Under pressure from activist shareholders, Fidelity National Information Services Inc. is considering ways to get rid of its underperforming merchant payments technology business, Reuters news service reported Feb. 10.
The Jacksonville-based financial technology company known as FIS acquired most of that business from Worldpay Inc., but its results have been disappointing since the $43 billion acquisition in 2019.
Reuters said FIS is working on a plan to spin off the merchant business, while also considering sale proposals, and the plan could be announced soon.
FIS had been scheduled to report year-end earnings Feb. 15 but it announced Feb. 12 it was moving up the release to the morning of Feb. 13, a signal that there may be a big announcement coming.
FIS Chief Executive Stephanie Ferris was chief financial officer of Cincinnati-based Worldpay before the acquisition. When she assumed the role of CEO in December, FIS said Ferris and the board of directors had started a comprehensive review of operations.
The company also announced the appointment of a new board member under an agreement with activist hedge fund firm D.E. Shaw.
Bloomberg News reported Feb. 2 that FIS has cut 2,600 jobs recently as part of the review, but it did not say where those jobs were located and the company did not comment on the report.
FIS, which opened a new 12-story headquarters building in October at 347 Riverside Ave., has about 1,500 employees in Jacksonville.
The company’s 2021 annual report said it had more than 65,000 employees in 120 global locations, with more than 40,000 outside the U.S.
FIS operates in three business segments. Its main business has been technology for banks, which produced almost $5 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2022.
The merchant business produced $3.6 billion in revenue and its capital markets technology business had about $2 billion.
The report on FIS came one day after Reuters reported Jacksonville-based Black Knight Inc. was trying to sell its mortgage loan origination technology business to help gain approval for its acquisition by Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
That merger has been under antitrust review by the Federal Trade Commission because of concerns the combined company would control too much of the mortgage technology market.
Black Knight’s main business of processing existing mortgage loans was spun off from FIS in 2008.