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Kyndryl Holdings

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Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fiscal first quarter 2027 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Lori Chaitman, Global Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Kyndryl's earnings call for the first fiscal quarter, June 30th, 2026. 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. 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. 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 to 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 up with prepared remarks, we'll hold a Q&A session. I'd now like to turn the call over to Kyndryl's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Schroeter. 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. We continued to see positive momentum with hyperscalers. We continue to invest in the areas where we see opportunity, Kyndryl Consult, our alliance partnerships, and our agentic AI capabilities through Kyndryl Bridge and our IP to support and modernize our customers' most complex mission-critical IT estates. 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 pre-tax income and $1 billion in free cash flow in fiscal 2028. 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. Four 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 pre-tax 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. 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 agentic 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 toward our multi-year 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 six months, our total signings 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.

Among these 40 large deals, approximately 30% of their value consists of scope expansion or are new logos, which compares to 15% in fiscal 2025. Strong signings in Kyndryl Consult and momentum in hyperscalers are translating to revenue growth in these targeted areas. Kyndryl Consult revenue grew 14%, and hyperscaler-related revenue streams grew 48% in the last 12 months on a year-over-year basis. Performance in Kyndryl Consult and 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's results demonstrate broad demand from enterprises looking to design and scale agentic AI across their business workflows, modernize complex hybrid IT environments, and strengthen 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 agentic solutions at scale with our Kyndryl Agentic 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. 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. 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 mph capable bullet train on tracks built for 30 mph world. Equally challenging, as our Kyndryl People Readiness Report found, there's also a lack of skills, as only 23% of business leaders said their workforce is ready for AI. The need for Kyndryl's 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. 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, related to the previous theme, cybersecurity and resilience remain top priorities. As agentic AI becomes more powerful, as we've seen with recent frontier models, 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 and mission-critical environments where Kyndryl has deep expertise in governing and 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. Finally, while most AI investments were initially justified through productivity gains, customers are increasingly looking beyond efficiency toward growth, towards speed, and toward 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.

Let's talk about three 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's Agentic Modernization Platform with pre-packaged 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 customer's 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 as separate initiatives. We're bringing together Kyndryl Consult, Kyndryl Bridge, and our managed services expertise to implement an AI-native agentic 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. 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 Kyndryl'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 three examples, our AI-led modernization approach is accelerating transformation timeline 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 advisor 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. 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. 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 signings gain 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 pre-tax loss was $37 million. The year-over-year declines in earnings and margin were primarily driven by $152 million of workforce rebalancing charges incurred in the quarter.

These charges had more than a 4-point impact on adjusted pre-tax income margin in the quarter. Our Three-A's 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.

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, our expanding consulting, and agentic 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 spinoff, 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 four 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 Kyndryl 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. 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, free cash flow was $401 million outflow. Compared to the same period a year ago, we had higher payments related to multi-year renewals and annual prepared software subscriptions and lower billing 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 pre-tax income to our free cash flow, as well as a bridge from our adjusted EBITDA to our free cash flow in the appendix, and more information on the free cash flow metric calculation. Our financial position remains strong. Our cash balance at June 30th was $2.1 billion. Our debt maturities are well-laddered from late 2026 to 2041. 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 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 prolong decision-making. Over the last four years, we have signed contracts with projected gross margin in the mid-20s and projected pre-tax 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 post-spin signings and the expected future profit growth from committed contracts. 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 pre-tax income to be in the range of $600 million-$700 million. This pre-tax 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-$500 million. Looking at the second quarter, we expect adjusted pre-tax 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-$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 Kyndryl Consult and our alliances-related revenue streams will continue to grow.

While at the same time, as I discussed earlier, we're 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, Kyndryl Consult, hyperscalers, alliance-led growth, and AI-led modernization. Our differentiated capabilities, including Kyndryl 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 2028 targets. Operator, let's now move on to questions.

Thank you, Martin. At this time, we'll conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Jonathan Lee with Guggenheim Securities. Jonathan, your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you help us think through what's contemplated in the fiscal 2027 outlook across the key moving pieces, specifically the assumed Consult growth pace, the level of signings conversion assumed, and any embedded assumptions around sales cycle duration? Where do you see the biggest sources of upside and downside relative to the flat to down two constant currency revenue outlook range?

Sure. Thank you, and thanks for the time this morning. A couple of comments. I will ask Harsh, obviously, if he wants to add anything to my answer. First, let us start where you did, which is on Kyndryl Consult. At the beginning of the year when we provided our revenue guidance, we said Kyndryl Consult would be high single, low double digit, and I think we have just printed a 10, so we feel very good about the start we had to stay within that range and have Kyndryl Consult deliver what we have 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 Kyndryl Consult in the first quarter says our assumption for the year looks quite good.

I would add to that, by the way, that in addition to the first quarter where we had good Kyndryl Consult growth, I would also say that we had a good July in signings. I think we feel like we are on track to deliver what we said for the year. Now, let us recognize that while the 50% growth, for instance, in signings in Kyndryl Consult in the first quarter is certainly a help. We also have a tough compare in the second quarter with Kyndryl Consult. Again, does not affect the year. We are still confident in the year. On sales cycles, given what we do and the role we play in our customers' environments, our customers are making long-term decisions, that has not changed.

At the same time, we run mission critical, we run their hearts and lungs, there is a big component of trust in how our customers make decisions, and that has not changed. At the same time, the world is getting more complex, and since we had our last earnings call, for instance, Mythos was announced, and that has certainly captured the attention of the enterprise tech world.

Our customers are making long-term decisions on mission-critical elements, and the complexity of technology and what they are thinking through is still ever present. In certain instances, is there a new dynamic, like sovereignty, for instance, in Europe? Sure. That is a discussion that leads into the overall sales cycle. I would not say that we are seeing dramatically different sales cycles, again, relative to the role we play in the world on long-term commitments, the role of trust in running mission critical, and the complexity of technology.

Yeah, there's a couple of things I would add. I think the higher value elements that we have in our signings, once again, the new scope and new logo, it continued at a pace of 30%, as Martin mentioned in his prepared remarks, compared to 2025 fiscal, which was like 15%. We do see a good mix of pipeline for new scope and new logo as we look forward as well.

Thanks, Jonathan. Operator, next question, please.

Our next question will be from Kevin Krishnaratne with Scotiabank. Kevin, your line's open.

Hey there. Good morning. Good strength, continued strength in the U.S., I want to switch to the Principal Markets, and maybe Europe was down 8%, constant currency 7% last quarter. I think that's expected. You did talk last quarter about some of the headwinds on AI sovereignty and buying decisions, just curious, was that ahead or below your expectations, and how do you see trends out of Europe evolving into Q2, Q3?

Yeah. 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. 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 environments that our customers are dealing with. It's the choices they have. They know that while they need to commit over the long term to Kyndryl to run their infrastructure mission critical, they also know that in three months, somebody can make an announcement that changes the world of AI again. 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, the sovereignty issue is not at all an issue here in the U.S. 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 the world in which we live, and it's the role we play in our customers. Harsh, anything you'd add?

Yeah, I think it's consistent with what we had talked about. If you remember in last couple of quarters, we had talked about U.K. as well as the European segment of Strategic Markets. That has been kind of what we have continued to see. It was as we were anticipating and not impacting our view for what we see the full-year.

Our next question will be from Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Hey, terrific. Thanks so much. Hi, Martin. Hi, Harsh and Lori.

Just thinking about the workforce in general. You've got robust signings, you've got some savings on the way from the workforce rebalancing. I'm curious if you can just comment on resourcing or headcount and just your line of sight there in reskilling and lining up the workforce to deliver on the AI-led modernization and the value-added services work that you're focusing on. Do you feel good about the pathway there? I would expect you'd probably see some increase in revenue per head or PTI per head, just again, just looking for more detail there. Thanks.

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Tien-Tsin. A couple of comments, again, I'll invite Harsh if he wants to add anything. Our use of AI, which we've talked about for a number of years already, starting with the machine learning we use from the Bridge data that we have in order to automate things, now moving into an agentic world, for us, we have 1,800 or so agents in the infrastructure helping us get to solutions faster, helping us reduce impact events, helping us reduce errors, helping us automate things. It's very real for us, and it is something that allows us to free up people and reposition them in higher value roles, still with a customer base that trusts them. We've been very successful in doing that.

I think we've redeployed in tens of thousands of people since we started this process, I expect that to continue. There is a chance that agentic can accelerate some of that, we're just assuming that we can continue to free people up and redeploy them. Remember, our business model is one that's paid on outcomes. We have to deliver uptime, we have to deliver resiliency features, we have to deliver security features. I think what we've proven to ourselves, to our customers, and to our investors is that as long as we continue to deliver on those outcomes, again, agentic and automation actually improves quality, improves the way we deliver. We get to keep a piece of the savings we can generate as we manage those contracts. I think our customers see the benefit in efficiency, they see the benefit in quality.

I think that is part of how we've generated about $1 billion in cumulative savings since we were spun out using, again, machine data, Kyndryl Bridge, and our ability to automate and our Advanced Delivery initiative. All while our net promoter scores on the run part of our business, which is what our customers are really looking at, continues to improve. We're in world-class territory on NPS. We're in world-class territory on quality of service. The use of AI, the use now of agentic is very real for us. It's how our Advanced Delivery part of our strategy has generated a lot of value, and our model is one, again, that allows us to continue down this path and continue to redeploy. Harsh, anything you'd add?

I would say some of the deals that you heard Martin talk about, I think it's important to talk about the value that we bring through the forward deployed engineers that we bring, as well as the agentification that we're bringing. That's helping us win against some of our competition because some of the insights that we have on the existing environments is unique from our point of view. That's giving us an edge in some of the new scope, new logo that we've won. Also we know how to manage our bench, in terms of reskilling and redeployment. We have a great success rate in redeployment. We started to have great success in reskilling resources.

We now, as we talked about exiting last year into this year, importance of workforce management that we are doing, which allows us to manage the cost of something that's stranded. That's allowing us to think about this as a more holistic way that we are approaching it, and you cannot miss agentification as an important element of that.

Thank you. Operator, next question, please.

At this time, I'd just like to give a final reminder. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait to be announced. It looks like our next question will be with Bradley Clark from BMO Capital Markets. Bradley, your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I want to hone in on some of the new logos that were highlighted on the call, and specifically one in the presentation. More broadly, in this competitive environment, how is Kyndryl approaching new logos and where do you think your advantages lie as you win new customers, particularly in the Kyndryl Consult business? If you could also comment on any pricing dynamics that Kyndryl is experiencing approaching new logos for some of these services versus what you're seeing more in renewals with your existing customers. Thank you.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. Thanks for joining and thanks for the question. Look, we've had, and we've talked about this already at our Investor Day a couple of years ago. We've added hundreds and hundreds of new customers, and that certainly doesn't surprise us. We win for a number of reasons, and the most recent wins are tied to our leadership with the Kyndryl Agentic Framework, which provides the architecture and the delivery framework so that our customers, we can really industrialize the design and the integration, and then the operations of their infrastructure. The Kyndryl Agentic Framework is highly unique, highly differentiated in the marketplace, supported by Kyndryl Bridge. Kyndryl Bridge is the control plane, if you will, that connects the tools and the workflows and the telemetry and the automation across the enterprise.

It provides us with real-time data and provides our customers with 16 million, 17 million, 18 million insights a month on how their infrastructure is running. It also provides us with over 200 million automations a month. All of that's supported by our expertise and our engineering talent in the form of Kyndryl Consult. Some of that we've had, but we've also been very active and very aggressive in investing in Kyndryl Consult to get industry expertise and industry points of view, to get the talent that we need in order to help the Kyndryl Agentic Framework and Kyndryl Bridge land in the right spot. That expertise has proven to be hugely valuable and is why you see the great Consult signings growth that we've delivered over the last number of years and the continued revenue growth. These are very complex, as you would imagine, infrastructures.

It's not that when AI comes along or when agentic AI comes along, that our customers are adding a model or a new application. These are models and agents and workflows and applications that need data, and they need to sit on an infrastructure. Somebody, and this is why our customers call us, somebody needs to integrate and orchestrate and govern and operate that in a world that is highly complex and at scale. What the expertise we've built, the investments we've made, not only in our people, but in Kyndryl Bridge and our Kyndryl Agentic Framework, is highly differentiated in the marketplace, and that's why we see a good long-term growth arc for Kyndryl.

Thanks, Martin. Operator, I believe we have one more question in the queue, and then Martin's going to close us out with some remarks.

Thank you, Lori. Our next question is with Spencer Anson from Susquehanna. Spencer, your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking my question here. There's been a lot of talk over the years about mainframe modernization and COBOL modernization. Can you just talk to the opportunity you see there, how it might affect your business, and any impact to the relationship with IBM? Thank you.

Yeah, sure. Look, mainframe modernization is a thing. It's real. It's something we're experts in. We have more scale than anybody else in mainframe and mainframe services. That scale allows us to invest and create career paths for that next generation of mainframe talent. We have 8,000, 9,000 deep mainframe experts, but those 8,000 or 9,000 look more like my kids, instead of me, because we've invested and partnered with universities to build curriculums, et cetera. Our scale gives us an ability to invest there in what is a very common and important set of dialogues with our customers. Modernization, mainframe being one of those, but modernization in general, is the sort of the top of the list on what customers are thinking about. You heard some of this in our prepared remarks.

Modernization, in order to use the new technologies that are coming out, like AI, in order to stay ahead of the bad guys and become more secure and resilient, and in order to keep up with an ever-changing regulatory environment. Modernization of which, again, mainframe is one where we have more scale than anybody. We, I think, run more than half the world's outsourced mainframes. We're really good at this, and it is driving a lot of interest from customers because, again, I've used this metaphor before, AI and GenAI and agentic AI represents a nice, shiny new bullet train that can go 200 mi an hour, but most customers are still running on tracks that were built for 30 mi an hour. That is sort of a way to capture this idea of modernization.

As for the relationship with IBM, look, our relationship with IBM, it's quite good. It continues to evolve. We spent the first few years working very cooperatively and closely with IBM and our customers to execute our Focus Account initiative. We're largely through that, not entirely. Some of these have long tails. But we've worked very well with IBM and our customer base in order to execute that. Even today, we're lined up with IBM to help customers get to the right answer. By the way, that right answer is quite often a mainframe. And quite often, by the way, we have to modernize in a way that allows customers to continue to deliver the services. So modernization is real. Mainframe is one of those flavors. We have the scale and the investments and the capabilities that nobody else has to do this.

The partnership with IBM has been good, and I expect it will continue to be quite good because our customers, they need IBM's technology just like they need access to public clouds and all the other complexity we manage.

Yeah, I think the other thing that I would add is, eventually customers will decide, depending on their business needs, what business modernization they need and where the IT environment for them will go. It's important that we are bringing all the capabilities and high-value services to follow their volunteer, which is important to us. This means largely the whole ecosystem, we have to be relevant for all the ecosystem players. In some cases, mainframe, including private cloud, will remain relevant for them. They have to exist, especially the customers that we deal with, they exist in all such environment, and they will evolve around cloud, public cloud, they'll evolve around SaaS-based application, they'll evolve around private cloud and mainframe. There is a relevance that we have to bring across. And modernization for us means we're playing across all the spectrum.

Thanks, Harsh. Operator, I think that was the last in the queue. Before we close, a couple of notes. One, I do want to thank Harsh for stepping into the CFO role, and leading our finance organization, and being a critical leader here at Kyndryl for the past six months. Of course, before that, he was our first COO. After a distinguished career, Harsh has made the decision to retire. Now he will continue as an executive advisor here to me and to the leadership team. From the very beginning, from the start of Kyndryl, Harsh has been a trusted partner, he's been an exceptional leader who always puts the success of our customers, the success of the Kyndryls around the world, and quite frankly, the success of Kyndryl first. Harsh, thank you for your leadership.

As we announced in July, we're pleased to welcome Ellen Johnson as our incoming CFO. Ellen, highly experienced in driving financial discipline, operational excellence, and she is a great addition to strengthen our leadership team. Ellen officially starts in the role tomorrow, August 6th, and I know she's looking forward to meeting with our investors, our analysts, in the coming weeks and months. Welcome, Ellen. Thank you. Again, every day, we deliver the world-class services our customers and the world relies on.

Our focus this year is to drive progress across the targeted growth areas of our business, including Kyndryl Consult, the work we do around the hyperscalers, our modernization efforts, it's come up a number of times, and obviously, the role of AI and how our customers deploy it, and also how we use it to streamline the way we operate. We've got a great team around the world that's focused on delivering every day. We are, and have been confident in our ability to deliver the year and to deliver our multiyear objectives. Thanks everyone for joining.

Thank you for participating in today's call. You may now disconnect

Kyndryl Holdings (KD) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

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