FIS Is Considering Selling Worldpay For $15 Billion

FIS is thinking about selling its Worldpay Merchant Solutions business. This is a change from what they had planned before, which was to make the unit into a separate company.

As soon as Stephanie Ferris became the new CEO of FIS in December, she started a review of the company’s portfolio of assets. Her goal was to identify and optimise incremental revenue generation, margin improvement, and cost reduction opportunities.

The payment giant has already taken steps to save hundreds of millions of dollars by firing 2600 employees and 1000 partners.

After FIS’s shares dropped by more than a third over the past year, hedge funds D.E. Shaw and Jana Partners pushed for a review of the company’s business assets to find ways to boost the company’s value.

According to a report in the Financial Times, FIS is now thinking about selling a majority stake in Worldpay for $15 billion. Private equity companies Advent and GTCR in Chicago are reportedly interested.

30% of FIS’s total revenue comes from merchant activities. Core banking makes up 46% of the rest, and capital markets make up the rest.

In 2022, Worldpay had sales of $4.8 billion and Adjusted Ebitda of $2.3 billion. In 2022, 43% of the business’s income came from company, 27% from SMB, and 30% from eCommerce.