Should You Add Fidelity National Information Services (FIS)?
Broyhill Asset Management, a boutique investment firm, released its fourth-quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The past two years were mirror images of each other for equity investors. Global stocks increased by 22% in 2022 after declining by 18% the year before. The fourth quarter saw exceptionally high portfolio activity. Although Broyhill’s fully invested managed funds underperformed year-over-year broader equities benchmarks, they avoided problems during the falls in 2021 and 2022, and their relative performance is still well above any longer-term horizon. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2023.
Broyhill Asset Management featured stocks such as Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) in the fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) is a financial technology solutions provider headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. On February 16, 2024, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) stock closed at $63.65 per share. One-month return of Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) was 6.33%, and its shares lost 8.42% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) has a market capitalization of $37.712 billion.
Broyhill Asset Management stated the following regarding Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Recent investments in this bucket include Ball Corp, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS), and Avantor. Fidelity National Information Services is a payment provider for financial institutions and merchants around the world. We took a hard look at the business around the time we established our investment in Fiserv, discussed in detail here. Thankfully, we decided to pass at the time in favor of what we believed to be a much better competitively positioned business with a much stronger track record of execution. Since then, issues at FIS have gone from bad to worse. The $48 billion acquisition of Worldpay in 2019, which took leverage up to 5.5x on the balance sheet, hasn’t turned out quite as well as Fiserv’s acquisition of First Data. Fast forward to today, and FIS is unwinding prior mistakes, selling off a 55% interest in the recently acquired business (meaning we now have a hard number for the remaining 45% they own), and using proceeds to take leverage back down to 2.5x post close while repurchasing at least $3.5B of stock through next year. As a result, shareholders will be left with a cleaner balance sheet and a simpler organizational structure, consisting primarily of their very defensive, very profitable core banking business, which traded down to a single-digit multiple vs historical averages for the industry closer to 20x.”
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Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. At the end of the fourth quarter, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) was held by 66 hedge fund portfolios, up from 55 the previous quarter, according to our database.
We discussed Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE:FIS) in another article and shared Weitz Investment Management’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2023 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
