capco grew in the fourth quarter exactly on a constant currency basis.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

Capco on a constant currency basis was down approximately 10%. That equated to a full year growth of 5%. We were anticipating Capco having slow growth in Q1 and returning to some growth in Q2, Q3, Q4, but in mid-single digit for most of 2016. So that’s how we kind of slow that piece of the business line.

Bryan Keane

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

Anything else to quantify inside of GFS that was negative or caused the drop of 3%?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

Those were the big items, the other one, the license comp that we had in 2014 once there was about $7 million or $8 million license in 2014 that drove a difficult sales comp in to ’15.

Bryan Keane

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

That’s really helpful. I think going forward in GFS ex SunGard is that still supposed to be in that positive 3% to 4%, and then just what drives that just in the first, second quarter in the first half, I assume its supposedly or supposed to be lower. Is there anything that helps the growth either way to come off that minus 3% ex SunGard?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank

I think the Latin America win definitely helps support some of that growth. Ex SunGard that would offset some of the PS business that we talked about. Clear2Pay is still growing very well for us in Europe and in Asia Pacific it’s been growing pretty well. So the combination lands on we believe the three to four kind of zone without SunGard in the front half of the year as well.

Operator

Operator

And we do have a question from the line of George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead.

George Mihalos

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

Just wanted to ask you is there cadence we should be aware of in the IFS segment as we model through 2016 or should the growth there be fairly uniform quarter-to-quarter unlike the GFS segment?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

We think it’d be fairly uniform. That business is highly recurring, very predictable and has performed well in our anticipation. That coupled with very little expectations around term fees, we think it’s going to be a pretty ratable growth.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

I think George when you think about it, it will return to a more normalized quarter-on-quarter that we’ve seen historically in that business, given its 90% reoccurring revenues. So that’s what we love about that business is very predictable.

George Mihalos

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

Just to follow-up on Bryan’s question, it sounds like for the first quarter at least of ’16, Capco again will be under some pressure. It sounds like may be on a constant currency basis that should be negative, and then start to turn positive in 2Q and then accelerate over the back half of the year. Is that the right way to be thinking about it?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

That’s a fair way to think about it.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

As we said the back half of last year we started filling the pipeline, we started getting out and selling the type of consulting we were looking for. We’ve had some engagements we are starting to fill that. So all the indicators are nice progress, but this will take some time to get it back to a more normalized basis.

George Mihalos

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

And just last question from me just as we think about the tax rate, the 35% for 2016. Woody how comfortable are you that that coming down in ’17 may be they are something closer 33 or a range like that?

Woody Woodall

Analyst · George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead

I feel really comfortable. If you look at what SunGard was doing, they’ve repatriated most of their cash back to pay down debt. It produced a standalone rate that was pretty high about 38% standalone when you take out discrete items in their history. So we will feel very confident in our ability to drive that rate down over the course of ’17 and forward as we implement tax planning strategy similar to what we’ve done at FIS, utilizing the foreign rate differential in some of the structure that we have.

Operator

Operator

And our last question of the day comes from the line of Glenn Greene with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Glenn Greene

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

The first one, you were asked the question on bank spending, discretionary spending related to SunGard, and it sounds like obviously with the fourth quarter you had a deal wins that went off. So just broadly the bank spending, discretionary spending environment for the core business ex SunGard both across those GFS and IFS?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

What we can say is what we’re seeing in our product focused sales teams, we are continuing to see good pipeline, good closure. Keep in mind, even on SunGard, most of their license fees are term based, so you have to renew them in order to continue to process. There’s also a large maintenance string and processing strings associated with that. So you’re really talking about mission critical applications. And as I said, we saw great response out of SunGard team in December. We see good pipeline in to the Q1 and good line of sight to our Q1. We are also seeing across traditional FIS business and our IP sales we’ve highlighted number of key wins last year. So we think that gives us confidence going in to ’16.

Glenn Greene

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

So basically broadly you haven’t really seen any sort fall off in activity levels, given the uncertain environment we’re all seeing and volatility?

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

Other than our people based services business, we haven’t. We’ve seen some softness there, we’ve highlighted that starting mid-way through last year, but really in our product led sales, we continue to see good strong momentum.

Glenn Greene

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

And just to be clear, there’s a lot of commentary around guidance for the segments. Just to be clear as it relates to the 3 to 4 organic growth, it sounds like you are thinking 3 to 4 for both IFS and GFS, and I think I heard the 26% margin comment for GFS including SunGard, just to be clear on the margin and growth expectations by segment.

Woody Woodall

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

We typically haven’t given segment guidance, but I’m going to give you some color around it. We do think IFS in that 3% to 4% zone, the top one. We would anticipate IFS margin’s in a 10 to 20 basis points expansion range. We would look for GFS revenue in the 3% to 4% zone as well, and that GFS margin profile to increase from 22% or so to 26% plus.

Glenn Greene

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

Just one last question, very high level commentary on the GFS from a geographic perspective, sounds like Latin American is probably going to improve with the Bradesco [language] sort of a much higher broadly kind of full year basis by the year before (inaudible) geographic.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

When you look at that blend, Latin America is going to have a nice year given the wind that we had in Q4. Moving over in to Europe, we’re seeing strong product led sales, especially in the UK and Germany specifically, and we think that’s going to continue. We had some good sales success last year in that region, a lot of that’s going to be onboarding this year, but we also see good pipeline and good integration. Asia has been strong for us consistently, and frankly as I mentioned we now doubled the size of that sales force in Asia which is something that we needed for the increase in demand that we’re seeing. And so we were in the process of broadening our sales force there anyway. So that’s going to be a good outcome. We are bullish that that team’s going to continue to execute and Asia’s going to be continue to be a strong grower for us.

Operator

Operator

And for closing remarks, we’ll turn the conference back over to the CEO, Gary Norcross. Please go ahead.

Gary Norcross

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead

Thank you for your questions today and for your continued interest in FIS. I’d like to summarize by saying strategy has consistently driven year-over-year performance results. Our deep focus in investment and financial services is allowing us to leave change in the industry. We are excited about our future. I’d like to thank our leaders and our more than 55,000 employees for their hard work and dedication in serving our clients. As important, I’d like to thank our loyal clients who depend on us and trust us to keep their businesses running every day. It is because of our clients and employees that FIS continues to empower the financial world. Thank you for joining us today.

Operator

Operator

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