Stephanie Ferris: Oh, you want me to tell the future? That’s a hard one. I would say–you know, it’s interesting on consumer spend. Banking and capital markets are no longer as positioned towards consumer spend like the merchant business, the Worldpay business, so we think we’ve moved largely away from that, not to say we’re totally immune, because we do process debit card transactions. I think from a macro standpoint, the concern that I think we should have, and we’ll keep a close eye on and be transparent, is around if we see demand drop for products and solutions, and we’re not seeing that. As you think about both the financial institutions and the capital markets participants, they’re all undergoing different levels of stress where they are in the industry, but our solutions are still in high demand in terms of whether they’re digital or a next-gen banking platform, wanting to drive more money movement, so the secular trends are there.
We’ll continue to watch them, but we’re no longer exposed from the Worldpay side in terms of consumer spend going up and down and that impacting us. That’s probably the best I can do, Vasu.
Vasundhara Govil: Thank you, that’s helpful. Just a quick follow-up on the debit routing for card not present – I know you mentioned a few wins with retailers and fintechs, which was nice to see. It’s clearly a share gain opportunity for the NYCE network. Do you think it could be a needle mover for the business in 2024?
Stephanie Ferris: I think it should be. I think the challenge–we’ve been tripling down on it and selling it. We actually are one of the few networks that had that up and running very quickly and had the dual messaging capability that’s required. We continue to press on it. We’ve had some significant wins. My payments guys will tell you, I continue to press them very hard on it should continue to accelerate growth, so more to come as we come into 2024, but we do think we have a strategic advantage there.
Vasundhara Govil: Thank you very much.
Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Dan Dolev with Mizuho. Dan, your line is open.
Dan Dolev: Hey, thanks again. Somehow I didn’t hear you before. Great results, guys. Two questions. One, Stephanie, you talked about the sales force transformation. Can you maybe tell us what makes you feel more confident in the sales force? Thanks.
Stephanie Ferris: Yes, thanks Dan. I think–you know, we spent a bunch of time in the first half of this year really refocusing the sales force on both selling all the products and solutions that we have across the segments, which we’re seeing–which we called amplify, which we’re seeing a lot of uptake there, but more importantly, really making sure that we were selling the technology-enabled software that we’ve invested in and that we think really should be where we should drive some high returns. I’m feeling really good about that, like I said. We have seen the quality of sales has improved as we came into this quarter – new sales have improved 50 BPs in terms of overall margins, and so as we look to transform the sales force over time, we’re seeing that really start to take root.
I think too, moving away from some of the non-recurring in terms of selling and into the recurring is also starting to be pretty good for us, and we’re feeling good about that continuing to underpin the recurring revenue growth as we move into 2024, so feel good about the sales pipeline, feel good about sales productivity, feel good about the quality of sales, but it’s still early days and we are managing it very closely. The team–I’m on a sales call every week and I have my own win-loss ratio – I hold myself accountable as well, so feeling good about where we are but we’ll continue to be pressing on this, as it’s critically important for us.
Dan Dolev: Okay, great. Since the market opened, I’m going to spare you my second question – I see people want to leave, but thank you.
Stephanie Ferris: Thanks Dan.
Operator: Thank you. That concludes the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to Stephanie Ferris for closing remarks.
Stephanie Ferris: Well, thank you everyone for joining us t his morning. As you can tell, we’re very excited about the next chapter for FIS. While we’re only in the first year of our journey, we’ve already made significant progress unlocking shareholder value, delivering our third consecutive quarter meeting or exceeding our financial commitments. We’re excited about the Worldpay separation and Future Forward. We’re delivering significant upside by resuming our buyback program, and with an upsized commitment to further reposition FIS for attractive long term growth. All of this leads to confidence in our current year outlook, our future prospects, and our plan to drive long term shareholder value. Thank you for your interest in FIS. We look forward to connecting with you over the next coming days and weeks.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
