You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Gary Norcross, our Chairman, President and CEO, will discuss our quarterly operating performance and share our strategy for continued accelerating revenue growth.
Woody Woodall, our Chief Financial Officer, will then review our financial results, including our balance sheet, cash flow and segment-level trends.
Turning to Slide 3.
Also, throughout this conference call, we will be presenting non-GAAP information, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net earnings and adjusted net earnings per share.
These are very important financial performance measures for the company but are not financial measures as defined by GAAP.
I'm extremely proud of our third quarter results, which returned to positive organic growth for the quarter, an impressive results for our team, given the backdrop of a global pandemic.
We continue to sell new business, grow the top line, expand margins and generate exceptional free cash flow.
Our strong performance demonstrates the durability of our unique business model and underscores our commitment to lifting our clients and communities.
While others have been forced to retrench and preserve capital, we continue to invest for growth, bringing new solutions and services to our clients now.
This quarter alone, we launched several new solutions, including Access Worldpay, which is now the world's most advanced payments gateway; ClearEdge, a new subscription-based offering that enables community banks to run a highly efficient, modern bank while also benefiting from simplified pricing and contracting; Ethos is our innovative, new data ecosystem that provides clients with a unified view across our enterprise, powering data-driven insights and automating reporting.
In addition, we partnered with The Clearing House to launch our new real-time payments managed service, which provides a complete turnkey service for financial institutions to quickly and cost-effectively connect to the United States' real-time payments network.
Even with all these new solutions, we continue to look beyond our own current capabilities to see what's next on the horizon for our clients.
I'm pleased to announce that we recently completed our fifth annual Fintech Accelerator program, which was just named Best Fintech Accelerator by Finovate, and we launched our new FIS Impact Labs, both of which are focused on accelerating transformative innovation into the market.
Now more than ever, our clients are embracing innovative technologies like these and our scalable end-to-end solutions are increasingly in demand.
We saw evidence of this demand from our recent InFocus client event, which was heavily attended and expanded its reach virtually this year to nearly 40 countries and which drove a 25%-plus increase in demand for FIS solutions.
Our strong new sales performance has increased our backlog by 6% organically during the third quarter.
And our pipeline is exceptionally strong, up more than 30% year-over-year as we continue to grow and win new business.
We are also adding our new sales opportunities for revenue synergies.
As of the end of the third quarter, we are generating $150 million in annual run rate revenue synergies and we have $60 million more currently being implemented with our clients.
This puts us in great shape to exceed our $200 million revenue synergy target before the end of the year.
We clearly have the momentum to continue accelerating revenue growth through 2021 and to sustain high single-digit top line growth into the future.
Our ability to leverage our world-class scale is driving ongoing margin expansion.
Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded 340 basis points sequentially and 30 basis points year-over-year during the third quarter as we continue to harness the operating leverage inherent in our business.
We remain focused on further enhancing our superior cost structure by driving automation, streamlining our organizational structure and generating expense synergies through our proven integration capabilities.
Our unique combination of durable revenue growth and persistent operating leverage enables us to generate exceptionally high levels of free cash flow.
We will use our free cash flow to invest back into our business, both organically to delivering innovative solutions like the ones that I mentioned a few moments ago, as well as inorganically to expand into new high-growth segments of the market.
This, in turn, will reinforce the momentum that we're building to drive continued growth acceleration.
Turning to Slide 6.
People often ask me what's next for FIS and how their investments allow us to compete with disruptors.
In order to answer that question, it's important to understand not only where we've been, but where we are going, what's new and what's next for FIS and most importantly, for our clients.
It begins with the pathway to transformation that we started five years ago.
We consolidated data centers and moved solutions to the cloud.
We rearchitected our application stack to be modular and componentized while upgrading and integrating our enterprise tool sets.
And we launched a dramatically more client-friendly approach to delivery and service.
Now we are leveraging our technology and expertise to leapfrog over inflexible point solutions using cloud-native open architecture to deliver digital omni-channel solutions that are simple to integrate and easy to navigate.
In this way, we are helping our clients to quickly adapt to rapidly changing consumer expectations with innovative solutions that are fast, flexible and frictionless.
What you can expect to see next from our centers around our unique ability to tailor end-to-end experiences by connecting the global financial ecosystem in ways that only FIS can do.
We serve each of our clients as a trusted partner by building new and unique capabilities to better solve their challenges.
We then scale these new capabilities across our cloud-based environment for the benefit of all of our clients in a highly efficient and cost-effective manner.
This is the advantage of our unique business model.
And we're just getting started.
By investing approximately $1 billion annually in new product development and R&D, we are bringing tomorrow's innovation forward now.
And by using our one-to-many model, we can continue to grow faster than the market, support our clients' needs and sustain their technology leadership.
I'll give you a few examples of how we are bringing together capabilities from across the business to create new and exciting growth opportunities on Slide 7.
Case New Holland is a global leader in agriculture and industrial equipment.
They have been a valued client with our capital markets business for the past three years, leveraging our auto and equipment finance solutions to deliver a robust and automated digital experience for its customers.
They recently asked us to help them to drive data and insights as well as improved acceptance across their network of more than 900 dealerships.
Now we're bringing capital markets together with merchant by partnering to drive frictionless payments.
Another great example is our Premium Payback solution, which enables consumers to pay for purchases with reward points.
Demand is very strong from both our banking and merchant clients as there is a compelling value proposition for each of them as well as for the consumer.
Thousands of financial institutions, representing more than 7,000 card loyalty programs, are enrolled in the FIS Premium Payback ecosystem.
In this quarter, we added one of the largest issuers in the world to our points bank, further driving adoption.
In addition, we announced this quarter that Walgreens is now one of the growing number of merchants to offer its customers our Premium Payback service, joining companies like PayPal, Shell and BP.
The ability to use loyalty points is becoming an increasingly important factor in consumer decisions on where to shop.
Highlighting the type of next-generation value that we are offering to our clients now.
Another area where we are driving phenomenal value is with our merchant bank referral network.
When we signed the Worldpay deal, we thought that we would be able to sign three to four new bank referral agreements per year.
As it turns out, we have signed more than 15 significant new bank relationships, adding well over 1,000 branches to our partner distribution network in the first year.
Lastly, it's gratifying to see one of the key benefits of the deal come to fruition as we expand our global reach.
We're leveraging our combined scale to enable our merchant business to enter new countries and markets.
Our e-com business remains a global leader and continues to be a partner of choice for multinational companies and leading global brands.
We're expanding into six new countries this year, including Argentina, which we announced most recently.
With our new domestic acquiring licenses, Worldpay from FIS can deliver advanced payment technology to both merchants and global companies operating in these countries around the world.
I'm also happy to announce that we have successfully expanded our integrated payments business into Europe.
We signed more than 30 partners there already and are finalizing agreements with several more.
Winning these new partners gives us access to distribution that will drive accelerated growth through 2021 and beyond.
With recent investments in the U.S. as well, new wins are up significantly within our integrated payments despite the pandemic.
In banking, we added another top 30 financial services firm to our growing roster of large client wins.
They will use our Modern Banking Platform to power their online bank and chose FIS because of our cutting-edge technology and omni-channel capabilities.
We are also seeing strong success with our digital and mobile banking solutions.
This quarter, we signed an agreement with a top 50 bank, who chose us because our Digital One and mobile banking solutions will enable them to rapidly innovate, further differentiate their consumer user experience and increase their speed to market for new products.
In merchant, we signed a top 100 luxury retailer, who chose to partner with us because of our end-to-end capabilities, including our debit routing, e-commerce and differentiated omni-channel technology.
Sticking with the omni-channel theme for a moment, I'm very pleased to announce that Walmart, the world's largest retailer, recently began processing e-commerce transactions with us, further expanding our existing relationship.
It's a testament to our superior client value proposition and omni-channel capabilities that we continue to win share of wallet with our largest global clients.
In integrated payments, we signed two of the world's leading dealer management system software providers, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K. Between the 2, it will provide us with distribution to thousands of dealerships through these leading ISVs.
Turning to capital markets.
Demand for our end-to-end, SaaS-based solution remains robust.
I'm excited to announce that we signed a deal with a leading global technology company to power their complex multinational treasury function as well as to modernize their B2B payment operations.
The company selected FIS because of our cloud-based technology, flexible deployment and simple integration.
We also signed a significant new deal with a large Japanese bank to provide a middle- and back-office post-trade derivative clearing solutions.
The bank chose us in order to leverage our new API-driven technology stack to drive efficiencies and reduce operational risk.
We clearly have the momentum to continue accelerating revenue growth through 2021 and to sustain high single-digit top line growth into the future based on our new solutions, our unique ability to combine our knowledge and expertise from across our business and new ways to solve our clients' challenges and due to our continued sales success with marquee clients.
As Gary highlighted, we're excited about the momentum that we are building in the business.
Our pipelines are full with more than 30% in banking and capital markets and remain the largest that I've ever seen.
Our cloud-based end-to-end solutions are clearly resonating in the market right now.
Transaction and volume growth continue to improve in our merchant segment.
And we are seeing positive trends in our revenue yields as well.
And with our backlog consistently growing in the mid- to upper single digits for multiple quarters in a row, I feel really good about our ability to accelerate revenue growth next year, consistent with the 7% to 9% range we have been messaging.
But let's start with our third quarter results beginning on Slide 10.
We delivered a strong set of financial results with significantly improving trends.
On a consolidated basis, revenue increased 13% to $3.2 billion, up 1% organically, which represents a marked improvement from the 7% decline that we experienced last quarter.
Improving revenue growth was primarily driven by two things: stronger recurring revenue in both banking and capital markets as well as improving trends throughout the quarter within our merchant business.
Adjusted EBITDA increased to $1.4 billion with margins expanding 340 basis points sequentially and 30 basis points year-over-year to 42%.
We continue to expect margins to expand sequentially again in the fourth quarter as consumer spending trends continue to improve, driving margin expansion for the full year as compared to 2019.
As a result of our improving revenue growth and profitability, we achieved adjusted earnings per share of $1.42 for the third quarter.
Touching on our Worldpay integration.
We are more than two years ahead of schedule.
We have achieved $150 million in revenue synergies as we continue to see really strong traction with our Premium Payback solution.
And we are significantly outperforming our initial expectations for merchant bank referrals.
We have also achieved cost synergies of over $700 million, including $385 million in operating expense savings, contributing to our adjusted EBITDA margin expansion.
I'll expand more around our segments with Slide 11.
Banking Solutions revenue increased 3% organically to $1.5 billion.
This includes a three percentage point headwind related to COVID as well as an exceptionally large license comparison in the prior year period.
Excluding these, organic revenue growth was closer to 6% for banking, which is more consistent with our strong growth in recurring revenue.
Adjusted EBITDA was $653 million for banking, representing 220 basis points of sequential margin expansion to 43%.
This is a very good result as the team drove effective cost management to overcome the large margin headwind associated with last year's license comparison.
Our merchant segment also saw a significant rebound in the quarter.
Revenue was flat on an organic basis at $1 billion.
This represents 14 points of improvement over 2Q when normalizing for the U.S. tax deadline shift as we continue to win market share, particularly in our e-commerce, integrated payments and merchant bank referral channels.
Adjusted EBITDA in the segment was $487 million, representing over 700 basis points of sequential margin improvement as we saw a material rebound in our higher-margin transaction processing revenue.
Capital markets revenue has increased 3% year-to-date on an organic basis, demonstrating more than one point of acceleration compared to the prior year period.
We continue to see good progress in transitioning this business to a SaaS-based recurring revenue model and away from license sales.
Capital markets declined 1% in organic revenue growth for the third quarter and was primarily due to quarterly differences in the timing of license renewals.
And we expect quarterly variability of this segment to continue to improve as we complete the transition to SaaS.
Recurring revenue continues to grow strongly and new sales for our SaaS-based recurring revenue solutions increased by nearly 50% during the third quarter, reinforcing our confidence for continued acceleration in revenue growth during 2021 and beyond.
Adjusted EBITDA was $286 million, representing a consistent 46% margin with last quarter, as capital markets teams continue to manage cost and execute at a very high level.
Turning to Slide 12 for an overview of our recent merchant volume and transaction trends.
We continue to see improvement throughout the third quarter with volume and transaction growth exiting the quarter at 6% and 3%, respectively.
Trends have consistently improved since April.
And this is especially notable for our revenue yields.
Historically, merchant revenue growth has been highly correlated with transaction and volumes.
But the severe impact of the COVID pandemic on cross-border and SMB caused revenue growth to fall by more than volume growth last quarter.
This quarter, as expected, we saw that spread narrowing as yields continued to improve, primarily with improving SMB trends.
E-commerce transactions increased 30% in the quarter, excluding travel and airlines.
While the global pandemic continues to affect us all, we believe this is a critical time to continue to invest in our solution suite to empower our merchants into an accelerating digital economy.
As Gary mentioned, we have rolled out significant enhancements within our merchant segment, all of which continue to position FIS as the premier provider of global e-commerce and integrated payments.
Turning to Slide 13.
I wanted to provide some color on the strength of our balance sheet, cash flows and liquidity position.
We ended the quarter with a total debt balance of about $20 billion and a weighted average interest rate of 1.6%.
Our debt balance is up slightly quarter-over-quarter, primarily due to FX translation, as we carry significant euro- and pound-denominated balances.
We continue to generate high levels of free cash flow.
This quarter, we generated $866 million, representing a 27% conversion of revenue.
Capital expenditures were $263 million or 8% of revenue.
As a result, liquidity increased again to $4.2 billion, up by more than $700 million quarter-over-quarter.
Our business model remains durable and our strategy is clearly working to help us win market share.

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compname reports q3 adj earnings per share of $1.42.
q3 adjusted earnings per share $1.42.

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