Kyndryl Holdings, Inc. (KD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kyndryl's earnings call for the first fiscal quarter June 30, 2026. The -- before we begin, I'd like to remind you that our remarks today include forward-looking statements. These statements do not guarantee future performance and speak only as of today, and the company assumes no obligation to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Actual outcomes or results may differ materially from those suggested by forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties. For more information on some of these risks and uncertainties, please see the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2026. And as such, factors may be updated from time to time in the company's subsequent filings with the SEC. Also in today's remarks, we refer to certain non-GAAP financial metrics. Definitions and additional information about our calculation of non-GAAP financial metrics as well as a reconciliation of non-GAAP metrics the GAAP metrics for historical periods are provided in the presentation materials for today's event, which are available on our website at investors.kyndryl.com. Following our prepared remarks, we'll hold a Q&A session. I'd now like to turn the call over to Kendall's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Shorter. Martin?

Thank you, Lori, and thanks to each of you for joining us. In the first quarter, we executed on our key priorities and made progress in our targeted growth areas, supported by continued strength in the United States. Signings and revenue grew in Kyndryl Consult, and we continue to see positive momentum with hyperscalers. We continue to invest in the areas where we see opportunity, KyndrylConsult, our alliance partnerships and our Agentic AI capabilities through Kyndryl Bridge and our to support and modernize our customers' most complex mission-critical IT estates. And at the same time, we took actions to further streamline our operations. While there is more work ahead, our strategic priorities remain clear. We're focused on delivering our fiscal 2027 outlook and our 2028 objectives. With more revenue expected to come from higher margin post-spin signings this year and next, the quality of that revenue base gives us confidence in our ability to increase profitability and deliver more than $1.2 billion in adjusted pretax income and $1 billion in free cash flow in fiscal 2028 and these targets can be achieved on low single-digit constant currency revenue growth. Harsh will provide more detail in a few minutes on our recent financial results and our outlook. Last quarter, we outlined the priorities that support our fiscal 2028 targets. As we highlighted, we entered the fiscal year with a 5-point improvement in beginning backlog versus fiscal 2026. And 4 months into the year, our pipeline consists of more scope expansions and new logos that support future signings growth and better mix of higher-value services. AI, modernization and cyber preparedness remain important priorities for enterprises around the world as they balance innovation and transformation with operational stability in an uncertain macro environment. This is driving demand for Kyndryl Consult with signings exceeding revenue over the last 12 months. These same dynamics are creating opportunities across our alliance ecosystem with customers' modernization needs accelerating demand in both public and private cloud. We continue to sign deals with average projected pretax margins in the high single digits reflecting our focus on higher value services and pricing discipline central to our transformation. Through our advanced delivery initiative, we are embedding more automation and AI into our operations improving productivity and upskilling our teams for higher value work. And with Kyndryl Bridge, our AI-powered services delivery platform we're providing our customers with the technology foundation to deploy, govern and orchestrate AI agents and a genetic workflows across complex IT estates. In parallel, we're taking workforce rebalancing actions to address lower-than-normal voluntary attrition and our SG&A costs with savings expected to begin in the back half of this year. We'll continue to share our progress against these signposts as we drive our business towards our multiyear objectives. I want to focus my discussion on total signings performance. While our customers remain thoughtful and deliberate in their IT decision making, we're seeing demand for AI-led modernization, especially where Kyndryl consult and our hyperscaler alliances help customers address their mission-critical needs. We're encouraged that over the last 6 months, our total findings have exceeded our revenue. Deal size and composition are additional proof points that demonstrate how we're executing our strategy. Over the last 12 months, we signed 40 deals in excess of $50 million, of which 10 were signed in the first quarter. And among these 40 large deals, approximately 30% of their value consists of scope expansion or our new logos which compares to 15% in fiscal 2025. Strong signings in central consult and momentum in hyperscalers are translating to revenue growth in these targeted areas. Digital consultant revenue grew 14% and hyperscaler related revenue streams grew 48% in the last 12 months on a year-over-year basis. Performance in Kyndryl hyperscalers has partially offset the revenue headwinds from focus accounts over the last few years and more recently, lengthening sales cycles and customers' decisions to procure hardware and software directly from IBM. Kyndryl Consult results demonstrate broad demand from enterprises looking to design and scale agentic AI across their business workflows, modernize complex hybrid IT environments and strength in cybersecurity and resilience. To meet that demand, we've been expanding our consulting skills and capabilities, including investments in forward deploy engineers, human systems architects and AI innovation labs, where we co-create agenetic solutions at scale with our control identic framework. To further address customers' modernization and AI needs, we've been expanding our relationships with our alliance partners. Recently, we expanded our alliance with AWS to help enterprises adopt and scale agentic AI as they modernize and run mission-critical workloads in the cloud. We also expanded our work with Microsoft Azure to help customers design, build and operate cloud architectures that align with evolving data residency and operational requirements. And we continue to strengthen collaborations with partners such as Broadcom and Dell, HP Enterprise and Red Hat to support customers' modernization efforts in complex private and hybrid cloud environments. AI is accelerating the need for modernization. Every day, I speak with business and technology leaders in different industries and nearly every customer conversation comes back to the same long-term themes. First, enterprises are eager to realize the benefits of AI, but many are trying to deploy next-generation technologies on infrastructure, applications and processes that were not designed for them. As you've heard me say before, it's like trying to run a new 200-mile per hour capable bullet train on tracks built for 30 oil per hour world. Equally challenging as our Kyndryl readiness report found -- there's also a lack of skills as only 23% of business leaders that their workforce is ready for AI. The need for Kyndryl expertise and modernization capabilities to continue running their business while transforming it that run and transform and run approach is where Kyndryl is differentiated. Second, AI cybersecurity and data residency regulations and mandates are becoming fundamental considerations in how customers plan and invest in IT. Enterprises increasingly want greater control over their data, their AI models and their digital infrastructure. And Kyndryl helps our customers navigate and build technology foundations that can adapt to the evolving regulatory requirements, geopolitical realities and business needs over the long term. Third, and related to the previous theme, cybersecurity and resilience remain top priorities. As agenetic AI becomes more powerful as we've seen with recent frontier models and further embedded into how enterprises operate, our customers need strong guardrails and policies to bolster the governance and security of their critical systems. This is especially important in the highly regulated a mission-critical environments where Kyndryl has deep expertise in governing securing data across complex hybrid environments and adhering to unique compliance requirements. Fourth, customers increasingly want open and interconnected platforms for flexibility and choice across public cloud, private cloud and on-premises environments. As technology ecosystems become even more diverse and interconnected organizations need agile platforms that integrate seamlessly across environments and applications, enabling interoperability, reducing vendor lock-in and accelerating innovation. And finally, while most AI investments were initially justified through productivity gains, customers are increasingly looking beyond efficiency towards growth towards speed and towards new business outcomes. These are structural and durable trends that leverage our heritage and expertise in mission-critical IT infrastructure, our ecosystem, Kyndryl Bridge and our differentiated portfolio of agentic AI capabilities. We're helping customers simplify complexity and build technology environments that can adapt as business, regulatory and technology requirements evolve while improving resilience security and operational performance. Now let's talk about 3 tangible examples of how we're helping customers deliver business outcomes across the modernization continuum using an agentic AI approach. First, with a large global payments company that we've been working with for decades, the challenge wasn't deciding to modernize. It was to better understand the complexities and dependencies across decades of mission-critical mainframe applications to modernize effectively, maximize their ROI and drive the agility and scale that the business required. We expanded our scope to roll out Kyndryl agentic modernization platform with prepackaged AI modernization workflows, which can be scaled to support multiple customer teams globally carrying out modernization work. We deployed our engineers to develop additional AI workflows to meet the customers' unique modernization and tech stack needs. Next, we expanded our scope with a leading European financial institution to transform its operations and technology while improving efficiency and meeting increasingly complex regulatory requirements. This customer wants to modernize applications, infrastructure and operations at the same time, not a separate initiatives. We're bringing together Kyndryl Bridge and our managed services expertise to implement an AI-native agenetic banking platform. This end-to-end modernization effort will automate its operations strengthen security and resilience, improve overall decision-making and enhance the customer experience. And then we were recently awarded a new logo with a global technology company to help streamline software engineering and IT operations using the Kyndryl agentic AI framework. This will help them grow while improving security, resilience and speed by combining Kindrel's expertise in Agentic software development, platform engineering and IT operations, we will deliver a scalable, secure and efficient technology foundation that supports their expanding Edge AI global business while reducing deployment complexity and operational risk. In all 3 examples, our AI-led modernization approach is accelerating transformation time line and improving efficiency, strengthening the resilience of their mission-critical technology environments. We were awarded new scope with each of these customers and now expect to expand into new areas, demonstrating the breadth of our capabilities and importantly, creating opportunities to deepen and expand our long-term strategic relationships with our customers. We're a trusted adviser and a long-term partner for our customers with differentiated solutions that center on achieving tangible business results with the expectation that higher value signings continue to improve, our focus is clear. drive profitable growth and stronger free cash flow. And with that, I'd like to pass the call over to Harsh to discuss our quarterly results and our fiscal year outlook. Harsh?

Thanks, Martin, and hello, everyone. Today, I will focus my comments on our first quarter results and outlook for fiscal year 2027. In Q1, we generated $3.6 billion of revenue, down 3% year-over-year on both a reported and constant currency basis. For the second consecutive quarter, we delivered 5% revenue growth in the U.S. as our AI-led modernization approach continues to resonate with our customers. We exited the period with 12-month signings of $14.2 billion of which $3.9 billion was signed in Q1. As Martin noted, it was encouraging to see Ciming scale momentum as we exited the March quarter and kicked off our new fiscal year. Our adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $512 million, and our adjusted pretax loss was $37 million. The year-over-year declines in earnings and margin was primarily driven by $152 million of workforce rebalancing charges incurred in the quarter. These charges had more than a 4-point impact on adjusted pretax income margin in the quarter. Our 3 initiatives have become central to how we run the business, as the savings from our workforce actions begin to materialize, we expect to see greater operating leverage flow through to the bottom line. Through our alliances, we generated more than $530 million of hyperscaler related revenue streams in the quarter with $2 billion over the last 12 months. we continue to expect hyperscalers to be a positive contributor to revenue and earnings growth going forward. Through advanced delivery, we are embedding more AI-based technology into our services through Kyndryl Bridge, driving continuous productivity improvements, reducing cost, and further increasing our already strong service levels. And while the work to address focus accounts through our accounts initiative is largely behind us, the discipline we developed continues to inform how we pursue higher value growth. Through scope expansions, new logos, are expanding consulting and agenting AI capabilities in our broad alliance ecosystem. I want to provide an update on what we have been sharing on our evolving partnership with IBM. -- largely driven by how customers are consuming IBM innovation. This chart illustrates a 3-point adverse impact on revenue performance in constant currency driven by our focus accounts initiative in earlier years and more recently by this evolving relationship. As we have described before, at the time of the spin-off, approximately 40% of revenue from our inherited commercial agreements were in a low to no margin position. To give you a sense of the magnitude of this, when we were spun off the annualized run rate of our spend with IBM was nearly $4 billion. Over the past 4 years, we have addressed most of the focus accounts, leading to improved profitability gains. In fact, our spend with IBM over the last 12 months was less than $2 billion, less than half of the spend since we spun off. During fiscal 2026, especially in second half, customers increasingly procured certain IBM hardware and software directly from IBM, while continuing to rely on Kindra for high-value services. That pattern has continued into fiscal 2027 and is creating a similar headwind to our top line performance over the last 12-month period. Importantly, these changes do not affect the scope or margin profile of our services or our ability to grow services content over time. However, they do reduce the size of our signings. And consequently, our revenue growth over time. And as we have said, this has limited impact on our earnings. Our outlook for fiscal 2027 continues to be based on the assumption that we'll see similar headwinds throughout the remainder of the year. Turning to cash flow. As a reminder, our first quarter is a seasonal use of cash driven by working capital timing. This year's free cash flow was $401 million outflow. Compared to the same period a year ago, we had higher payments related to multiyear renewals and annual prepaid offer subscriptions and lower billings and collections. This was partially offset by lower broad-based annual incentive compensation payments. Importantly, working capital dynamics were contemplated in our full year fiscal 2027 outlook. As we move through the year, we expect meaningfully higher earnings particularly in second half and stronger working capital to drive free cash flow. While quarter-to-quarter dynamics can vary, we continue to target a strong conversion of earnings to free cash flow on a full year basis. We have provided a bridge from our adjusted pretax income to our free cash flow as well as a bridge from our adjusted EBITDA to our free cash flow in the event base and more information on the free cash flow metric calculation. Our financial position remains strong. Our cash balance at June 30 was $2.1 billion. Our debt maturities are well laddered from late 2026 to 2041. And -- we plan to refinance or use cash on hand to fund our near-term debt maturity of $700 million. Our net leverage ratio exiting the quarter was 0.8x and and our investment-grade rating was recently reaffirmed by Fitch, Moody's and S&P. Under the share repurchase authorization, we bought 5 million of shares of common stock at a cost of $64 million in the first quarter. Since the inception of the program, we have repurchased 8% of our outstanding shares. On capital allocation, -- our top priorities are to maintain an investment-grade balance sheet and financial flexibility. We have remained focused on winning business with healthy margins, which takes significant discipline as enterprises prolonged decision-making. Over the last 4 years, we have signed contracts with projected gross margin in the mid-20s and projected pretax margins in the high single digits. We have again included a gross profit book-to-bill chart that illustrates how we have been creating and capturing value in our business with an average projected gross margin of 25% on signings over the last 12 months, we have added more gross profit dollars to our backlog than we have reported as gross profit over the same period. Having a gross profit book-to-bill ratio at or above 1 demonstrates the quality of force in signings and the expected future profit growth from committed contracts. And as Martin highlighted, new scope and new logos continue to increase as a percent of our large deal signings. Turning to our outlook for fiscal 2027. We continue to expect adjusted pretax income to be in the range of $600 million to $700 million. This pretax income outlook includes approximately $200 million of workforce rebalancing charges and a similar amount of savings associated with these actions to offset the charges. In fiscal 2028, these actions are expected to yield annualized savings in the range of $400 million to $500 million. Looking at the second quarter, we expect adjusted pretax income to be relatively in line with the $123 million we reported last year, which includes more workforce rebalancing charges compared to the prior year. The progress we are making on our workforce actions are on track to what we have previously outlined. For the full year, we continue to expect our free cash flow in the range of $400 million to $500 million. We continue to expect revenue to be flat to down 2% in constant currency with year-over-year trends projected to improve each quarter. Within that, we expect Kindra consult and our alliances related revenue streams will continue to grow. -- while at the same time, as I discussed earlier, we are assuming that our evolving relationship with IBM will be a similar headwind to what we have been experiencing. Taking into consideration the pace of signings over the last 15 months and what we expect to sign in the second quarter, we expect our second half 2027 revenue to be stronger than the first half. Let me now pass the call back to Martin. Martin?

Thank you, Harsh. To wrap up, we are executing against a clear strategy in a market where customers need trusted partners to modernize mission-critical environments, adopt AI and navigate increasing complexity. We're seeing momentum in the areas that matter most central consult, hyperscalers, Alliant load growth and AI-led modernization. Our differentiated capabilities, including Kendall Bridge and Agentic-AI, are helping customers deliver tangible business outcomes while creating opportunities to expand our relationships. At the same time, we continue to improve the quality of our signings, embed automation into our operations and drive greater efficiency across the business. Taken together, these actions give us confidence in our ability to deliver on our fiscal 2027 and our fiscal 2020 targets. Operator, let's now move on to questions. .

[Operator Instructions] Thank you, Martin. [Operator Instructions] At this time, we'll conduct the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jonathan Lee with Guggenheim Securities. Jonathan, your line is open.

Can you help us think through what's contemplated in the fiscal 2017 outlook across the key moving pieces, specifically the assumed consult growth pace, the level of science conversion assumed and any embedded assumptions around sales cycle duration? -- where do you see the biggest sources of upside and downside relative to be flat to down to constant currency revenue all range?

Sure. Thank you, and thanks for the time this morning. A couple of comments. I'll ask Harsh obviously, if he wants to add anything to my answer. So first, let's start where you did, which is on consult at the beginning of the year when we provided our guidance -- revenue guidance, we said consult would be kind of high single, low double digit. And I think we've just printed at 10%, so we feel very good about the start we had to stay within that range and have Consulteliver what we've embedded in our initial guidance. Additionally, we feel really good about the signings in the first quarter. As everybody knows, we have to keep the signings machine going and the 50% growth in consultant in the first quarter says our assumption for the year, it looks quite good. I would add to that, by the way, that in addition to the first quarter where we had good consult growth, I'd also say that we had a good July in signing. So I think we feel like we're on track to to deliver what we said for the year. Now let's recognize that while the 50% growth, for instance, in signings in consultant in the first quarter is certainly a help. We also have a tough compare in the second quarter with consults. Again, it doesn't affect the year. We're still confident in the year. On sales cycles, look, given what we do and the role we play in our customers' environments, our customers are making long-term decisions. And so that hasn't changed. At the same time, we run mission-critical. We run their hearts and lungs. So there's a big component of trust in how our customers make decisions and that hasn't changed. At the same time, the world is getting more complex. And since we had our last earnings call, for instance, mise was announced. And that's certainly captured the attention of the enterprise tech world. So our customers are making long-term decisions on mission-critical elements and the complexity of technology and what they're thinking through is still ever present. Is there -- in certain instances, is there a new dynamic, like sovereignty, for instance, in Europe, Sure, that's a discussion that leads into the overall sales cycle. But I wouldn't say that we're seeing dramatically different sales cycles. Again, relative to the role we play in the world on long-term commitments role of trust in running mission-critical and the complexity of technology. Harsh, anything to add?

Yes. A couple of things I would add. We continue to see momentum in a hyperscaler kind of that we have continued to see. And I think the higher value elements that we have in our signings. Once again, the new scope and new logo, continued at a pace of 30%, as Martin mentioned in his prepared remarks compared to 2025 fiscal which shows like 15%. And we do see a good mix of pipeline for new scope and new logo as we look forward as well. .

Our next question will be from Kevin Krishnaratne with Scotiabank.

Good strength, continued strength in the U.S., but I want to switch to the principal markets and maybe Europe was down 8% constant currency, 7% last quarter. I mean I think that's expected EBIT to last quarter about some of the headwinds on AI sovereignty and buying decisions. But just curious, is that ahead or below your expectations? And how do you see trends out of Europe evolving into Q2, Q3?

Yes. So a couple of things. It is all consistent with what we've assumed as we started the year and still supports our guidance for the full year. And the trends, as I just talked about, that we see in terms of deal closings and cycle times are not a lot different again, does Europe sometimes have a sovereignty discussion. It does sometimes, but by and large, it's the complexity of the environment that our customers are dealing with. It's the choices they have. And they know that while they need to commit over the long term to kind to run their infrastructure mission-critical -- they also know that in 3 months, somebody can make an announcement that changes the world of AI again. And so it's all of these things that I think come to a head a little bit more so in Europe than here in the U.S. Obviously, the world changes here in the U.S. as well, but the sovereignty issue is not at all an issue here in the U.S. So -- so no, the short answer is all consistent with what we assumed for our guidance. We're not seeing any trends, if you will, that would suggest the deal cycles are getting longer. It's just a world in which we live, and it's the role we play in our customers. Arch, anything you'd add?

Yes. I think it's consistent with what we had talked about. If you remember in the last couple of quarters, we had talked about U.K. as well as the European segment of strategic markets like that has been kind of what we have continued to see. So because as we were anticipating and not impacting our view for what we see the full year. Thanks. Operator, next question, please.

Our next question will be from Tianjin Huang with JPMorgan.