Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Kyndryl Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Lori Chaitman, Global Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kyndryl's earnings call for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2024. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These forward-looking statements speak only to our expectations as of today, and we are under no obligation to update them. For more details on some of these risks, please see the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2023. In today's remarks, we'll also refer to certain non-GAAP financial metrics. Corresponding GAAP metrics and 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. With me here are Kyndryl's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Schroeter; and Kyndryl's Chief Financial Officer, David Wyshner. Following our prepared remarks, we will hold a Q&A session. I'd now like to turn the call over to Martin. Martin?

Thank you, Lori, and thanks to each of you for joining us. I am excited about all that we at Kyndryl accomplished in our second fiscal year as an independent company, and I cannot be more proud of our teams around the world. We delivered solid fourth quarter results exceeded our full year targets on all of our three initiatives, alliances, advanced delivery and accounts and exceeded our guidance for fiscal 2024. We also delivered strong growth across Kyndryl Consult. We expanded our hyperscaler relationships and accelerated adoption of Kendall Bridge, and we're providing our fiscal 2025 outlook that includes substantial earnings growth and free cash flow. And importantly, we're pulling forward the timing of returning to revenue growth and now expect to deliver positive revenue growth in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year. With our consistently strong execution in fiscal 2024, we've proven that we can deliver on ambitious goals to strengthen our business and that we can grow in high-value areas that we target for growth. You may recall that this time last year, I said that our fiscal 2024 was a year of acceleration for Kyndryl. And as you can see from our performance, we've accelerated both our business transformation and our innovation, which have further solidified our leadership position in mission-critical IT services. We'll approach our third fiscal year with the same intensity and determination. This fiscal year, we will pivot from transformation to growth. It will be the year in which our top line inflects and half of our revenue is generated from higher-margin post-spin signings. It will be another year in which we delivered double-digit revenue growth from Kyndryl Consult. It will be the year in which our hyperscaler related revenue nears $1 billion. It will be the first year that we will…

Thanks, Martin, and hello, everyone. Today, I'd like to discuss our quarterly and full year results, our continued progress on our three age [ph] initiatives, the solid margins at which we're signing customer contracts and our outlook for fiscal year 2025, which began on April 1. We're enthusiastic about each of these topics and particularly our outlook. Our fourth quarter results reflect strong operational execution and continued progress on our key initiatives. In the quarter, revenue totaled $3.8 billion, a 9% decline in constant currency. The year-over-year decline was anticipated and primarily driven by our intentional exit from negative now and low-margin revenue streams within ongoing customer relationships, not by macro factors. As Martin highlighted, we continue to gain momentum in higher-margin advisory services. Kyndryl Consult revenues grew 15% year-over-year in constant currency, which underscores how we're growing our share in this higher-margin, higher value-add space. Consult Signings grew even faster at 30% in constant currency. Total signings grew 3% year-over-year in constant currency in Q4, our second consecutive quarter of signings growth and were up 3% in the year as a whole. Our signings growth for the year was strongest in our security and resiliency, core enterprise and ascend app state [ph] and AI practices. And with our momentum driving a strong April, our trailing 12-month signings through April 30 are up 7% year-over-year. Our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 19% to $566 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 350 basis points year-over-year to 14.7%. Adjusted pretax income was $30 million, a $91 million improvement in profit year-over-year. Consistent with the trends driving our performance all year, our 3A [ph] as were the key driver of our earnings growth again in Q4. For fiscal year 2024 as a whole, we generated $16.1 billion of revenue. Our adjusted…

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Divya Goyal with Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Good morning, everyone. Great quarter. So David, you mentioned towards the end of your script about the macro resilience of Kyndryl [ph] between Martin and yourself, you guys elaborate in the interest of investors, what makes Kyndryl so macro resilient despite a weakness being continuously noted across the technology services ecosystem? And what - how would this resiliency help you if the interest rates were to truly not go down as anticipated at beginning of the year?

Yes. Thanks, Divya, and thanks for the nice comment about the quarter. We feel really good about the year we just finished. And as I noted in my prepared remarks and you've heard it in David as well, we're very excited about the year. I think what we're seeing, and I think what we've been what we've been focusing our investors on is the investments we've made in our people, the investments we've made to expand their skills, the investments we've made to build new capabilities, combined with the investments we've made in our IP and our ability to turn our data into insights for our customers given the role we play in their environments. And again, we're mission-critical. So you combine great skills and engineering talent, new capabilities and innovation in the form of Kyndryl Bridge and actionable insights. And you put all of that into the context of business outcomes for customers in mission-critical. And I think you see why we see the momentum in our business and why it can continue to recognize that - we have only gotten Kyndryl Bridge into about just over half of the customer base. So we have a lot more to do. And even with that deployment, where we're generating about $3 million actionable insights for our customers per month, we have a lot more to get done. So look, we'll continue to invest in our skills. We'll continue to work with the ecosystem that matters to our customers. We'll continue to build new capabilities, and we'll continue to develop and deploy Kyndryl Bridge more broadly. And so as we move into a more consultative form of selling, which makes it very clear to our customers how our work is tied to business outcomes, I think we feel quite confident, quite good about our ability to keep momentum going in our consultant business. Would you add anything to...

And just as a follow-up on this very comment that you made Kindrel Consult. So obviously, it had an impressive growth this quarter itself, considering how the Consult business broadly, again, broadly thinking about it, the Consulting businesses have been a little bit constrained with respect to the dollars being allocated, but your Consult business has been growing impressively. So could you elaborate on what is it that's truly driving the significant growth and a reasonable run rate? I know David mentioned double digit, but what in our mine could be for ourselves, could be a reasonable run rate for the Consult business on a go-forward basis?

Yes. So a couple of things. And then obviously, I'll ask David if he wants to supplement. The nature of the Consult opportunities and the focus we have around infrastructure is one that is not discretionary is one that really needs to be addressed no matter what the economic environment is. And when Kyndryl engages with a customer and provides insights into how their systems are running, those insights can be geared toward helping them optimize their systems in a macro environment. By the way, everyone is looking to drive productivity. So helping them optimize systems is something that our Consult business does quite well, helping them, for instance, achieve their carbon reduction plans, which Kyndryl Bridge again, can help them understand how they're creating carbon across their footprint, helping them keep up with - helping them keep up with global best practices from the myriad of technologies, helping them understand the monitoring, getting ahead of problems. All of these things, again, related to infrastructure, all of these things in the mission-critical world will continue to drive our Consult business. From a run rate perspective, and again, I'll ask David to comment as well. When we started talking about Kyndryl Consult about 2.5 years ago, we identified already then that we had a bit of catching up to do, if you will, that we were - we mixed very light in the advisory side and that we thought the growth path, a very solid double-digit growth path, we would have in front of us for quite a while. And I think that's what we're still experiencing. We are growing the mix of Kyndryl Consult within the overall Kyndryl revenue mix. We are continuing to hire consultants. So we're putting more feet on the ground to help, and we are deploying Kyndryl Bridge more broadly across the customer base. In markets, by the way, that probably have a kind of a high single-digit growth rate to them. So we're gaining share across the Consult space in the markets we serve. So I'll - again, I'll ask David to comment, but I think we've got a really good long-term growth trajectory ahead of us in Kyndryl Consult. It is part of why we see ourselves getting back to overall revenue growth in the fourth quarter of this year. David?

That's right. And just to put a few numbers around that in fiscal 2024, we saw our Consult revenue up 16% in constant currency. It's become about 15% of our business overall. We see it getting over the next few years to 20-ish percent of our business. And given that composition of our revenue mix that we have, it means our Consult business is already quite sizable, north of $2 billion a year. And as a result, the double-digit growth we're seeing has a really significant positive impact on us. From a strategic perspective and an operational perspective, the growth we're seeing in Consult really gives us confidence in our ability to drive growth in areas like Consult and hyperscalers that we focus on for growth. And that we're confident that, that bodes really well for our return to growth later this year. And then the last thing I'd mention about Consult that's really important is that ideally, we're doing advisory work and implementation work in Consult that then gives rise to a managed services tail. So it actually is a positive feeder not only in its own right as a source of revenue growth that tends to have attractive margins associated with it. It also drives managed services revenues over time in many cases as well.

Incredible. Thanks a lot for the color.

Thanks, Divya. Operator, next question, please..

Your next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Thanks, good morning. Really good results here. I want to ask on signings. I know you mentioned the inflection and you've been marching towards that for a bit. But new logo versus renewals? Any comments on pricing? I know that in general, you're doing some transition with respect to pricing, the back book, but we're still hearing a lot of commentary around difficulty in getting projects started and difficulty in pricing and whatnot. I'm just curious around all of that.

Yes. Tien-Tsin, thank you. And thank you again for the nice - thank you also for the nice comments. So a few things on signing [ph] As you know, as we've described very consistently as we focused on moving the business away from low no and negative margin business, that has had an impact on the overall signings, but that's part of why we've driven so much progress in profit. So that focus continues to diminish over time. We made a lot of progress last year, and we drove a lot of profit progress while doing that. And even with the focus on profit, we managed to get a little bit of growth, right, low single-digit growth out of the overall signings number last year. And we would expect that we will continue to build on that base. Within that, as we've talked about, we focused on our customer base. We focused on expanding our relationships and wallet share within our customer base. So we are getting a fair bit of new scope within the existing customer base. And I know you made a distinction around new logo. Yes, we're winning some new customers, some entirely new customers. It just hasn't been a focus for us. However, having seen what our teams can execute within our customer base around new scope, having seen the positive response to the capabilities we've built and having seen the positive response to the innovation we're bringing, once we turn our sites toward new customers in earnest. And at scale, I'm confident that not only will we grow the scope within our customer base, but we'll bring on new logo as well in order to drive continued revenue growth path over the long term.

Okay. Very good. Just then my quick follow-up, just on the gross margins were very healthy ahead of what we had, do you feel like you're in a good place from a delivery standpoint? I know different pockets of the world are seeing different issues with respect to tech labor. Do you feel like you're in a good place? I know some of the workforce rebalancing is calming down here as well, but any updated thoughts there. Thank you.

Yes. I mean, again, I'll ask David for his comments as well. Look, our delivery remains world-class. Our delivery is the reason our customers are willing to take the journey with us into new spaces. It's the reason they're willing to engage with us and our alliance partners in new scope. And the team - our team has done a phenomenal job for the last 2.5 years and delivering every day and our focus around advanced delivery and our focus around Kyndryl Bridge has always been part of helping that. It has always been focused on delivering even higher quality, automating more so that our customers have a better experience. So I feel - touchwood, I feel like the role we play, which our teams take very seriously, the role we play in our customers' mission-critical environments is the one that motivates them every day to get up and deliver great service, and I think we're doing that.

Yes. And I think that's right. The gross margin improvement that we delivered last year is in the 300 basis point range. So we're making a tremendous amount of progress there. And I feel really good about where we are from a delivery perspective for two reasons. Number one, through our advanced delivery initiative, we've driven a substantial amount of progress, reaching $575 million of annualized savings already, it shows the progress that we've made, and we continue to have opportunity to drive incremental efficiencies from where we are. And Tien-Tsin, that's one of the reasons we've increased the ultimate goal for advanced delivery from the $600 million we had initially targeted to $800 million now. So it's a sign that we've got more runway and more benefits still to be gained in this area.

Thank you.

Thanks, Tien-Tsin. Operator, next question please.

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Friedman with Susquehanna. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking my question. I echo the congratulations. A lot of hard work here this year. I wanted to ask particularly about the accounts in the 3As is on Page 15. I'm just wondering, Martin and David, if I could get with perspective as to why that - because this is a key part of the investment thesis, why that seems to be performing better and faster with the $300 million of year-over-year earnings benefit. Why is that exceeding your expectations?

Yes. So a few things. Thank you again. Thank you also for the nice comments. Look, when we began and laid out the strategy, the 3A is strategy and particularly on account focus, we felt very confident that our customers would engage and come with us on this journey because of the role we play in their environments because of the trust that we've built up over years and years and years. And the fact is we're really good at what we do. So they love the engineering talent. They love the services we provide. So we were very confident in that. Now having said that, we also made a bunch of assumptions around the timing for these and what the ultimate landing spot would be as in how much content will come out, how much new scope will we get, what's the quarter in which or the year in which some of these customers will all align to get to a new relationship and sort of reenergize these relationships. And so we made a bunch of assumptions and the fact is that while we were confident going in with the basis for the strategy, we didn't know how long it would take. We didn't know what they would look like on the other side, and we didn't know what ultimately the ins and outs, the puts and takes would be in these relationships. And what's turned out is that they are as enthusiastic. Our customer base is as enthusiastic to work their way through these as we expected, and we're just getting them done a bit faster. And I think that's because I think that's because we have invested heavily in new capabilities. So we show up with new ideas. We've invested heavily in innovation. So we show up with new tools, a new platform to help them get more insights and we put all of that into a context of a business outcome for them. So it makes it easy to understand and easy to see why this will be better for us and obviously be better for them as well. And remember, all of this was in the context of how do we accelerate it from just its natural renewal periods, which extend well out into next 6, 7, 8 years. So we made a lot of assumptions. We've - the investments we've made in our people, in the ecosystem and in our IP and data are paying off and customers see the benefit to sort of resetting, if you will, these relationships, and they're better off. And obviously, we're better off.

Okay. Thanks for that. And then for my follow-up, David, you were going kind of quick there, and there was something you said that I don't actually see in the slides, but I'm sure it's me, not you, but when you were talking about the 575 is, I may have missed it, I apologize, but I thought that you annualize the savings I thought related to re-skilling, but it doesn't seem to be in the transcript. How are you annualizing the 575?

Yes. So the $575 million is the benefit that we're getting from advanced delivery compared to where we - compared to where we started. So in fiscal '23, at the end of fiscal '23, we were at a $275 million run rate from advanced delivery. And by the end of fiscal '24, we had increased it by $300 million to a $575 million annual run rate and we expect that to continue to grow from there. So that's really the key numbers, the key measure of our progress there that we point to.

Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jamie. Operator, next question please?

Your next question comes from the line of David Togut with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Thank you, good morning. And thanks for taking my question. I apologize if this has been asked is there are several calls this morning, but the strength in demand for Kyndryl Consult was notable, particularly against the consulting industry environment, which has been under pressure. Of course, Kyndryl Consult is nondiscretionary and the weaknesses elsewhere, really more in discretionary related demand. But could you go a level deeper on demand drivers for Kyndryl Consult in particular, how durable those demand drivers are if we look to FY '25 and beyond?

Sure. Sure, David. Thank you. And thank you for the nice comments, and thank you for joining. Kyndryl Consult has come up, and we do recognize that the performance that we're delivering and our view is not what you're seeing in many other places. And I think the reasons for that, which I'm going to talk about, the reasons for that are enduring and in fact, can continue, I think, for a period of time. So at our heart, as we've been talking about, we've been investing quite heavily in our team skills. We've been investing heavily in building new capabilities. And we've been investing quite heavily in building out our IP and the use of our data around Kyndryl Bridge. And so as our teams engage with new capabilities, with innovation and with relevant business outcome oriented ideas for our customers to pursue in this environment, in any environment, which can be around, for instance, how to optimize their systems. Everyone is interested in productivity in a macro environment like this, around resiliency, around how to get ready, for instance, for GenAI, et cetera, because of the role we play in their environments and the mission-critical nature of what we do, those investments are paying off. And we expect them to continue. And in fact, keep in mind that Kyndryl Bridge is only in about half of our customer base as we sit here today. So as we continue to build new capabilities with their alliance partners as we continue to invest in Kyndryl Bridge and bring new functionality and make more use of our data across a broader element, a broader piece of our customer base I see the enduring nature of why we're outperforming, why we're performing differently than what you see from others. I think that continues.

Yes. And when you think about some of the initiatives we've been pursuing to really see consult at the nexus of them. It's an area of focus in and of itself, but Kyndryl Bridge gives rise to additional consult opportunities and consultative selling opportunities. The alliances we have are very helpful from a consult perspective. Our practices are driving progress there, particularly in areas like cloud migration and mainframe modernization and security and resiliency and obviously, apps-sated [ph] in AI and even regulatory changes like DORA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act and the EU is giving rise to additional needs for consult work on our behalf. So we really see that - we see consult benefiting from a number of different initiatives and actions we've taken and even some elements of the macro environment.

Understood. And then just as a quick follow-up, your guide to return to revenue growth or to achieve revenue growth in 4Q of FY '25 seems a little early relative to the initial kind of spin presentation you gave. Is that a correct conclusion? And if so, what gives you the incremental confidence that you can get to revenue growth in 4Q FY '25?

Yes. So thanks, David. So we've - for 2.5 years since we've laid out the investment thesis 2.5 years ago, we said calendar '25 is the year in which we would get back to revenue growth. And really, what we're saying now is that - and obviously, calendar '25 starts in our fourth fiscal quarter. So really, what we're saying is that because of the progress we've made in the 2 growth sectors, which we've always been counting on to drive us back to growth, Kyndryl Consult and the alliances as an example, and the fact that we've done the hard work, the deepest part of the work last year around focus accounts and cleaning out the backlog. And we've eliminated or neutralized, if you will, the other areas that we've been trying to take out of our business like low margin, no margin OEM that we are confident now in that calendar '25, which we're still confident in calendar '25, actually can translate to fourth quarter of this year, which is the beginning. So for those who interpreted calendar '25 as maybe second half versus first half, so we're probably a bit more accelerated than what they would have thought. But look, we've got all the momentum. We've gotten a lot of - we've chopped a lot of wood last year around what the inhibitors to growth were, and we got great momentum in the growth drivers. So we feel good about it.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thanks, David. Operator, I believe that was our last question in the queue.

Yes. So that will conclude our question-and-answer session for today. And I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Martin Schroeter for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Thanks, and thanks for everybody for joining us. Look, you - I hope you can hear how proud we are and how energized we are by the progress we've made in the last fiscal year and how our very unique run and transform approach is resonating with and adding a lot of value to our customers because it allows them to continuously innovate while maintaining their operational excellence, which in the spaces where we operate mission-critical is absolutely vital. So we're in a fantastic position as we start this fiscal year. We've got many, many opportunities to win, and we're going to capitalize on those opportunities in order to drive profitable growth. As we look ahead to our third year as an independent company, I remain as excited as ever about the growth potential in front of us. And our foundational progress to date allows us to continue serving our customers' mission-critical needs with more capabilities and more innovation than ever before. So thanks again for joining us.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.+