Unisys Corporation (UIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Unisys ClearPath Forward Investor Education Event. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michaela Pewarski, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our ClearPath Forward operating systems and surrounding ecosystem, including ClearPath Infrastructure, Products, Industry Solutions and Services. These solutions comprise the majority of the Enterprise Computing Solutions segment, which additionally includes certain business process solutions. Similar to our past sessions on our Pension Strategy and Digital Workplace Solutions segment, the purpose of today's event is to educate investors and dive deeper into a specific element of our strategy or portfolio and allow you to hear from our extended leadership team. Joining me today are Chris Arrasmith, Unisys' Chief Operating Officer; and Sean Tinney, who leads our Enterprise Computing segment. Following our presentation, we will be joined by Unisys' Chief Executive Officer and President, Mike Thomson, for a live Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]. Slides for today's event are posted on our investor website. Our discussion and presentation may reference license and support revenue or profit. This includes our ClearPath Forward operating system licenses and support, ClearPath Forward products such as DataExchange ePortal and AB Suite and ClearPath Forward Hardware. The majority of L&S revenue is related to license and support, with license revenue and profit recognition tied to license renewal timing, which can be uneven between quarters and years. We also provide ex-L&S information to allow investors to evaluate our performance in the remainder of the business, including ClearPath-related specialized services and industry solutions discussed today. Ex-L&S also includes ECS Business Process Solutions, our Digital Workplace and Cloud Applications and Infrastructure segments and all other. These metrics and any other non-GAAP financial metrics discussed are given to provide a more complete understanding of our performance but are not meant to be a substitute for GAAP. Non-GAAP measures are reconciled to the related GAAP measures and are provided within the presentation. Before turning it over to Chris, I'd like to remind investors, certain statements today may contain estimates and forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. Current expectations, assumptions and beliefs forming the basis of our forward-looking statements include factors that are beyond our ability to control or estimate precisely. This could cause results to differ materially from expectations. With that, I will turn it over to Chris.

Thanks, Michaela, and good day to those of you attending. Today, we'll be presenting material focused on our ClearPath Forward ecosystem of platforms, products and services, as Michaela stated. We'll be speaking to you about ClearPath Forward as a vibrant and essential part of Unisys and how it is a centerpiece of value creation for our clients. Over the course of time, we continue to see clients investing in their ClearPath Forward environments, in many cases, increasing their commitments around transaction volumes as they look to take advantage of the value of data in these systems. Additionally, clients are frequently working to reinforce their security posture and available capacity for their compute needs and often look to their Unisys ClearPath Forward estate as a trusted source to accomplish these goals. We have enjoyed decades-long relationships with many of our ClearPath Forward clients, and we are committed to continuing our journey with them for decades to come. I'm joined today by Sean Tinney, our Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Computing Solutions, to take us further into the ClearPath Forward story. Sean, over to you.

Thank you, Chris. For the listening audience, starting on Page 3 of the handout, I'll be sharing an introduction to a key Unisys solution, ClearPath Forward, which will also be referred to as ClearPath or simply CPF. During this time, you'll learn about the modern mainframe ecosystem and the strategic role ClearPath plays in Vital Enterprise solutions. Next, you'll see a market perspective overview and learn how that perspective relates to clients' requirements and outcomes. From there, you'll be introduced to client journeys that illustrate the mission-critical role ClearPath Forward solutions play within different client environments. Finally, you'll discover how our long-term road map drives modernization, aligns with clients' short-term and long-term needs, delivers a platform that enables current productivity and future growth and eliminates risks and complexities of a service journey. Throughout this discussion, you'll understand why Unisys is viewed as a trusted partner committed to the growth and success of global clients relying upon ClearPath technology. As we turn to Slide 4, we're going to discuss the ClearPath Forward modern ecosystem. Defining the modern mainframe and the attributes associated with the modern ecosystem are key challenges across the market. You may be picturing an image of a giant computer system with boxes and wires designed to run an entire company's computing needs. And historically, that was correct. These systems provided unparalleled security, performance and reliability for our company's most valuable data. Mainframe systems also created challenges for dynamic change. As we look at our play fast forward modern ecosystem, we enhanced these long-standing principles with capabilities to increase deployment flexibility with on-premise and cloud options, enhanced security features, new real-time data processing and AI capabilities for analytics and system management. These enhancements provide clients with a secure, performative and resilient environment required with the flexibility to adapt to market and customer needs. As we prepare for the future, the CPF environment stays on the leading edge by introducing formal computing resistant security capabilities, high-performance computing speeds with AI-driven optimization for workload management, need of the AI functionality for operations, self-healing and rapid application development. Our road map ensures that Unisys' clients will continuously be at the forefront of performance, security and resilience. With critical data remaining adaptive, these clients are positioned to address ever-changing technology capabilities and market dynamics while minimizing additional overhead costs. As we go to Slide 5, we're going to discuss in a little more detail our ClearPath Forward portfolio. Our ClearPath Forward portfolio is a system of modern platforms and solutions accounting for about 20% of Unisys' annual revenue. ClearPath Forward is a fully self-contained computing environment built by Unisys that enables the deployment of extremely secure high-volume data processing. Examples of long-standing core business processes that run on the ClearPath ecosystem include core banking operations such as mortgage processing as well as core airline operations such as ticketing and reservations. ClearPath Forward is rooted in well-established traditional programming languages, but the ever-evolving environment enables modern workload and language execution. Our ClearPath history can be traced back to the 1986 formation of Unisys, where the Burroughs and Sperry product lines were brought together. In many cases, ClearPath Forward clients have been using CPF or our predecessor system for over 50 years. Unisys introduced the ClearPath Forward brand in 1996, and we'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2026. And we start in the top left quadrant. The ClearPath Forward ecosystem offers multiple deployment options from on-premise to private cloud and public cloud environments. These solutions also enable data use for analytics and AI pursuit. These solutions create a compelling modern front-end experiences and integrations to expand value and ensure modern relevance. As we go to the bottom left of the slide, in addition to our core computing capability for transaction processing and application hosting, the ClearPath portfolio includes value-added solutions. DataExchange and ePortal enable clients to access data and systems external to ClearPath and share data with other systems. These value-added solutions allow clients to leverage ClearPath to gain a complete view of critical data and use this data in new ways that support ever-changing business needs. AB Suite is another key solution, providing advanced application development capabilities that help clients modernize and manage mission-critical business processes within the ClearPath ecosystem. These solutions also serve as excellent value levers for Unisys, compelling long-term use and account expansion. As we look to the top right corner of the slide, in order to offer clients maximum flexibility, we offer a diverse application environment, allowing our clients to run Unisys proprietary applications, their own applications or third-party applications within our operating environments. Moving to the bottom right corner, we also offer a series of robust professional and managed services as well as support services to maximize our clients' investment. As we go to the next slide, we're going to take a bit of a deeper dive into these 5 core components. And we're going to start with what is an operating system. An operating system is software that interfaces between users, applications and hardware to execute programs and transactions. Some simple examples include leveraging Apple's operating system on our personal or professional devices with applications like Safari or leveraging a Linux operating system that traditionally commercially runs on many servers. At Unisys, we have 2 primary operating systems, OS 2200 and MCP, both of which offer similar functionality and operate under the ClearPath portfolio. The operating systems are designed to process high-volume, mission-critical workloads or simply put a client's most important transactions and most sensitive data. Security and performance are standout features of our operating system, driving a seamless and contained end-to-end business process flow that minimizes points of failure and security vulnerabilities. As we move to Slide 7, we'll dive a little bit deeper into ClearPath and what it delivers on a day-to-day basis. ClearPath clients are in a variety of industries where workloads demand secure, highly available and high-volume processing. Many clients use daily batch jobs to process millions of transactions in tight time windows. For example, financial institutions must clear checks daily and process inter and intra bank transactions before the next business day. ClearPath excels at this due to the efficiency of the operating and database management systems to execute and monitor queues of transactions. ClearPath is designed to support real-time processing demand such as managing airline passenger reservations, storing and retrieving voice mail messages and global cargo tracking. In every one of these examples, security matters. And where ClearPath processes workloads for tax processing and medical records, security remains critical. ClearPath can be scaled to process 1 million transactions per minute and to do this continually with a system availability of over 5 knots, which means processing can take place 24/7 365 with very minimal downtime for maintenance. Due to the built-in security features of ClearPath and the fact that data has never been forcibly extracted, clients can continue to rely on ClearPath for their most sensitive and time-critical workloads. ClearPath Forward environments help clients achieve amazing outcomes. To illustrate the depth and breadth of these capabilities, a client in the financial vertical securely processed over $56 trillion of annual interbank transactions and another relies on ClearPath to process 70% of all mortgage transactions in Brazil. Examples in the travel and transportation industry include booking and tracking of 7 million annual cargo shipments and processing of 732 million passengers in 2024. As enterprise business demands increase, ClearPath will continue to deliver uncompromising security, performance and speed. As we turn to Slide 8, we're going to take a deeper look at the multiple deployment options that ClearPath offers. When contemplating where to host applications, operating systems, services and data, there are a multitude of options and considerations. There are cloud-based hosting options, which leverage Internet-based and third-party managed remote servers to store and manage data as opposed to on-premise solutions, which leverage local servers and are managed by the organization. An on-premise solution is fully customizable and allows data to remain on site but comes with higher upfront cost and a reliance on an in-house IT department. A private cloud creates a dedicated environment, offering greater levels of customization, but this comes at an increased cost. Public cloud options share resources on a remote server with other companies, offering a cost advantage, but also creating a potential security exposure from the shared and outsourced environment. The final option is a hybrid cloud solution that combines public, private and on-prem options based on the specific needs of the business. This hybrid option is used to balance cost, security and flexibility that can create integration and governance challenges. The ClearPath Forward modern ecosystem is capable of running in public, private or integrated on-premise systems. This flexibility allows clients to take advantage of multiple deployment options while [indiscernible] relating to integration challenges, security and future-proofing investments as deployment strategies evolve. As we move to Slide 9, we'll explore the application environments that the ClearPath Forward ecosystem supports. So starting with what is an application. An application is a discrete software program that is designed to execute a specific action or activity, much in the same way we're leveraging Microsoft PowerPoint today for this presentation. An application environment is a series of applications that may or may not be interconnected. These applications are designed to run and manage a company's operations. The ClearPath Forward modern ecosystem supports 3 types of applications to meet the needs of our clients' operations. Unisys developed applications focus on maximizing the benefits of the operating system, inclusive of contemporary and customized app development as well as data sharing to and from the environment for AI and analytics purposes. We also support client-created applications that are developed within our ecosystem and customized to specific business processes. We also support third-party developed applications that are created outside of the ClearPath Forward ecosystem that can be introduced to our secure environment such as mortgage origination software. This unique application flexibility allows ClearPath Forward clients the ability to maximize valuable data, customizing and feeding the data to supporting applications and ensuring continuity and security. As we go to Slide 10, we're going to explore some more of Unisys' value-added solutions. ClearPath Forward operating systems are at the core of driving a client's most valuable data in key business processes. Access to the data that flows through this end-to-end environment is vital. Unisys offers about 30 different solutions to support a client's access to and use of data to drive meaningful business outcomes. The ClearPath Forward operating systems drive a seamless and contained end-to-end data flow ingrained into the business process. This process creates an exceedingly structured and actionable set of data that catalogs inputs, decisions and outcomes, which is the cornerstone for training AI models. There are 3 main solutions that make enterprise-grade AI possible to clients in the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. Our ePortal solution allows for data to be connected to internal and external applications, opening up new markets, channels and customers. Our DataExchange solution focuses on structuring data by highlighting critical process linkages to properly classify and engineer data across applications. And finally, our AB Suite solution that provides a low-code development platform to rapidly spin up new performative and available applications as business needs emerge. These value-added solutions provide the ClearPath Forward client base with the ability to rapidly leverage and monetize valuable data sets without sacrificing performance, security or introducing additional costs. As we move to Slide 11, we'll take a bit of a deeper dive into the ClearPath Forward service portfolio. Unisys is the creator of the ClearPath Forward ecosystem that operates across multiple industries on a global scale with a dedicated team of researchers and engineers across multiple coding language competencies. These attributes uniquely position Unisys to help create client differentiation within their representative markets. We offer a variety of both professional and managed services to support clients' business needs. Application enrichment or modernization services focus on custom application development and application modernization to help clients transform environments without disruption. Our Technology Consulting Services team offers operations, technology, quantum computing and security advisory solutions from strategy to design, development, implementation and support. This includes both hardware, software and business process projects. Finally, our Outsourcing and Managed Service offering provides clients with the ability for fully hosted and supported solutions. These best-in-class services deliver infrastructure and application environments that not only provide access to on-demand talent, but also a scalable and sustainable workforce and the ability to optimize consumption. We also directly address the challenges posed by the ongoing workforce retirement wave. Our offerings provide clients with multiple options to achieve business leads without taking on additional internal projects or resources. The ClearPath Forward environment establishes the definition of the modern ecosystem, providing a secure, performative and resilient environment for our clients' most valuable and sensitive data while allowing for flexibility, scalability and extensibility that the traditional mainframe environment previously lacked. As we move to Slide 12, we'll dive back into the overall ClearPath portfolio. As we saw in the preceding images, ClearPath is a secure, scalable platform designed to protect and scale core business processes. Along with services and applications such as ePortal, the ClearPath Forward ecosystem provides a pathway to the future in an environment that will evolve with client market needs. The next topics include how Unisys delivers on this commitment, along with client case studies that show the business outcomes possible with ClearPath Forward. As we go into Slide 13, we're going to talk a bit about the market and the market specifically for mainframe computing. Mainframes play a vital role in global business and will do so for decades to come. The market perspective from IDC shows most Fortune 500 companies rely on mainframes to operate their business. It is impressive to see that over 90% of Fortune 500 financial institutions operate on mainframe. Today, ClearPath provides the foundational attributes that have driven the historic use of mainframes. These attributes are resilience, security, scale and speed. This means ClearPath can reliably and rapidly execute extreme volumes of transactions while being incredibly secure. Unisys is committed to evolving ClearPath and adopting modern tools and technologies to maintain these foundational attributes. Critical in sustaining mainframe relevance, Unisys invests in research and development activities in post-quantum security, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Bad actors are poised to gain access to quantum computing capabilities as well as current security algorithms used across the world. And ClearPath is prepared to adopt new quantum security protocols to continue protecting our clients' data as the most secure operating systems in the world. The data contained in workloads executed by ClearPath point to additional value streams. By embedding AI into the ClearPath ecosystem, Unisys supports clients in unlocking further value from the significant quantity of data processed. This enables companies to operate more efficiently and bring new capabilities to market. We are committed to serving our clients at the highest level possible. Unisys will retain these foundational attributes of the ClearPath ecosystem in a post-quantum world and adopt innovative technologies to drive strong business outcomes. Unisys will continue investing in strategic areas of growth such as AI, and most importantly, will continue to provide the right skill sets and expertise to execute our market vision as part of our ClearPath Forward 2050 initiative. As we move to Slide 14, we'll illustrate ClearPath in day-to-day life as part of a services journey. A leading cruise line operator and Unisys have partnered for nearly 5 decades to meet the needs of a growing and evolving business. ClearPath has been at the heart of this technology strategy from the time this partnership started when the client had one ship and one port. Today, this cruise line operates 29 ships across 19 countries with 12.5 million guests. The scalability of ClearPath aligns with the cruise lines' growth and expansion goals and provides the operational productivity required to achieve those goals. ClearPath data management capabilities enable the client to rapidly deliver across a complex global environment. And the deployment of DataExchange and ePortal provides seamless data access internally as well as with guests and suppliers. The strength of ClearPath empowers secure management to global reservations and the ability to analyze demand and prices in real time, maximizing revenue. ClearPath also provides flexibility for the client to integrate and interface with external booking and pricing systems to expand booking avenues. As the cruise line operator further expands and offers innovative services to guests, Unisys will continue to be a trusted partner delivering results with ClearPath. To put these capabilities into context, as we move to Slide 15, we'll show how ClearPath supports the journey of our cruise line's guests. ClearPath enables guests to cruise line touch points, starting with providing options on schedules, prices, routes and other services and amenities. All this information is stored and managed by ClearPath and is quickly made available upon requests through online channels, travel agents or the cruise line's reservation center. Each transaction is processed by ClearPath as a system of record, and the integrity of the database is also managed by ClearPath. As the booking process continues and travel plans are committed, ClearPath continues to process these transactions and integrates with other systems to share passenger data. ePortal supports guests through interfaces that manage voyages, make payments, provide journey information and so on. Internally, the ClearPath system provides data to authorized crew members and forms guest communication efforts. DataExchange is used to connect various data sources and is the hub for running analytics and other operations in the data warehouse. ClearPath continues to process transactions once the ship leaves port, including providing notifications about ship events and stops. Once the cruise is ended, ClearPath supports AI-enhanced engagement strategies, including guest surveys, marketing campaigns and so on. From a management perspective, ClearPath measures profitability and drives internal analysis efforts. The ClearPath ecosystem is used to securely and reliably provide full operations support to achieve the objectives set by the cruise line. And as the cruise line moves into new markets and it takes on new ports, it drives new volume through the ClearPath ecosystem. As we move to Slide 16, we'll look at this journey through the lens of financial institutions. So much like the cruise line journey, ClearPath is also a key component in mortgage processing, including loan origination, settlements and closing and post-settlement processing. As a system of record, ClearPath maintains the business rules, processes and data associated with the end-to-end mortgage process. It also securely manages the end customers' personal data, keeping a record of every data item and transaction. Via the configurable AB Suite environment, ClearPath provides the ability to maintain business rules in the mortgage processing journey based on varying regulations across the globe. ePortal provides the system of engagement for mortgage customers to securely document and indicate process status throughout the approval. DataExchange provides connectivity with the external systems such as credit checking and provides access to all mortgage data for reporting and analytics purposes. Obtaining quick results for mortgage approval is the goal for both the lender and the mortgage applicant. ClearPath ensures fast access to all data and rapid transaction processing times in support of this goal. Post settlement, applications running on ClearPath managed mortgage servicing transactions, including payments and mortgage portfolio analysis to assess the risk of default. The mortgage processing and cruise line journeys demonstrate how the ClearPath ecosystem is integral to each client's business and how the management of the data is a key service that supports analytics and AI-based solutions to improve profitability. ClearPath provides the integration across data sets, allowing clients to seamlessly leverage data across systems, driving efficiency and profitability. As we turn to Slide 17, we'll examine why ClearPath Forward is so persistent. The total cost of ownership to replicate the ClearPath environment is extremely high, risky and usually takes more time than anticipated. The end result does not provide the same attributes as ClearPath, the resiliency, security, scale and speed. ClearPath is purpose-built to deliver on these attributes, which is not the case outside the mainframe market. To move into a different environment, the first hurdle is usually modernizing the application to run on a cloud-based infrastructure. And this typically means rewriting the application that contains thousands of business rules and processes. The business case to rewrite these applications, given the large-scale risk of software development, is usually not strong and may not be worth the incremental investment. Additionally, the data must be migrated, which means moving more data to a new database. It means restructuring the data so it's secure and still provides fast access and response times. Data migration must also account for post-quantum security in addition to the current security measures. Moving to a new infrastructure, even if it is private cloud, brings the risk of security, performance and scalability degradation. The biggest infrastructure risk is providing the resilience of ClearPath, [ our 5 9s ] or more, which could lead to increased infrastructure costs along with prohibitive management costs. To execute a migration program of this magnitude is expensive, and the proof points show that many of these engagements extend for decades without achieving the desired result. [ To put ] the magnitude of these transitions into perspective. This type of migration is akin to attempting to stand up a new ERP system, a CRM system, a middleware and data layer and a workflow system while simultaneously changing the business processes in a single approach. At Unisys, we demonstrate a strong commitment to our clients through the long-term development and the ClearPath Forward 2050 strategy. Clients recognize the value in these plans to evolve and improve the ecosystem that bring the advantages of modern programming languages, artificial intelligence and new innovations. Incrementally migrating to a new environment is a lengthy exercise that brings a multitude of significant and costly risks. As we turn to Slide 18, we'll examine our long-term ClearPath Forward 2050 road map. Looking ahead, ClearPath Forward is on a journey to become the ecosystem of the future. And what does it mean for our clients? It means a platform that's not just secure and resilient, but also flexible enough to run anywhere. With elastic scaling built in, organizations can adapt quickly to changing needs. Security will always be at the heart of what we do in ClearPath Forward. We're advancing zero trust architecture, quantum-safe cryptography and AI-driven threat detection. So our clients' data stays protected even as new threats emerge. Data is becoming ever more valuable and more distributed. ClearPath Forward's road map includes a unified data fabric, making it easier to integrate with external sources and leverage privacy-preserving analytics. This opens the door for enterprise-level AI transformation, helping organizations unlock new insights and efficiencies. Speed and automation are also front and center. We're focused on instant processing, predictive automation and continuous delivery, so our clients can innovate faster and minimize downtime. ClearPath Forward will support cloud-native development, low-code tools and modern languages like Java and Python to create new applications without having to change the existing underlying code base. This means organizations can use their current skills today and prepare for tomorrow. Resiliency is being taken to the next level with autonomous failover, cross-cloud recovery and AI-driven self-healing. The goal is to deliver an always-on infrastructure that supports mission-critical workloads without interruption. As we look even further ahead, we're investing in the enhancement of digital system administration assistance, containerized cluster management, micro services and Gen AI-powered development. These innovations will help clients stay ahead of the curve, no matter how technology evolves. Unisys is committed to evolving ClearPath Forward to meet the demands of tomorrow while preserving our reliable core strengths, resiliency, security and performance. At this point, I'm going to hand it back to Chris Arrasmith to take us through the rest of the presentation. Chris, over to you.

Thanks, Sean. Turning to Slide 19. Let's cover the key takeaways of this presentation. To recap, you've been introduced to ClearPath Forward. This key Unisys solution is a highly secure, performative and resilient environment for a client's most valuable data and business processes. You learned how ClearPath Forward, a modern ecosystem, plays a vital role in enterprise workloads, providing flexibility, scalability and extensibility. Through the market perspective, mainframe market stability was demonstrated and tied to client journeys that exemplify the role ClearPath Forward solutions play within critical client environments. Rounding things out, you learned how Unisys solution planning drives modernization, aligns with client short- and long-term needs, delivers an evolving platform that enables current productivity and future growth and eliminates the risks and complexities associated with a services migration. ClearPath Forward initiatives tie solutions, people and services with emerging technologies while remaining firmly rooted in the long-standing company principles of security, performance and resilience. In closing, ClearPath is a foundational offering in the Unisys portfolio and a key structural element of multiple facets of the global economy. ClearPath provides unparalleled mission-critical performance, security, speed, scale and resilience, powering the most crucial global workloads. Long-standing client relationships illustrate why Unisys is viewed as a trusted technology adviser for these vital enterprise workloads. With a focus on the future, ClearPath will play an essential role within client ecosystems for years to come through continued ecosystem modernization and technologies, including AI, quantum and hybrid computing. At this time, we'll open up the meeting for questions and answers. For this portion, Sean and I are joined by Mike Thomson, Unisys CEO and President.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Rod Bourgeois with DeepDive Equity Research.

Definitely a helpful topic. And I've got a couple of questions. First, could you elaborate on what you're seeing as the main drivers of ClearPath Forward consumption volumes? You guys have had multiple rounds of upward guidance in your ClearPath Forward volumes in the last couple of years. And I'm wondering if the volume momentum could peak out? Or are those drivers remaining in place or even getting better? If you could give a perspective on the drivers and what you're seeing there, that would be super helpful.

You bet, Rod. This is Chris Arrasmith. Great to be with you, and thanks for the question. There are a few different levers here involved in terms of consumption, as you mentioned, kind of upticks in the last few years. I'm going to have Sean give us a little bit of highlights around that, and then I'll fill in some color from there. Sean, go ahead.

Thanks, Chris. So as Chris mentioned, there are multiple drivers that have allowed us to exceed our projections over the previous years, all of which is really related around increased workloads with our clients. One of the first reasons is geographic expansion. So as our clients expand into new markets, new geographies, that workload increases and that volume increases with them. So as they grow, we grow in a correlating fashion. Also, the push around AI and data monetization results in increased MIPS top-ups and increased utilization of the data flowing through the system. And lastly, really, the -- we have the ability to -- we've seen some longer renewals. So this is a variety of reasons. There are reasons that factor into locking in better pricing points, looking at the broader integration and application efforts. So there's been several factors that have been driving our ability to outperform our original projections.

All right. And are those factors remaining on an upward trend? Or are you seeing any pause in those drivers?

Yes. Rod, this is Chris again. Thanks, Sean. The -- really, the varying levers that Sean was talking about kind of ebb and flow. And so we don't see a generalized slowing down. But as we go year-on-year, we see different of these levers being pulled. So Sean mentioned the expansion of the utilization of data for AI pursuits. We definitely anticipate that continuing on. In other cases, some of the value-add solutions that we talked about in today's presentation are more attractive for expansion at particular clients. And then we also see differing commitments in terms of time and consumption volumes in a combination of those things as we go forward. So we just continue to see strength in a variety of these areas. And because they're diverse, in some years, we have more strength in one of those levers than another. So we think there's a continuing trend of strength as it relates to the total portfolio.

Sorry, I just wanted to add a little tidbit there, too, and you and I have spoken about this in the past. And I think Chris talked about it here in the value-added solutions. So I would look at it this way. So a lot of the volume or consumption increases are clearly tied to our clients' growth, right? I love the travel and transportation story, right? You can see how their business continues to grow and then their utilization of our ecosystem continues to grow. And I think Sean and Chris both touched on that. But the purposeful design of ePortal, DataExchange, AB Suite, these are products designed to give access to and from our standardized platform of data to enable this data abstraction layer, which, again, is continued calls back to and from the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. So it's kind of purpose-built forced integration back to the ecosystem, which is obviously a consumption driver. And then it's the volume components, whether it's geographic expansion or just business expansion of our clients' ecosystems. And I think the reason we gave the illustration of both the travel and transportation and financial services because it's pretty clear throughout their journey, whether it's the UX/UI component at the end user level, all the way through pricing and follow-up communications, all of that runs back and forth from a consumption perspective. So I would say a chunk of it is purposely defined and a chunk of it is really tied into helping our clients grow.

Okay. Great. And if I could throw in a more general question as -- get your practitioners' view on the state of mainframes in general. What are you seeing in terms of the impact of AI on your clients' usage and their reliance on mainframes? I think there's both positive and some risk in play for mainframe usage. And it would be great if you could speak on that from your practitioner and expert perspective.

Yes, absolutely, Rod. And I'll start us off and then Sean would love to get your perspective as well. We have mentioned on several occasions today, the value of the data inside of the systems, the volumes of data from decades of transactions processing and relatively uniform data schemes is really make these super valuable troves of potential insight for our clients to unlock. And we think that is a significant -- well, we know, in fact, it's a significant driver of continued consumption benefit. But as well, there's enterprise value to be mined from that, that we're really still just kind of in the early days of tapping. There are clearly some risks involved as it relates to certain trends in the market that would be familiar to all of us around the rapid decline of mainframe compute resources as a result of AI-based reengineering of code. And Sean talked earlier today about the scalability, the reliability, the security of these systems. And really, they continue to be unmatched in many regards in that way. And so while there is a risk there, we don't really see that manifesting in an overnight capacity. And in fact, some of the data points Sean shared, many of the transformations, migrations, however you want to refer to them, really hit a reality check over the course of time, significantly overblown costs, time, effort and risk as it relates to realizing those transformations, whether they're AI-led or more traditionally led. Sean, do you want to add some color there? Those are at least a couple of examples.

Yes. I mean we mentioned several times about how AI can be leveraged in the SDLC and how to actually derisk a lot of the changes and whether it's resource changes or technology changes in the ecosystem. The risk of AI to migrate away from these systems is really minimal. And it's really because of the integrated nature of the code base because it's tied to so many different layers. It's integrated at the database layer, it's integrated at the infrastructure layer, it's integrated at the application layer and workflow layer that drives the sort of next best action, which is ultimately linked to the business process. And if you try to use Gen AI or some other sort of artificial intelligence to convert it, it's really much more than converting the code base. In a lab, that may work converting one code style to another. But when you have to then factor in all these dependencies and then layer on top of that certain geographical considerations, industry considerations, client-specific considerations, you're looking at AI that would need to be trained on so many different factors of data that is largely not readily available. So there -- while the system -- the data that flows to the ClearPath ecosystem is largely structured. When you're getting into business process rules, these usually sit in people's heads. So when you think about making a business case to use this, you now have to train multiple different AI agents, correlate those different AI agents, account for geographic considerations, account for industry considerations, account for client considerations. Your business case gets inverted really quickly. And then to make up for these gaps in the data, you usually create synthetic data. And when you create that synthetic data, you're trying as best you can to replicate a thought train. And when you get to that point, you're really now introducing more inaccuracy and less reliability into it. So all this is compounding in Virtu business case. So the threat of using AI to really get away from these systems is really minimal.

Yes, Rod, I would also say the repatriation aspect of what we've seen over the last, I'll say, year and continuing from an industry perspective, I think it's largely due to this, right? Because as we noted in here, 70%, right, of the Fortune 500 data is sourced from a mainframe application, right, whether that -- and predominantly, they're on-prem or hybrid. Well, it's a heck of a lot cheaper from a FinOps perspective to bring the AI to the data. And the data sits largely in a repatriated or private on-prem viewpoint, whether it's an integrated system hardware and software. But the key is getting to that data abstraction layer. And so I think industry-wise, we're seeing a little bit of push back to that. I think Chris and Sean certainly talked about kind of the muted point from a risk point of view. But I would say from a practitioner point of view, that's what we see more is bringing the AI to that data source and doing the compute there.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Arun Seshadri with Forza.

Just 2 or 3 for me. One, just wanted to understand when you look at your recurring revenue and your revenue performance, you've held revenue stable and modestly growing. Could you walk through the drivers of that, like recurring revenue, I assume, is in the mid-80s or higher and then pricing and churn, just the components that make up the revenue performance starting from, I guess, churn all the way to pricing and logos and expansions, whatever breakdown you can give? And then the other 2 pieces, if you could talk about should we expect gross profit margin dollars to be generally stable for the future? Or do you expect to see continue? I think we saw a modest degradation in gross margins -- gross margin, but the profit dollars are pretty stable. And then finally, CapEx. How do we see -- how do you expect to see CapEx? What is the CapEx associated with CPF? And how do you see that trending?

Thanks, Arun, for your questions. Mike, do you want to kind of kick us off with some commentary response to Arun's questions?

Yes, sure. Good to hear from you. Thanks for participating on the call. I believe all of your questions are really tied into CPF, right? We're not talking about the total company here. We'll deal with that in the normal earnings cycle, which will be in a couple of weeks here. So I'm taking the context of your question, all CPF related. The revenue, as you know, when we talked about this business, back in the 2023 days on Investor Day, we were talking about the top line here being roughly 3-year average of $365 million, et cetera. We've continued to bump that average up over the course of time in the last couple of years, we've moved it up to $380 million, $390 million. You see in this deck in the appendix that we're actually calling for $400 million on a top line perspective. So I think the increase that we see in that business is really 2 component pieces of that top line. One is what we just talked about with Rod that you're seeing additional consumption on the existing base upon renewal and in some cases, early renewal and upsizing that consumption. The other is you're getting the pricing power based on how integrated this is in the business operations, as Sean eloquently explained here through the process, right? This is how you run your business, right? And the point of this call was really to illustrate to the investors. We talk a lot about how sticky this business is, why we have pricing power and ultimately, while we have renewal rates that are in excess of 95% in this space. So we don't lose these clients because we've built an ecosystem that allows them to continue to modernize all aspects of data use, AI, quantum protection, speed and you see how integral it is into the way they function, the way they perform their business. So from a revenue perspective, we've seen this continual increase and a lot of that on the consumption side. The margin component that you asked about is a little different, and that is aligned year-to-year based on renewals. So when you see a slight step down, don't think of that step down as necessarily being a pricing issue. A lot of times, it might be a refresh component and there may be a higher mix of hardware in an integrated system, therefore, taking away some of that margin in that particular year on that refresh. But for the software component or the ecosystem component that we've talked about today, you've not -- you don't see that margin declining. In fact, we see pretty strong strength in the continued ability for us to gain and maintain pricing power, both on the support side of the ecosystem as well as the operating side of the ecosystem. I mentioned in there our continued 95-plus percent renewal rate. So we really don't see churn. That rate goes up when you talk about our top 50, that type of thing. So when we do see churn, it historically is from a much lower, I'll say, profile entity and typically in relation to an M&A where our client may not be the acquirer. So very little churn, maintaining all of the margin profiles that we've seen historically, increasing the top line. And then your last question, I think, was in relation to CapEx. We've been running a pretty steady CapEx input to support this ecosystem. Of course, we're always looking to kind of run a lean ship here. But the investment that we put into this ecosystem, we believe, is warranted. And it's as much as we need to ensure that we can stay at the cutting edge of technology, give our clients what they need from a road map perspective and have this product be viable. We -- our internal mantra here is ClearPath 2050, right? We really talk about how this thing develops over the course of the next several decades, not next year's road map type of thing. So hopefully, Arun, that gives you your revenue component, your pricing power, your churn, your gross margin and your CapEx answer there. But if I missed anything, feel free to weigh in here.

Okay. No, I appreciate all of that color, Mike. Just on the CapEx side, what type of -- what ballpark CapEx are you spending today in terms of maintenance within -- for CPF? And what would you classify as growth? Or is that just hard to discern? And if you could give us sort of what those numbers are or rough numbers are that you're spending on an annual basis? I understand it's relatively stable, but yes, any additional color would be helpful, and that's all.

Yes. Thanks, Arun. So we have not broken out historically that component. So I'm going to stay away from the mix of support versus growth on the CapEx side. But we talk about our CapEx essentially in 3 buckets, right? You've got your normal gross PP&E add. You've got kind of the CapEx for the R&D component, which is largely this, right? This is our primary IP. And we really talk about that kind of being 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. So our CapEx number, historically, we've been running in the $95-ish million or slightly under that from a total company perspective. So think of about 1/3 of that being dedicated to the continual invest into this -- the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. It's really hard to discern the maintenance and support component from the growth component because it's the shared team because, obviously, the integration between those is so tight. So they do work together. And that ebbs and flows, right? A lot of our growth development are at the request of clients, and we're talking about what they want to see over the next 10 years. And so as we have those discussions, we see an ebb and flow there. But I would say at a macro level, it's been a pretty consistent spend to continue this ecosystem.

The next question comes from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

I'm just curious, with extended contracts you've been seeing, how should we think about the renewal schedules? And are the contracts fairly evenly staggered? Or will there be a period of very low renewals coming up?

Anja, it's Chris here. Thank you for your question. We are providing guidance about average performance in this L&S segment really as a guide because there would be, as you would expect, some variability in terms of timing of renewals. And I think that's been a theme we've talked about actually for some time at the company. Mike, do you want to add some color there?

Sure. Thanks for joining. Appreciate the question. Yes. Look, I think Chris teed it up perfectly, right? So we're giving that 3-year average from a modeling perspective. I'll just remind the audience listening here, I know you know this, but I'll say it for purposes of others as well, that typically, what happens in these scenarios is clients have extended use beyond what they thought they were ultimately going to need when they've contracted. So the reason the revenue recognition is upfront on these license renewals is because they get the full consumption value day 1, right? And so when they get to a use perspective and they're going to run out of use or MIPS by the time their contract is done, typically, our contracts would revert to list pricing, which is significantly higher than the contracted pricing that we're talking about. So normally, they'll come to us for early renewal. And we don't have a lot of control as to when that happens. That's much more indicated by the way they run their business. So typically, it ends up being a pull forward. And then recently, what we've seen experience-wise, and I think Sean alluded to this in his dialogue that there's been extensions on top of those early renewals. And so we're starting to see a blending of that. So although we project it out based on the renewal schedule, and we have great line of sight to what the next 5 and 10 years looks like, that can get disrupted by someone's business taking off and their consumption being much higher and then having to force an early renewal and then throw on top of that and an extension of that contract. So really difficult, which is why we give out by quarter and first half, second half every year and try to give the 3-year view. We feel pretty comfortable that we've got a good line of sight to that window. Beyond that, it's a little hard to predict.

Okay. That was helpful. And then also, what areas of innovation are clients most focused on?

Yes. Thanks, Anja. I can take that one, and then Sean will ask for a little insight from you, too. There's really a mix. In some cases, clients have a keen eye for performance and scale enhancements as it relates to their ever-growing kind of volume transaction requirements. In other cases, clients have historically been looking for diversification of deployment options. Perhaps they want to leverage a public cloud deployment of a software series of our platform rather than an integrated on-premise system. And so there are a mix of those things. And then Sean mentioned today earlier some of the most recent advancements in post-quantum cryptography that some clients have described an interest in. Sean, do you want to give a few other kind of insights into what clients are asking for as it relates to road map and continuing evolution?

Yes. There's a couple of key themes, and you touched on a couple of them. The first one is around artificial intelligence and how to leverage these capabilities within our ecosystem. So there are clients who focus on how do we reduce the software development life cycle within that. So how can we accelerate the speed to value there as they look at it as how do we upskill and cross-skill an employee base with modern coding language development and remediation and self-healing. So there is a theme around how do we get more out of the ecosystem, how do we connect data between these ecosystems. Now for us, from a road map perspective, it's building these capabilities natively into the ecosystem. So as these modernization journeys, these app transformation journeys typically would have been a services journey, which adds accretive costs and projects into our clients' ecosystem, we just take them on a product journey. So we're mirroring our product road map and future state road map to this modernization journey, allowing them to take advantage of a regular release cycle to gain these benefits. The other one Chris touched on is the security element. That's always sort of been a stalwart of the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. But as there's advances in quantum computing, as there's the emergence of new types of bad actors, security is still always at top of mind. And for us, that means looking not only at post-quantum cryptography to ensure and prevent against [ steal ] now decrypt later, but also different ways of micro encrypting the data. And that really just means how can we further parse data to make it extremely tough to correlate between these. And then the last one is the performance aspect. And if you look at, again, another stalwart performance speed, the ability to take a look at continuous computing, the hybrid computing elements. So how do you blend traditional computing with high-performance computing and quantum computing capabilities to leverage that speed. So pretty much all those 3, when you look at them together, it's just how do we get more data moving through our system for analytics and AI, how do we secure that data and then how do we supercharge the speed in which we can leverage that data.

I think the other thing I would add there is this really necessary mix of things that we consider to be important in terms of platform evolution that we bring to clients as clear illustrations of ongoing value and then the balancing point around what things clients are specifically asking us for an ongoing basis. And that really speaks to the intimacy that we have with many of our clients. We talked about the decades-long relationships that we have in so many instances. And that just enables us to have an ongoing dialogue and create a right balance of things we think are critical for platform evolution versus things clients think are most important today and into the future. Thanks for the question, Anja.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Arrasmith for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. First, I just want to thank everybody for joining us today. You've seen and heard over the course of this last hour or so that we have a compelling value-rich ecosystem in ClearPath Forward that powers enterprise scale business globally. Our team of engineers continues to evolve our capabilities to keep us aligned to technology advancements, security and regulatory requirements and client demands for compute power. As stated in our introduction today, we plan to continue driving value for ClearPath Forward clients for decades to come. This concludes our presentation and discussion. Thanks again for investing the time to learn more about the key role ClearPath Forward Solutions play in the complex and evolving modern mainframe market. For additional information, please reach out to Unisys Investor Relations. Operator, you can close the call.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.