The most powerful woman in fintech is on the hunt for acquisitions

Just a few months after closing one of the biggest deals of her career, Stephanie Ferris, CEO of Fidelity National Information Services, has news for everyone: FIS is not over yet. Ferris and the company he runs want to get back to shopping.

In February, FIS completed the sale of a majority stake in WorldPay to GTCR, a Chicago redemption center. The transaction helped FIS reduce its total debt, which had increased to approximately $19.1 billion at the end of 2023, to approximately $10 billion upon completion of the sale. As of March 31, FIS’s debt was $11.2 billion and its leverage ratio was about 2.7 times greater, the spokesman said.

Deleveraging means FIS is restoring its mergers and acquisitions program, Ferris said. The Jacksonville-based company provides fintech software to merchants, banks and capital markets firms. FIS allocates about $1 billion a year to deals and will focus on small, synergistic products that the company doesn’t currently have or hasn’t had enough time to build organically, she said. Last year’s purchase of Bond Financial Technologies, a banking-as-a-service startup, was an acquisition – something FIS doesn’t intend to repeat this time around. “We’re really looking for products or companies that have revenue and EBITDA and a proven business model,” Ferris said.

Any acquisitions will be in areas that FIS wants to develop, such as digital and payments capabilities in the banking space and commercial lending technology in the capital markets sector, she said. FIS will not want to conduct one large transaction, but many smaller transactions. For a company to attract FIS’s interest, it should have revenues of at least $150 million to $200 million, otherwise “it’s not actually a company, it’s just a product and it doesn’t have enough customers for us,” Ferris said.

Ferris was talking Fortune last week after the end of a triumphant investor day. On March 6, FIS announced first-quarter earnings that exceeded expectations. The results mark the fifth quarter of Ferris’ tenure in which FIS met or exceeded earnings expectations. FIS also announced the launch of Atelio, which enables financial institutions, companies and software developers to include financial services in their offerings. Atelio already has three clients: KeyBank, College Ave and RoyalPay. (Atelio includes Bond executives, including Roy Ng, co-founder and CEO of Bond, who is vice president and chief business officer of FIS Platform and Enterprise Solutions.)

“It has been a very busy first 18 months, both inside and outside FIS. I’m really happy with where we are,” Ferris said.

Ferris’s beginnings as director general of FIS were not easy. She was handed the reins of a large, publicly traded fintech that was struggling. FIS’s heavy debt meant the company could only complete one acquisition – the purchase of Payrix for approximately $800 million in 2021, between 2019 and 2022.

In February 2023, just a few months after Ferris became CEO, FIS announced plans to spin off WorldPay. It started the sale process in April, and by July it had signed a contract with the buyer WorldPay, she added. The WorldPay process has generated a lot of interest, especially among private equity firms, and Advent International is rumored to be involved. Ferris did not want to comment. “We moved fast. “Transactions die if they take a long time,” she said.

The decision to sell most of WorldPay meant Ferris scuttled one of the biggest payments deals of 2019. There were several of them this year. Fiserv acquired First Data for $22 billion, Global Payments acquired TSYS for $21.5 billion, and Worldline bought Ingenico for €7.8 billion.

FIS’s purchase of WorldPay “was a poor decision,” said Dan Dolev, senior research analyst for fintech stocks at Mizuho Securities USA. FIS purchased WorldPay at the height of consolidation for processors. Dolev said WorldPay did not have a branded point-of-sale terminal for small businesses like Fiserv did for Clover or Square did for Square POS. All of WorldPay’s competitors had branded outlets, which made it difficult for it to compete, Dolev said.

“(Ferris) showed great courage in completing the merger,” Dolev said. FIS stock also rebounded after falling to a 52-week low of $47.16 in October. The company’s shares closed at $76.39 on Tuesday, up about 62%.

What is FIS?

FIS is one of the world’s largest financial services companies. Its software powers many of the largest private equity firms and ranks 95% on Forbes’ 2024 World’s Best Banks list, Ferris said. FIS technology “underpins the entire financial services industry,” she said.

FIS is so important that in March 2023, when several regional banks failed, including Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the CEOs of many banks large and small contacted Ferris to ensure their systems were running smoothly, she added . Such responsibility is an honor and a privilege that Ferris says he takes seriously: “I am an FIS steward…I make sure we are here for our customers every day.”

Ferris, who has worked in finance throughout her career, including as WorldPay’s chief financial officer, does not believe there will be a banking crisis in 2023. According to Ferris, the financial system is very strong.

“In fact, we have seen more accounts opened across the banking system. More deposit accounts have been opened compared to the perception that people are taking their money out and running and putting it away from banks,” she said.

Ferris has been in finance her entire career and has worn many hats. She was the CFO, COO, president, and now CEO of one of the largest fintechs. That makes her the most powerful woman in fintech, something Ferris said she doesn’t even think about. “There was always a group of guys in the room. Because that’s how I grew up, it doesn’t bother me,” she said.

As for peers, Ferris points to Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, whom she described as a “tough guy.” Ferris said Fraser has a tough job ahead of her as the only woman to run a major bank. “I think she’s amazing,” she said.

This story was originally published on Fortune.com