UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

FORM 10-K

þ	ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2004

OR

o	TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from                               to                               

Commission file number: 000-24931

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (404) 923-3500

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Not Applicable

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:
Common Stock, par value $0.01 per share
Title of Class

     Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports) and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes þ No o

     Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. o

     Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an accelerated filer (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes þ No o

     Aggregate market value of the common stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant, computed using the closing price on the for the Registrant’s common stock on June 30, 2004, was $662,066,572.

     Shares of common stock outstanding as of March 1, 2005: 70,626,594

Documents Incorporated by Reference

     List hereunder the following documents if incorporated by reference and the Part of the Form 10-K into which the document is incorporated:

     Portions of the definitive proxy statement for the annual meeting of shareholders to be held May 12, 2005, which the registrant intends to file no later than 120 days after December 31, 2004, are incorporated by reference in Part III.

 

S1 CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES

FOR THE YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2004

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

PART I

Item 1. Business.

     This annual report on Form 10-K and the documents incorporated into this annual report on Form 10-K by reference contain forward-looking statements within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These statements include statements with respect to our financial condition, results of operations and business. The words “believes,” “expects,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “anticipates,” “forecasts,” “intends” or similar terminology identify forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our beliefs as well as assumptions made using information currently available to us. Because these statements reflect our current views concerning future events, they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Therefore, actual results may differ significantly from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The risk factors described below provide examples of risks, uncertainties and events that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the expectations we describe in our forward-looking statements. Except as provided by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Business Overview

     We operate and manage S1 in two business segments: our core business financial institutions segment and our Edify business in the voice/speech solutions market. We sell our solutions primarily to traditional financial services providers, such as banks and insurance companies, as well as non-traditional financial providers, such as retailers. Our solutions address the needs of small, mid-sized and large financial organizations in two geographic areas: (i) the Americas region, and (ii) the International region, consisting of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ). Additional information about our operating segments, geographic disclosures and major customers is presented in note 17 to our consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this report.

Financial Institutions Segment

     Through our financial institutions segment, we provide enterprise and single channel software solutions for financial services organizations, including banks, credit unions and insurance companies around the world. Our solutions help financial institutions improve revenue opportunities, reduce operating costs and enhance customer service by delivering multiple customer-facing applications that can be implemented on a single platform. These interaction channels include:

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Branch and call center applications, or full-service channels, which banks primarily use to provide personalized service and relationship selling through the teller, agent desktop and call center; and

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ATM, Internet and voice applications, or self-service channels, which financial institutions use as a low-cost way to enable customers to conduct simple transactions anytime, anywhere.

     S1 applications, which can be sold as standalone applications or as an integrated suite across the enterprise, help financial services providers better service and sell financial products to all of their market segments, ranging from retail consumers and small businesses to global corporations. Our applications also help financial institutions lower the costs associated with supporting their infrastructure and servicing their customers and employees by providing a single platform on which all of their front-office applications and customer information can reside. Our analytical applications enable institutions to better understand their customers, segment their needs, more effectively cross-sell services and improve customer satisfaction.

     Our products are designed to run on-premise at a financial institution location, or hosted in a data center. The products can be branded and extended to meet the individual specifications of the financial institution. We provide professional services for the installation and integration of our products, product training, consulting and product enhancement services, all of which are focused on enabling our customers to maximize the value of our applications and meet their particular business needs and strategies. We also provide hosting applications for customers who elect to run S1 solutions in our data center.

     We derive a significant portion of our revenues from licensing our solutions and providing professional services. We generate recurring data center revenues by charging our data center customers a monthly fixed fee or a fee based on the number of their end users who use the solutions we provide, subject to a minimum charge. We also generate recurring

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revenue by charging customers who license our products a periodic fee for software maintenance. We also generate recurring revenues by charging our customers a periodic fee for term licenses including the right-to-use software and receive maintenance and support. In discussions with our customers and investors, we use the term “subscription” as being synonymous with a term license. We intend to license Enterprise Platform Version 3 and other next generation applications primarily on a subscription basis wherein revenue will be recognized evenly over the term of the contract.

Edify Segment

     Through our Edify business segment, we deliver voice and speech solutions for companies across a range of industries. Edify’s products help companies automate their customer service facilities, improve customer satisfaction and create new revenue opportunities, while reducing operational costs. Edify’s voice and speech applications are scalable, multilingual and flexible, allowing companies to easily integrate multiple back-end systems with a variety of contact interfaces. Edify’s voice and speech solutions combine speech recognition, speaker verification, text-to-speech, fax, and touch-tone automation with a powerful application development environment and natural language capabilities to help organizations optimize customer service while lowering costs. Revenues from the Edify business segment accounted for approximately 15% of our total revenues from continuing operations in 2004.

General Background

     S1 is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with 29 offices in 15 countries, including development Centers of Excellence in Atlanta, Georgia; Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Texas; West Hills, California; Pune, India; Dublin, Ireland; and Cape Town, South Africa. We are a global software and services organization that has more than 4,000 financial institution customers, ranging from global financial services companies to community banks and credit unions in the United States. S1 is primarily focused on the financial services industry, but also delivers voice, speech, point-of-sale, and payment solutions to retailers and telecommunication companies.

     S1 was founded in 1996 when we released the world’s first Internet bank — Security First Network Bank. In 1998, we sold the banking operations to Royal Bank of Canada. We then focused on software development, implementation and services. Our core business was Internet banking and insurance for several years. Through a series of strategic acquisitions and more than $100 million invested in product development activities in the past few years, S1 offers multiple products including our suite of integrated front-office products — S1 Enterprise.

     In 2004, we made three strategic acquisitions:

	•	X/Net Associates, Inc., a Rochester, New York based provider of lending solutions to financial institutions;
	•	Mosaic Software Holdings Limited, a United Kingdom based global provider of solutions that drive ATM and electronic payments: and
	•	a business unit from an Indian-based provider of software development, programming, infrastructure development and related services.

     The acquisition of X/Net and Mosaic added to S1’s suite of products and increased our customer base. The third acquisition enabled us to cost effectively move from a contracted to an owned development and professional services organization in India with a continuity of workforce.

Financial Industry Background

     There are many factors influencing the formation of a new, more competitive environment for financial services providers today. These factors include pressure to grow their businesses organically instead of through mergers/acquisitions, lower interest rates that require banks to generate income through alternative sources, and the need to minimize IT and infrastructure costs while meeting the ever-rising consumer expectations for customer service and convenience. We believe that these factors are influencing financial services companies to look for new ways to more effectively service and sell their customers through all of their interaction channels, including the branch (teller and platform), call center, Internet, phone and ATM.

     As in some other industries, financial services providers can more cost-effectively grow their businesses by cross-selling additional products and services to their existing customers. This is difficult to do if they are not able to understand, segment and intelligently market services to these customers. S1 solutions are designed to not only provide financial institutions with greater insight into their customer data, but also into the transactions that their customers conduct. Unlike traditional customer relationship management (“CRM”) solutions that only provide the demographic customer information,

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S1’s products are designed to combine customer information with transaction information to provide its customers with a very comprehensive view of their customers.

     As each customer interaction channel was introduced, many financial institutions took a tactical approach in expanding their offerings, incrementally adding these new channels as they fit in with their evolving business plans. By and large, each channel functioned independently, with limited, if any, interactions and knowledge of the customer interactions occurring in the other channels. This silo-like infrastructure has become too expensive for many institutions to support and too inefficient for consumers and businesses to try to interact with their financial institution. By implementing multiple applications on a single platform – what we believe to be the value proposition for S1 Enterprise solutions – banks are able to minimize the number of technology platforms, interfaces and administrative resources associated with supporting their operations. S1 Enterprise applications are designed to share common infrastructure elements through the reuse of business objects that help reduce the cost of rolling out new products, implementing upgrades and performing application maintenance.

     We believe that financial institutions that provide a unified experience for their customers across multiple points of interaction, delivered at the lowest possible price, will have a key competitive advantage. Financial institutions will need to deliver a consistent and compelling experience to their customers and provide them with products and services that better meet their needs and are relevant to their stage in life. We believe it is very challenging for financial institutions to deal with multiple channels, using different technologies, all of which must be integrated with a variety of legacy applications. Financial institutions are driven by technology and must attempt to keep up with the rapid pace of change. They must determine how to leverage their existing solutions while moving to new technologies that will protect their investments and better position them for the future.

     We believe that these factors are influencing the decision on the part of many financial institutions of all sizes to pursue an enterprise solution that helps them reduce their costs, increase their revenue opportunities and improve customer loyalty. With a single platform and common data model, institutions can reduce their costs by using single points of integration to the legacy applications, decreasing operational complexity and eliminating multi-vendor coordination, as well as drive revenue by enhancing cross-selling opportunities and improving the relationships they have with their customers. We are in the process of delivering a fully integrated solution that automates and integrates all of the front-office applications, while providing a technology platform to simplify integration and operations as well as speed implementation and time to market. Our activities during 2002, 2003 and 2004 were focused on the execution of our strategy around the delivery and implementation of this type of enterprise application and getting financial institutions in production on this new platform.

S1 Solutions

     Our direction for the S1 Enterprise is to take a holistic approach to unifying a financial institution’s multiple channels, applications, business processes and customer segments. By taking a customer-centric view, we expect that the S1 Enterprise will enable financial institutions to deliver a personalized, compelling experience to their retail, small business and corporate customers. By supporting all customer interaction channels — including full-service channels such as branches, agents and call centers; self-service channels such as voice, ATM and the Internet; and automated interactions such as ACH and wire transfers — we believe that S1 Enterprise will enable financial institutions to deliver a consistent customer experience while helping them rapidly deploy new products and services. S1 Enterprise offers banking, investment, insurance and CRM applications that can be used by both financial institution customers and internal users, such as tellers, agents, brokers, and customer service representatives. We provide flexible, customizable solutions with a modular approach so financial institutions can innovate their enterprise at their own pace, while increasing revenue, lowering costs and building stronger customer loyalty.

     In 2004, S1 made several strategic product acquisitions that supported the S1 Enterprise strategy. The acquisition of X/Net Associates, Inc., a provider of consumer and commercial lending solutions, helped augment S1’s online and branch offerings. The acquisition of Mosaic Software Holdings, Limited not only helped complete the S1 Enterprise vision by adding an ATM solution to enable S1 to support all primary customer interaction channels, but also brought electronic payments applications that serve both traditional banks and non-traditional financial providers, such as retailers. We intend to integrate these applications into the S1 family of products to enhance our current solutions and provider greater cross-sell opportunities.

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     We believe that S1 Enterprise, when fully implemented, will offer a number of important benefits to our customers, including the following:

	•	S1 Enterprise turns static customer and transaction data into actionable information to help financial institutions grow revenues — Financial institutions have a wealth of valuable customer information stored throughout their organizations. Their customers also have multiple financial relationships with other providers. S1 Enterprise helps financial institutions collect the data from internal and external systems, giving greater insight into customers and the ability to deliver more personalized service. S1 Enterprise features fully integrated CRM capabilities so that our financial institution customers can leverage customer information and marketing programs across all customer touch points, helping them create profitable and satisfying customer interactions. Our CRM solutions go beyond the traditional approach by turning information such as alerts, awards and promotions into actionable information at the delivery channel of choice for the financial institution’s customer.
	•	S1 Enterprise helps banks and insurers deliver compelling, personalized products and services that help increase customer retention — In order to build customer loyalty, financial institutions need to deliver personalized products and services that are timely, relevant and accurate. S1 Enterprise is designed to help financial institutions understand their customer’s buying behaviors, attitudes toward technology and short and long-term financial goals. S1 Enterprise helps financial institutions create more cross-selling opportunities, while maximizing the existing relationships they have established to up-sell additional products and services and to reduce customer turn-over. We believe such personalized service will increase opportunities for cross-selling and create more effective marketing.
	•	S1 Enterprise provides integration of multiple applications and channels to lower a financial institution’s costs —S1 Enterprise delivers integrated solutions across all of an institution’s interaction channels and market segments. Delivering all of these services from a common platform enables financial institutions to achieve significant cost savings over time. With the deployment of one application, financial institutions receive comprehensive functionality on an open, flexible, and operable industry platform. With multiple applications, they begin to see true economies of scale with the single platform. This not only reduces integration, maintenance and implementation costs, it can also leverage the cross-channel CRM capabilities for more effective personalization and sales opportunities. All of this capability is delivered while leveraging existing investments in back-office system interfaces.

S1 Vision and Strategy

     Our objective is to be the leading global provider of integrated enterprise solutions that enable financial institutions to improve the way they service their customers by integrating all delivery channels, expanding the total financial relationship and increasing profits. To achieve this objective, we intend to pursue the following initiatives:

Achieve Financial and Operational Stability through a Combination of Enterprise Revenue Growth and Continued Cost Control

     Within our financial institutions business, we generated approximately 23% of our revenues from services provided to our major insurance customer (State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company) in 2004. The remainder of the revenue was generated from the sale of licenses and services in the global financial services market. Revenue from State Farm of approximately $46 million and $48 million in 2003 and 2004, respectively, is expected to be approximately $45 to $50 million in 2005.

     In 2005, we will continue to sell Enterprise solutions to financial institutions. We believe these Enterprise customers will purchase additional Enterprise applications from us.

     Beginning in 2005, we intend to license Enterprise Platform 3.0 and certain other applications primarily on a subscription basis where in license revenues will be recognized evenly over the term of the contract. In addition to the recurring license and maintenance revenues we will earn, we expect to generate implementation fees from these sales. In late 2004, the strategic decision to move more of our business to a recurring license revenue model was made. We believe this will provide greater revenue visibility, higher operating margins and more financially balanced customer relationships.

     For the year ended December 31, 2004, S1 generated income from continuing operations and net income. In prior years, we made a number of changes to our operating structure which reduced total operating expenses through a combination of office consolidation, headcount reduction and other cost control initiatives. We believe that the combination

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of new Enterprise revenue and our continuing focus on cost control will result in the generation of positive cash flow from operations and profits in 2005.

Increase Revenues by Cross-Selling our Products and Services to Existing Customers

     We intend to generate revenues by selling additional S1 products and services to our existing customer base of approximately 4,000 financial institutions. We believe that opportunities for cross-selling our products and services will increase as we deliver more of our applications on the S1 Enterprise Platform, and as we continue to add and enhance products through acquisition and internal development. In addition to the sale of new products, the migration of our customer base from single-channel solutions to S1 Enterprise offers further revenue growth opportunities.

S1 Products

     We have products that address both the community bank and credit union marketplace, as well as those that address the needs of mid and large-size financial services providers. We generate revenues from the following principal product groups: Banking Solutions, Insurance Solutions, CRM Solutions, Website Solutions, Financial Reporting Solutions and Account Aggregation. At the end of 2004, we added several solutions related to ATM and electronic payments solutions with our acquisition of Mosaic Software.

S1 Banking Solutions

     In the third quarter of 2004, we completed the third major release of our flagship suite of products – S1 Enterprise. This release deliver new applications and brought all of S1’s Enterprise solutions (retail Internet, commercial Internet, teller, sales and service platform, call center, voice and analytics) onto a single platform – the S1 Enterprise Platform. The first of its kind, this integrated multi-channel solution architecture solidified S1’s leadership position at the forefront of this mission-critical trend in financial services industry.

     In the retail and small business banking markets, we offer the following Internet-based applications:

	•	S1Enterprise Personal Banking gives individual consumers anytime, anywhere access to all of their banking accounts, including deposit, credit card and loan accounts. Functions include the ability to view statements, account activity, and cleared and pending transactions online, to transfer funds between accounts and to pay bills electronically.
	•	S1Enterprise Business Banking is a comprehensive banking product geared to the unique needs of small business owner-operators. Available services include daily account balance and transaction reporting, disbursement services, payroll, account transfers, wires, and electronic tax payments. Personalization options simplify cash management tasks for easy organization and management of company funds.
	•	S1 Internet Banking System (IBS) Retail Banking is designed specifically with the unique needs of the community banking market in mind. This turn-key application includes functions such as the ability to view statements, account activity, and cleared and pending transactions online, to transfer funds between accounts and to pay bills electronically.
	•	S1 Consumer Lending offers highly customizable, complete credit origination system designed for indirect, direct, credit card, home equity and revolving credit lending, to be used in conjunction with multiple scoring and decision support tools.

     In the commercial banking area, we offer the following Internet-based applications:

	•	S1Enterprise Corporate Banking is a comprehensive Internet-based cash management solution that helps financial institutions better serve large corporations on a global basis. This application offers multi-lingual, multi-currency and multi-delivery channel capability to perform such functions as information reporting, global payments, check services, file services and customer administration on a global basis.
	•	S1 IBS Cash Management System is designed to help community banks deliver services to small businesses in the markets that they serve. Functions include integrated front and back office systems, multiple payment vehicles such

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		as domestic and SWIFT wires, ACH, and EFTPS, integration with the IBS retail Internet banking application and EDI data display.
	•	S1 Enterprise Trade Finance solutions help financial institutions increase the efficiency of processing their trade transactions. S1 Trade Finance delivers one integrated system to create and report on trade documents from purchase order, to letter of credit, to direct collections. These solutions enhance the risk evaluation process for global trade using optimized workflow and reporting and deliver up-to-date status reports on all outstanding trade finance engagements.
	•	S1 Business Lending is a complete workflow solution that supports the processing of a financial institution’s small business lending requirements from data entry through qualification, notification, closing and document delivery.

     In branch automation, we offer the following solutions:

	•	S1 Enterprise Teller is a “smart-client” teller application, combining thin and rich client technologies to provide scalability, real-time connectivity, and low total cost of ownership with extensive offline capabilities. The application is highly flexible and customizable, and its centralized administration capabilities enable quick and efficient rollout of new products, features, and upgrades.
	•	S1 Enterprise Sales & Service Platform provides a robust set of transactional capabilities and embedded relationship management tools. With real-time information from all channels and advanced features that support selling, branches can significantly improve their visibility of potential cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and have the tools to act on those opportunities.
	•	S1 Enterprise Call Center offers a full set of workflows, transactions and core services that meet the specialized needs of the call center environment. In addition to the core services found in the teller and platform applications, S1 Enterprise Call Center provides the customer information, sales and service capabilities, process flows, reporting, and the fulfillment management that are exclusive to call center operations.
	•	S1 Teller provides the complete set of transactions and core services necessary for fulfilling the rigorous requirements of today’s teller environment, including host communications, sharing and storing of information, cumulative totals, electronic journal, transaction security and approval, and balancing aids.
	•	S1 Sales and Service Platform includes an extensive set of transactions, sales tools, and core services that expedite selling new products, as well as servicing existing accounts.
	•	S1 Banking Call Center provides the customer information, sales and service capabilities, process flows, reporting, and fulfillment management that are exclusive to call center operations. The S1 Banking Call Center application integrates with other call center technologies, including integrated voice response (IVR) systems, computer telephony integration servers, and automatic call distributor systems.

     We offer two voice banking solutions: (1) a complex set of tools that an institution can customize to meet its unique voice banking needs, and (2) a packaged IVR system that is typically used by community banks and mid-size institutions.

	•	S1 Enterprise Voice Banking, powered by Edify, and speech recognition products help companies automate their customer service facilities, improving customer satisfaction and enabling new revenue-generating opportunities while reducing operational costs. Edify’s voice and speech applications are scalable, multilingual and flexible, allowing companies to easily integrate multiple backend systems with a variety of contact interfaces. Our voice and speech solutions combine speech recognition, speaker verification, text-to-speech, fax, and touch-tone automation with a powerful application development environment and natural language capabilities to help organizations optimize customer service while lowering costs. Edify’s open, standards-based platform manages millions of customer interactions every day across a broad range of industries.
	•	S1 Voice Banking delivers IVR functionality in a stable, flexible, Windows-based application. With the push of a button or through simple voice commands, users can check on a deposit or account balance, find a CD rate, pay bills or transfer funds.

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S1 Insurance Solutions

     S1 Insurance solutions include products for both the customer and the agent/intermediary. The applications support product sales capabilities as well as self-service capabilities for the property and casualty and life and annuity markets.

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S1 Consumer Insurance provides the features and functionality to enable insurance providers to improve customer service, acquire new business and reduce costs by providing anytime, anywhere access to meet insurance needs. Customers can view policy information, request changes to their policies, initiate the claims process and get insurance quotes as well as apply and purchase products online.

S1 CRM Solutions

	•	S1Enterprise Analytics features easy to use analytical and segmentation tools, comprehensive campaign development and management capabilities, and a unique methodology to drive the results of CRM out to all channels. It permits real time access to customer contact and value information, as well as target campaigns, and significantly enhances the value of CRM efforts.
	•	S1 Marketing Center supports the planning and execution of marketing campaigns based on multiple segmentations of customers and prospects. It includes robust inbound and outbound telemarketing features that can be combined with advanced Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) functionality to enhance the efficiency of our customer’s marketing personnel.
	•	S1 Sales Center supports sales associates and managers in a telesales or field sales environment by tracking all relevant information and proactively guiding the associate through initiating, closing and tracking opportunities.
	•	S1 Support Center enables customer service representatives and managers to create, assign and manage customer support requests such as incidents, problems and resolutions. It provides details of the problem, the ability to request status and history and the ability to suggest products for cross-sell and up-sell.

Website Solutions

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S1 Customer Center is a virtual financial lobby which provides customers with a destination web site or portal that gives them access to product information, news and other content, as well as community pages and bulletin boards. The S1 Customer Center enables financial institutions to efficiently create, manage and quantify their web presence.

Financial Reporting Solutions

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Under the FRS brand, our financial reporting solutions provide financial institutions worldwide with a suite of optimized regulatory reporting, financial intelligence and analytic solutions. FRS FinancialAnalytics provides a consolidated global data foundation to help banks prepare and comply with Basel II and IAS. FRS Regulatory Reporting eases the burden of complying with national regulatory reporting requirements of central banks, monetary authorities, and other financial regulators in more than 20 countries. More than 600 financial institutions, including 37 of the top 50 European financial institutions and 55 and the top 100 global institutions, utilize our financial reporting solutions.

Account Aggregation

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Through our reseller agreement with Yodlee, Inc., which is described in Note 18 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this report, we provide account aggregation capabilities, which allow the delivery of an integrated balance sheet consolidating, organizing and presenting a consumer’s personal account information from a variety of providers for confidential viewing and access.

Check Truncation Solutions

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S1 Check Truncation module enables S1 Branch Solutions to process checks electronically in accordance with the “Check 21” legislation that went into effect on October 28, 2004. By processing checks electronically, banks are able to reduce their processing costs, provide immediate credit to customers’ accounts, and reduce check fraud.

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S1 Services

     We provide services to assist our customers in the planning, implementation and customization of their applications as well as ongoing maintenance and support and, if desired, application hosting services.

S1 Hosting Services

     Our hosting services provide operational management and control across the full range of banking, insurance, loan, credit card and content applications and information. We host S1 applications for more than 400 customers in our global data center facility in Atlanta, which handles more than 2.5 million transactions every day. Our mature operating environment was designed to address mission-critical operational issues for financial applications, such as security, recovery and availability of data. Our global data center is a hardened facility that can scale to support large volumes of customers.

S1 Customer Support

     The S1 Customer Support team offers various levels of service to meet an organization’s support needs and budgets:

	•	Technical Support — Customer support engineers will work to provide solutions on S1 products;
	•	Software Release Management — Software upgrades that include enhancements to our software as well as operational and performance improvements; and
	•	Online Support — The S1 Support Website is designed to provide “one-stop” access to technical information for S1 products. The S1 Support Website provides access to technical FAQs, download patches, the latest documentation, and support bulletins.

S1 Professional Services

     Our professional services team helps financial institutions bring their solutions to market — rapidly and efficiently. Our professional services organization is engaged in the following activities:

	•	Project Management — Our project managers are responsible for keeping a project on schedule and within budget throughout the implementation cycle;
	•	Custom Software Development — Our developers will customize our solutions to meet the specific business requirements of our customers — from analysis and design to building and testing;
	•	Technical Services — Our team will design, implement and test the servers and network infrastructure to support our solutions. Our expertise includes software integration, database services, networking and the applications skills required to deliver secure, robust solutions;
	•	Educational Services — Our training professionals help financial institutions train their employees to use our solutions to better serve their customers; and
	•	Web Design Services — Our web design group is available to assist with delivery of a complete web presence for financial institutions.

Customers and Markets

     We provide solutions to all sizes of financial institutions, ranging from global financial services organizations to community banks and credit unions. Currently, we serve approximately 4,000 banks, credit unions and insurance providers and retailers.

     We also provide product enhancement, implementation, and hosting services to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company. Revenues from State Farm were 23%, 18% and 20% of our revenues from continuing operations during the years ended December 31, 2002, 2003 and 2004, respectively. We expect revenues from this customer to be approximately 15% to 20% of our total revenues in 2005.

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Strategic Alliances and Partners

     We have built a global network of more than 40 alliances, allowing us to more fully extend our expertise, capabilities, and reach within the financial services industry. We have established strategic, technology, and channel relationships with a number of organizations. We have alliances with companies such as IBM and BearingPoint as well as with numerous core processing vendors, bill payment providers, credit card processing vendors and printed product vendors. In certain geographies, including Asia, the Middle East and some European countries, we are using partners as our primary sales channel to increase our market reach. In 2004, we established several new international distribution relationships including Misys, one of the largest international core processors, and EverSystems, a key reseller in our Latin America region. These relationships will not only extend our sales efforts to new corners of the world, but will also increase the market share of financial institutions using S1 Enterprise solutions.

Sales and Marketing

     We sell our solutions primarily to small, mid-sized and large financial organizations. Our sales force is comprised of professionals structured in three major regional groups: (i) the Americas region, (ii) the Europe, Middle East and Africa region (EMEA) and (iii) the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. We reported revenues from continuing operations of $284 million, $248 million and $241 million in 2002, 2003 and 2004, respectively, of which 72%, 71% and 80%, respectively, were attributed to sales in the United States.

     In the Americas region, our sales force is a mix of named account support, geographic support and inside sales support, depending on the size of the financial institution. The named accounts sales force focuses on developing long-term relationships with senior management team members of financial institutions. Once we have established a relationship with these organizations and their senior management teams, the sales team continues to market additional products and services to them. The sales cycle for large financial institutions generally lasts from six to 18 months. Contracts with these large financial organizations typically have multi-year terms. Sales to the small community and regional financial institutions are executed by a telephone sales team. The sales cycle for these small to mid-sized financial organizations typically lasts from six to nine months, and the contracts entered into with them typically provide for direct delivery and service requirements. In addition, we have relationships with distribution partners, thereby maximizing our market penetration through the reseller channel.

     In the EMEA region, we sell through both a named account structure in specific territories such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Luxemburg, Spain and Portugal, and through resellers in other territories such as Switzerland, Italy, the Middle East and Africa. In the APJ region our sales efforts are focused primarily through resellers in countries such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore.

     Within each group are trained sales support personnel who provide functional and technical expertise to maximize the customer’s understanding of S1’s solutions.

     In addition to internal sales efforts and joint efforts with distribution partners, S1 markets its products and services in other ways to build awareness of the S1 brand. Our marketing efforts include participating in and exhibiting at industry conferences and trade shows, hosting an annual users conference, maintaining memberships in key industry organizations and establishing close relationships with industry analysts to help guide product development and marketing efforts.

Product Development

     Our product development efforts are focused on:

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Enhancing the S1 Enterprise Platform. In mid-2004, we delivered the third major release of our S1 Enterprise solution. This release included the delivery of most of our major customer-interaction channel applications on the S1 Enterprise Platform. These applications include our Internet retail, Internet small business, Internet cash management, teller, sales and service platform, call center and CRM solutions. Utilizing leading industry standards such as J2EE, the S1 Enterprise Platform is an open, flexible and scalable architecture that will serve as a common base for S1 product deployments. Its layered framework ensures that all applications are consistent in their interpretation and presentation of all data and that they can be consistently extended, upgraded, maintained and operated. It also allows all applications and channels to access customer information via a single database.

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Creating Development Centers of Excellence. In 2004, we established two new Development Centers of Excellence: S1 established its Pune, India Center of Excellence with the acquisition of the Indian-based business unit discussed above. With the acquisition of Mosaic Software, S1 added a Center of Excellence in Cape Town, South Africa which is focused on ATM, electronic funds transfer and payment solutions. Other existing Centers include Charlotte, North Carolina for banking; Littleton, Massachusetts for insurance; West Hills, California for branch automation; Dublin, Ireland for CRM and the Enterprise Platform; and Austin, Texas for community banking and voice banking. Atlanta, Georgia serves as the integration center supporting the development centers.

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Enhancing Existing Products and Services. We are developing new functions and features across our entire product line in order to provide a broader range of capabilities and continue to best meet our customer’s needs.

     We spent $42.8 million, $39.3 million and $43.7 million on product development efforts for our financial institutions segment in 2002, 2003 and 2004, respectively. During 2005, we expect product development costs for our financial institutions segment to be between $46 million and $52 million.

Competition

     The market for financial software is competitive, rapidly evolving and subject to technological change. We currently perceive our near-term competition as coming from primary four areas: (1) in-house development organizations of financial institutions, (2) best-of-breed solution providers (3) core processing vendors and (4) enterprise solution vendors. We perceive our long-term competition as coming from other enterprise software providers.

In-house Development Organizations

     We believe financial organizations may encounter the following challenges when building financial software in-house:

	•	building, maintaining and upgrading an in-house solution can be very costly;
	•	attracting and retaining the necessary technical personnel can be difficult and costly; and
	•	technological development may be too far outside the financial organization’s core competencies to be effective or successful.

Best-of-Breed Solution Providers

     These vendors offer solutions for a specific line of business and/or channel for the financial institution. In the retail Internet banking space, we compete primarily with Digital Insight Corporation, Financial Fusion (a division of Sybase, Inc.), and Corillian Corporation. In branch banking, we compete primarily with Argo Data Resource, Inc. and Fidelity Information Services, Inc. In business banking, we compete primarily with Fundtech Ltd., P&H Solutions, Financial Fusion, Inc. and Digital Insight. In CRM, we compete with Siebel Systems, Inc., PeopleSoft, Inc. and Onyx Software Corporation. We believe the disadvantages associated with a best of breed solution approach include:

	•	integrating applications and channels from multiple vendors greatly lengthens a financial organization’s time-to-market and implementation costs;
	•	operating and upgrading solutions from multiple vendors is very costly; and
	•	a combination of best-of-breed solutions across different channels does not provide a single view of the customer.

Core Processing Vendors

     These vendors offer data processing services and outsourcing for financial institutions’ systems of record. In this space, we compete with companies such as Fidelity National, Metavante, Fiserv, Inc. and Jack Henry and Associates, Inc. Many of these companies offer front-office products at a sharp discount to augment their back-office capabilities. We believe the primary disadvantage of this approach is that these front-office applications will lag behind the market to some degree in terms of functions and features and are of secondary focus to the vendor behind their back-office products and services.

Enterprise Solution Vendors

     As we continue to roll out our Enterprise suite in 2005, we believe we may increasingly see interest and competition from various enterprise software and solution providers, such as SAP Aktiengesell, Oracle Corporation and Seibel. We believe our advantage in the financial services market will continue to stem from our deep domain knowledge and tight

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integration with the various key business systems within our financial organization customers base. Additionally, our large installed base will differentiate our ability to establish, deliver and defend our core market over time.

Government Regulation

     We are subject to examination by, and are indirectly regulated by, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the various state financial regulatory agencies that supervise and regulate the banks and thrift institutions for which we provide data processing services. Matters subject to review and examination by federal and state financial institution regulatory agencies include our internal controls in connection with our performance of data processing services and the agreements giving rise to those processing activities.

     Laws and regulations that apply to communications and commerce over the Internet are becoming more prevalent. Currently, there are Internet laws regarding copyrights, taxation and the transmission of specified types of material. Congress also adopted legislation imposing obligations on financial institutions to notify their customers of the institution’s privacy practices, restrict the sharing of non-public customer data with non-affiliated parties at the customer’s request, and establish procedures and practices to protect and secure customer data. These privacy provisions are implemented by regulations with which compliance is now required. Additionally, many legislative and regulatory actions have been enacted or are pending at the state and federal level with respect to privacy. Further, our customers and we may be faced with state and federal requirements that differ drastically, and in some cases conflict. In addition, the European Union enacted its own privacy regulations and is currently considering other Internet-related legislation. The law of the Internet, however, remains largely unsettled, even in areas where there has been some legislative action. It may take years to determine whether and how existing laws such as those governing intellectual property, privacy, libel and taxation apply to the Internet. In addition, the growth and development of the market for online financial services, including online banking, may prompt calls for more stringent consumer protection laws, both in the United States and abroad, that may impose additional burdens on companies conducting business online. We are also subject to encryption and security export laws which, depending on future developments, could adversely affect our business.

Employees

     As of February 28, 2005, we had approximately 1,666 employees, including 653 in customer support, hosting services and professional services, 197 in sales and marketing and 690 in product development. In addition to full-time employees, we have used the services of various independent contractors for professional services projects and product development.

Available Information

     Our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 are available free of charge at our website at www.s1.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such materials with, or furnish to, the Securities and Exchange Commission. You may read and copy any materials we file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 450 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20549. You may obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC maintains an Internet site (www.sec.gov) that contains our reports.

Risk Factors

     You should consider carefully the following risks. If any of the following risks actually occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations would likely suffer. In that case, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and you may lose all or a part of the money you paid to buy our common stock.

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Our quarterly operating results may fluctuate and any fluctuations could adversely affect the price of our common stock

     Our quarterly operating results have fluctuated significantly to date. If we fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors as a result of any future fluctuations in our quarterly operating results, the market price of our common stock would likely decline. We may experience fluctuations in future quarters because:

•	we cannot accurately predict the number and timing of contracts we will sign in a period, in part because the budget constraints and internal review processes of existing and potential customers are not within our control;

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we are at the start of a transition of selling our financial institutions products on a perpetual license to a term or subscription license; we cannot accurately predict how long it will take to complete this transition or the mix of perpetual licenses to term licenses sold in any one quarter. Term licenses significantly reduce the amount of revenue recognized in the first year of the contract, but increase the overall revenue earned from the customer during the typical customer life cycle;

•	the length of our sales cycle to large financial organizations generally lasts from six to eighteen months, which adds an element of uncertainty to our ability to forecast revenues;

•	if we fail to introduce new or enhanced products, or if our competitors introduce new or enhanced products, sales of our products and services may not achieve expected levels and/or may decline;

•	our ability to expand the mix of distribution channels through which our products are sold may be limited;

•	our products may not achieve widespread consumer acceptance, which could cause our revenues to be lower than expected;

•	we have had significant contracts with legacy customers that have decreased or terminated their services and we may not be able to replace this revenue and / or the gross margins associated with this revenue;

•	our sales may be constrained by the timing of releases of third-party software that works with our products; and

•	a significant percentage of our expenses is relatively fixed, and we may be unable to reduce expenses in the short term if revenues decrease.

•	the migration of our license sales model to be more focused on recurring revenue contracts may result in less predictable revenue due to an inability to predict the rate at which it is adopted by our customers, or the rate at which it may be deferred.

In 2005, we will depend on one customer for a significant portion of our revenue and if that customer terminates its contract with us, our revenues and financial performance would decline

     In 2004, we derived 20% of our total revenues from continuing operations from one customer. This customer accounted for 23% and 18% of our total revenue from continuing operations in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Over the past three years, this customer has moved from a period of heavy investment and is now entering a more stable maintenance state with their applications. We expect revenues from this customer to be approximately 15% to 20% of our total revenues in 2005.

System failures or performance problems with our products could cause demand for these products to decrease, require us to make significant capital expenditures or impair customer relations

     There are many factors that could adversely affect the performance, quality and desirability of our products and could delay or prevent these products from gaining market acceptance. These factors include, but are not limited to the following:

•	extraordinary end-user volumes or other events could cause systems to fail;

•	our products could contain errors, or “bugs”, which could impair the services we provide;

•	during the initial implementation of some products, we have experienced significant delays in implementing and integrating software, and we may experience similar difficulties or delays in connection with future implementations and upgrades to new versions; and

•	many of our products require integration with third-party products and systems, and we may not be able to integrate these products with new or existing products.

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We have experienced substantial losses in the past and may not achieve or maintain profitable operations in the future

     Although we were profitable in the fourth quarter of 2003 and throughout 2004, we incurred losses in fiscal years 2002 and 2003. We are beginning the transition from a perpetual license revenue model to a term or subscription license model which may significantly reduce the amount of revenue in any one quarter during the transition. As a result, we could experience losses, which could negatively impact the value of our common stock.

We are engaged in offshore software development activities, which may not be successful and which may put our intellectual property at risk

     In order to optimize available research and development resources and meet development timeframes, in 2002, we acquired a development center in Dublin, Ireland. In 2004, we acquired a previously contracted Indian based development center. This center had been operated as a contracted facility since 2001. In 2004, associated with our acquisition of Mosaic, we acquired a development center in Cape Town, South Africa. While our experience to date with these offshore development activities has been positive, there is no assurance that this will continue. Specifically, there are a number of risks associated with this activity, including but not limited to the following:

•	communications and information flow may be less efficient and accurate as a consequence of the time, distance and language differences between our primary development organization and the foreign based activities, resulting in delays in development or errors in the software developed;

•	potential disruption from the involvement of the United States in the conflicts in the Middle East region;

•	the quality of the development efforts undertaken offshore may not meet our requirements because of language, cultural and experiential differences, resulting in potential product errors and/or delays;

•	we have experienced a greater level of voluntary turnover of personnel in India than in other development centers which could have an adverse impact on efficiency and timeliness of development as well as the opportunity for misappropriation of our intellectual property; and

•	in addition to the risk of misappropriation of intellectual property from departing personnel, there is a general risk of the potential for misappropriation of our intellectual property that might not be readily discoverable.

Our operating results would suffer if we were subject to a protracted infringement claim or a significant damage award.

     Substantial intellectual property litigation and threats of litigation exist in our industry. The number of patents issued protecting software and business methods has grown significantly in recent years, with the scope of such patents often unclear. Additionally, copyright and trade secrets are regularly asserted as a means for protecting software. We expect software to be increasingly subject to third-party intellectual property infringement claims as a result of the increased level of intellectual property based actions relating to such technology and methods, and as the number of competitors grows and the functionality of products in different industry segments overlaps.

     Third parties may have, or may eventually be issued, patents or assert copyrights and/or trade secrets that would be infringed by our products or technology. Any of these third parties could make a claim of infringement against us with respect to our products or technology. In some instances, our customers may be accused of infringing the intellectual property rights of third parties. As a result, we provide limited indemnity for our customers against infringement claims. Even if such accusations ultimately prove lacking in merit, the disposition of such disputes may be costly, distracting, and result in damages, royalties, or injunctive relief preventing the use of the intellectual property in question and may require entering into licensing agreements, redesigning our products or ceasing production entirely.

Any claims, with or without merit, could have the following negative consequences:

	•	costly litigation and damage awards;
	•	diversion of management attention and resources;
	•	product shipment delays or suspensions;
	•	injunction prohibiting us from selling our products; and
	•	the need to enter into royalty or licensing agreements, which may not be available on terms acceptable to us, if at all.

Acquisitions and divestitures may be costly and difficult to integrate / divest, divert management resources or dilute stockholder value

     We acquired two companies in the first quarter of 2002 and three companies in 2004. We also divested one company in 2004. The integration of these companies and any future acquisitions into our existing operations is a complex,

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time-consuming and expensive process and may disrupt our business. With acquisitions made prior to 2001, we have encountered difficulties, costs and delays in integrating the acquired operations with our own and may continue to do so in the future. Among the issues related to integration are:

•	potential incompatibility of business cultures;

•	potential delays in rationalizing diverse technology platforms;

•	potential difficulties in coordinating geographically separated organizations;

•	potential difficulties in re-training sales forces to market all of our products across all of our intended markets;

•	potential difficulties implementing common internal business systems and processes;

•	potential conflicts in third-party relationships; and

•	the loss of key employees and diversion of the attention of management from other ongoing business concerns.

A significant portion of our customers are in a consolidating financial services industry, which is subject to economic changes that could reduce demand for our products and services

     For the foreseeable future, we expect to derive most of our revenue from products and services we provide to the banking industry and other financial services firms such as insurance companies. Changes in economic conditions and unforeseen events, like recession or inflation, could occur and reduce consumers’ use of banking services. Any event of this kind, or implementation for any reason by banks of cost reduction measures, could result in significant decreases in demand for our products and services. Mergers and acquisitions are pervasive in today’s banking industry. Our existing customers may be acquired by or merged into other financial institutions that have their own financial software solutions or decide to terminate their relationships with us for other reasons. As a result, our sales could decline if an existing customer is merged into or acquired by another company.

We are involved in litigation over proprietary rights, which may be costly and time consuming

     We have received a claim that certain of our products, trademarks or other proprietary rights require a license of intellectual property rights or infringe, or may infringe, on the intellectual property rights of others. Those claims, with or without merit, could:

•	be time-consuming to investigate and defend;

•	result in costly litigation;

•	cause product shipment delays;

•	require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements; or

•	result in an injunction being issued against the use of our products.

     Royalty or licensing agreements, if required, may not be available on terms acceptable to us, or at all, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. Litigation to determine the validity of any claims could result in significant expense to us and divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel from productive tasks, whether or not the litigation is determined in our favor. In the event of an adverse ruling, we may be required to:

•	pay substantial damages;

•	discontinue the use and sale of infringing products;

•	expend significant resources to develop non-infringing technology; or

•	obtain licenses to infringing technology.

     Our failure to develop or license a substitute technology could significantly harm our business.

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Market volatility may affect the price of our common stock

     The trading prices of technology stocks in general, and ours in particular, have experienced extreme price fluctuations. Our stock price has declined significantly since reaching a high in 2000. Any further negative change in the public’s perception of the prospects of technology based companies, particularly those which are associated with the Internet or e-commerce such as ours, could further depress our stock price regardless of our results of operations. Other broad market and industry factors may decrease the trading price of our common stock, regardless of our operating performance. Market fluctuations, as well as general political and economic conditions such as a recession or interest rate or currency rate fluctuations, also may decrease the trading price of our common stock. In addition, our stock price could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to the following factors:

•	actual or anticipated variations in our quarterly operating results;

•	23% of our common stock is owned by 4 institutions, a rapid change in position of any one of these holders could cause a significant drop in our stock price if market demand is insufficient to meet sales demand;

•	announcements of new products, product enhancements, technological innovations or new services by us or our competitors;

•	changes in financial estimates by securities analysts;

•	conditions or trends in the computer software, electronic commerce and Internet industries;

•	changes in the market valuations of other technology companies;

•	developments in Internet regulations;

•	announcements by us or our competitors of significant acquisitions, strategic partnerships, joint ventures or capital commitments;

•	unscheduled system downtime of our products in either a hosted or in-house environment;

•	additions or departures of key personnel; and

•	sales of our common stock or other securities in the open market.

Future sales of our common stock in the public market could negatively affect our stock price

     If our stockholders sell substantial amounts of our common stock, including shares issued when options and warrants are exercised or shares of our preferred stock are converted into common stock, the market price of our common stock could fall. As of March 1, 2005, we had 70.6 million shares of common stock outstanding, assuming no exercise of outstanding options or warrants or conversion of preferred stock. As of March 1, 2005, there were outstanding employee stock options to purchase 14.4 million shares of our common stock and 0.8 million shares of preferred stock convertible into an aggregate of 1.1 million shares of our common stock. The common stock issuable after vesting and upon exercise of these options and warrants and upon conversion of this preferred stock will be eligible for sale in the public market from time to time. The possible sale of a significant number of these shares may cause the market price of our common stock to fall. Some of the holders of restricted shares of our common stock, our preferred stock and vested options or warrants have rights that may require us to register shares of common stock with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By exercising their registration rights and causing a large number of shares to be sold in the public market, these stockholders could cause the market price of our common stock to fall.

Our market is highly competitive and if we are unable to keep pace with evolving technology our revenue and future prospects may decline

     The market for our products and services is characterized by rapidly changing technology, intense competition and evolving industry standards. We have many competitors who offer various components of our suite of applications or who use a different technology platform to accomplish similar tasks. In some cases, our existing customers also use some of our competitors’ products. Our future success will depend on our ability to develop, sell and support enhancements of current products and new software products in response to changing customer needs. If the completion of the next version of any of our products is delayed, our revenue and future prospects could be harmed. In addition, competitors may develop products or technologies that the industry considers more attractive than those we offer or that render our technology obsolete.

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