DXC Technology Company (DXC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Let's get started. My name is Tien-Tsin Huang. I follow the IT services sector at JPM and super grateful to have DXC back with us. It's been a bit at this conference. I know we had them in Boston, but I think given some of the turnaround, I wanted to have them back. So thank you both for being here. So of course, Raul Fernandez, President and CEO of DXC; Rob Del Bene, the CFO of DXC. I'll ask a few questions. And if it's okay, we'll open up to audience if there's some questions as well. But hopefully, we can get through some of the big topics. But Raul, I know we've caught up with you a few times, you just had earnings, but it's been, what, a year or so...

11 Months...

11 months. Time goes by quickly. I remember the call when you first got on.

I want to ask, and I've asked this with a lot of the new CEOs because we've had a bunch of them this year. How has the strategy evolved? What surprised you to the upside? And where have you said, "Hey, there's some challenges here, and we need to adapt." So just give you a chance to maybe talk about the strategy upfront.

Yes. Look, I think consist -- what I saw when I did the deep dive when I was an interim and then switched to permanent, everything still holds. There's a lot to do, and we went into detail on that in the earnings call and the Q&A that is very tactical, that is very mechanical. It gets down to the right sales plans with the right mix of incentives, with the right tracking, with the right follow-up, with the right consequences, both good consequence and bad consequences, if we're not hitting it. So it's a fundamental focus on metrics that matter, metrics that we're measuring, accountability, moving quickly and in a 130-person organization, that's not that easy to do, but moving quicker than we did before. And then just being focused on essentially the gap analysis across -- if you look at, unfortunately, across all of our metrics, we have tremendous upside to get to average, right? So it's about getting the systems in place to accurately measure those things, measuring them and then taking actions on the things that you see to iterate better. So same focus, same message, work underway, early returns are positive. One of the things that's really been positive for me is the ability to bring in new talent, great talent, fresh talent, talent that has a different background, all obviously, tech industry, veterans, but that have a piece of an entrepreneurial chapter in their history, right? They work and act at a different speed. So if you think about it, I've had 13 additions, 8 subtractions, the average tenure of that cohort is only 4.5 months. So the early returns and early results that we've gotten have really been a lot of brute force stuff that we've been imposing and enforcing, but now that talent gets to have their impact and their imprint on everything they do, and that's spread across both major offerings and across our geographies. So people, talent, and the upside I see in the mechanics across the business.

Yes. And I know we've talked about this, your background is amazing, and you've met a lot of people, you've been an entrepreneur, you've been at some big enterprises as well. The one thing that when I heard on the earnings call that stood out to me was that you said the self-help initiatives would be more impactful to DXC than the macro. So can you just elaborate on that?

I think that it starts with a full appreciation of our client base. We have incredible clients. In some cases, we've done work for them for 10, 20, 30 years. I was in the Middle East for Saudi Payments. We've been handling that for 20 years. We're building the next generation of that. I was in London for the London Markets. We handle essentially a marketplace that processes GBP 115 billion of claims and transactions every year. So we have incredible clients, where we have incredible deployments, and we're helping either run the business or change the business. That beachhead is super valuable. If we can execute on an additional piece of work within the divisions that are already there, plus open the door to some of the other divisions that aren't there, the client base is fantastic. So executing more in the places we know we've got great references where we've got a way to navigate inside the organization more effectively, that's all part of self-help. That execution will have a bigger impact in the next 12 months than any small change, even a big change in the macro environment.

So just to talk to that even though macro is not as critical, what do you see on the ground? I do get this question and how cyclical is DXC's business at the end of the day? How would you answer that?

Look, I think the macro environment, the color commentary you hear from other CEOs is accurate. It's cautious. It is being fueled and pushed forward by pilots and prototypes in Gen AI, and we're doing a lot of them. But I don't see anything that the others have said about. It's still a discretionary environment where there's a lot more thought and a little bit more time in anything that gets the green light to move forward on. But again, to me, it's a number of looks, right? If we have enough looks, we should be able to get enough baskets to be able -- to be in a better place. And so our installed base of customers, where we may have one offering doing some work definitely is an incredible opportunity for the other offerings to come in as well.

Okay. Good. So let's dig into the restructuring and maybe get a progress report from you, Raul and Rob, just in terms of where we are and maybe in a little bit more detail. I mean the things that I always remember like ERP consolidation and, of course, some of the -- rationalizing some of the systems, a lot of hard work, so where are you?

Yes, a lot of hard work. It's early innings and making progress, making measured progress. I think in the past, as we've looked back, one of the things in the restructurings, that they spent the money, the net headcount never went down. We're spending the money, and the net headcount is going down and continues to go down. But we're also being very surgical and select and targeted on which groups and which positions we eliminate in this. And therefore, it's taking a little bit more time. So what we thought originally was a year, it's going to take 2 years, but it's taking more time for the right reasons because we don't want to repeat the mistakes in the past.

Yes. And I'd just add to that, the -- when we set out with the restructuring budget for the beginning of the year, we had certain savings baked into our run rate for the year that we needed to generate through better resource management, we're generating the savings without spending all of the restructuring. So it doesn't -- the less spending this year doesn't impact our financial goals for the year. And we -- so I've said we're going to carry over -- spend a max of $150 million this year, carry over the $100 million into fiscal '26. And right now, sitting here today, we don't have line of sight to precisely how we're going to spend the money in '26. We're just going to keep, as Raul said. So we're going to keep looking for opportunities to become more efficient in a very, very targeted way. So we don't want to stop that journey, and that's why I said what I said about spending in '26.

Yes. I mean this was stood out to me when you discussed this on the call and our follow-up was that you're just getting more out of the savings effort without the actual -- the cost of executing, to be clear.

Yes. And that's just part of operating better than we have in the past.

And on the systems side, making progress in eliminating duplicative systems, integrating more. But again, it's a journey, right? It's a marathon, not a sprint.

No, I know you're reinvesting. I know the headcount is coming down, but you are reinvesting. Can you remind us what you're prioritizing? And has that changed at all?

I think it starts with leadership and then talent, talent, in right place. The global footprint that we have is very solid and good, but then you want to tweak it and then skill sets, reinvesting in skill sets. So a lot of demand on the enterprise application implementations. We have our fair share of that. We want to get a bigger share of that. We'll do that through training and hiring more, and it's an area that we also may inorganically look for small tuck-ins once we're ready for that.

Okay. So just on the capital side, since you mentioned the tuck-ins. I know the free cash flow is a big topic for the name. You're running at above $700 million annual free cash flow, and then I know it'll take a little bit of a dip. So just remind us about the cadence of free cash flow, the savings...

Yes. So the last 2 years, we've been in the low $700 millions in terms of free cash flow. Originally took the guide down to $400 million at the beginning of the year. We're now at $550 million. Looking at the $550 million, we still have $150 million of restructuring impacting the $550 million. We do have modest debt reductions in the form of less in capital leasing impacting the free cash flow. So the underlying free cash flow generation of the company this year is similar to the last 2 years. It hasn't diminished at all. And as we move into next year, we expect that solid foundation to continue. We'll give a guidance in 6 months when we give guidance for fiscal '26, there may be some impact from the additional $100 million of restructuring. But the fundamentals are the same, and the free cash -- strong free cash flow generation is still intact.

And the freedom, given that, so the freedom and the desire, it sounds like to do tuck-in M&A is there? And can you give us a little flavor as to what geography, product, capability...

Around the enterprise application implementation. So smaller firms that would give us a double benefit, one geography into talent and then obviously book of business that we can grow. For me, we've got to be ready to anything we do, right? And it's going to be on the smaller side to make sure that it's accretive, that we retain the people that we retain the customers that we use that as a base to accelerate growth faster together than we were independently. So that's mechanics, internal mechanics being ready, and we're making progress towards that point.

How important -- you mentioned accretion, how important is margin expansion for DXC?

Look, it starts with revenue, right? This company was looking back by the quarters, I think all but one quarter has been going in the wrong direction. So first order of business is to get that to flatten out. Second order of business is to get that to move up. And along the way, we believe we have the ability to continue to work on profitability, gross margin, net margin. Again, we're below industry standards. So just getting to the industry standard is our first milestone.

Let's go back to demand. A big theme this couple of quarters, I'd say is that there's been a lot of large deal activity and a lot of signings. How would you characterize your bookings? And I know you've talked about improvement going into the next quarter and perhaps beyond. So talk to us about visibility there.

So we have good visibility. In the outsourcing businesses that we have, the deals come in waves based on renewal cycles, so they're lumpy. And so through the first half of the year, we didn't have the large renewals. We're expecting the second half of the year to be better than the first half. We think the book-to-bill in the GIS segment is going to be closer to one. So if it's at one, we'll be a little disappointed, we're expecting to do well. And again, we have line of sight to the specific deals, and that's why we have confidence in the number. In CES, the business has -- last quarter was 0.93; through the first half of the year, we're at 0.91. And we have the pipelines have been growing, and we have line of sight to be better than we performed in the first half approaching 1. So somewhere between the 0.93 and the 1. That's a very tight band. So we have confidence that's where we're going to end up in the quarter and for the second half. The only business I left out of that discussion was the insurance business, where the renewals are extremely lumpy and longer term and the book-to-bill in a particular quarter doesn't have an impact on the revenue streams.

Yes. The book -- business is more steady on the insurance...

The business is steady, and we're growing at mid-single digits, and we're going to continue to do well there.

As part of just the revamp of people and processes, looking out multiple years on renewals and having a more coherent renewal strategy way before you're even in the renewal period is part of what we've been implementing in the last 11 months. So we have line of sight. We know where the customer is in terms of the relationship and our deliverables. We know if there's anything that needs to be fixed. We know what else we could be bidding in the renewal. So it's just a much better mechanics around the renewal process. And again, it's just another example of you repeat that 100x across 100 different things, you'll start seeing the best.

Right, building that muscle. So GIS and GBS, is it worth spending a minute or 2, just going through the drivers of the outlook. We just did the bookings and then the dynamics around the pieces are a little bit different. So can you refresh us on that?

Yes. On GBS, as I just mentioned, insurance growth is steady, and we expect it to continue in mid-single-digit growth range for the remainder of the year, and that's -- we see that longer term as well. So really healthy growing business. In CES, at the beginning of the year, in our forecast for the year, we predicted that the second half would be slightly better than the first half, and we would return to growth in the second half of the year. We've modified that. We've really just tweaked it. We've gone from the second half of the year, just over 1% growth to just under -- just about minus 1% growth in that tight range. And that's simply because we see the project-based services recovering at a little bit of a slower pace than we originally thought would happen. That is concentrated in custom apps development, which is 2/3 of the portfolio. We're encouraged because the enterprise app side of the business has some real bright spots. SAP is growing. The cloud and AI segment is doing well through the first half of the year. So it's really this little tweak downward is really concentrated in custom apps. And again, it's a tweak, not a wholesale significant decline.

Anything on GIS then, specifically?

Yes, yes. GIS, we are -- we're pleased with progress in the ITO business. The company had some significant terminations from customers 2, 3 years ago. Those are winding down. So the headwinds from those terminations are diminishing, and that will continue through this year and help us a little bit next year. So that's good. And with service delivery quality being really high, our retention rates on our client base are extremely high. Those headwinds are going to be repeated. We're not going to...

Yes. That's another -- across both businesses, we've had good leadership infusion in there. We've had a significant amount of new leadership infusion. So looking forward to that impact. And then from a management standpoint, modern workplace is now fully under Chris' leadership, and he's running that offering and getting a more holistic view of everything and operating it more holistically, and that means not just delivering the work that we have, but selling more work, all of those mechanics are getting better.

So I do want to ask on the consulting and engineering side. There is a new delivery lead. You've talked about that. So do you expect a lot of change there on the delivery front and how you benchmark your delivery?

Yes. Look, it starts with cost -- accurate costing, accurate staffing, right people, right cost, right place, right talent, right time, doing it on time. I've seen some mistakes both here and other professional service companies, where they win the work, they make a commitment to have a team on the ground by X date, they slip. So they did the hard part, which is to win the work and then getting the word kicked off effectively and on time. Slips and you start getting penalties because you promised to show up on a certain date and you didn't. So getting all those mechanics like down is, again, part of the fundamentals.

And we've had some pretty significant changes organizationally, where we used to have delivery run in each market separately. So we brought that all together into each of our business units. And from a systems perspective, we've integrated the labor management systems of CES onto a single platform. So a lot of plumbing and organizational work has been done in the first half of this year and talent evaluation with Raul. And so we recognize that we need global delivery leadership in that business to optimize this role to set. So a lot of changes underway, and we think with the right leadership, we're just going to continue to get more efficient and drive -- help drive higher margins over time.

Similar to insurance, I feel like that is an underappreciated asset. I mean there's been a lot of M&A there with the big players, trying to acquire talent, acquire assets and engineering capability, which is different than systems integration and the traditional work that we see. So would you agree with that? And then my question overall is just competitively, DXC is right to win there versus some of the other peers? How would you describe that?

Look, I think everywhere we play in today across both of the offerings, we can -- on any given day, we can compete, and we're worthy of winning and we can win. It's a matter of building the mechanics so that scales on a more consistent basis and that things that are repeatable. What I love about the enterprise applications, it's -- you've got an event like S/4HANA. It drives a set of projects. Those projects are you can define because they're replicable, right, you're solving for one thing that everybody realizes is the end point and you can scale that more effectively, you can bid it more effectively because it's not a one-off. You can scale it more effectively because you know the talent and the conversion rate and the time to complete. So that's an area that we have some upside in because there's demand that's there. We've got presence. We've got an installed base of other services that we may be doing. It's a matter of scaling both our people and then bringing in net new people.

And putting in the discipline and the rigor to do repeatable process.

Exactly.

Questions from the audience before I keep going. And happy to take them if there are any. If not, I can keep going. Just on the Gen AI. I know it came up. We just had -- we had Accenture's AI lead here earlier. I know, Raul, you talked about a few examples on the call. But this strategy and same question, you're right to win. You gave a couple of examples there. How high of a priority is this for you?

It's a big priority for all of our customers. And I think one of the things that makes us unique is we handle a lot of operations for our customers. That means that you're handling a lot of data for your customer, which means we have access to the data that would be required to cleanse, to prep and then to begin putting into some multimodal AI tool and create a business outcome. So the fact that we sit so close to critical data that will be part of some AI project or mission is a competitive advantage for us and then being able to repeat and scale the examples that we had in there. And we've got a center of excellence that we've created internally, so that we're not just doing but making sure we're packaging up the deliverable, the ROI, the solution framework and then sharing it across the geographies and the rest of the offerings.

So is DXC internally taking advantage of Gen AI -- you mentioned it sounds like this is more for client delivery, but how are you deploying it across the business...

Yes. I think anywhere where you've got anything that's a repeatable, let's just simplify it, help desk. It's a repeatable set of questions and answers, right? Humans tended to be doing that. You've got this library of questions and answers that has covered just about everything that could happen, especially if you've been on an account for 10 or 20 years. You need to clean that up first because if you're going to train on something, you got to train it on data that's clean. So there is an exercise that I think is underappreciated and under talked about, which is the prepping of the data before you apply any model. And then it's the application of the model running it side by side with the existing process, making sure that you're getting both the throughput and the accuracy and then the shift over, right? And so we are looking to use it internally because we do handle a lot of Q&As and a lot of help desk. So we're actively deploying it upon ourselves to make it more efficient, to make those interactions more efficient.

How quickly might you see some of the results in your mind?

We're already seeing some of them now. I mean, we've got small pockets of this marketplace that was handling 40 million of transactions that had x number of humans attached to part of it, now doesn't have the humans attached. So it's small, and it's small increments of efficiency. We are using net efficiency to reinvest that professionals time in another area, where we want to get better at, but we've definitely seen the impact of it.

And also in our ITO business, our AI-based service delivery platform is now in 190 -- is being utilized to deliver services to 190 customers and is directly contributing to the margin improvements in that business.

Yes, there's a lot of proactive monitoring, proactive technical self-help, proactive healing. And again, it's a -- call it an operating system that we use to manage all of these instances and all of these customers. And we're now not just making the product set better, but we're also now opening that up for customers to be able to have their own access to it.

Okay. One more question on AI if you don't mind. Having covered DXC or historically for over, whatever, 20 years, security has always been a strength. I know insurance payments has been a strength. When I think about insurance, a lot of data there, of course, a lot of security needs there around the protection of the data. But as an example, is there something that you can leverage on AI to do something to enhance the platforms that you have across whatever [ Hogan ] or some of these historical platforms.

It's great. Look, as you know, we're pretty big in the insurance sector. Just as an example, there's a marketplace, Lloyd's London marketplace, GBP 114 billion of claims that we process there every year, a tremendous amount. There's a lot of human interaction and part of the work stream there, infusing AI to make that even more efficient, more profitable is, again, on the road map. I was talking about that yesterday on financial services, in Hogan, you're right. It's another area where we had a product or we had some IP and now infusing that IP with current technology, Gen AI technology is all part of what we're doing.

Good. No, it seems like that's...

Yes. And the product set like as I think about the insurance road map, it's heavily laced with additional Gen AI features.

Glad to hear it. Any questions here, we've got 3 minutes left. Yes, Brendan, please.

Congrats on the early success with the turnaround. Sitting here as like not operators, it seems like there just could be so many balls in the air with a turnaround like this and you guys appear to be good jugglers. But if I could just ask you like, what are the biggest risks that you see to like sort of midterm success of the turnaround. How would you answer that question?

I think -- great question, continuing to get access to great talent. So as part of the whole exercise, there's been an evaluation of where we're good and where we need to make changes. So early results, early returns and early recruits awesome on that front. But that would be one area just to make sure that as we go deeper and you got 1 level, 2 levels down, that we're getting the not just the right candidates, but at the right time and right speed. And then, yes, it's being balanced, I think and measured. And I think it is recognizing that we have a lot to do across the portfolio and not going down a rabbit hole, which you can easily do and neglecting the holistic work that needs to happen. So I think it's a balance that we've achieved, and we've got a great partner in Robin making sure that we're holistically looking at everything because it is a lot to do all over the place, and you've got to be very focused and you've got to be very organized, and you've got to keep score. If you don't keep score, you're not going to figure out if you're hitting your own metrics.

So let me wrap up a couple of more. Just on GIS. I know it's performing a little bit better than expected, still important business for DXC. I know the goal is to match market growth. I think you've said that a few times. The question I have there is do you have the assets in place to do that? Or can we see potentially some changes in the portfolio?

So I think everybody is thinking about what they have today and what the customer wants. And so there is thoughts around, okay, within security, we could definitely use our own version of this, right? I don't have -- that is a real topic and there is a real need. I don't remember exactly the piece of additional technology that we'll be looking to potentially integrate in. So -- but what's there today, and again, 11 months into this, I feel confident that everything we have today can get to a better place from a revenue standpoint. Will additions help the math? Yes, but we're focused on utilizing everything that we've got first and foremost, and then being ready to bring anything else and that's an acquisition related. But I'm confident with the current array of products, services, people and as that gets more market share, then we can see how we can accelerate some of that. And again, part of the mission of the new talent that, again, on average, has only been there 4.5 months is to prioritize what they need to accelerate.

Right. Yes. So as they season, I'm sure we'll get some updates from you, but we'll close it out and get you out of here with just the question on thinking of milestones or watch items that we should be looking out for on the outside? Anything to call out?

I think it's measured progress across the board, getting it right. I think one of the things, and thank you for being with the company for so long. The company has historically disappointed and been inconsistent. So being consistent is super important to us and making just measured progress across the board. There's no -- this is the new product release of the iPhone 20. This is a very slow and methodical built.

Yes. No, look, we're -- like I said, it's fun. We learn from tracking it. So we'll keep you asking -- we'll keep asking these questions to you, Raul...

No, absolutely. They're good.

We'll keep it up, but thank you for being here. Thank you for the time.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.