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Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS -0.35%)
Q1 2019 Earnings Call
April 30, 2019, 8:30 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the FIS First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode, Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session, instructions will be given at that time.(Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Pete Gunnlaugsson. Please go ahead.
Peter Gunnlaugsson -- SVP of Corporate Finance & IR
Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everyone and welcome to FIS's First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call.
Turning to Slide 2. Gary Norcross, Chairman, President Norcross, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer will begin today's call with company highlights for the quarter. Woody Woodall, Chief Financial Officer will continue with the financial results for the quarter. This conference call is also being webcasted with today's news release and corresponding presentation 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.
Turning to Slide 4, we will also be providing information with regards to our recent Worldpay announcement as such participants in the solicitation should also refer to the additional information provided regarding regulatory filings with the SEC and how to easily obtain copies of these filings moving forward. Please note that our update today is neither an offering of securities nor solicitation of a proxy to vote. Information discussed today is qualified in its entirety by the registration statement and joint proxy statement that FIS and Worldpay has filed with the SEC.
With that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Gary to discuss first quarter's results. Gary?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Pete. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I'm very pleased to announce that FIS growth story continues. We delivered exceptionally strong results to start the year exceeding our revenue, earnings and profitability expectations for the first quarter. Turning to Slide 6, our consolidated revenue growth of more than 5% was driven by a record year of sales in 2018 and continued strong sales and volumes throughout Q1. Our margins expanded significantly as a result of continued execution of our data center consolidation, operating growth and the positive impact of non-core divestitures and we also announced our transformative deal to acquire Worldpay which further drives growth an attractive faster growing markets. Client spend and demand for our portfolio remains exceptionally strong, particularly for our new and modernized solutions.
These factors drove another solid quarter for FIS. We saw a very strong growth in these sales, which increased more than 30% of total contract value compared to the prior year period. These factors are accelerating the overall growth and quality of our pipeline and we remain on track to exceed our sales plan for the year. These early results combined with our robust backlog, create very positive momentum and gives us a solid confidence in achieving our full year expectations. Given the strong start, we raised our revenue guidance for the year.
Turning to Slide 7, FIS remains on the forefront of leadership by investing over 7% of the total revenue in the modernizing our solutions and infrastructure to advance our clients' future. We've capitalized on our leadership position, bringing to market digitally driven, open and cloud-based solutions that enable our clients to more efficiently run their operations, connect with their customers and grow their businesses.
Industry analyst group, IDC recently named FIS as a North American leader in omni-channel and digital banking solutions into industrywide rankings, underscoring the impact of these innovation focused investments. Additionally, our API gateway Code Connect was also named as the most advanced API strategy among U.S. core banking providers by industry analyst, Aite Group.
This recognition is proof of solid progress toward executing on our strategy to deliver the most modern solutions in the industry, accelerate our data center consolidation in cloud strategy and continually drive increased efficiency within our organization. Turning to Slide 8, additionally, to lead the future of finance and commerce, we are also very pleased with our recent strategic announcement to acquire Worldpay.
As we discussed with you last month, this transaction is a continuation of our historically successful M&A strategy to accelerate growth while continuing to optimize margins and leverage synergies through effective integration. This combination will provide significant revenue synergy opportunities of $500 million over three years.
As a reminder the new revenue opportunities from the combined organization include expanded global offerings for merchants with innovative e-commerce solutions, deeper and broader solutions for financial institutions, such as fraud tools payment processing in a global merchant referral network and enhance an innovative payment solutions, creating a faster payments community for high volume retail and high value commercial payments.
These are just a few of the immediate opportunities drive new revenue streams, which will accelerate our growth profile on organic growth trajectory. On day one as a combined company, we will have over $12 billion of revenue growing organically approximately 6%. I'm pleased to share that we have received early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period from the Department of Justice on the Worldpay transaction.
This early termination and progress in our other regulatory filings gives us strong confidence in our ability to close this transaction in Q3 of this year. We have begun planning to meet our post closing synergy goals. Culturally our two organizations are well aligned and we're making good early progress in defining our go-forward organizational structure until closing we will continue to operate as separate companies and we will keep you informed as we move toward close.
Turning to Slide 9 for key themes focusing now on our segments, our Integrated Financial Solutions segment delivered exceptional organic revenue growth of 7% and margin expansion of 160 basis points. Following strong growth results in Q4 revenue growth for this segment continues to exceed expectations as well accelerate year-over-year. This outstanding growth was underpinned by onboarding of new clients, resulting from the strong sales throughout 2018. We also saw increased transaction and processing volumes as our clients continue to perform very well.
Our multi-year investments in digital innovation continue to be a strong opportunity driver for us as clients of all sizes are looking to more meaningfully engage with customers and build new revenue streams for digital channels. For example, a National Cooperative Bank of more than $125 billion in assets selected our Digital One solution to bring more personalized, consistent and efficient digital banking capabilities to its small business customers in the U.S. In addition, a $20 billion U.S. community institution who is upgrading to our modern FIS core platform will leverage Digital One to enable omni-channel sales and service capabilities within its branches and self-service digital channels.
This multiyear agreement is a key success factor in the bank strategy to transform and modernize its banking environment and services. Our IFS Payments division also drove very strong growth again this quarter. This growth was underpinned by the combination of new client logos coupled with strong transaction and processing volumes. We are also seeing exceptionally strong demand in adoption for our loyalty solutions, for example we are successfully expanding our loyalty as a currency offering into new consumer based markets, including retail and restaurants.
As noted last quarter, our innovative mass enablement strategies bringing new capabilities to our clients for a one-to-many deployment model. Our robust Q1 results and strong pipeline gives us confidence, this will continue to be a strong growth driver for IFS. In summary, the spend environment in our IFS segment remains healthy. We are successfully capitalizing on new opportunities, which are expanding and strengthening our already robust business. Our Global Financial Solutions segment results in Q1 exceeded plan due to very strong sales delivering organic revenue growth of more than 2% and margin expansion of nearly 300 basis points.
These sales results will translate to accelerated reoccurring revenue growth for the remainder of the year and into 2020. Revenue growth for our GFS Banking and Payments division grew almost 10% organically. Much of this growth was driven by increased transaction and processing volumes from new logos and expanded relationships with current clients.
For example, a European subsidiary of a global financial services powerhouse expanded its relationship with us by selecting FIS as its multiyear payment processing in a loan origination partner to support its geographic expansion. We also expanded our long-term relationship with the global card brand accelerating our ability to support cross border business to business payments.
These wins underscore our ability to leverage our broad banking and payments portfolio with local market expertise to solve market-specific challenges. Our investments in risk and compliance solutions continue to drive new meaningful revenue opportunities. We are seeing good demand to help organizations more easily comply with the new Consolidated Audit Trail industry requirement to track orders throughout their life cycle for reporting of U.S. equities and options.
As a result of that demand, we expanded our relationship with three large global financial services provider during the quarter by entering into new agreements for our Pro-Digit (ph) solution. We are very pleased with our pipeline strength and growth trajectory of our GFS business, like the IFS environment investments spend within our GFS markets remains healthy.
We are confident in our ability to turn opportunities in the closed wins and an accelerated pace. We recently hosted more than 3,000 attendees at the first of our three large client conferences, the drive to modernize, realize efficiency gains and grow revenue were prevalent themes for many clients, This then you provided the platform for our clients to learn more about the solutions that are designed to help them achieve these objectives using modern using modern technologies and capabilities. Based on this transformation, the modern technologies we announced, we are lowering our service level agreements for business recovery times to less than 15 minutes for our digital applications in North America, driving significant benefit to thousands of our clients.
Where most providers are committing to hours, not minutes, we believe this is a bold offer, and first of its kind in the industry, but not the last of its kind from FIS. Feedback from our clients throughout the event was overwhelmingly positive and early results of the conference show strong continued demand.
Turning to Slide 10, this feedback coupled with our strong first quarter results and robust pipeline underscores our confidence in our strategy, and our investment decisions. It also gives us clear line of sight and our ability to deliver our 2019 goals and beyond, which are to innovate for long-term growth, drive strong sales with competitively differentiated solutions, and build on our global scale.
We remain very confident in the value we're delivering for our clients and believe that will continue to translate into strong returns for our shareholders. Woody will now provide additional detail on the financial results for the quarter and full year. Woody?
James W. Woodall --
Thanks, Gary. Turning to Slide 12, in the first quarter, revenue increased 5.1% on an organic basis and EBITDA increased 3.4% compared to the prior year period. EBITDA margin expanded 130 basis points to 35.4%, and adjusted earnings per share grew 9.3% to $1.64 per share. This quarter was a strong start to the year and exceeded our expectations for top line growth, margin expansion and earnings.
Moving to Slide 13, IFS revenue increased 7.3% on an organic basis, and EBITDA grew 10.4% with 160 basis points of margin expansion. As Gary mentioned, the strong sales execution we have highlighted the last few quarters is resulting an accelerated revenue growth.
Turning to Slide 14, banking and wealth grew 7.2% for the quarter. Growth was driven primarily by another strong quarter for our Wealth Management business. Payments continues to see strong growth with 9.7% in the quarter. This was driven primarily by increased transaction processing volumes.
Additionally, our loyalty as a currency solution continues to see strong adoption and grew nearly 30% year-over-year. Corporate and digital grew 4% in the quarter, with new sales wins for our small business, and integrated payable solutions.
Turning to Slide 15, GFS revenue grew 2.4% organically while EBITDA grew 1.4% compared to the prior year period. For the quarter, this represents 290 basis points of margin expansion to 35.8%.
Moving to Slide 16, the institutional and wholesale group declined 3% driven by previously mentioned difficult license comparable. These results were better than expectations, and sales were strong in the quarter with the team exceeding their plan. Recurring revenue sales increased about 40% outpacing non-recurring deals, and the teams continue to execute well.
We anticipate this group to turn positive next quarter with continuing momentum for the remainder of the year. Banking and payments grew 9.6% for the quarter. These results were driven primarily by license revenue in Brazil, and continuing strong demand for our digital solutions in our large financial institution market.
Moving to Slide 17, our Corporate and Other segment grew 4.1% organically, when the EBITDA loss of $79 million. Corporate expenses for the quarter exceeded our plan by approximately $10 million due to higher accruals related to incentive compensation driven by our operating results, and healthcare benefits.
Moving to Slide 18, free cash flow is about $250 million for the quarter, a 10% increase over the prior year period. Debt outstanding as of March 31st was $9.2 billion with an effective weighted average interest rate of 3.3%.
Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 19% in line with expectations for the quarter and full year. We returned over $500 million to shareholders in the first quarter through the repurchase of 3.9 million shares for approximately $400 million and $113 million in dividends. As a reminder, we have suspended our share repurchase program, in conjunction with the Worldpay transaction.
Turning to Slide 19, I'd like to add some color regarding the synergy estimates we communicated in our recent Worldpay announcement. In the first 12 to 18 months post close, we expect to drive around $100 million of revenue synergies. These opportunities will leverage complementary solutions that are in the market today with very little limited sales effort generally required.
Over an 18 to 36-month period, we plan to deliver on the remaining 400 million of revenue synergies. Items in this category are also in market today, but we will have to have an interaction with the client to discuss the value proposition, convert a portfolio or complete a sale. Of the $400 million of expense synergies identified during due diligence, we expect approximately $200 million to come from operational efficiencies including vendor and facilities rationalization another $100 million should come from technology segments primarily driven by incremental data center consolidation and related costs. Over and above what we've committed to you on a stand-alone basis.
And finally, we anticipate about $100 million to be achieved through functional corporate alignment. As we shared on the morning announcement, both companies have a very strong track record on delivering and exceeding synergies.
As Gary mentioned, we now expect the transaction to close in Q3, we are looking at a potential debt issuance as early as May, We'll be looking at both the European, and U.S. debt capital markets as we prepare to finance the transaction.
Turning to Slide 20, today we are increasing the low end of our revenue guidance to 4%. Last year, we begin highlighting the strong market demand for our solutions and the investments we've been making in modernization and innovation. These efforts and investments have been translating into increased sales, and are now translating into accelerating revenue growth.
We are reiterating our adjusted earnings per share guidance. Our strong operating performance for the quarter and expectations for continued strength for the remainder of the year is being offset by the suspension of our share repurchase program.
Turning to Slide 21, this was a very successful start of the year for FIS, in addition to announcing a transformational M&A deal, our teams remain highly focused on delivering for our clients and driving operating results. We will continue to leverage our market leadership to produce accelerating top line growth, exceptional margin expansion and robust cash flow.
These strengths allow us to invest for future growth and return value to shareholders. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, (Operator Instruction) Your first question comes from the line of David Togut from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
David Togut -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Thanks, good morning and good to see the acceleration in organic revenue growth.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, David.
David Togut -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
This looks to be your strongest organic revenue growth for FIS as a whole since the fourth quarter of 2016, and for IFS, the highest growth since the second quarter of '16. So my question really is the sustainability of this higher organic revenue growth rate, clearly you're lifting the guide for the year, but when you look at the underlying drivers banking payments you have the conviction that they can remain this strong for the next year or to?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think David we've been indicating that our sales are continuing to ramp up you see this, this quarter, once again 30% growth year-over-year on total contract value, so the sales engines are working very well. The market demand seems to be high for the, for the products and services that we've been investing in over the last several years, and we think as you know it's a long sales cycle and then it's a long onboarding cycle, but we do think that projection to the future, very nice strong continued organic growth for FIS and for our existing businesses.
So we feel good about where we are and we've had a great year last year in sales across multiple quarters and that's led into Q1 as well we've been signaling that on every call.
James W. Woodall --
Yeah, David, if you think about us coming out of the first quarter and raising revenue guidance. I'm typically a little more conservative is one quarter doesn't normally make a year. So should give you some color into the confidence level of our view on revenue for the year, and the continued acceleration.
David Togut -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Understood. And then what feedback have you received from your regional bank customers with respect to their demand for cross-selling of Worldpay's Merchant Acquiring Services into their core corporate customer base?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
The response from our client base has been outstanding on the Worldpay combination. It was, it's clear they see it as very complementary to FIS, they see the opportunity for us to innovate and expand and help them address unique ways to address the ever-changing payments landscape. Obviously as we move forward to close, we'll be putting our -- getting our sales teams together, and then in going to market as a combined company. But I would tell you the early feedback from all of our clients has been enormously supportive. They see it is a very strategic combination. They see it as a great company. And so they're excited about what this is going to, how this is going to help them compete in the future.
David Togut -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Congrats, again on the strong results.
Unidentified Speaker --
Thanks, David.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Dave Koning from Baird. Please go ahead.
David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst
Yeah. Hey guys. Great job.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Dave.
David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst
Yeah, I guess first of all in a little bit similar to David's question to just on the sustainability, was there anything in Q1 in GFS specifically you called out, I guess the Brazil license that I don't know maybe that was unsustainable. But the I&W revenue actually gets better, the rest of the year, so just when we think about maybe what was in there that might not be sustainable and then as we think about the rest of the year, is this more of a 4% to 5% grower, the rest of the year?
James W. Woodall --
Yeah, I think a couple of things, we had a couple of items that came in earlier in the year than we anticipated. Those couple of items helped the consolidated growth by about a point . for the quarter. So, if you adjusted amount to be -- about a 4% grower, it certainly was, we were excited to get those closed out down and lock down for the year. So we're not having to worry about it for the rest of the year, but you will certainly see GFS grow and accelerate their growth throughout the remainder of the year as we talk about comps getting easier. So we feel good about it. We feel good about raising the bottom end of the guidance and we want to continue to execute over the course of the year.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, the sales team really did a great job in GFS this past quarter. When you look historically, we always have more in the forecast, then what we, what we expect that you know because obviously there's always some slippage of transactions that incurred between quarters. But really the sales team stay very focused and really closed pretty much everything that was scheduled to close in Q1 and it result in exceeding the plan and our expectations for the quarter. So, they did a really good job as well which to Woody's point gives us further confidence as we think about going into the remainder of the year with our revenue targets and raise.
David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst
Okay, great. And a second question, I guess is kind of a two part question, but sometimes you give quarterly EPS, just to give us a sense. So anything on that? And then also did Brazil just the sales now that you've broken up the JV anything interesting percolating there?
James W. Woodall --
I'll touch base on the EPS and really the market consensus estimates for Q2 are very close to our expectations right now. I'll say that. So I think the models are in pretty good shape and I'll let Gary kind of touch base on the sales.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, you know I think we continue to have good traction in Brazil. We've got some good conversations, it's early. We're still sorting out the Brazil JV as we get that separated there's some transition agreements that we're working on, but we're still bullish on the opportunities in Brazil with the Worldpay combination we think that'll just further accelerate. So, there'll be more coming on that Dave, but Brazil is a great market for us.
David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst
Great, thanks guys. Nice job.
James W. Woodall --
Thanks, Dave.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Hey, thanks. Nice job, guys. Let me just start off with, when we look at this quarter's growth and then we go back to the pro forma targets you guys gave for the deal, you talked about revenue growth being 6% plus. And then going all the way up to 8% plus as the year has progressed. Was this kind of acceleration will give you so much confidence because bridging I think investors are still having some questions on bridging up to the 8% to 9%. So are you, did you see this strong FIS stand-alone growth. Is that a factor in that higher 8% to 9% outlook for you guys?
James W. Woodall --
Absolutely, Darrin. You know probably is the missing piece of -- if you add models together as to what Worldpay's expectations were, what our synergy expectations were and the timing around that, you probably have people that we're missing you know 50 basis points to 100 basis points of growth probably.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Absolutely.
James W. Woodall --
That's primarily the reason for that delta. We are seeing accelerated growth on our side of the business.
Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
All right. So that sounds like you do see it being relatively sustainable, which is great to hear. And then just a quick question on the deal itself, the timing of the deal, and it's good to see you guys are now shoring up the third quarter timing, I guess, summer is what we should be thinking now and you mentioned a little more color on the revenue synergies. I mean, but does it say -- it sounds like you have more conviction in the timing and the types of synergies. Can you give us a little more detail around the conversations in terms of what's giving you more context and color on the timing of the $100 million in year one, and then perhaps any other conversations with clients over some opportunities even above and beyond the pilot (inaudible) and anyway, thanks again, guys?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, yeah look Darrin, I mean as we, as we go through the regulatory approval process and the early releases as an important milestone for us. We've been able now to start getting some of our groups together and really start building a bottoms up plan, which gives us more confidence and to Woody's point shoring up some of the synergy timings and how they're going to flow. As you know we've, we take these combinations very seriously, like a lot of people. We have a playbook that we like to implement and really work through the plans as we get the teams together. The cultural alignment has been very strong between the two companies which is exciting to see. We both think about the markets in very similar ways, we think about clients and go to market in very similar ways. So, I would just tell you all that collaboration and working together has allowed us to get more confidence around the synergy timings. And then we look forward to your point of closing in Q3 and then running as a combined company because we think there's just a lot of opportunities between our -- between our two companies, when we put them together.
Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
That's great. Nice job, guys. Thanks.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Brett Huff from Stephens. Please go ahead.
Brett Huff -- Stephens -- Analyst
Good morning, guys. Nice quarter.
James W. Woodall --
Thanks, Brett.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Brett.
Brett Huff -- Stephens -- Analyst
First question is a little bit asked about this already some of the questions we've been getting from investors are, Can you give us a little more detail on how we get to the revenue synergies. You articulated that revenue acceleration for FY stand-alone as part of that. And you gave us a little bit more on timing kind of breaking things up into the end market and easier to close in end market but little harder to close. Can you give us more detail on those last two buckets, just give us examples of some of the end-market stuff and kind of the differences in those two buckets?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, well, I mean I think what he tried to recover some of that Brett in his prepared remarks. And as you know, we're operating as two separate companies today. So there's only so much that we can do with regards to revenue and really talking about how we go to market and some of those things, but we, as we do talk across the operating units, and we look across those opportunities. I think we're getting more and more comfortable that there are just some real opportunities where assets exist on either side of the -- of of the company.
So a Worldpay capability that we think can have strong applicability to push through, perhaps even through our mass ennoblement strategy to the FIS client base and then vice versa. So those kind of fall in the easy bucket we pointed to some of the things around debit transaction volumes and how we think about perhaps surrounding those and some benefits we talked about things around card personalization. And we think there are some interesting opportunities there. Just Worldpay's ability to optimize our merchant portfolio. So as you think about, there's just a number of things that either company has extensive capabilities and that we believe the broader client relationship and our ability to place those solutions across those broader products will help accelerate revenue for us in the short-term.
Then there is also a number of medium examples that we've talked about and what he highlighted in the script, where it will take some sales engagement. It will take some client interaction for people to really understand the value proposition. If you look at something as simple as loyalty as a currency that's really a strong growth business for us and we don't have a lot of reach. I mean from a de novo launch that's now has a run rate of well over $30 million a year, which is not huge, but as you think about now deploying that across our more than a million merchants potential we think there's a lot of opportunity there. And we're seeing a lot of adoption even with our limited exposure to merchant.
So, we think there just opportunities like that as the company's combine that we're very confident they'll be real revenue synergies, and this is not what we are going to go and building a capability on either side of these capabilities exist. It's just really about the extension and the global reach. That's going to drive acceleration. So, all of those things, just give us confidence as we look it where the growth is, of course, we keep highlighting our accelerated growth and we highlighted that all throughout last year, quarter-on-quarter just very, very strong sales force and execution. Q1 was another really strong sales quarter for both IFS and GFS and so you'll continue to see the FIS based business accelerates. So, all of those give us confidence.
Brett Huff -- Stephens -- Analyst
Great, that's helpful. And then second question is interesting you highlighted your change to the SLAs, give us a little bit of background on that. I know that your data center strategy has been important both to the mass enablement, Digital One and things like that is even bigger banks start to consolidate more on your servers?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah.
Brett Huff -- Stephens -- Analyst
What's the industry standard. Is that a shot across the bow against other competitors out there kind of give us the magnitude of how important that might be for you? Thank you.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
You know, I think it really is just. I wouldn't say it's a shot across the bow that's not the intention. What I would tell you is what we're trying to show is, look, we are investing massive amounts of capital dollars in expense into data center consolidation on modern architectures and modern technology and we've highlighted those stats in the last year over 50% of our compute was in the cloud, we focused on digital. We think it's important for our clients to see the benefit from that.
So you know when you're traditionally look and how this industry has built up, SLAs on disaster recovery or business recovery services are based on hours. I mean some instances it can be 24, even 48 hours. And in some instances, and those are fairly standard across the industry and for us, that's just not where the industry is today. The industry's move very rapidly.
And so what we're showing to our customers is we understand where the industry is today. We understand where the exception -- where the standards are today and we're going to move there and we'll lead in that direction. So, I think everybody is going to have to offer a minutes with regards to recovery in the future and being able to do that it really does just show not only are the benefits of cost we're getting because we're getting some nice run rate cost reductions out of consolidation, but we're getting some really nice step functions and availability that you just can't get in traditional deployments in traditional architectures and so you know now establishing a timeline at 15 minutes, less than 15 minutes.
We think it's a substantial step honestly that's going to accelerate from there, it's going to get less from there over time. And so, we just think it's an important testament of where our monetization story is and our clients. We're very excited about back shop that we would be willing to pass that on to own, but we think it just shows an important commitment to the industry and where we're going.
Brett Huff -- Stephens -- Analyst
Great. Excellent. Thank you, guys.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan -- Analyst
Thanks, good quarter. Obviously on the revenue side, I wanted to ask you, Gary about maybe just, the spending environment relation to other good or great quarters you've seen it has, how would this ranking in your mind, and I know I've asked you this, it's on before I ask it again, secular versus cyclical, how much of this do you think is sort of secular momentum given all this digital momentum and everything else in the market versus some macro issues, maybe?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Now, look, I think it was, it was a great quarter. I mean honestly a very clean quarter for us. The sales teams across the company executed exceptionally well. Just a lot of closings and demand coming out of our conference. We've got just honestly record pipelines coming out of our conference for follow-up. So, I think the industry is. So, we're starting to see an increase in demand across where we've invested historically, which I think is great. So from your secular the secular. I think the industry is strengthening. I think a lot of our larger clients, to be honest have held on as long as they can in some instances, they probably have held onto their technologies too long and we're just seeing a lot of demand.
And really, the large financial institutions that are starting to look for omni-channel digital deployment to really modernize their entire touch points with their customers, they are looking for ways to modernize their back office with state-of-the-art cloud computing and availability, and so it gives me real confidence that this is going to continue to benefit FIS.
So I feel, I feel, as I said, really good about the quarter, really good about 2019 and really good about what we're seeing in our pipeline growth in their demand for our solutions and services across the board.
Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan -- Analyst
Great. That's great. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. Please go ahead.
Ashwin Shirvaikar -- Citi -- Analyst
Hey, guys. Hi, Woody, how are you guys?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Ashwin, how are you ?
Ashwin Shirvaikar -- Citi -- Analyst
Good, good. Thanks. So let me start with GFS and I guess the clarification is on the institutional wholesale business. You said in the past and impact from the move to outsourcing and the accounting change on license recognition sort of creating a mix issue. It sounded like you were incrementally more positive on that sub-segment is that more a comp issue or are you actually see demand pickup in spite of those other factors you've mentioned before?
James W. Woodall --
Yeah, first quarter specifically was more of a comp issue, some of the other items, we've talked about in the last year in terms of moving from upfront license to outsourcing are still going. Our recurring revenue sales were up 40% and that outpaced our non-recurring sales but we had a good non-recurring sales quarter as well.
That's right.
But we do anticipate accelerating growth over the course of the year in I&W and then that would be able to be in a more sustained model as those recurring sales smooth out some of the lumps that we've seen in the past there.
Ashwin Shirvaikar -- Citi -- Analyst
Got it. And then I wanted to ask if I could about couple of products that you guys have highlighted for the two quarters now as being sort of hot (ph), so loyalty and service, mass enablement those two things. Is it actually possible to maybe size those things because from my understanding, both of those and obviously important components and a go-forward basis as we think about synergies with Worldpay as well. So, getting a good baseline and a little bit more granularity would really help us?
James W. Woodall --
I'll give you some color on loyalty as a currency that solution we anticipate to be just under $50 million for the full year 2019, it's growing at a rapid pace. About a 30% growth in this particular quarter, mass enablement is a little more difficult give you granularity because it runs across a number of different areas and products but just supplementally helps them in terms of their growth rates, but you should be seeing it flowing through all the sub-segments within the IFS grew primarily that's where more of the mass enablments done right now.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Mass enablement is really not a product, it's more of a deployment (ph) methodology. Our ability to deliver solutions faster in market, which has been a clear demand for our clients, how do they compete with not only the large money center institutions, how do they compete with emerging fintechs et cetera, et cetera and frankly how do they just meet the demand of their customers.
And so, you know, the team did a very nice job really innovating around this ability to put capability in market in a much faster pace across hundreds if not thousands of clients in that, then based on whatever product they slate for that deployment methodology that then accelerates our revenue stream, but it will drive tens of millions of dollars for the IFS segment this year in new organic growth and that'll -- you'll continue to see that as a, as a continuing increasing way for us to deploy and get new capabilities in market faster.
Ashwin Shirvaikar -- Citi -- Analyst
Fantastic. Thank you, guys.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Georgios Mihalos from Cowen. Please go ahead.
Georgios Mihalos -- Cowen -- Analyst
Hey, good morning guys and let me add my congrats on a very nice quarter.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, George.
Georgios Mihalos -- Cowen -- Analyst
Woody to kick things off just sort of two questions as we think about the rest of the year. Firstly, you outperformed in the first quarter. A tough comp quarter, should we be thinking that on an aggregate basis, organic growth is going to be fairly steady now from quarter two through quarter four and then related to that, to the extent you continue to outperform, will you take any upside from the margin side and sort of accelerate reinvestment in the business?
James W. Woodall --
Yeah, on the first comment, we do anticipate revenue for the remainder of the year to be in line with the guide we just gave you, which is a 4% to 4.5%. So, we do anticipate that, do I believe it's a conservative guide? I do at this point given what we're seeing in the market, but it is only the first quarter.
So, I'm a little conservative from that front. I think we wouldn't see any incremental, reinvestment over and above what we've already been doing, we think we've been out investing the market, in terms of data centers, in terms of modernization, in terms of innovation. So, I don't think we would look for any accelerated reinvestment from where we are today, George and I think, I think that answers both of your questions.
Georgios Mihalos -- Cowen -- Analyst
That's great. And just a quick follow-up, the $500 million of revenue synergies from the Worldpay acquisition. Is there a way to kind of frame that domestic versus international?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
At this time, we haven't, we haven't frame that out. George, obviously one of the benefits to both of our companies is we're a global provider of financial services on a combined basis will be approximately 30% of total revenues outside the U.S. We obviously see a tremendous opportunity for geographic expansion for Worldpay.
We've talked about that, when we announced the transaction of really helping them break into new high growth markets if they weren't in, that could really accelerate that timeline by as much as three years, but I would tell you that we think the revenue growth across the board will flow pretty much in alignment with our revenue splits.
But, more of that'll come in the coming quarters as we get to -- once we get closed on the business we'll certainly come back and give you some more granularity into that.
Georgios Mihalos -- Cowen -- Analyst
Thanks, guys.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Cantwell from Guggenheim. Please go ahead.
Jeff Cantwell -- Guggenheim -- Analyst
Hi, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. You've had several interesting announcements recently. There's one in particular I wanted to see if I could ask you about is with Visa and their B2B Connect platform, which looks like going to focus on cross border. What can you tell us about that? Do you think that combination is something that could be a significant driver of new volume, new opportunities for your customers and yourselves and if that's the case then how so? Any color you could give us there would be very helpful, help us think about the, your company's emerging opportunities, incremental in nature?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Look, I appreciate it. Yeah look the team is doing a very nice job of making sure that we're taking advantage of various partnerships or investment in our technologies and modernization where it makes sense to drive our future growth. We don't really give granular details of what we're expecting out of those relationships, but what I would come back and tell you is the payment landscape is changing very rapidly.
The need for real-time money movement, the need for cross border, the need for alternative payment types is all very high. What I'm really pleased with the team is through their strategy. They're taking advantage of the various capabilities that exist in the market and allowing us to meet our client demands and needs.
So we don't enter into relationships cavalierly, if we don't see an opportunity or frankly we're not being pressed by our clients. We don't enter into that. So the relationships going to be a good one. We're excited about it. It's a, it's an extension of what we have today and we think that as payments continue to move around the globe, and and take on different form factors and different changes that FIS will be the benefactor of that given our strategy and how we're approaching it.
Jeff Cantwell -- Guggenheim -- Analyst
Great. Thanks very much. And then you're clearly having numerous conversations with your financial institution partners. I wanted to see if you can give us a general sense of their temperature for investment, as well as where they think we are in the business cycle because, the service it sounds like there's still some positive tailwinds some step-up in investment across the FI space. I was wondering, if you could give us a sense as far as what your conversations are like with your partners, and how optimistic you know you think they are about the outlook over the next 12 to 18 months?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I would tell you over the last five quarters, given what we've seen going on in sales all throughout last year we had the largest sales year in the history of the company. Last year, this quarter, another big quarter sales and frankly, given our pipeline and given my personal ongoing conversations and frankly across the entire leadership team their conversations.
We're seeing a continuing acceleration in their desire to spend. As commented earlier I think many of our larger institutions, and frankly even community institutions around the world have held on too along with their existing technologies and so there's a real sense of urgency that's been building.
And I think you're seeing that in our sales results and seeing that in our accelerated growth. So, I'm very optimistic that the next 18 plus months is going to be a real strong positive tailwind for us, with regards to demand and sales success.
Jeff Cantwell -- Guggenheim -- Analyst
Great, thanks very much.
Operator
And your final question today comes from the line of Glenn Greene from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Glenn Greene -- Oppenheimer -- Analyst
Thanks, good morning. Great quarter, Gary and Woody.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks you.
James W. Woodall --
Appreciate it.
Glenn Greene -- Oppenheimer -- Analyst
I guess the first question, you've obviously talked about it a lot, but just maybe Gary, if you could talk a little bit more about the 30% CCB growth, the key drivers, from a product service perspective, maybe contrast the IFS and GFS trying to get a sense of how broad based the sales success was?
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, look, I mean going on IFS, they just really had a great year last year in sales really led into a strong Q1, Glenn. We saw it really across all major product lines, core and wealth continued to do very well. Our payments business continued to operate on all cylinders. There's a lot of our back office capabilities.
As you know, that segment specifically it's all reoccurring in nature, I mean it's all a heavy SaaS model but just continued strong demand sales team is executing well and the pipeline is strong. And just coming out of that conference, I would tell you, like everybody we measure our leads coming out of conferences and we had over 3,000 people in attendance.
The leads that came out of the conference are very strong year-over-year, and so I feel really good about where the IFS business is positioned. I feel really good about the contribution margins that the new sales are bringing online, obviously the implementation as you know that you do have anywhere from a 6 to 12 months the implementation timeline as sales closed.
When I look at GFS, similar with demand, we're really starting to see, especially in the large bank market on the retail banking side where large regionals frankly even global institutions have held on too long to their existing technology stacks, and they're really looking for cloud-native-type capabilities to gain the efficiencies out of the cloud that other industries have been able to take advantage of. And so, we've got a lot of success and we highlighted some success in the prepared remarks around Digital One with some very large institutions. We're seeing a lot around our next-generation core banking platform and demand on that platform. As you move into the capital market solution. Just a really good strong quarter. It does have some grow over issues as Woody talked about. I mean the movement from licensing to a SaaS model, that's an exciting long-term opportunity for us, and we're seeing that with real high growth and reoccurring revenue up 40%, but then we had very strong solid license sales as well.
So, and you'll continue to see some of that lumpiness as that business makes its transition. But the good news is, very strong demand and we even highlighted a regulatory change with consolidated audit trail. As you look at those kind of changes that are occurring that plays into our solution capability that we've built.
And so, I feel good about the spend environment for the industry. We're five quarters into some really nice sales results and I think that's a strong indicator for the next 18 plus months.
Glenn Greene -- Oppenheimer -- Analyst
Okay, and then just a final one is just really a clarification. And it's a -- I mean Darrin asked you the question Woody I guess on the revenue bridge for the pro forma. Just want to make sure I'm clear on that. Does that suggest that you think sort of FIS stand-alone would accelerate let's say 50 to 100 basis points in 2020, and perhaps grow north of 5% organic?
James W. Woodall --
That's a fair assessment of how we model it. Not here to give you 2020 guidance today, but that's a fair assessment as to how we model it.
Glenn Greene -- Oppenheimer -- Analyst
All right, perfect. Thanks, guys, congrats.
James W. Woodall --
Thank you.
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you for joining us today, and for your ongoing interest in FIS, We are pleased to start the year delivering very strong revenue, profitability, performance and earnings growth. We entered 2019, with a robust pipeline and strong sales momentum and have continued to build on those strengths throughout the first quarter. Combined with our business model and consistent execution of our strategy, we are confident we have clear line of sight into achieving our plan for the remainder of the year. A special thanks to our loyal clients who depend on us to keep their businesses running and growing every day and to our leaders and employees for their hard work and dedication in serving our clients. Thank you for joining us today.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this conference will be available for replay after 11 AM, Eastern Time today, through May 11. You may access the AT&T teleconference replay system at any time by dialing 1-800-475-6701 and entering the access code 466408.
Duration: 53 minutes
Call participants:
Peter Gunnlaugsson -- SVP of Corporate Finance & IR
Gary Norcross -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
James W. Woodall --
David Togut -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Unidentified Speaker --
David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst
Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Brett Huff -- Stephens -- Analyst
Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan -- Analyst
Ashwin Shirvaikar -- Citi -- Analyst
Georgios Mihalos -- Cowen -- Analyst
Jeff Cantwell -- Guggenheim -- Analyst
Glenn Greene -- Oppenheimer -- Analyst
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