Xerox Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ:XRX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Bandrowczak: Yes, let me take the start of that, and then turn over for Xavier for numbers. We took a look at Q4 and we saw a strong signings in our services business and grow that, and that backlog looked extremely strong. We also see strengthening in our core business in the areas that we played today. So a combination of increase in orders, backlog and our service. And the other piece that Xavier mentioned was in our signings, we’re signing now at over 100% on revenue renewal in our core contracts and our services business. So those gives us good foundation for growth and stability as we go forward. Xavier?

Xavier Heiss: Yes. Steve, I will add as well. So those are the macro conditions that we were observing, specifically in Europe quarter three, a little bit smoother in the quarter four. We see a little bit of easing specifically around the interest rate on both sides of what we found here. So this gives us a little bit of confidence on this revenue side. But the important thing, Samik, is when you look at the revenue, normalized revenue, as you mentioned it here, this is flat to minus 1% this is what the industry is seeing here. When we look also at the trend of return to office page volume and cut, we have also indicated that is telling us that the numbers that we put on paper here can be sustained.

Samik Chatterjee: Got it. Got it. Okay, and for my second one on cash flow, you did $649 million in 2023, there’s an operating income improvement of $100 million or so. And then you have the HPS transaction continue to sort of accrued some cash. So, maybe help us with the walk there and particularly what’s the restructuring piece in there as well. And why isn’t the cash flow guidance a bit more — a bit higher? Thank you, for 2024, I mean.

Xavier Heiss: Yes, Samik, that’s a good question. So free cash flow, we said at least $600 million at this stage of the year. The improvement in operating cash flow, which is directly related to the improvement of the operating income. We are still expecting our conversion rate from operating income or adjusted operating income to free cash flow being 70%, 80% range, which is what we are used to produce there. But for this year, as you mentioned it, we have a restructuring provision. Restructuring provision from a cash point of view has an impact of around $140 million. Then we have also an additional contribution in pension that you do in the U.S. and due to the profitability as well, additional cash tax is there. So when you net all of this, it gives us this number of around $600 million over time. We will provide more visibility quarter-by-quarter on how this trend is going.

Samik Chatterjee: Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions.

Xavier Heiss: Thank you, Samik.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Erik Woodring from Morgan Stanley, your question please.

Erik Woodring: Hey guys. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a few as well. Steve, maybe if we just start, the helpful color on the renewal rates for large customers, can you maybe just help us understand what percentage of — I don’t know how you’d frame it, services, contracts those large customers represent, and then how to think about the rest of those cohorts, the same metric for smaller customers. I believe you have a fairly long tail of SMB customers. So how do renewal rates look for that cohort? And how do I think about the importance of the large enterprise versus kind of SMB customer set? And then I have a follow-up, please. Thank you.

Steve Bandrowczak: Yes, thanks Erik, I appreciate it. So it’s roughly about one third of our overall revenue. And so what we’re seeing there, is the opportunity to really embed IT and digital services on top of our core services contracts, as we start to see, and we’re seeing renewals come up year-over-year, we put a big focus on client centricity. And what that means is how do we help our clients drive productivity, how do we help them solve some of the biggest challenges they have. So if you think about headwinds, whether it’s around use of capital, whether it’s around labor pressure, whether it’s around pressure on profitability. We continue to bring products and solutions that helps them to offset that and that’s why we’ve been successful in our renewal rates up.

Same thing applies in our SMB businesses, right? When we look at our SMB, it’s probably even more of an opportunity. We see significant SMB has the same enterprise challenges with profitability due to increase of, whether it’s labor costs, whether it’s pressure on capital, whether it’s pressure on overall increase in costs, they’re looking to us to help to offset. So we continually bring solutions. We talked about some of these last quarter on some of the vertical solutions that we’re really focusing on. How do we help inside of healthcare? How do we help inside of universities, law firms, et cetera. And so as we look at those renewal rates, we continue to bring solutions on top of it and we’ve been very successful. And I’ve made the statement a couple of times now that we have a great opportunity to expand in existing accounts with products and services that we already have.