Gary Adam Norcross
Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fidelity National Information Services
Thanks, Nate, and thank you for joining us. Our third quarter results demonstrate continued strength of execution across the company, with revenue growing 10% to reach $3.5 billion. Margins expanded 270 basis points to exceed 45%, and adjusted EPS increased 22% to $1.73 per share. We continue to see elevated demand across our solution portfolio, with sales execution driving a 7% organic increase in our $22 billion backlog across banking and capital markets. Revenue synergies related to our Worldpay integration increased to $150 million in the quarter, bringing the total to $600 million on an annual run rate basis. We remain on schedule to exceed $700 million exiting this year, beating our original target by 40%, while accomplishing this feat a year early. Our cost synergies tell a similar story, increasing to $875 million in the quarter and on schedule to exit the year around $900 million.
This is inclusive of approximately $500 million in operational expense as we look to conclude our Worldpay integration well ahead of schedule. In the quarter, new wins across a wide range of clients illustrate that our strategy is working and gives us confidence in our growth. In Banking, these include another two modern banking platform wins, including one with PayPal. PayPal will utilize the Modern Banking Platform to enable their new high-yield savings account. These new wins continue to demonstrate the versatility of our new cloud-native software. Turning to our Merchant segment.
We continue to build on its differentiated global e-commerce offering. Our extensive global reach is a significant differentiator for us. We operate in 146 countries, accounting for 126 different currencies and support more than 300 alternative payment methods. This allows us to remove complexity and cost, while increasing authorization rates for multinational enterprises like Microsoft, who recently expanded our relationship from a single region to now span the globe. Our ability to offer sophisticated capabilities and rapidly expand into emerging new verticals also differentiates FIS. For example, we continue to build a strong foundation in crypto, signing Crypto.com, this quarter. We won this business by demonstrating authorization rates that are far superior to their incumbent provider.
We also expanded our global travel and airlines market share, winning Allegiant as an impressive new domestic carrier. In Capital Markets, Citi is the latest example of a client transitioning from legacy in-house to a fully outsourced solution with FIS, while another innovative technology company will leverage seven of our capabilities to help power their digital registered investment advisory solution. We cannot be happier with the significant growth the team is driving out of our Capital Markets segment. Our solutions are highly differentiated and proven throughout the industry. It's important to note that our new wins across all our segments include financial institutions, domestic and multinational merchants as well as leading technology companies and innovative fintechs.
Few other companies can provide such a complementary set of solutions. I am proud of our team for their ongoing dedication to our clients and for delivering another strong performance this quarter. Turning to slide six. While our team continues to execute at a very high level, our share price is clearly not performing well. Over the last few months, our management team engaged in open and constructive dialogue with the investment community about areas where we can improve the messaging and transparency of our business. We believe in the strength and value of our company. And on today's call, we will directly address the three most common questions we heard. I'll begin by providing an update on our leading competitive position as well as our capital allocation strategy to sustain and accelerate growth.
Woody will then provide a deep dive into the Merchant segment after he recaps the quarter's financial performance. The bear case assumes that FIS is standing still or unable to compete, and this is definitely not the case. We anticipated the changing competitive landscape and invested heavily in technology and innovation over the last five years. Ours is a durable business model, and FIS will remain a global leader with sustainable competitive advantages now and into the future. Therefore, we will continue to provide additional clarity as needed to ensure that our shareholders properly understand our business, strategy and the true value of FIS.
Turning to slide seven. FIS has the best collection of assets in the industry. Banking and Capital Markets generate approximately 2/3 of our revenue mix, with exclusive long-term contracts and deep client relationships covering mission-critical applications needed to operate our clients' businesses. These segments grew through the pandemic, demonstrating the durability of their revenue streams and are growing faster than ever. Our ongoing investment in new technologies, Indian software suites within these segments generates increased recurring revenue and accelerated organic growth. Through three quarters, our year-to-date new sales already exceed that of the entire year in 2020, which was also a record year for FIS.
This historical success has now created $22 billion in backlog of signed revenue, which I referenced earlier. Given our year-to-date success, 2021 is going to be another record-setting year for sales, and that will drive continued strong growth across these segments into 2022 and beyond. Our Merchant segment currently accounts for about 1/3 of our revenue mix. It boasts deep client relationships with exceptionally high retention rates that are supported by sophisticated vertical expertise and five-star client service. Our expert professionals are on the ground in every geography to meet any need.
Our clients depend on us to support their global ambitions by opening every sales channel to them with innovative software-led and omnichannel capabilities. Here, too, we are generating record new sales, and revenue growth is accelerating as high-growth channels account for an increasing proportion of the segment's growth. Given the market dynamics in these high-growth channels, we expect to consistently win new clients and expand our share of wallet. Another key advantage is our extensive global distribution and enviable client portfolio, which enable us to quickly and effectively drive adoption of new technologies. There's a reason why incumbents, innovators and disruptors consistently choose FIS as their partner of choice. These durable revenue streams, combined with our scale of delivery, allow us to aggressively invest in differentiated solutions and capabilities.
Turning to slide eight. I'd like to directly address the strength of our competitive position and why this company will continue to lead the way powering the global digital economy. FIS powers the intersection of software, payments and embedded finance. Our core competency is commerce enablement, whether that's the electronification of banking, enabling electronic transactions online or at the point of sale or automating treasury, B2B and wealth and retirement. We have multiple competitive advantages, including breadth of capability, global reach, extensive distribution and an enviable client portfolio.
With our infrastructure migration to the cloud now complete and the Worldpay integration coming to a close, I'd like to share our strategy to further enhance our competitive position and generate shareholder value. Our strategy is to unlock the true value of FIS by weaving together our extensive digital assets into a global platform that facilitates the rapid adoption of new technology and speeds innovation. By componentizing our capabilities, we will expose our unique set of financial assets to the market as well as continue to push new product through this emerging platform. It expands our TAM by positioning FIS as the destination for innovators and developers, where they can get everything they need to create exciting new customer experiences.
And it helps them to do it faster by providing preconfigured capabilities, low-code and no-code technology, third-party integration as well as sandboxes for experimentation and rapid prototyping, complete with the developer forum. Importantly, for our shareholders, it will speed time to revenue for FIS through automation and self-service, while simultaneously creating additional scale benefits by eliminating technology debt. This strategy supports our midterm outlook for 7% to 9% revenue growth, 50 to 100 basis points of annual adjusted EBITDA margin expansion and superior free cash flow. Our past success demonstrates that we execute major programs very well, and our team will keep FIS at the forefront of the industry by executing the next phase of our enterprise technology transformation.
As we do this over the next three years, you'll hear us talk less and less about segments, as traditional silos and old ways of thinking fade to the background. Instead, we'll begin sharing exciting examples of a new class of super users, who combine technology across the breadth of FIS in new and exciting ways. Each of these super users is buying capabilities from all three of our traditional segments, demonstrating a powerful value unlock for FIS. Amazon is a great example of the power that our portfolio brings to clients. They started their journey with us by leveraging our nice debit network capabilities a decade ago.
Today, they utilize our enterprise acquiring capability for Whole Foods, our global e-commerce capability to enter new online markets and our treasury cash management solution out of Capital Markets. And we've expanded the relationship by leveraging our omnichannel capability to empower their new Amazon 4-star in-store concept internationally, opening its first location in the U.K. At FIS, we embrace being a scaled technology leader and look forward to continuing to advance the industry by enabling the next generation of innovative client experiences.
I'll conclude my prepared remarks by reviewing our capital allocation strategy on slide nine. Our priority is to deliver long-term growth by investing internally to improve the value we bring to our clients, while expanding our TAM. In parallel, we continue to actively pursue M&A to add innovative new capabilities as well as to enter high-growth adjacencies. Our team has a well-established track record of successfully integrating the businesses we acquire, consistently outperforming our synergy targets and driving shareholder value. Through this combination of investments in organic and inorganic opportunities, we have successfully accelerated revenue growth by positioning FIS to deliver innovative solutions in attractive markets where our technology and expertise are highly differentiated.
The scale and profitability of our business puts us in the enviable position of being able to both invest for growth while simultaneously returning capital to our shareholders. Year-to-date, we have repurchased $2 billion in shares, reflecting our view that FIS currently represents a generational buying opportunity. We still maintain significant headroom for accelerated share repurchase, with 85 million shares of authorization remaining, and we will buy back stock aggressively. We are committed to consistent dividend growth and are increasing our expected annual dividend growth rate to 20% in 2022 and beyond.
This will enable us to expand our dividend payout ratio over several years without affecting our ability to invest in growth. Our capital allocation strategy is underpinned by a strong balance sheet and investment-grade credit ratings. This strategy has been consistent for many years, and we will continue to allocate capital to drive robust shareholder returns. In conclusion, while competition is intense across our industry, FIS is built for purpose as the leading commerce enablement company. At FIS, we're doing what no one else can, bringing together a unique breadth of capability and global reach to enable our clients to innovate at speed.
With that, I'll now turn the call over to Woody to discuss our financial results and to provide a deep dive into the Merchant segment. Woody?