Stephanie Ferris
Chief Executive Officer and President at Fidelity National Information Services
Thank you, George, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. 2024 was a year of continued progress at FIS. We made significant strides executing on the strategy we laid out at Investor Day. To drive commercial excellence across the enterprise, refocus sales on key growth vectors and extend and complement our portfolio of solutions with targeted M&A. We committed to doing this while also focusing on continued profitability and increasing total returns to shareholders. While there is still much work to do, the actions we've taken to refocus the company are driving improved financial outcomes and delivering greater value to all of our stakeholders.
Our focus on commercial excellence continues to increase the momentum we are seeing in new sales across core banking and our key growth vectors of digital, payments and commercial lending, positioning us for accelerated growth going-forward. I want to thank the entire FIS team for their commitment and dedication to moving the company forward through this period of rapid change. Overall, we delivered a solid set of financial results in 2024, leveraging our strong position across the money life-cycle. Revenue growth accelerated from 3% to 4% in 2024. And while this was slightly below our expectations due to some onetime items, growth in new sales, including a 10% increase in cross-sales and improved commercial excellence across our client base leave us confident in further acceleration in 2025.
We are pleased with the early returns on our sales transformation, driving new wins and higher-margin recurring revenue. For example, we've hired more quota-caring specialists focused on specific solution sets in key verticals such as payments, digital and treasury and risk. We are confident this specialized sales approach will allow us to better cross-sell solutions into our clients and position us to capitalize on our most attractive and growing markets. This focus on profitable growth and business simplification translated into strong margin expansion of 64 basis-points for the year. This exceeded our original outlook of 20 to 40 basis-points.
First, we are poised to drive further margin expansion in 2025, in-line with our Investor Day targets as we execute on the pillars of our Future Forward strategy. The strong execution this year resulted in adjusted EPS growth of 18% on a normalized basis, again exceeding our full-year outlook. Lastly, we returned $4.8 billion to shareholders across share repurchases and dividends, including $1.2 billion in the 4th-quarter. Looking into 2025, we are well-positioned to return $2 billion of capital and deliver double-digit total return to shareholders, including 9% to 11% adjusted EPS growth.
Turning to Slide 6 for a discussion on new sales, key client wins and partnerships. First, I'm pleased to report that we ended the year-on a high note with the sales momentum we generated over the first 3/4 of the year continuing into the 4th-quarter. The strong close reaffirms our confidence in accelerating revenue growth over the course of 2025 and will provide a solid foundation for continued growth into 2026. Beginning with Money at Rest, we had a record year of core wins with success across all of our strategic banking platforms. This included several competitive takeaways with our core platforms resonating across regional, community and de novo banks.
I'm excited to announce that Centennial Bank, a growing regional bank with over $20 billion in assets, will be moving to our IBS platform. And as part of this strategic migration, they've also selected our B1 studio digital bank offering, which will be replacing their current provider. We're thrilled to be working with Centennial and look-forward to growing alongside them. Our. Our IBS platform was also selected by a leading Midwest-based community bank. The bank will be migrating KFIS from a competitor solution that have been servicing the bank for decades.
Moving to digital. New sales of digital solutions grew 70% year-over-year in 2024. Demand was primarily driven by cross-sales into FIS's core clients. Additionally, we are seeing early traction bundling our digital solutions with new core wins, reducing complexity and cost for banks. We expect the strong digital sales momentum to continue in 2025, aided by the recent Dragonfly acquisition and specialized sales focus.
Moving to Money Motion. We signed a number of new wins across domestic and international banks and premier fintech companies. First, I'm pleased to announce that we entered into a strategic partnership with the firm, enabling our debit processing clients to have access to Affirm's market-leading Buy Now Pay Later capabilities. BNPL represents one of the fastest-growing markets in the changing payments landscape with over 86 million Americans having used the service in 2024. Our partnership with Affirm, the first-of-its-kind to bring together debit processing with payover-time capabilities demonstrates FIS's commitment to innovation and unique positioning to unlock financial technology across the money life-cycle.
During the quarter, we also expanded our relationship with NatWest, a leading UK financial institution. NatWest will utilize several new products across both payments and lending. And we've continued to gain traction beyond financial institutions having signed several new network and processing deals with emerging technology providers. This is a significant opportunity to further diversify our payments business, leveraging our loyalty, network and issuing capabilities.
Moving to Money at-work. First, we had another strong sales quarter with continued demand across trade processing and commercial lending. In the 4th-quarter, one of the largest regional banks in the US opted for FIS's transfer agency solution. This is another example of how our cross-sell initiative, Amplify is resonating with clients. We also continue to see benefit integrating our strategic acquisitions into our global distribution network. During the quarter,, a specialized SaaS post-trade platform acquired in early 2024, signed one of the largest deals in its history. Leveraging FIS's brand and track-record in the market, Torstone was able to sell its back-office services to a leading digital brokerage company.
In the 4th-quarter, we also signed a number of new engagements with both traditional and alternative lenders and our pipeline of opportunities remains large. Commercial lending remains a key growth vertical for us with double-digit revenue growth in the quarter and strong new sales. FIS' products and solutions were once again recognized by a number of prestigious advisory and expert firms across the industry. Our Horizon banking platform was recognized by winning in the advanced technology category, while IDC recognized FIS as a leader in Marketscape's North American digital core banking platforms and for its outstanding customer satisfaction and treasury management.
Additionally, Gartner placed Horizon and IBS in the leaders quadrant of their MAGIC quadrant for retail core banking systems. And the firm also recognized MVP in the Visionaries quadrant. We are pleased to see so many of our products and solutions continue to be recognized as leaders in the market, reaffirming the momentum we are seeing in sales activity.
I'll conclude on Slide 7 with an overview of how FIS is capitalizing on the unique market of the office of the CFO. Leveraging our reach across the full money life-cycle, FIS is uniquely positioned to tap into one of the most attractive opportunities in enterprise software, helping CFOs turn finance from a cost center into a growth center for their business. The role of the CFO across large enterprises is expanding. Finance leaders are being tasked with improving and automating processes while simultaneously lowering costs and navigating complex tax and regulatory environments. To achieve these goals, CFOs are leaning on trusted technology providers like FIS for help.
The office of the CFO represents a global market of over $25 billion with double-digit growth and significant runway to further grow our business with enterprise corporate clients. The fragmented competitive landscape in this space works to our advantage. While competitors might be able to offer clients one or two solutions, FIS delivers a comprehensive suite of end-to-end capabilities across money at Rest, in Motion and at-work. This suite includes award-winning solutions across payments, supply-chain management, digital enhancements and fraud prevention. And we are further extending our lead with the launch of next-generation solutions such as Treasury GPT, a new tool launched in partnership with Microsoft.
Leveraging AI, corporate treasurers are able to access and synthesize large pools of data, helping them improve their cash management activities. We are also expanding our reach with strategic M&A, including the recent acquisition of UK fintech, positioning FIS as a leader in supply-chain finance capabilities. This mix of organic and inorganic investments reinforces how we are effectively allocating capital across the company to capitalize on growth opportunities. The office of the CFO is just one example of an attractive and growing market where FIS's unique set of assets positions the company to win.
First, I stepped into the CEO role at FIS two years ago, a company I am honored and privileged to lead. During this time-frame, we initiated one of the largest transformational strategies in the company's history to improve our profitability and financial foundation, enabling us to drive key client outcomes of simplification, innovation and client centricity, as well as investor outcomes of enhanced shareholder value. The organic and inorganic investments we are making are delivering tangible results. We have successfully completed five acquisitions, driving positive financial returns and extending our solution capabilities in key growth areas such as digital, payments and commercial lending.
We established new commercial partnerships with industry leaders like Microsoft, Affirm and Worldpay among others. These partnerships have enabled us to extend innovative new capabilities to our clients and their customers. We had our strongest year ever in core banking with record new wins, sales momentum across our key growth vectors, including 70% growth in digital sales and continued demand for our commercial lending solutions. Overall, new sales increased a solid 9% in 2024, showing progress in our commercial excellence transformation and providing us with visibility into future growth as signings convert into revenue over the next few quarters.
Our solutions have received dozens of new awards and third-party accolades from prestigious organizations, recognizing us as leaders and visionaries. We are on the right path to accelerate growth, expand profitability and increase shareholder value. And while progress isn't a straight-line and we still have more work to do, I'm extremely pleased with the momentum we have and excited about our prospects going-forward.
And with that, I'll turn it over to James for a review of our financials. James?
