Apr 30, 2008
Executives
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and CEO Thomas Hirsch - CFO
Analysts
Tien Tsin Huang - JPMorgan David Koning - Baird Gregory Smith - Merrill Lynch Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse John Kraft - D.A Davidson Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc Patrick Burton - Citigroup Tim Fox - Deutsche Bank Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research Charles Murphy - Morgan Stanley
Operator
Welcome to the Fiserv first quarter 2008 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session begins, following the presentation.
Today's call is being recorded and it is also being broadcast live over the internet at www.fiserv.com. In addition, there are supplemental materials that will be referenced on today's call at the company's website.
To access those materials, go to www.fiserv.com and click on the access presentation link on the home page. This call is expected to last one hour, and you may disconnect from the call at any time.
Now, I will turn the call over to Mr. Jeff Yabuki, President and CEO of Fiserv.
Sir, you may begin.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Good afternoon and thanks for joining us for our first quarter conference call.
With me today are Tom Hirsch, our Chief Financial Officer, and Norm Balthasar, our Senior Executive Vice President and former Chief Operating Officer. Our remarks today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
There are a number of factors that could cause Fiserv's results to differ materially from our current expectations. We will make forward-looking statements about, among other matters, adjusted revenue growth, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted operating margins, EBITDA, cash flow targets, sales pipelines, our CheckFree integration efforts, the disposition of certain Fiserv businesses and our strategic initiative Fiserv 2.0.
Forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our earnings release, which can be found on our website at www.fiserv.com for a discussion of these risk factors.
You should also refer to our earnings release for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this conference call, and for a reconciliation of those measures to the nearest applicable GAAP measures. These non-GAAP measures are indicators that management uses to provide additional meaningful comparisons between current results and prior reported results, and as a basis for planning and forecasting for future periods.
Let me say upfront that we are pleased with our strong start to the year, both financially and strategically. As shown on slide 3 of our presentation, adjusted revenue, earnings, and free cash flow were all up sharply for the quarter.
We made progress against our key strategic objectives, which are important steps in delivering long term value for clients and shareholders. We extended our CheckFree electronic bill payment relationship with Bank of America through 2013.
While comfortable with our previous arrangement, the new agreement provides a higher degree of economic certainty and value creation, as we continue our market leading relationship with Bank of America. In a few moments Tom, will talk to you about our new segment reporting structure.
This new structure is illustrated of the transformation the company has gone through over the last year. Our traditional financial businesses now comprised more than 90% of our net revenue base and our total payments oriented assets represent a significant portion of that total.
We exited businesses, which were less attractive in favor of strategically important, faster growth assets such as payments, which enhance client relationships and extend our competitive position. Before we talk specifically about the quarter, let me provide context for our overall performance.
We have three main priorities for 2008, first to deliver earnings results consistent with our commitments, regardless of environmental conditions. Next to make significant progress integrating CheckFree in Fiserv.
And last to enhance our level of competitive differentiation through innovation and integration leading to superior results for our clients and shareholders. As you are hear today, we have made progress in the quarter across each of these fronts.
There has been significant discussion in the media and through the earnings season about the economy and its impacts on results. When we established guidance for 2008, we assumed a tough environment, the significant weakness in our lending businesses has been worse than we anticipated.
We assume that license revenue would be softer this year and it has been. However, our sales activity to-date is stronger than we expected and we are cautiously optimistic about our level of new business for the year.
Make no mistake, we like everyone else would prefer a more robust economy. However, the recurring revenue nature of our business model insulates us well from swings in the economy and while we are pragmatic and realistic about the current environment, we are not lowering our 2008 earnings guidance due to any incremental weakness in the economy.
Now on to highlights for the quarter. Adjusted EPS was $0.78 per share, an increase of 26% over the prior year's $0.62 per share.
Adjusted operating income was $280 million for the quarter and adjusted operating margin increased 200 basis points to 25%. The increase is primarily from continuing improvements in the business mix, the addition of CheckFree and our relentless focus on operating efficiency.
We continue to believe, we can drive margin expansion for the foreseeable future. Overall revenue was $1.3 billion in the quarter, a new Fiserv high and an increase of almost 40% over the prior year, due primarily to the acquisition of CheckFree.
Adjusted internal revenue growth was 4% company wide, while the growth is softer than we prefer, it's within our expectations for the quarter given the lending results and the top line impact of declining flow of revenue. Adjusted internal revenue growth in our combined financial and payment segments, was 4.4% in the quarter against a very strong prior year comparable quarter.
Excluding the impact of the significant quarter-over-quarter decline in the home equity processing business, our internal revenue growth would have been just under 6%. We continue to make progress in our two primary strategic initiatives, Fiserv 2.0 and CheckFree integration.
These activities, which are deeply interrelated should lead to a more attractive cost structure and enhanced revenue growth characteristics for the company. The CheckFree synergy impact in the quarter was as expected with only about $7 million of benefit embedded in our quarterly results.
We are taking the actions required to achieve our 2008 cost synergy targets of between $40 million and $50 million and are in pace to achieve our goal. We gained momentum with more than 140 new financial institution bill payment relationships signed in the quarter.
We also made good progress integrating the CheckFree bill payment product into our various core processing solutions. This work should be complete by the end of the year.
We closed the sales of Fiserv Health and the first portion of Fiserv ISS in the quarter. The regulatory approvals needed to complete the sale of the remaining businesses of Fiserv ISS are expected by the end of the third quarter.
Free cash flow was strong in the quarter, increasing more than 47% over the prior year to $172 million. That plus the net proceeds from the businesses sold allowed us to pay down more than $630 million of our debt in the quarter, and also repurchased about $100 million of our stock.
As I mentioned earlier, we entered into a long-term contract extension with Bank of America for our full suite of electronic bill payment services. Coming to terms with Bank of America has been an important priority, and we are pleased that we will continue our long-term relationship.
We agreed to extend the relationship through 2013, providing Bank of America the best in market solution for electronic bill payment and presentment. Bank of America received a one-time discount for the services, consistent at levels that we see from time to time, when signing a large multi-year agreement.
The new BoA contract pricing will decrease revenue this year by about $25 million, which was not previously considered in our 2008 guidance. We are optimistic that we can recover this reduction over the contract term through a combination of continued transaction growth and the provision of additional products and services, which help Bank of America continue its online market leadership.
All in all, we believe this is a very good agreement for both parties. With that I will turn the call over to Tom, for a more detailed discussion of the segment results and our balance sheet.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Jeff and good afternoon everyone. During my presentation, I will refer to the supplemental information included in the slide presentation available on our website, which was reference at the top of the call.
Commencing with this quarter, we have provided our results in new segments breakout, to assist and your analysis we filed an 8-K earlier this week providing historic quarterly results for our new segments for both 2006 and 2007 As Jeff mentioned earlier, we have significantly transformed the company over the last year through the acquisition of CheckFree and several business dispositions. These changes are even more obvious, as you look at the evolution of our segments over the last year as shown on slide 4.
We divested Fiserv Health and the first part of the ISS business, while adding significantly to our payments related businesses. Slide 5, provides more details of the composition of our new segment.
The new segments are designed to provide you with additional visibility in to our results. Our new financial institution services segment combines our market leading core account processing solutions, deposit automation and item processing solutions and all of our lending operation.
This segment comprised approximately 49% of consolidated net revenues in the first quarter of 2008. As shown on slide 6, you will also note there are lending divisions, which remains under pressure due to general market weakness is becoming an increasingly smaller part of the company, accounting for only about 7% accounting for only about 7% of total adjusted net revenue in the quarter.
Of those revenues approximately 50% are related to the home equity processing business. As you are well aware this business has experienced significant challenges over the last nine months and we expect this headwind to our revenue growth rate to continue.
We also created a new payment and industry product segment, which comprises about 43% of consolidated net revenue. This segment contains our payments orientated businesses such as debit and EFT processing, electronic bill payment and presentment, expedited bill payment, credit card processing and more.
This segment also contains our various risk management products, our output solutions division and our investment account processing business. These businesses tend to have faster growing, higher margin product and services including our significant payments presence.
We anticipate the growth rates in this segment to outpace our financial institution segment. We typically combined these segments when evaluating our internal revenue growth rates serving the financial industry.
As many of the payment solutions are included in, our integrated product offerings to our clients. This also allows us comparability to our previously named financial segment included in prior years.
Our insurance segment is relatively unchanged after the disposition of Fiserv Health, but is a now much smaller part of the total company, contributing 8% of net revenues and 6% of adjusted operating income in the quarter. Finally we have corporate in other segment that includes a small amount of unallocated corporate overhead, intangible amortization associated with acquisitions and inter company eliminations.
As you know, we allocate the substantial majority of our corporate cost to the businesses. This segment reported $14 million of adjusted unallocated expenses in the first quarter of 2008, compared to $12 million in the prior year, an increase of only $2 million.
One additional note, we have changed our practice of adjusting our reported revenue for pass-through customer reimbursements, which are included in both revenue and expenses, and have provided reclassified adjusted financial information to reflect the change in our adjusted revenues and adjusted margins in our 8-K filed earlier this week. Beginning in 2008, we will only adjust revenue for the postage pass-through costs directly related to our Output Solutions business in our Payment segment.
This business provides card personalization and printing service and due to the nature of the business, incurs a great deal of reimbursable postage included in both, revenue and expense. Excluding these reimbursements is consistent with our largest Output Solutions industry competitor.
We will no longer adjust our revenues for other customer reimbursements besides the pass-through postage in our Output Solutions division. This is based primarily in our review of the competitive landscape and our check reintegration.
This change creates consistency with our competitors reporting practices, and enhances comparability of financial results. Lastly, these out of pocket cost reimbursement items are now more frequently bundled into our client pricing.
Although this change to our financial statement presentation has the effect of diluting both the adjusted operating margin percentage and the adjusted organic revenue growth rate, we believe the change makes sense. Now, on to the segment results, overall performance in the quarter includes solid results in our two largest operating segments.
The final institution segment generated revenues of $549 million in the quarter an increase of 8% over the prior year with the majority of the growth being generated through acquisition. Adjusted internal revenue growth was 1% for the segment and excluding the negative impact of the decline in home equity lending revenues of $40 million the growth rate was approximately 4%.
Operating income in the financial segment was up 11% to a $138 million in the quarter and operating margin increased 90 basis points to 25.2% on revenue mix including termination fees and operating efficiencies partially offset by the decline in our home equity business. Our payments in industry product segment generated revenues of $529 million in the quarter or $483 million on an adjusted basis.
Net of the pass-through cost for postage, substantial revenue increased over the prior year, due primarily to the acquisition of CheckFree. Adjusted internal revenue grew 8% in the quarter driven by new client additions and increased transaction volumes.
Operating income for the segment was a $140 million in the quarter, with adjusted operating margins of 29.1% up a 190 basis points over the prior year due to continued operating efficiencies and the addition of CheckFree CheckFree generated $308 million bill payment transactions in the quarter, up 14% year-over-year. Growth this quarter was somewhat distorted by the number of days in this year's quarter versus the same quarter last year, which it will work itself over the course of the year.
New subscriber additions continue to be strong. As shown on slide 8, adjusted internal revenue growth for the combined payments and financial segments was 4.4% for the period and was 5.8% adjusting for the negative impact of the home equity lending business.
We believe that the home equity processing business will have a continued negative impact on second quarter revenue growth due to reduced processing volumes and several large clients, who are exiting or substantially reducing their home equity business. We anticipate improvements to our growth rate in the second half of 2008 as year-over-year comparison view.
Our insurance segment revenue results for the quarter were slightly weaker than our internal plan and we continue our focus on expense management, while making additional product investments. This segment historically has a slower first quarter due primarily to the mix of business and the timing of revenues.
We anticipate improved performance going forward as revenue strengthen and normal seasonality kicks in. Termination fees in the quarter were $17 million compared with $9 million in 2007.
The increase is primarily attributable to one client, who has recently acquired early in a five year contract term that resulted in a larger fee. As we explained last quarter, we are recording a $2 million charge or $0.01 per share each quarter during 2008, which was a result of the employment agreement amendment related to our offshore captive that was effective in the fourth quarter of last year.
As Jeff mentioned earlier, free cash flow was strong at $172 million for the quarter, up 47% over the prior year. About $20 million of our favorable working capital benefit in the first quarter will be reversed in the second quarter of 2008, which was related to the timing of interest payments on our debt.
Capital expenditures continue to be managed very well, with $50 million spend in the quarter compared with $45 million last year, which did not include CheckFree. As the management team, we focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet and generating substantial free cash flow from our operation.
This process includes actively managing working capital and intense disciplined surrounding CapEx. That said, we do expect capital expenditures to increase for the remainder of the year over the first quarter's level, as we identify ways to build additional value for our clients.
For this year's first quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $340 million, up 47% from the prior year. Total debt at the end of the quarter was $4.8 billion, a decrease of more than $630 million from our year end 2007 balance of $5.4 billion.
We also repurchased just over $1.8 million shares of stock in the quarter for about $100 million. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 38.6%, and we expect an effective tax rate of approximately 38.7% for the full year.
Now let me turn the call back over to Jeff.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Tom. We had solid first quarter results against our key Fiserv 2.0 initiatives.
Integrated sales for the quarter were $14 million, about 22% of our full year objective of $65 million of sales. While that is slightly below radical attainment per year, March results were quite strong, accounting for more than half of the $14 million in sales for the quarter.
We remain comfortable that we will achieve our $65 million target for the year. Our operational efficiency goal for the year is to realize an incremental $20 million in 2008 over a $20 million achieved last year.
For the quarter, we achieved $6 million or 30% of the full year goal and are on track for the year. Sales quota attainment was 91% for the quarter against the benchmark of 100%.
Although quota performance was below our ratable plan for the quarter, we are encouraged by the breadth of our current sales pipeline. Although in some cases, sales cycles are elongating, clients continue to look for ways to increase efficiency, manage risk, enhance payment capabilities, and serve customers in a more differentiating way.
De novo bank activity remained solid for the quarter with nine new core processing deals. We won a large health banking deal during the first quarter, which now means we serve three of the top five largest health companies in the nation.
Given what we can see today, we are cautiously optimistic about our sales opportunities for the year. As mentioned earlier and shown on slide 10, we are revising our 2008 guidance to reflect the impact of the Bank of America contract extension, which will negatively impact 2008 earnings by approximately $0.09 per share.
However, given the performance in the quarter and our conviction for the full year, our new adjusted earnings per share guidance is not being reduced by the full BOA impact and is now $3.28 to $3.40 per share, 23% to 28% growth over 2007 adjusted EPS of $2.66 per share. We continue to expect second half performance to be stronger than the first half, given the cumulative impact of synergies and Fiserv 2.0 benefits on our results.
We now expect our internal revenue growth to be in 4% to 6% range, down about 1% from our previous guidance. The primary factors impacting revenue growth are the Bank of America reprising, further declines in flow revenue and larger clients unexpectedly exiting the home equity business.
We still expect much stronger revenue growth in the second half of the year as our lending caparisons improve and we gain momentum. Given our solid performance in the quarter and after adjusting for the margin impact of the new BoA agreement, we now estimate that operating margins will expand by at least 100 basis points for the full year and finally we expected full year free cash flow should grow inline with our adjusted earnings growth.
I mentioned at the top of the call that we had three key priorities for the year and we are on track on each. As you saw in our first quarter results our business model is strong and has sufficient diversity in our earnings streams to allow us to absorb many of the challenges facing the market today.
We fully expect to achieve full year earnings results within our revised guidance, while continuing to build for the future. Next we have made great strides in integrating CheckFree.
I am often asked how the process is going. My answer is consistent.
It's going very well and its really hard work. Our leaders are focused on delivering the myriad of costs and revenue benefits within this powerful combination of market leaders.
We expect to achieve our integration goals for 2008 and set ourselves up for additional success in 2009. Lastly this year is about expanding our level of competitive advantage and differentiation.
Between Fiserv and CheckFree we are supplying industry leading mission critical solutions to the full continuum of financial institutions. Whether we are integrating new capabilities or core processing, extending product leadership in online banking and electronic bill payments, combining assets to develop new risk and compliance offerings or helping clients to rationalize and manage multi style of payments infrastructure, we find ourselves with a premium sheet at the table.
Each day, we are working with clients to solve complex problems and capitalize on exciting opportunities that are only available to us because of the expanding capabilities within the new Fiserv. We will also expand our level of differentiation through our commitment to clients, vast industry knowledge and multi-facet innovation.
Those activities are part of the reason, why our sales pipeline is as strong as it's ever been. While it's too early to predict how these opportunities will play out, we are encouraged by our progress and confident in the future.
Before I end, allow me to recognize the hard work and effort of our more than 24,500 colleagues around the world, who are working to make the new Fiserv the best it can be. Our employees and associates recognize that you have to step it up, when the environment gets tough.
Our people are making that happen for our clients each and every day. They are the best in the industry born on.
Operator, we will now open the lines for questions. Question And Answer
Operator
Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions].
Tien Tsin Huang of JPMorgan, you may ask your question.
Tien Tsin Huang - JPMorgan
Hi, thanks. Good afternoon.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Good afternoon, Tien Tsin.
Tien Tsin Huang - JPMorgan
Good quarter. I think with detail follow-up on Bank of America.
Were there any significant changes in scope in the contract, it sound like it was very much the same, but just wanted to clarify?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I mean and we have obviously working on that for a while. Given the confidential nature of the agreement, we don't think it's wise to provide any additional information on terms themselves.
However, let me say that the Bank of America multiyear extension is obviously a strategic plus for both us and Bank of America. BoA retains the assurance that they have, the best possible service infrastructure, as they've had for several years, continuing support their online services.
We provided them with the better economics and they extended their commitments. So, from that standpoint, we think it's pretty well balanced.
We're pretty happy with the deal and we think that the longer term is really important in allowing us to be able to invest further in this relationship given the extension for the next three years. We think its win-win.
Tien Tsin Huang - JPMorgan
Yeah, quite to see get out of the way as well. The follow-up on that in terms of CheckFree, are there any other contracts that are maybe coming up for renewal or possibly for renegotiation and definitely the 141 of their bill pay customers ever signed I just want to confirm that those were bank customers, they're not billers and then also with those primarily new bill pay implementation or there is some take away business as well.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
There is a bunch of questions in there. So, the 141 are actual bill pay installations, those are financial institutions not billers.
We didn't disclose the number of billers that we had in the quarter. There are a variety of types of new contracts some of the smaller institutions that are Greenfield, some of them are large wins and obviously some of them were takeaways and those include both volume that comes from our own sales, as well as the continuing good work that we do with borrowers in the industry.
We continue to nurture those relationships and we are seeing good volume coming out of that given the quality of our CheckFree's infrastructure services. As far as it relates to the other contracts there aren't any other large contracts that are up right now and we are happy to be able to focus now on delivery and not have to be negotiating contracts.
Tien Tsin Huang - JPMorgan
Okay, very good. Then lastly just integration wise with CheckFree, it sounds like it is on a trial, but what are the next milestones that we should be watching for in the coming quarters to the balance of the year?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, it is a great question. We, from a perspective of results I think the milestones that will matter is you should start to see bigger, bigger synergy benefits flowing through.
We were about $7 million in this quarter. So, we are going to need to have increases to land in our range of $40 million to $50 million, which we are confident that will do.
So, that's one time. The second one and I think pretty importantly is how does the sales pipeline look against those products that we are bringing together.
We're really having some very interesting success talking to some of the larger financial institutions about taking the different products in our portfolio and putting in together. And we are quiet excited that and we will see some sales wins coming out from those by the end of the year.
Tien Tsin Huang - JPMorgan
Okay great. Thanks.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Thanks. David Koning of Baird, you may ask your question.
David Koning - Baird
Yeah, hey guys.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Hi, Dave.
David Koning - Baird
One other thing on Bank of America, if we just kind of do a back of the handful calculation, it looks like you may have almost given up close to half or so of the profit that we just assume in a normal 25%, 30% margin on the Bank of America revenue historically. And so I am just wondering what's positive enough to kind of offset that and maybe I don't know how much in detail you can get.
But are you given higher minimums than you used to have and maybe are you guaranteed revenue to go up from them each year over the next several years?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Sure, it's a good question. Obviously as I said earlier, we're not in a position to really talk about the terms of the agreement.
From our standpoint, the only reason, why we mentioned the revenue is, because we made a change to our guidance and it was really because of that, the pricing…the one-time price concession. From our perspective, just looking at the history of the BoA agreement, we've seen that agreement…we've seen the underlying performance of Bank of America to be quite strong, and there has been nice growth that come out of that over the last five to seven years, and we believe that will continue, given Bank of America's commitment to the digital space and the success that they've had historically.
So that's one point. The second point, and I think most import, Dave, is, without talking about the details of the agreement, we said last quarter that we were quite satisfied with our agreement with BoA, and that the two or so years that were remaining, we were comfortable kind of continuing that agreement and seeing what would happen at the end.
For us to go in and decide that we would renegotiate the agreement, we obviously had to believe that there was more net present value in the negotiated…extended agreement than there was in the prior agreement, and so I think you can assume that we believe that to be the case.
David Koning - Baird
Okay. That's great.
One other thing, on the last call, you talked about basic '09 indication of EPS growth, in the 20% ballpark, is there anything that you've seen that would make you change it, your thought process in that at all or of the current guidance, '08 guidance, you still think 20% or so is in the ballpark?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
It's a good question, Dave. From our perspective, the underlying performance of the business, we thought it was quite strong in the quarter, and as I mentioned, our sales pipeline looks good.
Our cross-sell, our integrated sales initiatives are delivering and so we want to be cautious not to get in the practice of providing 2009 guidance in April of 2008, but we don't see anything in the landscape that is different today, than it was in the prior quarter. Obviously we've seen some weakening in the home equity business and we compensated for that in other parts of our business and we believe will continue to do that.
And so we taking that into account, we don't see anything that would suggest that our view in February would be different than it is today. Tom.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
That's correct, Jeff. I think the other I'd add Dave to the previous comment that Jeff had on the BoA contracts, this kind of goes outside of that agreement, is that is view of looked at our results over the last two years as we continue to grow the top line.
We're extremely disciplined around the process of making sure that revenue is good revenue to the company, its profitable that's why when you see typically organic revenue growth of the company, we anticipate that's your going to see improving operating margins and improving operating income. Then its something we work very diligently at all the time and throughout our organization.
So, that was just a comment kind on the contract pricing issue.
David Koning - Baird
Great, thanks and nice Q1 result.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Dave.
Operator
Gregory Smith with Merrill Lynch, you may ask your question.
Gregory Smith - Merrill Lynch
Hi guys.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Hi, Greg.
Gregory Smith - Merrill Lynch
Just on BoA, some where you've said, correct me if I'm wrong, but whatever the revenues you get from BoA in '08, the '09 revenues assume bill payment volumes continue to grow, '09 revenue should grow and we should continue to see the revenues from that contract growth, grow year-on-year, is that a correct assumption?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, what we did in the new agreement is we gave BoA a one-time reduction in pricing, which will lower our 2008 revenues as we indicated and then we would expect based on the secular trends and the history that they would grow over that amount and so there would be growth on that new reset amount, yes.
Gregory Smith - Merrill Lynch
Okay, perfect. And then was this something you had been in discussed for quite a while, just wondering why it couldn't have been anticipated when you gave the original '08 guidance.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I mean I think the reality is that there had been on and off again and on and off again discussions really ever since prior to our discussions with CheckFree. I mean that's how long these discussions have been going on between CheckFree and BoA.
And as everyone does that the transactions of this size takes lives of their own and at the time, because we talked about this in time we provided guidance we just didn't have a good enough sense that this would actually get across the finish line.
Gregory Smith - Merrill Lynch
Okay. And then lastly the sort of out performance that you have called out and the reason for not taking guidance down by the full BoA impact, where exactly is that our performance coming from?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
That is primarily just coming across the Board, I would say more in our payments related areas those have continued to do well. Our expedited bill payment business and our EFT business continue to grow nicely and also on some of the early integration efforts that we have as far as combining some of our businesses there.
So, I would say in that payments area has been a big plus for us.
Gregory Smith - Merrill Lynch
Okay. Thanks a lot guys.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Greg.
Operator
Bryan Keane, Credit Suisse, you may ask your question.
Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse
Hi, good afternoon.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Good afternoon.
Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse
License sales, what percentage of revenue is that now? I guess that's still an area of softness and you guys expected it to be soft, but I guess now with CheckFree in there.
Can you give us a sense of how big that is?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
It's still not very big, Bryan. I mean last year it's around 5%, maybe a little more, but it's still around that particular level.
So, it just really not a big number. They brought a couple businesses then, and as you know, the larger ones and we anticipated that into our larger institutions, the larger licenses those have been slower and we anticipated that early on.
But it's roughly about 5% of our total revenue --
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
5% of a larger base.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
That's correct.
Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse
Okay. And how are… I guess, Jeff, your first impressions on Carreker and Corillian, how are they fitting into the mix?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes. One of the things that we probably underestimated upfront, Bryan, was the opportunity that exists in Carreker to be able to match up well with some of the things that we do at Fiserv.
In terms of things like remote deposit capture and deposit automation generally, and risk management. Some very interesting products where Carreker has both the relationships and the expertise, and we have obviously, the distribution network across the smaller institutions.
And we're bringing that together and doing some pretty interesting stuff. And again, we feel fairly optimistic that we'll see some nice sales come in towards the second half of the year.
On the Corillian side, I mean, there was no surprise there. The Corillian obviously has kind of the best technology, the best internet banking technology in the market.
We're seeing some very interesting opportunities with Voyager, generally, to be able to integrate that into other elements of our system today. We're finding by putting together some of our internet banking products, and kind of looking at what are the right suites, how can we leverage kind of the best of all of our products to come up with some market leading products.
So we're seeing some wins there, I would say. On the downside, there are not a lot of people, because of the economy the way it is today.
It relates to your earlier question, there aren't a lot of reasons why people are going out and swapping out their online banking and those kinds of incremental license purchases are not happening as they were, say, a year or so ago, or 18 months ago. So it is a little bit harder there, we have some new products that are coming towards the end of the year.
That's one of the reasons why we're somewhat bullish on our sales results or predictions of our sales pipeline. So we think we'll see better results in the second half of the year.
But for now, we're pretty pleased by what's there on the Carreker and Corillian side.
Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse
Yes. Just a follow-up on that.
I think your opening comments, you said sales activity a little stronger than anticipated, so is that the area that's surprised you? And then also it surprised me to hear that March was a little bit stronger in integrated sales, can you just comment on that?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. I mean, we like everyone else.
We're quite nervous about how the economy would be and what that effect would have on our clients. And so, I think we generally were just a little bit tentative going into the year and we were really trying to balance that out against what we were hearing from our clients, and what we were hearing from most of our clients on extra largest institutions in the US is, people still are looking for ways to serve clients and deliver payments, and to be a little bit more efficient.
And so we have really seen strength, more strength across the Board than we anticipated and that's really popped off by some pretty interesting core processing deals and other things that are out there because people are really looking for ways to drive efficiency in. Because we think we have one of the stronger suites available.
Again, we're getting maybe longer looks than we would have historically. On the integrated sales side, that's purely related to the fact that our products are coming together very nicely, our integration efforts are coming together nicely and we're paying our people to sell them.
And that's really just… it sounds so fundamental Bryan, but it's really making a big difference.
Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse
Okay. Great.
Thanks a lot.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you
Operator
Jonathan Kraft of D.A Davidson, you may ask your question.
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
Hi. It's John Kraft.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Hi, John.
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
Congratulations on the nice quarter.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
I just want to clarify something here and sorry this is the middle of earning season, so I may not be thinking properly, but you did say as far as BoA that it's a one-time pricing concession. Can I think of that as a one-time $25 million rebate for '08 or was it a one-time reduction in transaction price that happens to equate the $25 million in '08?
And if transaction volumes are the same in '09, it would be another $25 million then?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
It's the later. Right, it's a one-time adjustment to the price schedule.
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
Okay. And there are incremental volume-based tiers after that as well, correct?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
You know we probably shouldn't go any deeper than that on a detailed basis. We believe that it's a $25 million or so item in this year and based on what we can see that will obviously, there will be growth but there aren't future reductions in the pricing schedule.
So beyond the annualization impact, which is relatively small, we don't see a future change to how we had anticipated future revenues.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yes. It's going to grow office space, John if that's your point.
We are seeing continuing growth as we go in to '09 and '10 as far as volumes and subscribers as that continues to grow.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
And actually '09, '10 and through '013.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Right.
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
Well. I am happy to see the overhang gone.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah.
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
And just one last, I guess, housekeeping item for you, Tom. Might you be able to provide a little bit of guidance on a segmented basis what your organic expectations would look like for the year?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
We're not going to do that this time, John. As we get to further along in the year and we have our Investor Day, we'll be putting out some long-term performance outlook by segment.
But for now, I mean, we're going to kind of look at it in our guidance on organic revenues 4% to 6%, and that's where we are at for this year.
John Kraft - D.A Davidson
Okay. Fair enough.
Thanks, guys.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Glenn Green of Oppenheimer, you may ask your question.
Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc
Yes. If you look at the $0.09 impact it almost implies, if my math is right about, almost a 100% margin on the $25 million revenue impact.
First of all, am I thinking about that right?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes. And the reason why it's 100, I mean, it's basically a change to the pricing.
And there is no… for all intention purposes, all of the expense structure stays the same. So, basically, how we've thought about it in 2008, it's a $25 million reduction.
Now, not surprisingly, we'll obviously work to look for efficiencies in our platform and other ways to make ourselves more efficient to compensate for that. But for 2008, it's really a one-for-one reduction.
Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc
I got it. So you're thinking about it as sort of a fixed cost business.
Got it. And then, Tom, you allude to why the bill pay transactions were late and you talked about the number of days in the quarter.
I would certainly under the view that March was a strong seasonal quarter for the bill pay industry, to something sort of, some kind of phenomenon happen in this quarter.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
So, Glenn, let me just go back to what you said. I mean, obviously, just to clarify it's not… we're thinking about it not as a fixed cost business, we're thinking about it.
Although the impact is similar, but what we're saying is we assume that… remember this is a change against really our 2008 guidance and so we'd assume the series of assumptions, growth assumptions and everything else. We basically assume that nothing changes, except for the pricing.
Now, if for a some reason, volume were to drop and things like that, then that number would be less, and if volume were to grow exponentially over our assumption and that would be higher. But I think that would actually be a good thing.
So I just want to make we clarified that.
Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc
I got it.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
The other thing to add Glen is that, over time obviously we have a lot of things working on the expense side as far as infrastructure goes. But overtime will continue to work to get our cost down on a per transaction basis.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
And to the point on the actual bill pay volumes. There are some interesting anomalies as we've gotten in and kind of learned how the settlement… the transaction settlement business works.
There are some interesting anomalies that have to do with how transactions are settled and the timing of those transactions and how that relates… how the days of the week and the month of March of 2008, how that translates or relates back to the month of March of 2007. Suffice it to say that we are quite comfortable with the growth that we're seeing and that it will continue, that those anomalies will work themselves out by the end of the year.
But it still looks a little anomalous to commit in the first quarter.
Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc
Okay. And then Jeff, you had alluded to some of the activity in the big bank market and you repeated your comments from the prior call.
But could you give a little bit more color on the kind of deals, or the nature of the deals that you might be referring to without being real specific?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
It's a little bit tough. We're looking at things, some deposit automation type of transactions.
We're looking at some item processing transactions, we are looking at ways to expand the Fiserv Clearing Network. We are looking at different ways that… one of the interesting challenges facing the financial industry right now is all of the legacy payment platforms that are out there.
And the opportunities to bring those silos together, to create a more holistic and a more data rich view of the end consumer. And so, no company really prior to now, has had the full suite of capabilities to look at that and bring that together.
And so, we are looking at some places there. And in the risk areas, we see some very interesting opportunities when you take our products and the Carreker products, that we think are quite valuable.
And the last thing that I would say is, one of the interesting opportunities that exist in our business really is through the RevE business, which is basically a consultative business that exists in Carreker. That really is based on looking for, as the name implies, ways for the larger financial institutions to enhance their revenue.
And not surprising this is the time when lots of the larger financial institutions are looking for ways to enhance their revenue. So, we see a lot of interesting opportunities coming out from that area.
Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc
Is it fair to say that Carreker sort of exceeding your expectations in terms sales activity or even performance at this point?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yes, there has been some, I think there, as part of the combination, there has been some very good integration between that business, the remote capture business that we have, our check processing business, and the team has worked extremely well together, the Carreker team and the Fiserv group here, and I think they are doing very well, as a team, and have a good outlook for the year.
Glenn Green - Oppenheimer & Co Inc
Yeah, right. Thanks.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Pat Burton of Citigroup, you may ask your question.
Patrick Burton - Citigroup
Yeah, hi. Congratulations on the quarter as well.
My question is, are there any other large bank contracts within the portfolio where you could envision this type of renewal coming up this year or next? Thanks.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Certainly nothing this year. No.
It's important to keep in mind that there's no other contract in the portfolio, that is of the breadth that this… that Bank of America is. So from that perspective, I would say there is no risk of anything like that happening.
Patrick Burton - Citigroup
Okay. And by not going out with the details, you don't think there could be a knock-out effect with other customers of the CheckFree base?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
No.
Patrick Burton - Citigroup
Okay. Thank you.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Pat.
Operator
Tim Fox of Deutsche Bank, you may ask your question.
Tim Fox - Deutsche Bank
Thanks. Good afternoon.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Hi Tim.
Tim Fox - Deutsche Bank
One question, just maybe a clarification on your commentary on the sales pipeline and breadth. It sounds like the sales pipeline is actually expanding.
However, quota attainment was below plan because of longer sales cycles. So I'm just trying to reconcile the two, and if we see quota attainment remain somewhere below plan, is there a risk to numbers, just given the contended sales cycles?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Sure. And that was one of the reasons why I certainly mentioned the sales cycle, because that is in certain cases, and again, it's not all of the businesses, but in certain cases, we are seeing that elongating and the delays in some of the decision-making.
I would say a couple of things. The quota attainment in this quarter is a little bit misleading because we basically straight line our quota for the year and its not surprising that in any sales organizations, your first quarter results are going to be less than your fourth quarter result.
So we would expect to see that change and as people get geared up. I would say Tim, if we get to the third of fourth quarter and we're still below, then I think obviously that's going to be an issue.
But again, the first quarter its kind of small sampling of what's going on, we think that if we were a 120% or 130% in this quarter, we actually wouldn't feel any different. What we really care about right now is what is the size of the pipeline, what's the composition of the pipeline and what are the probability of closing those items in the pipeline, and that's where we actually have a fair degree of comfort right now.
Tim Fox - Deutsche Bank
Okay. That's helpful and just secondly, following up on guidance and to an earlier question about the fact that you are not taking the full $0.09 impact.
Help us understand how you can be a little bit more confident about that performance, given the fact that home equity has been weak, granted it's a small part of the business at this point. But doesn't seem like, from a macro perspective, that's going to prove any time soon.
Do you see any other large customers exiting? How can we feel confident about that relatively small part of the business, not weakening even further?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
I'll give you my insight and I will let Tom kind of close it out. That business has reduced a lot.
I think at our peak, we were about $90 million per year larger than we are right now on a run rate basis and that peak was some time in 2006. So we've seen a lot of reduction there and the surprise, to the extent that there was one in the quarter, was that some of the large players actually are getting out of the home equity business.
Now, we've taken that into account for the year and we are quite comfortable that kind of the stability and the insulation of our business model will allow us to continue to take that as we've taken the $90 million reduction so far. So, we are comfortable.
Now, Tim if world falls apart, dramatically worse, if there is a 50% to 75% decline in home equity volumes over the next couple of quarters over, where we anticipate them to be right now, then I think that could be problematic. Our pipeline reports and our forecast and what we see give us comfort that we'll be okay.
And we've obviously taken into account within a range, a range is a little bit wider right now and it's wider because we think there is some risk in the home equity business. But what we don't want to do is, sit here and spend the whole time talking about, what's become a relatively small business and have that takeaway from some of the strength that we are seeing in other parts of the business.
Tom?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah and just, I'll just close that out. Again, this business is about 2%, 3% probably of our total revenues as a company on a net revenue basis, and we continue to take out the variable cost of this business.
So, overall we've had some out performance in other aspects of the business, just compared to plan, like I talked about, particularly in the payments area, and a few other areas. So, again I think you got to size this particular business.
We've given you that additional detail, so you see the size of this business, and it's down to a pretty low level and again, we have other compensating factors just given the size of that business compared to the rest of Fiserv, which again is very high recurring type of revenue and very resilient to these economic time.
Tim Fox - Deutsche Bank
Alright, that's helpful. Congratulations on the quarter.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Tim.
Operator
Julio Quinteros of Goldman Sachs, you may ask your question.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
Great, guys. Real quickly, Tom would it be possible to get the organic growth rates under the new segment also disclosed.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, it's in the appendix of the presentation Julio. So, it should be out there.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
Oh, so the historical quarters during the, appendix here, okay, great.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
And then can you just help us. Can you help us sort of decompose the organic growth number specially in the financial side, which came in and looks like a 1%, just help us understand, the kind of the puts and takes in terms what the drags were in financial and how to think about that as we go forward, what falls off, what continues to grow just to have a better sense on what the quarterly trajectory would look like there.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Okay. I think in that particular area, when you go back to slide 12 Julio, you see that that business last year started the year in the first quarter around 4 and ended around 2 and that's primarily because there is a lending impact hit through the year.
For the first quarter, we did 1, but again the lending impact was much larger, it was about 3 percentage points for that segment. So, we really did about 4% notwithstanding the home equity lending business.
The other part for that business, are really the core account processing, which continues to do well. That's the strength, we are the market leader in those solution sets or ITI or CBS solution.
We continue to sell more products to our existing clients. So, that business continues to be very stable and growing.
The head win we have is the equity business, which we talked about, and I think really that's where we are at. I don't know, Jeff, if you have something to add to that.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
I think that's right.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
And I guess, the only other thing, anything in terms of termination payments or anything like that would have been tougher costs going into this quarter?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Going into the for the remainder of the year, Julio.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
Yeah, exactly, sorry.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
No,
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
No, okay. Got it and then just finally on the payments business as we kind of look at it now, just in terms of seasonality if you looking at the numbers here just looking at for the first time actually 13810 and 5 for '07 looks like there is a little bit of movement in those numbers.
Is that seasonality or is there something other than just kind of help us understand what drove all the moves between first quarter, second quarter and third quarter to fourth quarter.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Well, I tell you Julio.
First of all that business last year on a percentage basis, was a lot smaller than this year with the acquisition of CheckFree obviously for the base is fairly smaller, when you compute the revenue growth there. The other thing I'd say that I think its on slide 4 or 5.
The Fiserv, where we kind of show what's in that particular business, we have the industry product piece, the output solutions piece and that business can tend to move quite significantly little bit more in the first quarter primarily and it can move based upon some larger transaction that occur in the card fulfillment business. So, that does to have a little bit more volatility, but I think as Julio see the segment as its bigger in 2008 its going to be much more stable.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
Okay. Got it and then I just make sure understand the change on the previous presentation for the reimbursement versus what we're doing now.
I heard what you said about maybe I guess I just want to -- if its possible close the door on what's the reimbursement number would have been in this quarter, we were still using the old definition, is there way to reconcile that maybe?
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Well, I think the reimbursements have been historically. I think they have been around $400 million or so on the customer reimbursement side, on an annual basis and now its probably around 200 with just a postage.
So, its probably around a $50 million a quarter.
Julio Quinteros, Jr. - Goldman Sachs & Company
Got it, okay. Great thanks.
Thomas Hirsch - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks Julio.
Operator
Kartik Mehta of FTN Midwest, you may ask your question.
Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research
Good afternoon. Jeff, I am just trying to reconcile from the commentary you made on BoA and you can not only say so much.
But it would be fair to say based on your comments that the services you provide CheckFree over the length of this renegotiated contract are the same services that you provided prior to this renegotiated contract?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes.
Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research
And Jeff, I am just trying to understand the margin impact, you said on the BoA that you couldn't take the cost out that quickly. It is just because of the structure of the business, is it just, you are in a integration standpoint and that's why and that eventually you will be able to take the cost out and the impact we already seeing in 2008 won't be the same in 2009.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I mean that's the really problem in a situation like this is, it's a little bit like the opposite of gasoline prices. When gasoline prices go up, like there just up, when you pay the extra amount and if gas and profits to the oil companies go up and gasoline prices go down profits of the oil companies go down.
And you might feel you have to do things over time. I mean this is a very big transaction processing business, where we are looking on a regular basis to make sure that we are reducing cost as often as we can.
I don't know that we will ever get to the point, where we take out all $25 million of cost related to this reduction. I do believe that we have very defined opportunities to reduce our, the cost of operating this platform and we will execute that and this gives us little bit more incentive to make sure that we are executing it.
But I can't sit here right now and say, when we will start to see the realization of the, says it against $25 million.
Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research
And just last question, what do you think, is there a difference in a way of financial institutions are acting today, versus the full kind of this credit crunch happened. I know your results don't seem to indicate that, but I'm thinking from either a product standpoint or in light of the length of contract standpoint.
Is there anything that's changing other than lower license revenues?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, we have the good fortune of serving the entire continuum of financial institution clients, and so from the smallest institutions this obviously up through the mega institutions. And the impacts on those institutions are different, and there's obviously tentativeness across…different levels of tentativeness across each of those groups.
I mean I think that the…but for the credit crunch, you would see, I think you would see as Tom mentioned, you'd see higher license revenues, you'd probably see a little bit more pricing power than you see today because people are paying a lot of attention to everything. I think people are being much more prudent about how they spend, and I actually think that benefits companies like us because of the breadth of the solutions and the integration that we can bring.
And I think there'll be less, I frankly believe there will be less changing of core platforms over the next year or two, because I don't think people will want to take the risk. And that's helpful for us, because of our…obviously because of our breadth there.
Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research
Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate it.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Kartik.
Operator
Our last question comes from Charlie Murphy of Morgan Stanley. Sir, you may ask your question.
Charles Murphy - Morgan Stanley
Thanks very much. I was wondering just possible to get some color on which segment you'd expect to contribute the most to the…a 100 basis points of margin expansion this year?
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Now it is…we're just not going to be in a place, where we're giving that kind of segment by segment guidance. Obviously, we'll see at each quarter, the underlying strength of the payment segment itself there tends to be more leverage and more growth.
So, you might anticipate that, that would be the place, but it can come from a variety of different places depending on what's going on from the sales perspective.
Charles Murphy - Morgan Stanley
Thanks very much.
Jeffery W. Yabuki - President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Alright, well thanks everyone for your time on Wednesday afternoon.
We appreciate your support. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact our Investor Relations Group.
Have a good night.
Operator
Thank you for participating in today's conference. You may disconnect at this time.