Unisys Corporation Aktie

Welcome, and thank you for joining Unisys for our 2026 Investor Day. We're broadcasting live today from our headquarters in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, where our leadership team is gathered together and is excited to give you a look at our solution portfolio, our innovation, delivery and go to market. Let me walk you through the agenda for today.

We'll start with our Chief Executive Officer, Mike Thompson, we'll share some of the trends he's seeing in the market today and talk about our strategic direction overall.

Then we'll hear from Chris, our Chief Operating Officer. He'll talk about the delivery transformation here at Unisys. He'll also speak to you about our approach to artificial intelligence. After Chris, will hear from some of the leaders of our segments, starting with Sean, who leads our Enterprise Computing Solutions segment, which includes our ClearPath Forward ecosystem. After Sean, will hear from Manju, who leads cloud application and infrastructure solutions. Then we'll take a quick break before we're joined by Patrycja to talk about digital workplace solutions and some of the exciting market opportunities there. After Patrycja will hear from Joel, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Teresa, our Chief Marketing Officer. -- who'll speak about our partnership strategy and go-to-market. We'll wrap up presentations with our Chief Financial Officer, Deb McCann, so I'll go through our financial strategy and some of the medium-term targets we hope to achieve over the next few years.

After Deb will have a live Q&A session hosted by Mike, Chris and Deb and we'll be answering questions that you submit to the function on the side of the webcast portal throughout today's event. And we encourage you to do that throughout the event as questions come to you. Anything we don't have time to get to will follow up on, and you'll hear from someone on our Investor Relations team.

In between sessions, we'll also be sharing compelling stories from our clients, and we're really excited for you to hear about some of the breakthroughs we're driving for them every day.

Before we get started, I want to direct you to the disclaimer slide in the presentation for today's event posted on our investor website. As a reminder, today's event contains estimates and forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. Current expectations, assumptions and beliefs underlying these statements include factors that may be beyond our ability to control or precisely forecast.

Future results could differ materially from our expectations, and we do not assume any obligation to update these statements in the future. For more on these items and a discussion of risk factors, please see our recent SEC filings.

We may also reference certain non-GAAP financial metrics today, which we provide to give you a more complete understanding of our financial performance, but they are not meant to be a substitute for GAAP.

With that, I'll turn it over to Unisys Chief Executive Officer and President, Mike Thompson.

Hello. Welcome, and thank you for your interest in Unisys and participation in this event. Many of you we've been engaged with Unisys for quite a while, and we talk to you on a regular basis. Several of you are new to our story and are trying to understand better who we are and what we do. Good news is we have something for everyone embedded in our discussion today.

Client-focused and future ready is more than a rallying cry for our team. It's the essence of the strategic objectives that we established in 2021 and and the basis for the strategic decisions we've made around our people, process and solutions. The majority of the conversations that I have with clients from Fortune 500 CIOs to government CTOs come back to 4 basic things. They want AI embedded into service delivery from day 1, not bolted on afterwards.

They want results that tie to measurable business outcomes, not just activity metrics, they want a partner they can trust to navigate complexity over the long term, and they need the ability to move faster than their competition. These are not aspirational ideas. They're commercial imperatives and they're reshaping IT services right now and exactly what we've spent the last 3 years positioning ourselves to deliver.

Today, you'll hear from our leadership team how these imperatives are reflected in our portfolio, and our go-to-market approach and in our delivery. I hope you'll consider these imperatives as you listen to today's content. Just taking a look here at my agenda for today, as I've mentioned, we have some new folks joining us today, and we want to orient them and provide a refresher for everyone else as we're talking about who we are as a company.

As far as progress is concerned, I think we're in about the middle innings of the full implementation of our strategy. So we'll share what we've accomplished and what's left to do. We'll illustrate the alignment of our strategic objectives and how they've evolved. We'll also illustrate the importance of technology implementers and orchestrators as we believe that's the missing ingredient for full realization of agentic-AI.

Lastly, we'll give you a few takeaways to evidence the opportunities that are in front of us. So before we get started here, maybe just a little look into who we are. Our roots trace back over 150 years, which means we have a long track record of navigating change and creating and applying innovation.

The current construct of Unisys was formed in 1986 through a combination of boroughs and sperry, 2 of the most influential names in computing history. We're approximately 15,000 associates strong, operating in over 100 countries. We're not a start-up making promises, we're a global enterprise with a long track record of delivering securely at scale in the most demanding environments in the world.

The recognition we've earned reflects the work our people do every day. It comes from many sources, including industry analysts, clients and business publications. So why does this heritage matter for today's AI conversation? because clients aren't looking for just experimentation partners. They're looking for partners with proven experience. They're looking for a trusted institution that they can bet their careers and business. And that's who we are.

We have deep engineering routes and experienced hands in everything from hardware procurement, installation and brake fix, skills and solutions for asset management and service desk, proven experience in infrastructure digitization and application design and creation, a strong security reputation with the basis for that what we build into our solutions and services. We're a provider of high-power compute environments for some of the most demanding governments, industries and clients around the world, and we provide managed services that cross the continuum from mainframe to a genetic computation.

Coming out of our last Investor Day, we established a foundation in 2023, and we've committed to a multiyear transformation. Today, we'll illustrate that, that foundation has been set and that we're in execution mode. Furthermore, our strategy is applicable today as it was 3 years ago, even though the markets changed considerably.

First, we believe we reset how the market sees Unisys. We're now positioned as a company with AI-enabled solution and as an outcome-based partner. That reset is validated externally by our climb up the analyst rankings into leader or challenger positions in our priority solutions, and you'll see evidence of that in Chris' presentation. We believe this is a significant first step to growth as the analyst rankings are often the basis for getting invited to client RFPs.

Second, we've launched a new generation of AI-enabled solutions and stood up our agentic application factory that creates production-grade agentic apps and agents in weeks rather than quarters. We've upskilled at scale and continue to invest in educating our associates on the latest and greatest set of AI tools. Application of that tooling continues to augment and amplify our associates' capabilities. It avails them of a digital workforce to streamline operations and create capacity for scale.

Our capital structure continues to improve based on strengthened profitability obtained through transitioning clients to higher-value work, the application of our automation first strategy and a disciplined approach to allocation of capital.

Lastly, we have a defined path for free cash flow, which inflects positive as pension headwinds are reduced and stabilized. The strategy that we've evolved from 23 to 26 really takes us from defense to offense, and we believe it positions us for growth. We're now evolving that framework to operate an AI-first mentality.

As I mentioned, we think the missing ingredient for the full realization of a genic AI is the application of implementation expertise. From an industry perspective, we have the compute power and the tooling we need to create a new operating model. But from an adoption perspective, companies don't know how, where and when to use the tools how to embed them into their existing hybrid ecosystem securely and effectively or what the total cost of adoption means, and that's where we come in.

Our addressable market has evolved into new adjacencies. And implementation of a digital workforce via the use of agentic solutions and AI-enabled workflows are opening new doors and new opportunities. Our solutions have evolved into AI-enabled and not bolted on. AI is now considered a default operating layer across the hybrid technology stack. And our focus around the ClearPath Forward ecosystem has expanded beyond services and industry solutions.

We've witnessed firsthand from our clients that the ClearPath Forward ecosystem is a pillar of enterprise compute and an AI-first data backbone for mission-critical workloads across highly regulated industries. Our land and expand strategy is evolving into precision targeting, and we're expanding the use of our partnership engine using focus named account selling and doing it alongside our alliance partners, OEMs, hyperscalers and frontier model layers of the technology stack.

Margin expansion opportunities continue to evolve due to the Agentic-First workforce transformation. A mix of digital and human labor ultimately delivers higher quality and enhanced experience without proportional headcount supports to continue that margin growth. Operational excellence evolves into unlock free cash flow and provides a pathway to deeper investments into the business. This, of course, would be on the heels of our expected structural payoff of the U.S. pension a potential debt refinancing, which we believe we could do more effectively with improved EBITDA and leverage ratios and a continued disciplined use of working capital.

Net-net, the strategy we outlined in 2023 built the foundation for what we're discussing today, which we believe will help us realize a return to growth. The continuation or sharpening of our strategy based on what we've learned and the changes in market conditions are powered by an AI-first delivery model that's already in motion and accelerating.

Client focus and future ready, again, more than a tagline. It's the basis of our strategic decisions regarding people, processes, solutions and how we deliver value to our clients. AI is reshaping what clients expect from their IT service partners, not just faster delivery, but better and smarter outcomes. We believe companies that embed AI into their engagements and measure success by results will set the standard for service delivery of the future.

What's required are solutions with embedded AI and an AI-first delivery service team. Embedded AI means accelerating delivery, reducing defects and freeing talent for higher-value advisory work and not just in the delivery of IT services. That's what makes Agentic-AI different. It's the democratization of technology beyond IT and it extends the application of technology into client delivery and to other functional disciplines.

Outcome-based results baked into dynamic SLAs are becoming increasingly mainstream and rewarding partners who tie pricing to results, not ours, trusted strategic partnerships with deep roots and a long history of operating and executing BAU run is required to augment operational execution with agentic features.

We've got a deep engineering moat to leverage that AI with an operating stack that needs to work securely and in unison with the existing technology. Our approach also seeks to include a road map for continual improvement. Simply put, firms that demonstrate continual improvement and measurable ROI win renewals and expansions.

So why now? I want to be direct about what we believe is happening in our industry. Agentic AI is not the next iteration of AI. It's a fundamental step change, the most significant market expansion event in the history of IT services. We believe that, and we think the market data backs that up. As you can see on this slide, analysts are calling for $450 billion of economic value to be created by agentic AI by 2028.

One in 3 enterprises, software applications will contain some form of Agentic-AI. Usage of Agentic AI is expected to increase tenfold -- and the Agentic-AI market is expected to grow at a 44% CAGR over the next decade. Enterprise clients need a trusted partner to help build, deploy and orchestrate intelligent agents at scale. We believe companies that position themselves as architects of the Agentic enterprise will define the next generation of IT services.

The question for the room and the question I'm asking every day is who earns that role? We believe Unisys is one of the very few companies positioned to win it, and you'll hear that evidence throughout what we go through today's presentation. The timing of this event matters. We're not here to tell you about a plan. We're here to show you a business that's already executing this strategy with paying clients, measurable outcomes, a commercial model that's evolving to capture newly created value.

The debate is over. Three years ago, clients were asking whether or not to invest in AI. Today, the question is how to do it, how to do it fast, safely and at scale. That shift has fundamentally changed the sales conversations. We've organized our entire approach to AI around a 3-stage framework, develop, transform and orchestrate. This is not marketing language. This is how our teams think about client engagements and how we measure progress.

Develop is where we help clients build the foundation data readiness, AI governance frameworks, security architecture and the infrastructure required to run AI workloads reliably. You can't run before you walk and a lot of our clients are discovering that their data environment and governance structures need to work before AI can deliver at scale.

Transform is where the business value starts to become visible. Additional influxes of agentic workflows, intelligent service delivery and AI augmented workflows are all examples of that. This is where in resolution goes from hours with multiple engineers to minutes with a single engineer. This is where our clients start to see the ROI of AI. From an orchestrate perspective, the destination is running at scale. Enterprise-level companies securely and responsibly with an eye towards continuous optimization is the right end state.

Adopting AI as an ongoing process, not an event. In a perfect world, this is self-funding, and the advantages continue to compound, which allows clients to operate faster and cheaper than their non-AI competitors.

Today, you'll see examples of how each of our business units map directly to this framework and how it plays out with real clients and real outcomes.

Lastly, I want to call out a few items that hopefully you can help to listen for today's content, and we'll tie in some objectives that we're trying to obtain. These points should stitch together one Unisys, and you'll see the continuity of our strategic objectives.

First, we're in the midst of a multiyear transformation, reinventing ourselves as a leader in the future state mission-critical IT solutions built for an agentic world. Trust, scale, security and depth of enterprise knowledge is a combination most AI native competitors simply don't have. Trust takes decades to build, and we've earned that. The market opportunity is real and now the Agentic AI is not a 2030 story. It's a today story.

Second, our AI go-to-market model, develop, transform and orchestrate gives us access to a larger addressable TAM. Every client engagement has the opportunity for new scope and expansion, which is how we expand wallet share without expanding headcount proportionately. You'll see specific proof points of this from each of the business units.

Third, our people are the engine for our AI-first delivery mindset. We continue evolving our workforce through an AI-first capabilities and delivery mindset. AI trained associates, future-ready solutions and the digital plus human delivery mix are how we scale repeatable outcomes without proportionately scaling costs.

And fourth, we're at a financial inflection point. We believe the pension liability that's hindered our capital structure is on a defined path to resolution. Margins are expanding. New business TCV is growing, and we believe our strengthened balance sheet can now be used to fuel growth.

With that, you'll hear from Chris Arrasmith on future-ready solutions and how we're building an AI-first delivery organization that scales without proportional headcount growth. Sean Tinney is going to explain how our ClearPath Forward ecosystem with Five9's availability and AI at its core is modernizing without disrupting $56 trillion in transaction flows.

Manju Naglapur is going to show you how cloud applications and infrastructure is becoming the delivery engine for the future of a genetic enterprise. Patrycja Sobera will speak to how digital workplace is giving employees back time and making infrastructure and physical AI a real competitive advantage. And our commercial team with Joel Raper and Teresa Poggenpohl, will show you how we're rewiring our commercial engine to close faster and go broader.

The through line here is simple. Unisys is not transforming for transformation's sake. We're evolving our transformation to better serve our clients, grow our business and create sustainable value for our stakeholders. I'm confident you'll see evidence of this throughout today's presentations.

I'd now like to hand it over to Chris Arrasmith, our Chief Operating Officer.

Thanks, Mike, and thanks for those of you with us today for investing some of your day with us. Really happy to be with you, and we've got some ground to cover. So let me briefly review the agenda with you.

First, we're going to talk about our AI transformation journey at Unisys and the building blocks of the operational transformation that Mike was just alluding to. We're going to talk about our capabilities and solutions our AI-powered workforce, the convergence of human and digital labor, our growing ecosystem of strategy around partnerships and alliances; and finally, some elements that we believe make up what we call the Unisys Edge.

When we think about the pillars by which we define our AI transformation, we've been on this journey for some time. And you wouldn't be surprised to hear that some of the elements of that are really baked into the foundation, not as an add-on, but core to the mission of the company and interwoven throughout all of our solutions and services.

We start by thinking about moving in an agentic workflow orientation from operating systems of record, in some cases that have been around for decades in other cases, more recently developed but moving from those systems of record to creating systems of action, taking advantage of the data sitting inside of those systems. And we're creating that future with our workforce.

I mentioned the convergence of human and digital labor, really operating in a mode whereby we enable our associates at Unisys to have the skills that are required to operate new tools in a new paradigm, driven by AI such that they can work together with digital workers, the digital labor footprint of the future that will bring our solutions to life.

Our partner-led ecosystem has been growing over time and we anticipate that it will continue to grow as time passes. We'll talk in a couple of places today about tools of today and tools of tomorrow.

And lastly, all of what we are doing is really built for scale. We've talked already about the length and breadth and depth of our expertise in industry, and we are operating in a phase of repeating and continuously scaling our capabilities over time to bring value to clients and not just in pilots.

When we think about all of the solutions that we bring to the market, the portfolio has an array of AI-infused capabilities. And in fact, we also understand the way that clients rely on us to bring forward additional capabilities as well. So we are answering for today's problems and helping clients to anticipate what we believe are their next series of problems to solve.

In some cases, that relates to the fundamentals of the foundation by which they establish their AI strategy. how they think about the data that's nested in systems and the ways that they need to bring that data set forward to take action against it. In fact, there are likely workflow transformations and processes that have to be reimagined, redefined and reengineered. We need to consider the way that we give agency and create new agentic capabilities for the operation of those transformed workflows.

We need to ensure that we've got an operating model that includes the infrastructure requirements in what is expected to only be an ever-expanding hybrid mode of operating and that we do so responsibly and securely over time. And so again, while we infuse those things into our defined solutions of today, we offer clients alternating and differing journeys based on where they find themselves in their own transformations.

When we talk about the pillars of our go-to-market strategy for AI, you've already heard about develop, transform and orchestrate. We want to give a couple of examples about what we mean inside of each of those capabilities. When we think about data and the development of data environment readiness, we are applying that in one instance to a large university data system, unlocking the power of that data to make that long-standing knowledge base available to all of the constituents that, that university system is serving.

And in addition to that, for a multinational banking client, we're taking advantage of the similar view of long resident data and systems to create pathways to the future unlocking the potential of those systems for customer experiences and the propagation of skills across that client. In transformation, we are looking at a genic workflow deployments in a growing number, we believe that the future of Agentic is only going to expand.

And today, we look at that from a proactive issue detection and resolution to ways that customers are operating and interoperating with those systems on an ongoing and daily basis. And in some instances, what our previously thought to be well-worn workflows as it relates to complex infrastructures are achieving new heights of efficiency and reliability and security, thanks to Agentic operating models. And in orchestration, when we think about continuous optimization you wouldn't be surprised to hear that we expect to be better tomorrow than we are today at operating complex systems and infrastructures and ecosystems. And importantly, as I mentioned previously, the tools of today are not necessarily the tools of even tomorrow.

And we believe that a strong and growing ecosystem enables us to create optimization opportunity on an ongoing basis, driving value for our clients. When we think about the workforce of the future and again, the convergence of human and digital labor, we consider that past roles such as analysts, customer success leaders, systems architects and engineers, testers, subject matter experts, they are all necessarily part of a new reality, and they need to be recontextualized in the face of that new reality.

When we think about the way that those roles I just mentioned become the future AI strategists, the outcome-based leaders, the architects of new transformed workflows the validators of AI-based systems development and testing. And lastly, the translators of expertise and depth in domains and you couple that with real-time data insights that are available through the use of today's AI tools, we are talking about a workforce that is prepared for making real the promise of the solutions that we have been developing over these last several years.

And it's that convergence of the solution readiness it's applicability to the market and the ways that our associates drive value through those AI tool sets and create new roles for themselves that we believe expands value for our clients well into the future. And I want to be clear that we are upskilling across our entire global team of associates. We expect every Unisys associate to be learning and improving upon their AI skills over the course of time.

I mentioned earlier as well, the necessary expansion of a partner ecosystem. And our approach says that we don't have to build everything ourselves at Unisys, we can bring the best of what's available forward to help solve client problems in their own context. Our strategic partnerships continue to extend our reach and capability, and our alliances across hyperscalers, across infrastructure, software providers, model providers, the list goes on, is only going to expand. And it enables us to have a reach and a depth that only augments some of the reach and depth you've already heard about today for Mike, and you'll hear about as we go forward.

But just know that we anticipate fully that our partner ecosystem is not static and will be growing over the course of time. When we think about the Unisys Edge, we've got several key points that I want to visit on with you.

First, when we think about end-to-end AI, we mentioned here the idea that AI at the edge is just as important as it is in the hybrid cloud and data center future and the propagation of public and private AI models is a great example of that. We are positioned at scale globally to provide service and solutions that touch all of those elements of a vastly expanding ecosystem.

In addition to that, security and governance have long been parts of Unisys proud history, and we carry that into the future. We believe that security and governance will be and need to be built into every layer of the operating model, the solutions, the services, platforms and products that are brought forward. We have a proven enterprise delivery model at scale.

We've been doing that for a long time. Our depth of industry and process knowledge that are a result of that proven scale are unmatched and we believe are a significant differentiator for our future. And lastly, that Agilent practical AI says that we meet clients wherever they might be on their journey, solutions that are well fit for specific problems they may have today and road maps and paths that enable them to envision their next horizon and the 1 after that, so that they and we can help them to drive real-world enterprise outcomes.

As a brand, we promised to power breakthroughs. And you heard before some of the industry validation that we have been garnering over these last several years, -- and so we wanted to take a moment to show you some of that recognition from global rankings to our presence on a growing number of global reports across a variety of providers. And as well, we wanted to make sure to tell you that we're also focused on ensuring Unisys continues to be a compelling place for associates to work and build a career.

And so you'll see that we have also been garnering a variety of recognitions for the depth and quality of the experience that we provide to our associates over time. Thank you for the opportunity to share more depth around our strategy and how we're making it real.

Before I go, I would like to give you a look into our largest global delivery center in Bangalore, India. Like I tell our team every time I visit -- there is no other place at Unisys quite like it, and I'd like for you to see some of it now. Enjoy.

[Presentation]

Hello. I'm Sean Tinney, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Computing Solutions at Unisys. And I'm here to give you an overview of our ECS business and discuss the impact of AI on our ClearPath ecosystem. Now what you're going to see over the next 20 minutes is a business that's not only durable, but one we believe is accelerating and how AI is not migrating workloads away, but rather driving more workloads onto it.

By the end of this section, I want you to leave with 3 convictions. First, this revenue stream is sticky. Second, that it's growing in relevance. And third, that it has the opportunity to become more profitable as AI reshapes how our clients consume it. So let's take a look at how we're going to spend our time today. I'm going to walk you through our solution portfolio and the market opportunity behind it. How we're driving AI at the core, a demo of our digital system administrator to show AI operations in action, and we'll close with some client values and outcomes. So first, let's start with what we actually sell.

Our ClearPath ecosystem is not a single product. It's a 3-legged stool of recurring revenue. At the core of this 68% of that revenue is our ClearPath license and support business. These are our core operating systems, our products that drive our clients' mission-critical systems and operate under long-term recurring revenue contracts. 21% of this revenue is our ClearPath Managed Services. These are the standardized services we deliver around this product ecosystem, managing and operating these systems on behalf of our clients. This also helps expand our wallet share with this client base. 1% of our portfolio revenue is our business process outsourcing services that allows us to move up the value chain with our clients and into the business processes themselves.

So 3 things I want you to internalize here. First, the majority of this revenue stream is contracted under long-term recurring contracts. Second, the risk of migration is extraordinary, both in terms of dollars and risk; and third, our standardized services layer drives operating leverage.

So now let's take a look at what's going on in this ecosystem and around this ecosystem. The premise of this slide is simple. -- mainframe workloads have doubled over the last 15 years, and they're poised to double again. with AI as the accelerator. If we look on the left-hand side, what the research and analyst community is telling us, the mainframe market is expected to grow at roughly 6% a year over the next 5 years through 2033 with AI as the accelerator. 90% of IT leaders are planning on deploying AI directly on to the mainframe. MIPS growth, MIPS being a unit of workload consumption are predicted to grow 2x over the next 2 years at midsized enterprises.

And with all this transaction volume growth, 70% of that workload running through these ecosystems. That's the profile of a growth industry. And there are several structural reasons why this is happening. Data gravity favors the core. Enterprises want their AI inferencing happening near their system of record, not away from it. So that is driving this AI inference on to the platform. co-located with the transactional data.

These new agentic and AI and code assistants are spinning up in the ecosystem, driving that workload growth. And the added requirements for data sovereignty and post-quantum security are driving more workloads not less into these ecosystems. So how are we poised to capture it? We have AI integrated around the core, hybrid consumption models. greater than Five9's availability, all on a globally secured platform. Quite simply, this market is running towards us.

So to put it plainly, the structural tailwind here is real, it's externally substantiated and accelerating. And we believe our portfolio is positioned to benefit from it. If the previous slide talked about the structural forces around this market. This slide talks about the buyer behavior.

Now for over a decade, the CIO narrative was cloud first, modernization by migration. But that error is over. The market has decisively moved to cloud Smart, modernization without disruption. And look at where it matters. -- high-volume data sensitive industries like retail and banking. These are industries that can't afford the cost of disruption, the latency, the risk.

Highly regulated sectors like financial services, health care and government. Where these distributed cloud-based architectures can't meet the audit requirements and complex manufacturing environments or workloads quite simply run more economically on the ClearPath ecosystem.

And there are forces that are driving this. New technology creates the threat of new bad actors, creates more regulatory and audibility pressure drives more need for cyber security and cyber resilience. The cost of these distributed ecosystems continue to rise surprising many CIOs. You're also seeing performance in consistency on workloads that are running that. These noncritical workloads. So business cases are up ending.

And as Mike pointed out earlier, ecosystem flexibility they need to maximize your investment and modernize without disruption is becoming the need of the day. So why do we win? All of these factors play right into what has been at our core for years, mission-critical workloads in a secure and resilient environment and perhaps most critically, we're built to modernize and integrate with these cloud AI and digital channels. and not compete with them.

So how do we capture this? It's really 3 mechanisms, develop. This is our client growth engine. AI at the core modernizing on the edge, continuing to provide workload and performance balancing. This is how we extend the runway of our ClearPath Forward ecosystem with our clients. transform, tying our technology and products to the business outcomes and the industries that our clients operate in, allowing them to drive faster application creation using ClearPath is the data hub and not the transaction engine -- this is how we allow our clients to do more with ClearPath and not with less.

And then orchestrating the future of work, ensuring we have the right skills at the right level of experience, supported with the right technology to help shape the future of work for our clients. And that's how we drive accretive services revenue. Underpinning all these are 5 key advantages that are core to our business unit. Consistent and low TCO. Consistent and incremental modernization, the access to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and modern languages as a function of the estate and a secure and reliable ecosystem. This is why our clients renew. This is why they expand.

Now if we take a look at the road map that's driving all of this, it's anchored by 3 core tenets: security, performance and interoperability. Security. When the phases now of crypto discovery, getting ready for post-quantum readiness and into predictive security policies. Now why this matters commercially, is we're staying ahead of the post-quantum transition that's going to hit every one of these regulated financial and government institutions in the coming years. And this justifies our premium pricing in regulated industries.

On performance, creating a framework for hybrid computing, native language support and continuous dynamic workloads. The system is always on. It's always performative. This is what drives workload growth and this is what drives workloads expansion. Interoperability, ensuring we can work with the AI applications of today setting the foundation to work for tomorrow and solving the problems of the future with Quantum and classical integration. This is what allows us to layer accretive services revenue around this.

All of this underpinned by emerging technologies, enabling our clients to modernize one quarter at a time. So we're going to talk about something that we believe fundamentally changes the economics of this business, and that's artificial intelligence. AI is not a feature we bolted on to the ClearPath.

It operates in 4 reinforcing loops around the core. Number one, AI-driven integration, ensuring our ClearPath ecosystem can work with these emerging AI models, but doing so in a way that does not expose security and data flows at the core. This extends the runway and the life cycle of our ClearPath ecosystem.

Number two, AI value realization, ensuring when they're running these models that they're validated against structured data taking the validated business rules that is in this system. This increases speed to value, reduces hallucinations and justifies our pricing power, AI data sovereignty. We're our clients' digital backbone of today and setting it up to be the digital and AI backbone of the future.

This justifies our premium pricing and ushering into AI-enabled operations. Orchestrating with structured data sets, the operations of tomorrow, driving AI into the operational mechanism, supporting them with the skills they need. More integrations drive more in our operability, which drives more platform value and more revenue per client. This is the flywheel. So we're going to take a look now at a demo of our ClearPath digital system administrator.

And 3 years ago, Chris Arrasmith as the General Manager of this business stood here and talked to you about our Endurance program. how we were training the next generation of ClearPath engineers on skill sets and coding languages that they didn't receive at university. How are we bringing them up to handle this ecosystem? -- and the evolution of that Endurance program has evolved into AI-based knowledge management into AI-enabled operations and our ClearPath digital system administrator.

We're going to look at this through the hypothetical scenario of incident resolution. Now this isn't the same incident resolution that you and I have when we submitted a ticket about our computer not working. These are mission-critical incidents. My website is down. I can't reconcile my transaction. Now traditionally, these incidents come in, and it's all hands on deck. You have a team of engineers each with a different discipline, level of experience, skill set, all trying to understand the root cause of this problem. What is the application layer like what is the infrastructure layer? What is it the database? What is our partner ecosystem, test the solution, retest the solution, retest the solution and then finally moving something into production.

The whole time cost to serve is going up, resolution time is going up, satisfaction is going down and the potential for revenue leakage is compounding. In an AI-enabled scenario, a single cross and upskilled engineer, working with a team of digital engineers behind them, proactively managing this situation. Same scenario. -- vastly different cost to serve. Now let's take a look at our digital system engineer or DSA.

[Presentation]

Okay. So let me close the loop with some numbers that really matter because these define our moat. Greater than Five9 availability. This is what our clients expect, and this is what ClearPath delivers consistently. 700 million airline passengers processed in 2025, 150 million payments reconciled per year. $6 trillion in Interbank U.S. payments processed. $450 billion mortgages managed at over 1 million transactions a minute. These are not nominal transactions. These are the transactions that power global economies.

And on the right, perhaps the most important number on this page, 0, 0 incidence of compromised ClearPath user data. That amplifies every number you see on the left-hand side of the screen. And what this also tells -- is the cost of switching off ClearPath is not measured in dollars, our emerging technology. It's measured in systematic risk to global operations. Now I'm going to bring Manju Naglapur up onto the stage. And he's going to tell you about our cloud application and infrastructure business. But before I do that, I want to leave you with 3 takeaways in 1 client story.

First, this revenue stream is durable. 68% of our portfolio is recurring licenses on clients who run some of the most mission-critical workloads on earth. Switching costs are extraordinary, both in terms of dollars and risks, -- and we've had 0 incidents of compromised user data at Five9 availability. These are not commodity workloads, they're sovereign scale. Second, this market is growing. The mainframe market is growing at 6% a year through 2023, driven by the power of artificial intelligence.

The market has shifted from cloud first to Cloud Smart. -- and IT leaders are deploying AI directly into the mainframe. This is a tailwind. And thirdly, this revenue stream has the potential to be margin expanding. AI-enabled operations compresses our cost to serve, effectively translating into operating profit. ClearPath is client-focused, future-ready and scalable for clients to build our futures on.

Now I'm going to let you hear from one of our clients building their future on ClearPath. Our relationship with Carnival Cruise Line goes by nearly 50 years, starting with 1 ship at 1 port and evolving into their entire operations. It's a story of partnership, story of modernization. It's a story of growth. Please listen to Carnival Crops line.

[Presentation]

Hello, everyone. Good day. I'm Manju Naglapur. I'm the SVP and Global General Manager for CAI cloud applications and infrastructure business unit. CA and I listen the core of the enterprise. We work at the intersection of hybrid cloud, applications, security, data and AI, not just to modernize technology but to build organizations that are resilient, intelligent and ready for the future.

The market has moved past AI experimentation. You heard from Mike and also from Chris in the opening sessions, the pilots are done invested with. The real challenge now is secure, scalable execution in real environments. Most enterprises lack the foundational elements to operationalize at scale. AI is won or lost on foundations.

And the gap between ambition and readiness is our next big opportunity. We're aiming to close that gap through our solutions by orchestrating transformation, end-to-end, connecting strategy to measurable outcomes.

At the end of the session, I want to leave you with 3 takeaways: one, we operate the foundation. The work we do sits in the core of enterprise is trusted and mission-critical. The market now exactly needs what we operate; two, we orchestrate the enterprise landscape. Taking advantage of these foundations, we are expecting to drive autonomous agent-driven actions at the enterprise. Three, we help enterprises reimagine for the new world of AI. We closed that gap as an AI-first services organization, combining our AI framework and delivery model to embed intelligence into operations and delivery.

Today, we'll show you how that drives outcomes across our solutions. In this session, we'll start with the market opportunity, then walk through the strategy and delivery approach. From there, we'll dive into our solutions portfolio and our AI framework. And finally, we'll transition to AI orchestration action and client outcomes.

Let's start with the market opportunity and growth. The traditional TAM for C&I was growing a little over 5% in a $1 trillion-plus market, let's say, mid-level CAGR. Now AI just reroute the math, the AI market is $2.6 trillion over the 3-year time frame from 2026 to 2029, growing at around a 30% CAGR. This is an opportunity at a much bigger scale. Out of this, we can focus our efforts on $1.6 trillion AI growth opportunity across infrastructure, cloud, applications, orchestration and security with a projected CAGR of 26%.

By aligning our capabilities to these segments, we are aiming to capture this projected market growth by delivering differentiated value. We are not chasing all of it. We're targeting 4 segments where our moat is the deepest -- as you can see at the left of the screen, AI-driven infrastructure demand, enterprise AI orchestration, AI-enabled application transformation and security and governance for AI.

Now what gives us the right to play in this $1.6 trillion pool. First, our engineering moat, Unisys spent years building, transforming and operating some of the world's most complex enterprises. Second, agentic execution. Unisys is aligning our organization around an agent operating and execution model. three, enterprise and domain context intelligence. This is a core differentiator and our more defensible asset.

Beyond foundational models, Unisys brings deep accumulated understanding of client environments and industries that gives real execution advantage for trusted governance as a not star. Clients don't just want AI that works. They want an AI that can stand behind. We understand that governance isn't an afterthought. It's foundational to how our solutions are designed and delivered.

We are aiming to become a resilient AI-first partner, combining enterprise context, governance by design, deep engineering and agent execution to consistently deliver outcomes in a complex real-world environment. We have now going to be talking about the alignment to the market evolution. We have been through multiple evolutions in the past 16 years. cloud and accelerated digital transformation until 2024.

We are in a new phase of this market that many are calling the intelligent super cycle, and that's driving a much more significant transformation in how we operate. The market expectations have significantly changed technology investments to business outcome expectation is getting close to real time due to AI. And we are aligning our business to this new reality.

As you can see on the right side of the screen, demand is now market pull with clients seeking faster time to value, which we are addressing through our paid rapid value assessments that identify and prioritize impact fast. -- or we call them as RWAs. As an example, when we go into a prospect or a client, we are not spending months in terms of due diligence on workloads or application terrain or even security.

We are able to provide assessments within 2 to 3 days. I think this is a game changer today, which is also helping our commercial division in terms of getting to a better prospecting. And now if you think about value measurement, which is shifting from unit-based milestones to our outcome-based models, we are bringing -- beginning to align delivery to business outcomes, not just SLAs and KPIs.

At the core, we are moving towards a repeatable operating model that blends human expertise with an agentic digital workforce. The things tie this together, what you see along the bottom. Context-driven intelligence. Every decision informed by client-specific environment, nonlinear speed, outcomes that don't scale with headcount and measurable value.

Every engagement tied to a number, the client cares about -- that's the evolution. It's not an incremental upgrade, but a fundamental shift in how the business creates value. So what is our transformation strategy with all these changes happening around the world? AI is becoming a part of nearly everything we deliver, not a side project bolted on later. The difference shows where it matters, faster delivery in projects, leveraging our AI framework with a clear ambition to lead the market.

As a result, we industrialize delivery, driving compounding value well beyond initial implementation. We have simplified our commercial models and link them to client outcomes. -- nobody cares how many tickets we close, but they want to know what measurable outcomes we delivered and last, and this is the one I care about the most. We have been building a fluency in our own teams. This is where artificial intelligence meets human intelligence. We have been upskilling our associate so they can operate and scale with digital labor and not just talk about them. So how do we reimagine our portfolio for the future.

Our portfolio focuses on hybrid cloud applications and security core domains for enterprise transformation. This reimagined portfolio is built on our experience with Unisys as Clint Zero, combined with hard 1 client credibility and moves it decisively up the value chain towards higher growth and margin opportunities in the new AI economy. It's how we help our clients develop, transform and orchestrate. The things should matter to you.

First, aiming for higher mix shift, our AI-first AI-infused portfolio, intelligent operations powering hybrid cloud, data foundations that activate enterprises and the agency applications that move the needle. This carries structurally higher margins than traditional services. As that mix shift, these new services grow as a share of revenue and the branded margin rises with them.

Second, the moat. It's the Unisys Intelligence Accelerator or what we call as UIA, -- the AI framework that powers the entire portfolio, it works 2 ways at once. It makes us sharper and more efficient across our installed base and it lets us compete aggressively for greenfield wins in the markets we did not play before.

Third, delivery. We have reimagined how the work gets done, human plus agent teams forward deployed engineering and AI-native talent. This decouples revenue growth from headcount growth and allows us to scale. We believe we have the right-sized engineering team and deep industry expertise for the new AI world. So the takeaway is simple, a trusted foundation a portfolio moving up the value chain and the delivery model through a framework built to expand margins as we grow.

So I've talked about our AI framework, UIA, but I really want to dig deep into this for at least a few minutes. If you think from a delivery standpoint, we expect IA to execute 2 things at once. -- a margin engine and an excellent into new business. It captures the blueprint agent and the industry client context, making it reusable. So each engagement in an industry is cheaper to deliver than the last -- we're converting a linear cost services business into 1 with software like operating leverage. And why can't the competitor copy it? The technology anyone can will -- what they can build is what UIA accumulates and delivers as a compounding value. The proprietary context on mission-critical enterprises to run for decades.

The Frontier model is rentable by anyone tomorrow. Our understanding of these environments is not. That's the moat, and it continues to evolve. We treat models as interchangeable and focus our differentiation on intelligent routing and enterprise context. This brings fin off discipline to AI consumption, selecting the right model on the right compute for each use case. That approach lowers token cost, strengthens margins and gives us the confidence to make more aggressive AI-led investment bets in new pursuits.

One thing to live with transforms a services business into a compounding 1 where reuse drives margin proprietary context defensibility and model commoditization works in our favor. To show the power of this UIA framework, I want to share a demo that illustrates the agentic model actively driving decisions and workflows with human in the loop, governance ensuring control. Lets watch the demo.

[Presentation]

I hope you enjoyed this demo. The true measure of this approach is client outcomes. We are delivering measurable outcomes at enterprise scale across industries. Clients see faster modernization, greater resilience and reduce operational complexity. Let me highlight a few examples.

First, let's explore a client story for our national instruments. National Instruments now are part of Emerson is a leader in automated test and measurement systems. The initial challenge we faced 1.5 years ago when we were working with this client was it had a large portfolio of legacy applications, which is slowing down modernization. And it was increasing operational complexity with mounting legacy debt.

So when we think about the leaning in terms of Gen AI, we were able to embed AI into development life cycle automating core conversion, automating testing, reverse engineering code and also documentation and also providing an outcome where the client was modernized in months, not years. This typically -- this kind of a project would have typically taken years with the same size team and we were able to modernize upwards of 90-plus critical applications, improving speed, quality and overall delivery efficiency.

This demonstrates how AI accelerates modernization and reduces tech debt at enterprise scale. Now let's transition to a client story about Cushman and Wakefield. They are a global commercial real estate service leader.

The challenge that Cushman and Wakefield had was the rapid growth, which led to fragmented systems and inconsistent operations across 400 locations, driving inconsistency and operational inefficiency. The approach we took was to create a unified cloud platform with AI ops and AI-enabled automation and ServiceNow based orchestration across operations.

The outcome we generated here was we helped them save $35 million, about $35 million in savings over a 5-year period. There were a lot fewer incidents. Faster resolution and improved availability and operational resilience. This illustrates AI-driven operations delivering cost savings, stability and improved enterprise performance.

Now I'd love to tell you about Caixa, a bank and a financial services company, representing a vast majority of market share in Brazil's market sector. The challenge here was it was a highly complex regulated environment requiring integration across systems and always on reliability. They were on a modernization path and existed in 2 words, legacy and new. They wanted highly complex integrations to happen across the enterprise.

The approach we took here was to integrate these 90-plus critical systems and also 280-plus application program APIs, or application program interfaces, embedding Devsecops automation and security controls that was needed for this highly regulated environment. The outcome here was we are today supporting 120,000 transactions per minute. -- and 27 million monthly contracts at enterprise scale. This shows how automation and orchestration enable mission-critical operations in regulated environments.

So now let me talk about how we lead with partners and recognize -- how we are recognized by the analysts. We don't build AI in isolation, and we don't ask you to take our word for our capabilities.

On the partner side, we deliver with 30-plus of the leading names in AI, the hyperscalers, the foundation model providers and the platform players. In fact, we just won Dell's data center Partner of the Year, highlighting our ability to deliver across complex environments. This matters. We're not locked into one stack, so we architect what's right for your business.

And on the analyst side, if you look at to the right, 23 independent reports have evaluated our capabilities, and we have earned 10 leader rankings with 32 additional leader rankings in subcategories. What makes it so impactful is that it's external validation, confirming we deliver at scale.

In closing, I want to share a very special client story, CSU, California State University. They have been a client and a partner for over 2 decades -- let's hear from their Chief Information Security Officer, George Mansour, as it tells his story about our journey together. Thank you for your time today.

[Presentation]

Welcome back. My name is Patrycja Sobera, and I run Digital Workplace Solutions business unit here at Unisys. Well, before I start, a quick reminder of the Q&A, we would love to hear from you. So please use the chat on the side of the webcast portal. While we've already heard about our enterprise strategy and our AI framework and how my peers Sean and Manju are bringing them to life. Now let's shift to focus on our Digital Workwear Solutions business unit and how we're evolving this space, not just from a digital standpoint, but also physical and human aspect. So agenda Western, who leads our solution management, will start with market opportunities, key trends in digital workplace will then bring it to life with a demo.

We'll also walk you through our solution portfolio and its evolution as well as examples of actual outcomes we're delivering to our clients every day. And finally, we'll close with where we're taking DWS next in terms of growth. So let's start with market trends.

Well, over the past 12 months, 4 market trends have really accelerated -- number one, every CEO out there is asking for ROI on AI investments, not just use cases, but how do I get employees skilled up in AI? How do I drive adoption of the -- how do I avoid the problems like hallucinations or data leakage.

Secondly, the endpoint economics are under tremendous pressure. The cost of memory is driving volatility in PC pricing -- and the CIOs feel stack between investing in AI ready devices versus deferring that cost to later.

Thirdly, most enterprises are actually investing in employee experience, and they understand how it links to customer experience and ultimately to business performance, but they're still struggling to connect it though, especially with telemetry in a metric-driven way. And lastly, the geopolitical situation in the world has introduced complexity and additional regulation demanding much stricter data governance.

So these 4 trends alone show us the workplace is becoming more complex, more critical and really important to running any business operation successfully. And according to forecast from Gartner and Everest, we see a steady growth trajectory in this market. backed up by demand to invest in modernization of Digital Workplace, which we believe gives us a great opportunity to grow.

Weston, what's our strategy to capitalize on this?

Well, maybe I could start with that first trend that you mentioned that ROI, getting an ROI with I loved how earlier Manju talked about AI for the enterprise and bringing AI security to the enterprise as well. I think for us, Patricia, the focus is on the human side of -- and so there's a couple of strategies that we bring about.

First of all, we know you can't just deploy tech and expect it to just magically work. I mean that's especially true with AI. So we are providing professional services that help our customers' employees figure out where to use AI, when, how and even sometimes why they need to be using AI. The second aspect of our strategy is we all know that data is key to be able to make your AI working properly. I mean we know these LLM seem to have sucked in every bit of the Internet -- but do they have your corporate knowledge? Do they have your key business processes baked into it. In most cases, they don't. Hopefully, they haven't, right?

So what we are doing is to provide integration between the corporate data and these LLM that you've purchased. And then going beyond that to find the missing data that needle in the haystack. And potentially, the second trend that you mentioned was the high cost of PCs. I mean that's a killer, right? We have a three-pronged strategy for that. First of all, can we keep PCs longer? We have a beautiful intelligent PC refresh program that looks at the reliability and the performance of every PC in the estate, and we determine how long the piece can be kept before it starts becoming a problem, often keeping it longer than the warranty -- the second aspect is extending the life of the devices, physically doing something to them. I mean that could be something simple like sending a technician around to blow out the fans, so your CPUs running a little bit cooler or even remotely wiping and reloading the operating system, so it's running fresh again.

And the third prong of our approach there is to ask this question, does everybody even need a PC I mean through our persona-based workshops, we're finding that some individuals mining a PC, some might need an AI PC and others might get away just perfectly fine with virtual desktops and others, maybe just an enterprise browser. Now Patrycja, what about proactive experience, that third trend? What is our strategy there?

Absolutely. Look, some really close to my heart. Since the inception of our experience management office 5 years ago, we haven't looked back. experience really underpins all of our services. We haven't stopped transforming from reactive to proactive, predictive and preemptive telemetry driven, insight-driven environment for our clients. Our priority is really to remove all the digital friction before it translates to a support call to a service desk. We are also a founding member of the XL Institute, and we've created a framework of XLA, experienced several agreements 2 of which are actually in production environment today, looking at device, looking at application, looking at persona and now even physical workplace like meeting room XLi.

And all of this experience ethos really supports our services technicians and field services technicians as well with deep telemetry with one-click automation, we're really always customer 0 when it comes to our own innovation. And then lastly, the geopolitical situation and all that instability in the world has created an increased demand for data solvency and governance.

And this is really why we designed our service experience accelerator to run in tenant with security in mind and to be third-party independent. Our clients' data is housed 100% within their domain, so we can actually still provide the full set of services but without compromising any of our clients' data. And it's super important to every client out there, especially on my side of the pump. So look, we made some really big claims huge amount of buzzwords. Let's see how it works in reality. So it's time for a demo. And you'll see here how we're bridging the digital and physical workplace to really deliver value to our clients.

[Presentation]

Great. Well, let's unpack what we just sell that. With deep AI-enabled telemetry we predicted issue before it impacted a live production environment. So in this case, we're able to maintain operations at 80% capacity by reducing the load of that failing voltage regulator whilst we're orchestrating a panini fix, which was actually using Agentic AI to help us dispose the right technician with the right skill with the right certification in the right location, truck just like you would track and Uber. So what's also important here is that clients who combine our offerings like services operations like field service will really benefit from that continuous knowledge loop and really will get the maximum value from our solutions. Weston, what's the full scope of our digital workplace services. How are you evolving these?

Well, maybe we can take a look at the left side of this slide here because these are the 5 priority solutions that our clients are telling us -- this is what's essential to have a modern digital workplace. We've talked a lot about experience. So we have an experience as a service offering. So what is that exactly? What we do is we proactively monitor every device in the client environment and proactively detect and fix the issues, especially for people that are suffering in silence, and we fix those before they even call the service desk.

Now of course, there are going to be issues that come into a service desk. And when you need more help, we deliver in a genetic service desk. And we saw, for example, in the demo there, that last part of that video, that knowledge graph, where we're collecting all that information, that's being supported by our knowledge curation tool that finds the, I don't know, the needle in the haystack, that one last bit of data that's hidden away somewhere that's absolutely essential to fix a key problem in your environment.

And thirdly, when in-person support is needed, we've invested heavily in that space. Our field services and engineers. I think we -- I'd like to say we give them superpowers with the AI that we are feeding them to help them solve their problems. We talked about the high cost of PCs, Patrycja, and our device subscription service is key to helping our customers reduce the cost and the complexity of managing their PC environment.

And fifth, Unified Endpoint Management, and I just want to be clear here. This is not unifying the management of just endpoints. It's unifying the management of everything in the digital workplace. And so what does that include? I mean, here we are in a smart conference room. There are smart buildings, more and more sensors are showing up, smart factories, smart restaurants. We're looking to manage all of that environment in the digital workplace.

Let's now move to the right side of the graph here. These are the 5 growth services that we put forth. All of them are using AI in one form or another. So the first one, IoT and connected devices, there are sensors showing up everywhere. We just talked about smart building, smart factory, smart office, smart restaurants. All of these devices need to be installed, managed, configured, supported, and that is a big growth area that we see.

Remember in the demo that knowledge map that we saw at the very end, absolutely needed for an IT service desk, finding that needle in the haystack. But I'd like you to just imagine going to a single holistic help desk in your organization and asking any question about your company, not just IT, but maybe HR, travel, finance, maybe even some of your key business processes. All of that is backed up by this knowledge management.

Thirdly, we've talked at length about data centers exploding everywhere. There's 3 being built in my state alone. They all need liquid cooling and high-end storage services and we've been ramping up our services and training for our field engineers to take on this growing area.

The fourth area, ESM, enterprise service management. That's like ServiceNow, those sort of platforms. Now you may say, hold on a second, ESM, that's not new. What are you talking about there? True. But you remember, Mike talked about how these platforms are all embedding AI in them. And that's true with the ESM platforms. Our customers are saying to us, hey, these bots are showing up everywhere. What do I do with them? Can I standardize can I reduce my cost? And so we see this as another great opportunity that we're already delivering for our customers.

Lastly, sustainability. I mean Europe has been on the sustainability and with bandwagon for quite some time, but this energy crisis is now causing our U.S. clients to ask us, how can I reduce the cost of my energy consumption. And to be clear, this isn't just a single offering. This is something, Patrycja we're baking in across all of our offerings to be able to tap into that telemetry and make it possible.

So hopefully, if we take a step back, the strategy should be clear. We're building on our strengths, key strengths we've highlighted here. We're now tapping into some key growth adjacency markets. Maybe now I could take a look at some case studies. And to be clear, we're not just going to talk about what we're doing in our -- for our clients. But I think more importantly is what's the measurable business outcome for the clients.

And we see that especially in this very first client that we're going to look at a European construction client. I mean they had an admirable goal, they're wanting to get an ROI out of their AI. They got 10,000 employees. They want to get them all up to speed. And so of course, we're going to provide training and data-driven OCM to figure out who's using AI, who's not using it, why are they not using it and how to get them up to speed. But I really love how this client said, "You know what, let's start with the executives. Let's get all the executives in the room. " And so we did. We had this Pompton workshop where they learn how to use AI properly. They saw the power of it themselves. The outcome, they came out and they said that was an awesome workshop. -- we can now walk the talk and when we tell our employees to get on board, we can mean it.

Now Patrycja what's an example of a client where experience management come into play?

Yes, absolutely. I love this example. Well, look, this is a global manufacturing firm to whom we gave back 49,000 productive hours over a period of 1 year. How did we do it? Well, by driving proactive, predictive, again, data-driven insights leading to the removal of PC or application issues before they occur, which if you think in the context of this organization, the most important persona is the R&D engineers -- so time back in productivity means that they are able to focus on product development and not calling the service is about R&D application performance issues. -- which then contributed to an increase in the number of products they launched in Q4 by 4 times.

So essentially, we removed 50,000 hours of digital friction to enable this organization to focus on what they do best, which is create products. So look, we just covered some great examples of value we deliver to our clients, whether it's AI enablement, whether it's knowledge curation, experience management. We want to shift gears a little bit and focus on field services. This is actually the largest part of DWS business and the largest expansion area for us. So let's play a video and see how we're infusing airfield service with AI as their frontline companion.

[Presentation]

Well, what you just saw is how we are enabling our frontline worker with a genetic AI, making every technician faster, smarter, more effective in real time. And that's exactly what's allowing us to move up the value chain. This is how we're actually expanding field services into higher-value opportunities. So at the lower end of the market, traditional OEM repair and workplace support are actually becoming a little bit more commoditized, price pressure is high here. But as you move up the stack, the dynamics change.

So in areas like multisite environment or higher infrastructure, the cost of failure is actually significant. So here, clients are willing to pay a premium for expertise for consistency for global execution we're known for. So overall, this AI infrastructure space with data center growth on the back of AI is huge. I think it gives us great opportunity. This is actually where the demand is.

So whether it's liquid cooling, whether it's high-end storage as an example, this is exactly where we focused on in terms of growth. So if our global footprint, our AI-enabled workforce, our execution, we can win these high-value segments.

So look, I'll wrap up. I hope that you can see our passion and how excited we are about DWS growth with our experience-led delivery, reducing friction and driving value to our clients every day. with our investment in AI across services and client environments. It's not just a momentum for us. It's the momentum supported by analysts, advisers, the industry and also the communities we're part of.

Our funding membership are increasing, excellent Institute as an example, where I also have a pleasure of serving as a member of their advisory board as well as service council. So with everything aligned, the market, the technology, the community, we strongly believe that we are positioned here for growth and continued success.

And with that, all the remains to say, thank you for being part of this journey with us.

Hi. I'm Joel Raper, Chief Commercial Officer here at Unisys.

And I'm Teresa Pogenpul, Chief Marketing Officer at Unisys.

Today, we're going to share a few highlights about our go-to-market strategy. First, I'd like to discuss our sales strategy and how AI solutions that you've heard about today from all the great presenters will be key enablers for growth. And then next, I'm going to talk about how we have infused AI into our sales process.

And then last, Teresa is going to discuss how our marketing strategy is driving awareness and consideration for Unisys at our clients and prospects. So let me start first by saying how exciting of a time this is Teresa. As a technologist nerd, we're living in a magical world and it's really exciting to be part of where we are with AI that you've heard about all day today. So hopefully, you've heard that AI is not an initiative at Unisys. It's about an operating at the core of Unisys.

The winners in this market won't just be companies that talk about AI. It will be the ones that fundamentally change how work gets done. -- for all the first time -- or for the first time in modern times, at least by modern times, large enterprises are slower to implement AI at their core. They're struggling with things like governance and security and process changes and non-native AI employees that must adapt and learn about the new world that we're in. That's exactly what we're addressing here at Unisys.

We're not layering on AI into existing processes, but kind of rewiring them through the strategic ecosystem of our partners, including Dell, AWS and Microsoft and many more that you can see here on the screen today. These partnerships accelerate how fast we can take the capability to market. And while Unisys differentiates on integration, execution and outcomes. AI through us is an important part of that. Simply put, automate before you add effort into our delivery models.

With the sales force agent force that you just heard about from Patrycja we're already running 1 of the largest AI-driven field services operations globally, pretty exciting. -- autonomously routing over 1 million tickets annually, auto scheduling the appointments and delivering industry-leading first-time fixed rates across more than 100 countries.

With Azure open AI, we're transforming service delivery into an genic model, the biggest struggle that enterprises face today, automating triage, resolution, knowledge creation while self-enabling self-healing operations. AI with us is how we work alongside with us. This is how we help clients move from experimentation to real outcomes. Again, a big struggle in the enterprise. Because AI first model effort is no longer the proxy for value, the outcomes of what it delivers is. We're starting with focused industry-specific use cases tied directly to real enterprise challenges, whether that's application modernization, service operations or engineering productivity. We have started to do this alongside with Microsoft, where we're developing a more bespoke AI applications to solve very specific industry challenges. -- in higher ed, in health care, manufacturing and financial services, embedding agents built to solve very specific outcomes, and you heard a couple of examples today on that.

That model, combined with partner platforms and models with our understanding of the uniqueness of enterprise environments, we can quickly deploy improve value early and solve real operational constraints from day 1. That's about creating fast, credible entry points that scale into long-term engagements with our clients. AI for us, this is something very dear to my heart as I have kind of gone on this trajectory within the sales organization is we're running Unisys as client , again, something you've heard in every 1 of our business units today. whether it's a bedding Microsoft Copal into the corporate functions or using GitHub copilot with Claude into how we build and modernize our applications.

We're using continuous structure upskilling programs to build AI fluency across our entire organization. I'll talk more about this shortly, but let me close one really important point. This is very deliberate. It's a model that position us to win consistently. Unisys partners with global enterprises managing complex, distributed environments, mission-critical industries, where resilience is no longer negotiable, as you heard from Manju, a mid-market organizations seeking enterprise-grade outcomes efficiently.

These environments face fragmented systems, high cost to serve, limited visibility into the value. And that's exactly where we believe our model is designed to win. Using AI-driven automation, intelligent operations and outcome-based delivery to deliver these measurable results is the answer. That's what makes this repeatable targeted growth strategy for Unisys.

Now let me show you how we're translating the AI first operating model into a modern, scalable sales engine. So the sales engine 2.0 is how we build leading sales organizations and AI first market, 1 that is repeatable, instrumented and improved productivity quarter after quarter. This market has already validated the shift, AI-driven enabled our enablement is expected to significantly accelerate sales velocity. And with the key point is simple. This is not about tools. It's about how you operate, how you go about it, what's the mentality of the people that are using this data. It requires a shift in their mindset completely, from selling as an individual effort into running a system where intelligence is embedded and scaled right in front of you.

Let me show you a little bit about that. So first, guided selling with embedded intelligence. We're embedding AI directly into the cadence of selling. That could be meeting preparation, call plans, executive ready, messaging, risk identification and more importantly, next best actions. What is the anticipation of what's coming. At the same time, we're simplifying. We're going to just deconstruct our sales process, evaluate our tech stack. So sellers spend less time on administrative work.

We've taken actions to reduce processes and tools but we're still filling each 1 of our sellers with more data information to make us create the sales engine 2.0. We spend more time where it matters with clients building pipeline and driving velocity. AI-enabled white space discovery is something that's big for us. You've heard Mike talk about the growth that we have within our existing clients and understanding what is it that they have needs for? What are their interesting? What are the things that make the opportunities for our solutions to be valuable within those companies. This is creating a pipeline that has more predictability to it. And we're using data and AI to systematically identify unmet needs with those expansion opportunities.

So we're no longer reliant solely on the individual insight, but are augmenting with it and a more complete data-driven view of each one of our accounts. And last, the rapid value assessments, which you heard a little bit from Manju, most of our enterprise clients know that they need to act now. Many of them are struggling with a way. And so we're creating these rapid value assessments to help them with the stall decisions that they have, shared understanding of where the value that these rapid value assessments can create.

Our RVA addressed that directly. The sales motion is done by identifying the ideal client to go after based on specific signals that they have in the market. And it's quickly structured for engagement that identifies where that value is trapped and quantifying the impact of that value and translating that into a clear prioritization for a road map for each one of those clients.

And fourth, outcome-based pricing. You heard about that, I think, from most of the earlier presenters. We historically have been in a world where I think customers always wanted an outcome base, but never could pull the trigger because of the complexity of setting that up. But now AI is changing that completely. And Mike touched on this.

Historically, our model, much like the rest of the industry has been tied to effort. We're paid by the amount of people and things that we bring to the table. Well, we would price early and then spend weeks valid in the solution before we ever got to delivery.

Now AI has fundamentally changed that dynamic. As AI removes the manual effort and reduces incidence, the question becomes, does the price go down or is the value increase. Well, our view is very clear on this, the value increases. So we're involved. We have evolved our model towards value-based and outcome aligned pricing, including elements like gain share and revenue share. As we remove cost, the complexity from the clients' environment, their costs go down and our margins can improve. That creates a much stronger alignment, focus on outcomes, not activity. And this is a key part of how we differentiate in the AI first market.

So net sales engine 2.0 is not about tools. It's AI fluency within our people. It's value creation within our offerings. And it's a durable commercial model that implements continued the improvements continue to compound. So let me pass this on to Teresa, who's going to talk a little bit about the marketing efforts and how we're targeting our customers.

I really love hearing Joel's story about how our commercial team leverages AI and tech tools. It's really, really powerful as you heard. And in marketing, we, too, leverage AI and leading-edge tools to find and nurture relevant clients and prospects at their key decision points. Digital channels are the backbone of our marketing strategy and enable us to be very, very targeted but also to be very efficient with our dollars.

And I'm going to share 4 examples of how we're using tech for smarter marketing. First, intent signals. We harvest intent signals from activity across the Internet and our website, and it helps us identify people who are exhibiting strong interest in a particular topic. So for example, we might be able to see that 10 people from a specific company are all searching on various terms related to application modernization. These intent signals strongly suggest that they are in market to purchase services in this area.

Second, precision targeting. We need to find these people without waste. We AI really does a great job of enabling us to target our audiences in the right place at the right time with the right message. So if you stay with the example of the 10 people that were researching various AI or app modernization terms, we can target them directly on the websites that they frequent and serve our ads on the topic to them.

So in real time as a researching, we're sending them our thought leadership, client stories, et cetera, on that topic. That enables us to position Unisys as a real leader in app modernization as they're doing their research and making their decisions.

Third, personalized journeys. When these people get to our website, we show them tailored content that's based on their intent data. So pop-ups would show the next piece of content based on what we know they viewed before. And again, it's just storytelling and adding and evolving the story based on what they do.

Fourth, predictive analytics, we use AI to optimize all of our campaigns to prioritize target accounts and to focus on the prospects with the highest intent to buy. And all of this and everything in marketing that we do is powered by AI, which we really call a force multiplier. An example, we do content creation. It helps us with writing.

We develop ads with AI. We do research with AI, and we also optimize our campaigns using AI. What I'm showing here is a range of campaigns that we have in the market. ranges from thought leadership campaigns, lead generation campaigns, account-based marketing campaigns, and they're all really focused on a few goals.

One is to drive awareness for Unisys and our key solutions. The second one is to generate leads and really help Joel and his organization have something to work with when they go to market. And then finally, help influence our target audience to help the commercial organization win when they're selling. These ads are driving real momentum for us in the market.

And we want our clients -- we want to get our clients and our prospects to our website, to consume our content, to learn more about us, and these ads do just that. For example, if you find one of these ads might be on LinkedIn, they might be on the Wall Street Journal or Forbes as our target audience is consuming information. We want to get their attention and have them click in to learn more. And we're really, really proud that these ads are driving a click-through rate that is 3x higher than the industry average.

Again, you got to hook them, have them click and then go and learn more. Our web visitors are up 54% year-on-year. Asset downloads. That means that you find a piece of thought leadership and they download it, up 52% year-on-year. And we're seeing really strong engagement with an AI chatbot that we have on our website.

We launched it a couple of years ago, and we weren't sure really how it would perform. But what the chatbot does, it's AI-enabled, but it enables our visitors to ask specific questions and get an answer to be directed to specific content or even book a meeting with a subject matter expert. And we've seen continued year-on-year growth in meetings booked and the chatbot itself has become a key channel for lead generation.

Again, we're trying to make it as easy as possible for our target audience to engage with us. And there's nothing like hearing from our clients about how we deliver breakthroughs for them. You've heard a few stories as we've shared them with you today, but we leverage these client stories in our advertising.

We have a wide variety of client stories that we promote externally. And that we're really proud of, including what you see here, Benjamin Moore, we have Cushman & Wakefield Carnival USA, California State University, and I encourage you to go to our website, check them out and learn more. These ads really do drive tangible impact for us. The ad that you see on the right is a digital ad.

Again, something that you might see on Wall Street Journal LinkedIn. And again, the ideas took them so they click in and really want to learn more about what we did for Benjamin Moore. We have different formats for these ads. We have longer form Benjamin or ads that feature the CIO, and you can hear directly from the CIO about the powerful work we did to help their business.

And just if you focus just on this Benjamin Moore ad, the stats are really powerful, 18x the click-through rate from the ad to our website versus other content that we deliver. The campaign itself, just for Benjamin Moore to date, has driven more than 73,000 visitors to our website to learn more. And once they're on our site, they stay 4x as long, which is exactly what you want them to do. And then I'd just share a fun story.

After this ad launch, I think it was only in market for a couple of weeks. Another company in the industry actually reached out to us after seeing the ads because they, too, wanted to learn more about what we could do to help them. It's exactly what you want to have happen.

Account-based marketing is also a key pillar of our marketing strategy. The goal of account-based marketing is to influence key stakeholders with curated content that aligns with what we're trying to sell. Ultimately, we want to expand our share of wallet and we want to win deals, and we can use our content delivered at the right time to help influence those buyers during their decision-making journey. And AI itself has enabled us to significantly scale our account-based marketing over the past 2 years by creating content, helping us optimize and do all the things I talked about earlier.

On this slide, I'm showing an example from a biotech company that has been a client since 2016. And we ran a personalized campaign for this client that included digital ads like the 1 that you see on the right side of the slide, which they might find when they're visiting LinkedIn or consuming media like Wall Street Journal as I explained. And that drives them to a custom landing page that has been created just for them. And that landing page would share things like our specific credentials in certain areas. It would share and remind them who their account team is, who are other Unisys people that support them that they might not know. It would have case studies that are relevant. -- but all dynamically updated.

And when you look at this specific example on the bottom half of the slide, what we're really trying to do is drive consistent, high-value engagement with the senior leaders at that client, again, getting all that content in front of them as they're considering who they're going to hire as a services provider. And what we know in this particular case that we touched 25 IT and senior leaders with their engagement on this site. And they were consuming information, learning more about us, again, influencing them through their decision journey.

In this case, we know that the CIO and the VP of IT downloaded key content, and we know that in real time. We also know that we use physical touch points to help engage with them as well. Their CIO attended a Unisys sponsored roundtable on a content relevant to what we were trying to sell them. But again, all those engagements are really, really high quality. And the results are clear. when we run an account-based marketing program, we see significant higher wins.

In closing, our intent data and tech tools enable our marketers to deliver the right messages at the right time to the right people influencing them to help our commercial team be more successful.

And I think for us, this is the magic of AI. These insights and the account intelligence that we get now, they're critical for use, as I presented with the sales engine. It enables us throughout our sales process to give a leg up and ultimately win in the market.

Hi. My name is Deb McCann, I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Unisys. When I looked at the list of those of you attending, I saw lots of familiar names. And I really want to thank you for your ongoing interest and support in Unisys. I also saw lots of new names.

So for those new investors, welcome, and thank you for your interest. -- and always feel free to reach out to our VP of Investor Relations, Michaela Pewarski, if you want to set up some time to meet with us, we're always happy to do so. So first, I'm going to quickly walk through the agenda of the items I'm going to cover. So first, before we move to our future targets, our Investor Day targets, we're going to look at what we told you in 2023 that we had achieved and how we did against those.

Then I'm going to move into the elements of our 2026 Investor Day targets, and run through those. Then I'm going to talk through our capital allocation priorities. And then we're going to wrap up talking about our investment thesis and the milestones that we believe we are heading towards to unlock value for stakeholders.

Before I dive in, I just want to orient you with our reporting segments and the terminology change that we're making. So our reporting segments are unchanged, and those are digital workplace solutions, cloud applications infrastructure and enterprise compute solutions. Within enterprise compute solutions, we have on the far right, on the bottom, ClearPath, and that consists of our operating system and the support that goes along with it. That makes up about 2/3 of ECS. In the past, this was called L&S for license and support.

Going forward, we're going to call that just clear path. And this consists of from a total company revenue perspective, about 20%. Everything else to the left, we're going to now refer to it used to be x L&S, -- now we'll be referring to it as technology solutions and services. There's no change to the solution classification within these categories and no change to segments. We just thought these new names simplify our terminology to be more intuitive for our stakeholders.

Next, we're going to talk about the goals we laid out in 2023 at that Investor Day and how we did against them. For ClearPath on the top here, you can see, we exceeded the -- we had said the 3-year average revenue would be about $360 a year, and we ended up averaging about $425 million per year. And the margin we thought would be about 65% and it ended up being 70%. This was due to higher consumption, longer-term deals and additional integrated system purchases than we had planned on. This was strategy and execution, not just luck.

As Sean went through, our ClearPath platform has unmatched security, speed and resilience. And the holistic ecosystem of ClearPath, we've made significant investments and we're benefiting from an increased use of data and AI by our clients.

Next is our technology solutions and services revenue. When we set our targets, the market was growing mid- to high single digits. And the industry as a whole since then has underperformed that expectation and was growing low single digits. So overall, while we did not achieve our revenue targets due to some of the things we've talked about on our earnings calls, such as pressure on public sector, lower PC field service volumes. And again, just that slower market environment, we were still pleased we grew within -- basically with in line with the industry. but disappointed we didn't hit our targets we set out.

And then so in light of that muted revenue growth, though, the good news is we focused on profitability given some of those market factors that we couldn't control as much. And so from a technology solutions and services margin perspective, we had targeted about 100 to 150 basis point improvement of margin per year, and we ended at the top of that range at 150 basis points.

Regarding SG&A, we had targeted over the 3-year period to reduce about $50 million in SG&A, and we ended up producing $70 million SG&A. This was through streamlining corporate costs, looking at our real estate portfolio and rationalizing that and centralizing IT.

So from that perspective, we beat what we had set out to do. Our operating profit margin the algorithm may have been a little different, but we were still able to be in the range that we had laid out when we talked to you in 2023. Regarding pension, we had talked a lot about reducing liabilities, reducing volatility, and we did just that.

We reduced liabilities 28% and in the 3-year period, and we were able to substantially remove all volatility in our pension contributions, which makes it easier to model and understand the cash flows we have going forward.

From a pre-pension free cash flow perspective, we -- the range we had given was about $150 million to $175 million. And although we achieved $72 million, it was a little bit not apples-to-apples in that since then, we had made the decision to refinance and borrow an incremental amount to help reduce our pension contributions and so the additional interest on that, plus the higher interest rate on our existing debt was increased interest about $50 millionn.

And then there was a $30 million environmental receipt from some previous payments we had made that we expect some recovery from. We thought those would come in but will likely come in closer to either 2028 or 2029. So we -- although we didn't beat the number, we came in at the low end of that $150 million operationally if you adjust for those items.

Next, before I get into the medium-term targets, I wanted to just set the baseline. So for 2026, we're pleased to update our guidance on a constant currency revenue the guidance for the constant currency revenue growth, narrowing the range and bringing that midpoint from negative 5.5% to negative 4.25%.

This is really based on 2 things: one, increasing our ClearPath revenue, we had set that at $415 million. We're increasing it to $425 million. And then within Tech Solutions and Services, we've seen a modest improvement in client volumes and timing and levels of short cycle work. This is relative to our original assumptions. So we're pleased that we were able to update that revenue growth.

Turning to our 2026 Investor Day targets, I'm going to start with revenue and specifically focus on technology solutions and services revenue and the growth opportunity there. You've heard a lot from the previous speakers how we've reset Unisys' market perception. We've climbed in the analyst rankings and all of the exciting opportunities in the market and our sales and marketing strategy to capture those opportunities.

Also the alleviation of some of those macro headwinds, all of this translates into top line growth. The growth is concentrated as you see on the right, in solutions where demand is the strongest. These are riding on real agentic AI tailwinds while displacing more traditional work in our mix.

This excludes just a note, and it's footnoted at the bottom. These numbers exclude the potential impact of our U.K. joint venture wind down. This has about a 200 basis point impact on growth. This revenue is typically at a 0% margin, therefore, not a driver of our cash and profit goals.

Next, I'm going to turn to gross margin, and I'm going to focus on technology solutions and services. Over the past 3 years, we've improved that gross margin by 560 basis points, a very significant improvement. The improvement, although we see a lot of opportunity, that rate decelerates over the next few years, mostly because we've done a lot of the heavy lifting already. And although we see a lot of opportunity, it's just -- it's not at the same pace as these past few years.

But we still do see an opportunity for 200 basis points of improvement in gross margin over the next 3 years or about 70 basis points per year. It won't always happen in a straight line from year-to-year, but that's our overall improvement. Is that 200 basis points. The key drivers of that are on the right hand of the slide -- as you can see, mix shift. So higher -- the higher margin field services at our data centers as opposed to traditional field services, AI adoption and automation. AI augmented delivery and improving operating leverage as we scale.

Also, our outcome and consumption-based contracts as we sign those to support price, they really reflect the enhanced client value and if we improve our productivity, that drops to the margin. And lastly, the future skilling on the existing base to support our associates to be future ready.

Okay. On the next slide, we're talking about SG&A. So we already talked about over the past 3 years, we've reduced $70 million by rationalizing real estate, IT and our corporate functions.

Going forward, we're really focused more on improving our SG&A productivity. So because a lot of the heavy lifting has been done, we still are looking at transforming, deploying AI, lots of efficiencies we see and also shifting our resources to ensure their focus on the highest impact areas that we're focused on, which is growth and profit.

And so we're targeting 150 basis point improvement in SG&A as a percent of revenue over this 3-year period, which translates to about $10 million to $20 million reduction in SG&A on a dollar basis.

Next, kind of bringing it all together. So all of these numbers that we're setting out for our 2026 Investor Day targets, here's a summary of all of them. So if you look on the lower left, we already talked about the technology solutions and services 3-year CAGR of about 3% to 5%. And then assuming ClearPath similar to what we've said in the past, about $400 million per year on average, all of that translates to total company of about 2% to 4%. And that's a 3-year CAGR from the 2026 guidance midpoint.

From a gross margin perspective, we expect total company 100 basis points of expansion. This assumes that 200 basis point improvement in Technology Solutions and services we talked about and maintaining the ClearPath gross margin at around 70%.

And then with the additional improvement in our SG&A productivity, this translates to a non-GAAP operating margin of 12% to 14%. This translates to an adjusted EBITDA margin of about 17% to 19%, which would be approximately $365 million of EBITDA in 2029. And an increase of about $75 million compared to what we're expecting in 2026.

All of this translate, if you look at the far right, to our free cash flow target for 2029 of about $50 million or $110 million pre-pension. This assumes a similar level of items such as tax payments, CapEx, as we've assumed in 2026.

Next, I'm going to move to our capital allocation priorities. As we generate more cash, our near-term capital allocation priorities will remain balanced between leverage reduction and growth in investments. We're successfully bringing down leverage, which should improve our credit rating and position us to continue reducing and ultimately removing our U.S. pension plans.

With lower leverage and pension contributions, we can invest more in growth and in the longer-term road map, we will consider a capital return program after we've delevered and funded growth. The timing will depend on reaching sustainable positive free cash flow with a liquidity cushion of cash on the balance sheet.

Let's talk a little bit more about delevering since it's such an important focus of our capital allocation over the next few years. So driven by a combination of increasing adjusted EBITDA by approximately $75 million and significantly reducing our pension deficit.

On the right, you can see an estimated trajectory of total debt. And so the dark green lines on the bottom are our debt or actual secured notes. And then the 2 -- the light green and lighter green are the pension deficit for the U.S. and the non-U.S. plans. A portion of cash contributions as we make our pension contributions each year go toward that deficit reduction. They're not dollar for dollar. But as you can see, by the end of -- by 2029, we expect our pension contributions to translate to $240 million of deficit reduction from where we were in 2025.

And so net leverage, as you can see on the bottom right, going from 2.9x to slightly under 2.0x of leverage by the end of 2029. And about 2/3 of that is from the deficit reduction and the remainder is from the profit improvement. Achieving this target gives us the improved credit profile and capacity to finance the removal of the U.S. pension plans if we decide to do so.

Next, continuing with our pension strategy. I'm going to talk about a little bit the benefits of last year's debt raise to refinance and to contribute $250 million to our U.S. plans. So by doing that, as you look on the upper right, by partially funding our plans that allowed us to provide more certainty to our investors our investor forecast by shifting asset allocation to remove substantially all of our contribution volatility. It also enabled us to resume annuity purchases that cost effectively remove portions of the overall liability.

Also, it was cash flow accretive. And so we reduced contributions by more than the interest on the incremental debt we borrowed to make that $250 million in contribution. Some additional steps we're taking are -- on the bottom right, you can see we're executing another annuity purchases or expectation in the second half of this year to remove additional liabilities later in the year. And this lowers the premium cost for full removal, which is based on the deficit plus a premium on the remaining liabilities.

We're also undertaking a rigorous process to cleanse pensioner roles to bring down premium costs as a percentage of liabilities towards the lower end of that 10% to 15% range we estimate. And we're also evaluating the potential removal of one of our U.K. plans over the next few years.

Before we move to Q&A, let's quickly talk about why we believe Unisys is a compelling investment. Today, we are being perceived in the market in a whole new way. So if you look on the left hand of the slide, these are things we really find ourselves today as a transformed Unisys. We're a recognized leader. We have a diversified client base with a $60 billion TAM. We've enhanced our profitability, and we've stabilized our pension.

In the near term, we foresee growth inflection. We're working on scaling our digital workforce, and we see many AI tailwinds and TAM expansion, and that will happen this year and into next. In the medium term, through 2029, we see a sustained growth step-up. We see that 200 basis points of technology solutions and services margin, and we're seeing deleveraging by about and also the potential of the pension removal. Plus that $30 million environmental recovery receipt that we should be getting in that time frame.

So where does this all add up? If you look on the far right, this is where we believe we'll be unlocking shareholder value. So you can see that $200 million of targeted net debt reduction and that $75 million targeted increase in adjusted EBITDA before any multiple expansion, we see as providing value of about an additional $3 per share for the debt reduction and about $4 for the EBITDA.

And really, at the end, this is before any expansion in our valuation. So what we really believe is that Unisys at this point, we're a stronger Unisys, we're a highly competitive player with solidly positive growth in cash generation and enhanced flexibility.

So with that, I'm going to turn to Q&A. Thank you.

Welcome to our Q&A session. Look, I'd like to open it first thanking Deb and the entire leadership team for -- what I hope you found to be a very informative set of presentations and enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed giving it to you. Deb and I have the pleasure of speaking with all of you on a regular basis. But for us, it was a pleasure to have you really introduce to the entire leadership team. And I hope that the passion that this team has for not only winning, but delivering for our clients came through in the presentations.

I really thought it did, and the continuity was there. So happy to open this up now for some Q&A. We had a handful of questions already put into the queue.

And Michaela I'm going to turn it over to you to tee up our first question, please.

Thanks, Mike. The first question is frontier models are launching deploy codes? Are they a competitive threat to Unisys?

Yes. It's a great question. I would like to say they would think they're a competitive threat to Unisys. I'm not sure that, that fact exists. When I think about their push for deploy Co, I believe that, that is really a push to drive more traffic to their LLM, right, essentially and utilization of their tool. I think you've heard throughout the day today, the component pieces that are really required for that level of deploy code, I'll say, continuity into our client base.

We've talked a lot today around the trusted environment that we've built with our clients in many cases, over decades of support understanding of that technical environment is critical to actually application of AI into that environment. Clearly, there is a deep expertise from our teams, for the clients we support industry expertise. We've been running these ecosystems for decades. So this is not a matter of just applying technology and turning it on and to use Joel's term, it magically works, right? This is really about an understanding of that ecosystem and having the trust that our clients put in us to apply the technology to that ecosystem and orchestrate it.

So I agree wholeheartedly that is what's missing in the environment for the full adoption of is the implementation and orchestration. And you've seen that come through really in each 1 of our business segments discussions as well as our commercial and go-to-market discussion of how we think about that. And so really driving that orchestration and implementation requires deep-rooted knowledge of the ecosystem because they're extremely complex and no one is live coding a new CRM system. Could you do it? Sure. Should you do it? Probably not in the construct of an enterprise environment. But Chris, I don't know if there's any color you'd like to add to that?

Yes, happy to. Thanks. I guess just to reinforce a couple of points you were talking about. You alluded to reliability and scale and performance and security characteristics that don't just show up and in fact, require the depth of expertise that you've just been describing as it relates to the engineering, the tooling and the orchestration of the tooling and the process and workflow expertise that we really have in significant depth across a number of industries from our experiences.

And in addition to that, as we talked about earlier today, the tools of today are no longer the same tools as tomorrow or next week or next month or next year. And so when we think about positioning for expansion of tool set usage and the dedication of those tools in concert orchestrated and fit for purpose for a specific client's challenge that's where our capabilities really come forward in shine. And so it's that combination of scale, performance characteristics, expertise in depth. And then orchestration potential over time.

Yes. And you just don't get that with AI native, right? So I think -- so we agree that, that's the hole in the market, and we think we're well positioned to fill that hole.

Thanks. The next question is there are reports that companies are not getting a worthwhile return on AI investments. Are you seeing cases of clients abandoning projects or seeing issues with AI performance? And how is this impacting the pace of adoption?

Yes. Look, another great question. Clearly, there has been, I'd say, probably for the last year, maybe with the exception of the last 3 months or so, everyone has been in kind of experimentation phase when it comes to AI, and it's changing so fast.

I think that the enterprise clients significantly misunderstood the complexities of their ecosystem. And so I really feel like there is a little bit of a pause on everyone wanting to be first to apply AI, but not necessarily knowing where, how, when and really what the cost is. And really, the complexity and the understanding of the complexity of the ecosystem, making sure the right guardrails are there, making security a component piece of the application of AI.

I think we've matured pretty quickly in that evolution. And I think folks are realizing that this is not an event. This is a process. And just like every other process that you're adding to your software development life cycle or your ecosystem, whether that's adding hardware, whether that's software applications, a genetic workflow regardless of what the application is, you have to do it really thoughtfully. And I go back to our previous question, the understanding of that ecosystem is critical to the application of that.

So I think what's happened in the last maybe 3 to 6 months, is a bit of a pause, a slowdown, which I think was warranted, and really an understanding of how and when to apply AI and really looking at it through that incremental gain point of view as opposed to completely replacing the ecosystem. And so I think that's probably the stage we're in. We are in really early innings here as far as I'm concerned in the deployment of AI in an enterprise scale environment.

We have a long, long way to go. You saw many of the TAMs we're talking about $450 billion of economic value over the course of the next decade, for x market growth there. high 30% CAGR growth. There's a lot to be done. But again, it has to be very pragmatic in the approach -- and I think people are realizing that at this stage. And so I think really question 1 and 2 tied together nicely in that regard. But again, Chris, I don't know if you want to add any additional color.

Yes, sure. I think the considerations you're talking about are really important in that they are a result of nobody to nobody's surprise, a few early stumbles with regard to deploying AI at scale. What are the ramifications for the enterprise? What about all these costs, the token costs, et cetera. And what's really great for us is the opportunity that we see with some of our existing solutions to show returns from results with clients we're already deploying against, and we gave a couple of examples of that throughout today. and to help clients who aren't maybe yet that advanced in their journey with the other capabilities we talked about.

And then when we couple that with the expertise that we've illustrated over time with the depth around the platforms that are executing so many high-volume transactions over years and years. What comes with that is really some special insight that's going to help bridge that gap between expectation and reality as we go forward. So for us, the positioning and the timing is just right.

Yes. Look, and just maybe one last point on that. Clearly, there's been value in the application of this. We gave you 2 great stories here with CSU and Cushman Wakefield, tens of millions of dollars saved. Patrycja talked about thousands, tens of thousands of hours saved. So it's there. The technology is real. And we just have to be pragmatic about how we apply it, when we apply it.

And I'm a firm believer that we're going to look back 3 years from now and see all of these small incremental changes that we've made to the infrastructure show tremendous value to our clients.

Next question. At a recent conference, Mike mentioned Unisys has the skills to support quantum computing. -- kindly double-click on this and what skills Unisys has that overlap in quantum? And are any of them being used now?

Yes. Great. So I would love to answer that question, but I happen to be sitting next to the gentleman who not only ran that business, but is 1 of our experts in quantum. So Chris, maybe I'll just have you feel that one.

Yes, happy to. Thanks for the question. I'll answer that in a couple of ways. So firstly, as it relates to expectations around post-quantum cryptography futures, that's one of the key early areas where we deployed engineering depth and talent in order to protect and defend our ClearPath estate and all of the clients who have been using it for a long time.

And so what that created was the motion for us that we've continued to increment against to develop and expand the capabilities of security around those ClearPath environments and then extending those in the form of advisory and capability assessments as services to additional clients who may not be using ClearPath -- so in that way, we're protecting what's important for us from a proprietary platform usage across all those great deployments we've talked about with you and extending the value out to other clients in a post-quantum crypto world.

So they can iterate and improve as that horizon comes ever closer to us. So that's number one.

Secondly, as it relates to the practical application of quantum computing, we have a growing number of quantum engineers at the company who are expanding on use cases with a variety of prospects and clients in early-stage capability assessments, use case studies as well as early proof of concept in a few targeted areas, that are going to prove out the hypothesis that a quantum-based solution can, in fact, solve problems better than in a practical computing application. And so it's early days there, but we think that's a really important part of the enterprise computing story at Unisys.

We've been doing that for a long time. And so we just consider that a next chapter. And so coupled with the engineering depth that I've just talked about, we're developing and have in fact, already developed several key assets and tools and accelerators that will help clients along that journey. And so whether it's from advisory services, or the actual creation of solutions on the ground and all of the algorithms that are expected to be a part of that. And in fact, the patents that we've already secured in that space -- we think there is a significant opportunity as we head into the future in both of those dimensions.

And that was a heck of a lot better answer than I would have given on the quantum computing. So thanks, Chris.

Yes, you bet.

Next question. Your revenue growth targets have a footnote, excluding the impact of a U.K. joint venture. Can you provide more detail about that?

Sure. I'll start and then maybe, Deb, I'll ask you to give a little color here. So we've been involved for probably close to a decade or 2 decades with a venture called iPSL. It's a joint venture with 3 of our large banks in the U.K. It's a BPO for check processing essentially. It's something, as we all know, check processing has been winding down year-on-year.

And really, over the last decade, this business has more declined by more than half, right? So it actually creates a pretty strong headwind for us as far as revenue growth is concerned. It's a 0-margin business. Frankly, we're in the business a lot more because of the client partners that we have in that business. They also happen to be clients of other aspects of our business.

One in particular is a ClearPath Forward client. So the engagement there has really been in support of those clients in a much broader relationship. But yes, this is something that over the course of, again, the last decade has been declining. And we're at a position now where there's a benefit here to winding this venture up -- and we've gotten to a point really where the pension scheme that was aligned to that environment is also in a point where we can fully fund that pension and ultimately diffuse that as well. So it's a good time for us to actually exit that, but it does create a headwind.

And maybe, Deb, you can just give us some of the financial aspects of the headwind it creates for us.

Yes. So in 2026, that number was about $90 million of revenue. That included -- as we talked about on Q1 earnings, there was also a portion we got from iPSL to help fund that iPSL pension. So it's a little higher in 2026. But that has been steadily declining over the past few years. And that will start to really wind down starting at the end primarily that wind down will be in 2027.

So that's why when we give those 3-year CAGRs for both the technology solutions and services, which the other segment is within that. where this is. And then also total company, those CAGRs include that it's about a 200 basis point impact in that 3-year CAGR. And so that's why it's important. We wanted to lay that out, and we'll continue to give that differentiation so that as we're reporting our numbers, you can see how we're performing against it.

Next question. Given you expect a 30% CAGR in AI market growth, do you expect your growth forecast might be modest?

Well, look, I would start that with the 30% number was really an industry number, not specific to Unisys. So -- and we fully expect to participate in that market CAGR growth. There's also the aspect of mix when you think about the application of that growth, the size of those deals. We are, as most of you know, a large recurring base and have long-standing contracts, so when you look at application of this new technology, that becomes incremental and it takes some time for that to actually outpace the legacy base.

So probably early days yet for us to be thinking about whether our forecast or guidance is conservative or not, but we feel really good about the opportunities that the TAM represents. We feel really good about what that new business signings look like. We think we've got the right offerings to participate fully in that TAM. And I think you've seen and heard a lot of that today. So I would say, again, early days, but certainly more of a tailwind than a headwind as far as we're concerned when we talk about forecast or profitability. I don't know, Deb, if you want to add any additional color there.

Yes. No, I think you covered it.

Great. Next question. Several speakers referenced outcomes-based pricing. Are you seeing success in moving clients to these contract structures?

Well, absolutely, we're seeing success in doing that. I think for those of you listening to our investor calls on a quarterly basis, last year, we had 1 of our biggest renewal years -- we signed roughly $1.7 billion worth of renewals in our technology solutions and services portion of our business.

So when you're signing that kind of work on a renewal basis, you don't get a real opportunity to do a lot of project work. It's really solidifying that base. But we have had some good success as it pertains to outcome-based pricing. I would say we're not having any conversations with clients that are not starting with outcome-based pricing.

One of the biggest barriers, frankly, to doing it is not our willingness to do it, it's the clients' willingness to do it. Many of the procurement organizations at our clients are still trying to apply kind of legacy methodologies to what they're doing.

But if I look at what you saw today in Service Experience Accelerator as an example, if we're successful in deploying that technology to our existing client base, I mean, clearly, that's going to have significant savings for us. We're talking about revenue share with clients on that. It's a little bit of a short-term headwind when you talk about the application of that technology, but it's margin accretive from our perspective.

But that's a great example of the deployment of that technology is really about deflections and it's about preventive maintenance. And those are the types of outcomes that we think our clients want, and we think that adds value to them, right? When you talk about the number of hours saved is as again, Patrycja mentioned in her prepared remarks. So there's a lot of good news there. I think the conversations we're having at every client really start with this outcome-based pricing. We've had good success with it, and we think it's going to continue to expand.

Next question. How do you expect advancements in AI and AI code generation to impact ClearPath? Is it a risk or an opportunity?

Well, I'll do a quick start on that, and then I'll punt that over to you, Chris. Clearly, we think it's an opportunity. There was some great dialogue here today. Sean gave you some wonderful statistics around how we're embedding AI into our ClearPath platform. We've seen 3 years now of consumption increases in that ecosystem, roughly $40 million a year. We just raised guidance again on the top line. A portion of that was related to an increase in that ecosystem.

So clearly, ClearPath from a consumption perspective is benefiting from AI. But Chris, maybe you can give a little more depth there.

Yes happy to. You're talking about the continuing use of the data in these platforms for the creation of yet untapped value. And that really speaks to the consumption patterns that you were just referring to, Mike. And we anticipate and believe that, that's going to continue as we head into the future. And that's been our experience.

And in addition to that, we also consider that the continuing evolution of the platforms and the ecosystem surrounding ClearPath are also beneficiaries over time of the implementation and embedding or infusing of AI inside the platforms themselves.

So consider the execution of AI native workloads inside the platforms. Those are parts of of anticipated new capabilities in the platforms as we go forward. So those are parts of continuing to stay current and ahead of where our clients want the platforms to be. And we see continuing demand for that.

And then lastly, just as it relates to the other things that you would expect in terms of development efficiency, testing efficiency, comprehensiveness, et cetera, those are infused inside the engineering function as well. And so there's a multifaceted benefit chain here that we are, in some cases, in early days of already experiencing and in other cases, are embedding in our road maps for the future.

And so there really is confidence from our perspective about future paths here that are continuing some of the trends we've been seeing.

Yes. Look, I think Sean touched on as well, the part of the question was around cogeneration. The entire project endurance that Chris started and Sean picked up the mantle on, really solidifies that engineering base that ability to use code, convert code. We've been refactoring Cove for probably a decade in that environment. So we feel strongly that we've got a digital answer to that question.

And again, I think the engineering moat that's embedded in our ClearPath ecosystem speaks for itself.

Mike, I guess, I just would add to that, too. I'm so happy you mentioned that endurance capability. Really, one of the core questions about long-term serviceability -- and part of our ClearPath 2050 initiative over these last several years now has been about ensuring that effective engineering depth and support is available and so it's not just in the creation of the platform code or the updating of those -- of that code for new capabilities.

It's as much about the long-term lasting necessity for that engineering depth and expertise that's also benefiting from the infusion of AI technologies, like you just said.

Next question. there is significant capital being allocated to the data center build-out. Can you expand upon the data center services you provide across your portfolio and size those opportunities?

Well, the sizing piece of that is going to be extremely difficult to do as we all know and see every day in the news, billions upon billions of dollars are being invested into building out that data center. I don't want to limit our exposure there from a TAM perspective to be just a build-out of an AI data center.

I think the opportunity there is large -- and we continue to, I'll say, shift our marketing focus to aligning to the builders of those data centers both as the users as well as the physical folks that are constructing those centers because we do think there's opportunity for us to play in that space, whether it's part of a consortium or as a sole proprietor kind of in their racking and stacking and taking care of that. But our data center opportunity goes much, much deeper than that.

We've already seen and have accomplished a transition of a lot of our front line engineers. You heard Weston and Patrycja talking about the opportunities for those engineers inside of the data center, right? So that goes to things like high-end storage and networking capabilities, training our front-end engineers into a multitude of skills right, takes them out of some of the lower-cost commoditized work that they're doing and pushes them up stack.

You heard Weston talk in detail around IoT devices, sensors and devices conference rooms. If you looked in the Journal today, you saw some NVIDIA discussion around AI chips in PCs. Dell had a very similar announcement earlier in the week regarding their chipset. So it's not just data center anymore. AI is and will be more and more at the edge at the desktop level in servers, on-prem in the cloud.

So I go back to that long-standing legacy of having hybrid infrastructure management, both from a field services perspective as well as embedded in our CA&I business unit, where the orchestration of that and the application of how workloads get moved, done, executed. That's all in my mind, data center support both from a services execution perspective as well as an install break fix and ultimately, a managed services.

Again, I don't know if you...

Yes, sure. Well, look, you've talked about Edge. You've talked about data center. You've talked about hybrid infrastructure and the private and public kind of handshake that's going on there. that's only going to continue to grow. And part of our mission is to ensure that the scaled global field services population that some of you would be familiar with, have the right skills at the right time, delivered in an experience that they can absorb usually via a mobile device to go to the site, have the part, meet them there and replace it successfully on the first trial because the impact of missing out on that is pretty tough when you're talking about data center workloads, for example.

And those are the exact investments that we told you about today. And so we're really well positioned to take advantage of those investments and extend them across that entire ecosystem. That entire chain from the end user with their own device, to the data center where they're sourcing the query or the response to their query in the data center.

And I think we just -- on the web page, just put a whole new section on how we're targeting this market.

Yes. Great point. Thanks, Deb, for bringing that in. I think there's a multitude of data out there for the site and what it means to us. So if you're interested check out our website or it's a new page for data center in particular.

Next question. Thank you for the disclosure around your deleveraging path, pension detail and EBITDA expansion. Would it be fair to think that pension-oriented deleveraging could be pulled forward should capital markets provide you the opportunity?

Sure. Yes, we -- I can't commit to anything right now. But clearly, based on the execution, our profitability and the way we see capital markets in the next year or 2, that could be a potential. But I think -- we'll have to see. And also in about 2.5 years, the non-call period ends on the notes.

And so we would assess, right? It does it make more sense to pay some of that down. Does it make more sense to borrow, make a pension contribution? Or does it make sense at a certain point down the road to pay down the whole U.S. qualified pension that $225 million to $275 million we've said it would cost. And so as we look at our execution on profitability and cash flow and we look at the capital markets, we'll make that determination.

I think at the end of the day, we look at that through a lens of cash, right? What is the most advantaged cash position we can put the company in to continue to reinvest and do other things with that capital.

Exactly.

Next question, do you have any workforce reduction plans given the emerging AI technology?

Yes. Certainly, a question that's pertinent in the market, and we've seen many, many of our competitors having significant layoffs, unfortunately, in the market. I would say our position is and has been that we have really thinking about upskilling our workforce to have that workforce ready for scale. Chris has a program in our organization really aimed at delivery excellence. And we feel like it is a better investment from our perspective to lean into that, to upskill as many associates as we can.

And our thoughts are really about making those associates much more productive, right? When you think about the productivity index you hear everything from 6 to 10x from a productivity perspective with the application of this technology. And our goal here is not just to meet our clients' expectations. It's to exceed and delight our clients, right?

And I think from our point of view, and that doesn't mean we're not going to have normal trimming of the workforce where maybe there's a client attrition or something that we can absorb. But our goal and what we've really instituted over the last 18 to 24 months, was really a concerted effort to upskill really every associate in the company and Chris is spearheading some of this. So maybe you can give a little color there as well.

Yes, happy to. Our view around this productivity index that Mike is talking about is really core to a couple of important factors here. One is that for us to be AI first, as a company, we need to ensure that our associates who have been and continue to be the lifeblood of how we do things for clients have the skills. And so that's really where our attention is focused now. And then similarly, as Mike was talking about, there are places where we decide to make adjustments and changes as any business does.

And so our expectations around delighting clients with the use of the newest technologies, with the implementation of our newest solutions that have been widely recognized in industry is leading by this time is really where we're focused and where we're asking for our associates to focus.

Next question. You laid out a number of seemingly significant growth opportunities, which 1 or 2 are you most excited about?

Well, you probably all have different 2 that were -- for me, the 2 that stand out the most are the opportunities within kind of that data center ecosystem, if you will. I think we've got deep, deep experience there. the competition, I think one of the stats we put out today, 7,300 field services agents that we've got. We've got a very deep and broad skill set that I think differentiates us in that space.

And so I think there's some real opportunity for us to lean in there and expand that data center beyond field services and into management. The other area that's like just jumps off the page from my perspective is agenetic orchestration embedded in CA&I. When you think about the application of a digital workforce, into this environment. It's something that we're seeing. And frankly, it's amazing. I mean things that we've delivered to clients already in days that would have taken months, if not quarters, to do with half the talent or 1/3 of the talent to actually deliver it.

The technology is really incredible there. Those are typically going to be smaller deals with quicker pass-through time. So that will get us likely some more in-year revenue, quicker recognition on those types of things. and really establishing a little better cadence in project work. Deb and I have talked for years that we'd like to see that mix shift between that 80-20 of recurring revenue and project work shift a little bit because the project work is typically a little better margin profile.

So I think that aligns really nicely to to those 2 opportunities that I would pull off, but again, either if you have anything you're thinking of?

I was just I think service experience accelerator. So within DWS, I think, is an exciting opportunity, where we're already have a lot of clients on it, plan shifting a lot of our other clients onto it. I think it's the one that jumps out for me.

I know you're going to go clear path I mean I suppose out around us out. But I do think there's kind of -- you talked about the kind of this idea that we are touching compute capability and the necessity for that for participating in that evolving ecosystem, again, from end user device, IoT device at the edge, into the data center, all the workloads happening in a hybrid way between private, public cloud and in those data center environments, we are really positioned to touch all those.

So if I could have 1 big one, that's 1 for sure. And really where that comes to life is with our team. our associates, and we talked earlier today about the changes in roles, kind of past and future, future roles enable our folks to actually take the experience that they have and think about and answer questions differently with the tools we're putting in their hands. What happened yesterday? What happened last hour such that we can make changes in our decisions for what to do in the next hour. That compression of time and enablement of decision-making is just a massive step change for our people.

And so in that context of how we touch and fix and create new value across that compute ecosystem, that's a really big deal for me. And it involves our people, which I'm really passionate about.

And then yes, the last thing is clearly the ever enduring value and yet to be untapped value that exists inside that ClearPath client base. And that the ClearPath team and the clients are ever more involved in partnering to find new ways to unlock that. So that's really exciting to me, too.

And we have time for 1 final question. Any comment on the stock price increasing from $1.97 to $4.60 in about 2 months.

Yes. Keep it going. That would be my comment for the stock. Now look, I really feel like -- and I'll tie it back into the very first question that we've got. There, in my opinion, was an a market knee-jerk reaction when certain of these models came out.

And this -- if you think about what happened to deploy cos, when the models came out SaaS providers got hit pretty hard. Solution implementers got hit pretty hard. We -- in that industry in general, I think, got hit pretty hard from a valuation I like to think that this is really just a return to norm. And it's interesting that the same the same positioning that caused the market deflection now coming out with deploy Co is actually causing the inflection to return to the norm.

So again, do I think that this is the valuation that our company should be at? No. I I still think there's room. Deb gave you some great examples of what that short-term investment could look like without even changing our valuation. But we're happy to see a little bit of a return to the norm. And hopefully, it's a realization from a market perspective that Unisys is here to stay.

I'd like to just maybe close with a couple of things that I started with and maybe close with, there are a couple of things that I'd like you to take away from this.

First, the strategy that we put in place, again, middle innings as far as I'm concerned, but the foundation is set and I think you've seen throughout the day how that strategy continues to evolve, right? We didn't look into the position that we're in right now. And I think we're really set for success and building from a strong foundation.

Second, if I look at the opportunity in the market, TAM has opened up for us in a couple of areas. And we just mentioned maybe 3 or 4 or 5 between us that I think we've yet to see the benefit of that TAM. And so hopefully, we'll continue to win in the marketplace, and we'll continue to grow the business from that front.

Three and the thing I'm probably most proud of and I think most important to us is a comment that Chris made. It is embedding into our workforce this AI-first strategy. I mean we've spent the last several years embedding the AI into our technology and solutions but those solutions really only have value if we can deploy those solutions in a meaningful way to our clients.

So really, the fact that, that workforce is up to speed with the latest and greatest tool sets -- and I think that's really going to help our clients achieve their value as well.

And then lastly, that the work we've done over the last 7 to 10 years around continuing to strengthen our balance sheet, continuing to strengthen the profitability of the company kind of puts us in a solid position, we have a good cash balance. We've got working capital improvements, et cetera. So looking forward to what we can achieve together and frankly, doing that probably for the first time in a long time with some tailwinds.

So seeing the market kind of reflect a little bit of positivity in this space. is really helpful to us. And if nothing else, you should take away from today that Unisys is an AI future-ready company. Client-focused future-ready is not a tagline to us. It's really important, and we're positioned to take advantage of that in the market.

So thank you all for your time. Thank you for your participation. I hope you took as much away from this as we did. Frankly, we really enjoyed bringing it to you and look forward to talking to you probably at the next quarter.

Good morning, and welcome to the Unisys Corporation First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michaela Pewarski, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us.

Yesterday afternoon, Unisys released its first quarter 2026 financial results. Joining me to discuss those results are Mike Thomson, our CEO and President; and Deb McCann, our Chief Financial Officer.

As a reminder, today's call contains estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. We caution listeners that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed on this call.

These items can be found in the forward-looking statements section of yesterday's earnings release furnished on Form 8-K and in our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. We do not assume any obligation to review or revise any forward-looking statements in light of future events.

We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as non-GAAP operating profit that excludes certain unusual or nonrecurring items such as postretirement expense, cost reduction activities and other expenses that the company believes are not indicative of its ongoing operations.

While we believe these measures provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance, they are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP. Reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are provided in the slides for today's call, which are available on our investor website.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Michaela. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss the company's first quarter 2026 results. We're off to a good start in 2026. Both growth and profitability were modestly ahead of the expectations we provided, keeping us on track to achieve our full year guidance ranges.

Strong new business signings improved our trailing 12-month book-to-bill ratios and will contribute to in-year revenue. While geopolitical events have introduced new uncertainties in the market, client budget seems to be loosening a bit and especially in the commercial sector and in Europe.

Project volumes are beginning to materialize on the back of last year's renewal with solid pipeline in place for the remainder of the year.

First quarter profit improvement keeps us on track to achieve our full year free cash flow expectations and reflects our focus on adopting AI and continued workforce optimization.

As expected, our pension deficit and estimates for future cash contributions remain stable due to the actions we took last year to remove the majority of the pension contribution volatility, allowing us to focus on strategic growth and efficiency initiatives.

Looking more closely at the first quarter, revenue was up 1% year-over-year and 3% in our Ex-L&S solutions. Volumes with existing clients were better than anticipated, including a modest pickup in the PC refresh cycle.

This helped offset some of the top line effects from client attrition and modest price pressures created through sharing AI cost savings with clients, which we discussed last quarter. While AI efficiency gains reset market pricing last year, they're benefiting gross margins, which improved 80 basis points in the first quarter, including 170 basis points of Ex-L&S gross margin expansion.

Turning to client signings, our first quarter wins increased confidence in achieving our 2026 performance goals and we continue to have a higher portion of guided revenue contracted and in backlog compared to a year ago.

The first quarter new business TCV was $158 million, up 16% sequentially and 45% year-over-year. This was our strongest quarter of new business signings since the fourth quarter of 2024, with growth from both new logos and the existing base. Several multiyear contract wins illustrate our ability to gain market share when leading with innovation.

For example, we had several notable signings for our agentic service desk powered by our service experience accelerator capabilities. During the quarter, we won a large new scope contract to provide our agentic service desk with one of the world's premier quick service restaurants, expanding our existing support to the entirety of their nearly 14,000 restaurants in the United States, with additional growth opportunities around the world.

We also signed a new logo in Australia, which will be our first deployment of our agentic service desk in the Asia-Pacific region, where we landed several recent wins.

As a part of this engagement, we will provide elevated IT support to approximately 11,000 employees in Australia's Department of Health, Disability and Aging, where we now support numerous regulatory functions. This is a multiyear contract, which has options extending to 10 years and is structured on delivering against automation and service experience outcomes rather than ticket volumes.

The value behind our service experience accelerator is proving to be a compelling point of the spear solution for new business, delivering measurable results and quickly orienting us as an experienced AI partner in moving enterprise AI from concept to reality.

Our Device Subscription Service, or DSS, continues to resonate with another first quarter win at a large financial client in the United States. Clients are grappling with evaluating OEMs and hardware costs, understanding device AI capabilities and forecasting headcount fluctuations, all of which makes our clients more open to our intelligent refresh offering, which simplifies the process and helps offset cost pressures.

We have recently expanded our intelligent offering to encompass certain IoT devices through a deeper partnership with Dell. Several key engagements for application development and management also contributed to strong first quarter new business TCV.

For example, we expanded our existing services relationships with ENAIRE, Spain's air traffic controller, a client of 30 years. Renewal included a sizable new scope, which involves managing more than 100 of our clients' existing applications across numerous functions, with additional funds budgeted for future projects to design, test and deploy new applications.

Our application capabilities also opened the door at the largest community college system in the United States with Unisys signing a new logo agreement to modernize and manage an important student-facing applications that provides their approximately 2 million students with resources and tailored education pathways for more efficient incoming transfers, graduations and entry into the workforce.

This engagement established a solid foundation, which is already leading to additional work expected beginning in the second quarter.

We also made progress on our initiatives to cross-sell CA&I application services into our ECS client base. In the first quarter, we signed a renewal with a large Colombian retailer for existing ClearPath Forward and managed services that integrated new scope application development work supporting the client's core commercial and inventory applications.

Across our segments, TCV renewal rates were strong and above 95% for the total company. We are also seeing some unexpected extensions from attrited clients stemming from the lack of readiness from the new service provider.

At one such client, we were awarded a large new scope in the first quarter for infrastructure and modernization services. We believe this win demonstrates the desire of some of these clients to remain engaged with us, which we attribute to the deep relationships we've established, our delivery track record and the broadening awareness of our capabilities.

Looking at our go-to-market and pipeline, we've seen a modest pick-up in client demand over the past few months and a stronger pick-up with new logos where qualified pipeline increased sequentially in Ex-L&S solutions.

A number of these opportunities originated from a new initiative within our direct sales organization, which is the development of rapid value assessments for our key AI-enabled solutions. These repeatable assessments help quantify time to value, inclusive of estimated timelines and outcome-based pricing scenarios, easing friction associated with returns on AI investments, especially in the mid-market.

We're currently utilizing rapid value assessments for our agentic service desk, intelligent operations and security operations with assessments for agentic application transformation and management and intelligent device refresh in the works.

We're also generating more leads by collaborating with alliance partners on development and marketing around a narrower set of solutions, which identified overlapping priorities and strong value propositions.

These efforts have led some partners to place Unisys more prominently on their road maps and using us as their primary and preferred implementation and managed service partner for their technology and are directly handing off leads in areas such as enterprise service management, unified endpoint management and field services to implement technology for smart reading rooms, kiosks and digital signage.

I want to shift the focus to discuss our investments in the business, much of which is concentrated on leveraging artificial intelligence to move into higher-valued services and penetrate emerging market opportunities stemming from AI.

Our approach towards enterprise AI has been to avoid simply rebranding existing solutions as AI-enabled, but instead to use AI to fundamentally transform the outcomes we deliver to our clients and that positions us well for future-proofing our client relationships.

In our Ex-L&S IT services, this involves thoughtfully choosing partnerships to strengthen, enhancing the skills of our workforce, expanding our operational accelerators and constructing agentic workflows and governance frameworks to deliver secure, reliable results.

We have also been proactive about rolling out delivery innovation in our existing base to create measurable results, increasing our relevance and thought leadership with clients, prospects and industry analysts.

We're working to maximize that momentum by investing more deeply in our talent. We're expanding our forward-deployed engineering capabilities to increase capability in areas such as agentic application services.

We view Agentic AI as a major opportunity for organizations to close the modernization gap, especially in public sector and higher education. Expanding our forward-deployed engineering capabilities positions us to take a more prominent role in designing and managing agentic workflows, whether they enhance software applications or replace elements of their functionality.

In some cases, we're seeing client interest in expanding these services beyond central IT to reshape business as usual and functions such as HR and finance. As we think about upskilling for AI more broadly, the skills and demand are rapidly evolving almost on a daily basis, with the one constant being the pace of change coming from frontier models, hyperscalers, software and OEM providers.

We're committed to maintaining a platform and model-agnostic approach that best addresses a given used case within a specific industry for a specific client.

At the same time, significant existing technical debt within IT estates will require subject matter expertise to meet clients where they are today and help them transform and transition their technical debt over time.

To do that successfully, we're aligning certain technical resources around key models and platforms to provide specialized consulting to both our external and internal delivery teams. Physical AI infrastructure is another emerging growth vector for Unisys, stemming from demand for AI compute and the rapid build-out of data center capability that's occurring.

Data center builds are expanding the need for field technicians knowledgeable in the installation and maintenance of complex AI-focused IT infrastructure. Our large globally scaled field services organization with cutting-edge training and delivery experience connects humans, data and AI agents on one trusted platform.

In the first quarter, we signed a new business engagement with a leading global OEM to support the build-out of a large U.S.-based data center. While the initial scope is small, it lends credibility to our specialized capabilities for the installation and support of AI infrastructure.

AI infrastructure is just one element of our overarching strategy to expand our field service revenue streams. We're continuing to grow hybrid infrastructure volumes and focus on generating opportunities in network equipment and enterprise storage. We're also broadening field service capability in a variety of hardware, most notably within offices, restaurants, retail and manufacturing facilities.

In L&S Solutions, we're approaching AI from both ends, infusing AI functionality directly into the ClearPath Forward ecosystem, while also making it easier to extend ClearPath Forward data and applications to fuel AI in other parts of the enterprise.

During the quarter, we put out a new release of AB Suite, which is our low-code development environment for building applications on top of ClearPath. The update suite development enhance data encryptions and simplify integration of data with external environments without disruption of mission-critical operations.

The release also adds capabilities for generating AI-based synthetic test data, allowing developers to rapidly test new functionality, while reducing the risk of exposing sensitive data, strengthening security and compliance.

In addition to AB Suite release, we launched a new AI developer toolkit with practical guidance for building AI data models within the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. This is the first in a series of targeted client AI-enabled initiatives aimed at reinforcing ClearPath's value proposition and role as a long-term AI-ready platform that clients can rely on for decades.

Taking a step back across all our segments, we're seeing AI disrupt the status of the industry and push clients to rethink their solutions and IT providers. This has given us an opportunity to show our agility and step into a more prominent role with clients and partners and accelerate the shift in our brand perception.

We also hear it in our conversations with and recognition from the industry analysts and advisers that influence client decision-making. In the first quarter, Unisys was again named a leader in reports on end-user computing services and mid-market digital workplace solutions by Avasant and Everest.

We are also newly included in the HFS report on next-generation IT infrastructure services, which includes providers able to help enterprise reimagine infrastructure specifically for AI-native operations and distributed digital environments. These acknowledgments follow Gartner's elevating Unisys to a global leader in digital workplace services.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Deb to discuss our results in more detail.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, my discussion today will reference slides from the supplemental presentation posted on our website.

I will discuss total revenue growth, both as reported and in constant currency and segment growth in constant currency only. I will also provide information, excluding license and support or Ex-L&S to allow investors to assess our performance outside the portion of ECS, where revenue and profit recognition can be uneven between periods due to license renewal timing.

Looking at our results in more detail, as Mike mentioned, the year is off to a good start. As you can see on Slide 6, first quarter revenue was $438 million, up 1.3% year-over-year, which included an approximate 600 basis point benefit from foreign exchange relative to the prior year period.

In constant currency, revenue declined 4.5% with the largest declines in L&S Solutions due to renewal timing and anticipated volume declines in our Ex-L&S solutions. Excluding license and support, first quarter revenue was $372 million, up 3.1% year-over-year and down 2.9% in constant currency.

I will now discuss segment revenue performance in constant currency terms shown on Slide 6. First quarter Digital Workplace Solutions revenue of $118 million was down 6.5% year-over-year.

This decline was better than we had anticipated and reflected the factors we have discussed in previous quarters, such as client attrition, pricing dynamics in the industry and lower base levels of PC field services volumes that are stabilized, but down year-over-year. At the same time, growth in areas such as higher-value field services and better-than-expected volumes helped mitigate some of those effects.

For example, our volumes and revenue from high-end enterprise storage have nearly doubled on a year-over-year basis. And as Mike mentioned, we continue to see significant market opportunities across a more diverse set of higher-margin field services, including AI infrastructure and IoT devices. We are also pleased with our DWS pipeline, which is up sequentially.

First quarter Cloud, Applications and Infrastructure Solutions revenue was $182 million, representing a 2.4% year-over-year decline. The decrease primarily reflected lower volumes, especially at certain U.S. public sector clients and client attrition.

As you may recall, we began seeing public sector clients pull back in the first quarter of 2025 due to uncertainties related to federal funding levels and those year-over-year headwinds should lessen as we lap declines in subsequent quarters.

Within the Enterprise Computing Solutions segment or ECS, our License and Support Solutions revenue was $66 million, down 12.4% year-over-year due to the timing of the renewal schedule. There is no change to our expected weighting of 30% of full year L&S revenue in the first half and approximately 70% in the second half and we continue to expect $400 million of average annual L&S revenue in 2027 and 2028.

Artificial intelligence has been and continues to be a driver of L&S consumption and in churn revenue and we are evolving our ecosystem with innovations that facilitate enterprise AI, both on our platforms and external AI-enabled client environments that can utilize valuable data generated by our systems.

We continue to detect no change in client commitment to the ClearPath Forward ecosystem resulting from AI and code refactoring. On the contrary, there are some signs that our ecosystem evolution is leading to certain clients with migration plans reevaluating specific workloads to retain and outsource management to Unisys, which we attribute to consistent investments in platform modernization and sustainability of our skilled workforce.

In our specialized services and next-generation compute solutions, the Ex-L&S portion of the ECS segment, first quarter revenue was $50 million, down 2.5% year-over-year. This was ahead of our expectations due to improved volumes and additional scope in some of our business process solutions, which partially offset declines from the phasing of project work.

Total company TCV was $274 million for the quarter, up 33% year-over-year. New business TCV totaled $158 million, up 16% sequentially and 45% year-over-year. This is the highest level of new business TCV we have had in 4 quarters.

Trailing 12-month book-to-bill was 1.2x for both total company and Ex-L&S Solutions. We ended the year with backlog of $2.96 billion, up 2.4% from the prior year-end.

Moving to Slide 8, first quarter gross profit was $113 million and gross margin was 25.7%, up 80 basis points from the prior year. Ex-L&S gross profit was $73 million and Ex-L&S gross margin was 19.5% in the first quarter, up 170 basis points year-over-year.

Improvement was primarily driven by expanded use of intelligent automation and ongoing workforce optimization. During the first quarter of 2026, a transaction within the company's U.K. business process outsourcing consolidated joint venture generated $3 million of non-segment revenue and gross margin benefit with no net cash impact.

Total company and Ex-L&S gross margin benefited by 50 and 70 basis points, respectively. The transaction is expected to generate $12 million of gross margin benefit for 2026 evenly among the 4 quarters.

We remain on track to deliver our targeted 150 basis points of annual Ex-L&S gross margin improvement amid a challenging growth backdrop, although our path may not be a straight line.

I will now touch briefly on segment gross profit shown on Slide 8. DWS segment gross margin was 13.5% in the first quarter compared to 14.2% in the prior year period. Contraction primarily reflects impact from exited clients and growth in lower-margin device subscription service revenue in the quarter, which can have larger components of hardware, but offer a strong entry point for expansion into higher-value offerings.

DWS margins are expected to improve as we move through the year and benefit from the implementation of delivery initiatives.

CA&I segment gross margin was 21.8% in the first quarter, up 230 basis points year-over-year. The improvement was driven by continued workforce and labor market optimization, along with higher productivity supported by greater use of intelligent automation, especially within our central application capabilities.

The segment also benefited from increased project volumes in higher-margin solutions relative to exited contracts as we see continued traction in high-value application services and multi-cloud management, which leverage more of the latest AI models and tools for delivery.

ECS segment gross margin was 46.9% in the first quarter, down 80 basis points year-over-year. This was driven by lower L&S gross margin due to the timing of license renewals, partially offset by nearly 70 basis points of improvement in SS&C Solutions, which was helped by improved utilization in business process solutions.

Across our segments, we are providing our associates career pathways and upskilling in emerging technologies, which is supporting our workforce optimization and internal staffing and our low trailing 12-month voluntary attrition of 11.1%.

Turning to Slide 9, first quarter non-GAAP operating profit margin was 4.5%, up 170 basis points year-over-year. This was modestly better than the slightly positive margin outlook we provided last quarter, primarily due to execution against our operational efficiency objectives and increased L&S volume.

SG&A was $92 million, down $5 million or 5% year-over-year, keeping us on track to reduce SG&A by $10 million to $20 million in 2026. As a reminder, these savings are concentrated in streamlining corporate functions outside of sales and marketing and most of the restructuring costs to achieve have already been recognized.

Adjusted EBITDA was $46 million in the quarter, representing a 10.6% margin, up 130 basis points year-over-year. GAAP net loss was $36 million or a diluted loss of $0.50 per share, while non-GAAP net loss was $10 million or a loss of $0.14 per share.

Turning to Slide 10, capital expenditures totaled approximately $21 million in the first quarter, relatively flat on a year-over-year basis and consistent with our capital-light strategy. As a reminder, a significant portion of capital expenditure relates to development for our ClearPath Forward ecosystem, comprising our L&S solutions.

Free cash flow was negative $26 million compared to positive $13 million in the prior year period. The decline was driven by the timing of interest payments on our 2031 senior secured notes with payments now occurring in the first and third quarters.

In addition, the first quarter interest payment included interest related to an 18-day stub period. Pre-pension free cash flow was $2.9 million in the first quarter, net of $28.2 million of pension and $0.2 million of postretirement contributions.

The quarter included approximately $12 million of contributions to our U.K. pension scheme that are incremental to our previous full year forecast. Our joint venture partners funded these contributions, resulting in no cash impact to Unisys. For the remainder of 2026, we expect cash contributions to all global pension plans of approximately $69 million.

Our cash balance was $380 million as of March 31st compared to $414 million at the end of 2025. Our liquidity position remains strong, supported by significant cash balances and undrawn $125 million ABL facility with an accordion feature up to $155 million and no significant debt maturities until 2031. Our net leverage ratio, inclusive of pension is 2.9x, down from 3.2x a year ago.

Turning to our global pension plans, based on market conditions, we estimate that as of March 31st, both GAAP deficit and aggregate expected contributions through 2029 are essentially unchanged from year-end. As a reminder, we provide more detailed projections for estimated cash pension contributions and GAAP deficit at year-end.

Quarterly updates reflect estimated impacts of asset returns, market conditions and assumed deficit reduction from contributions. Following our capital structure transformation in mid-2025, which included a $250 million discretionary contribution to our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans, we took actions that removed substantially all volatility from our expected U.S. contributions.

This increased stability, along with the existing stability in international contributions set through trustee negotiation has significantly increased certainty for investors as to our future cash needs and trajectory of deficit reduction.

Turning to Slide 12, I will now discuss our financial guidance for the full year and the additional color we provide. We are reaffirming our full year guidance range and expect total company revenue to decline between 6.5% and 4.5% in constant currency, which based on April 30th foreign exchange rates equates to a reported revenue decline of negative 3.5% to negative 1.5%.

Guidance assumes Ex-L&S revenue constant currency decline of 7% to 4.5% and full year L&S revenue of $415 million.

As a reminder, the timing and exact amount of L&S revenue can be difficult to forecast with precision, as it depends on renewal timing, term and client consumption levels among other factors.

We are reaffirming guidance for full year non-GAAP operating profit margin of 9% to 11%, which assumes a slight year-over-year increase in L&S gross margin, targeted Ex-L&S gross margin improvement of 100 to 200 basis points and $10 million to $20 million reduction in operating expenses.

Looking specifically at the second quarter, we expect approximately $450 million of total company revenue on a reported basis, which assumes approximately $70 million of license and support revenue. Based on these assumptions, we expect second quarter non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 5%.

We expect second quarter items impacting GAAP net income of approximately $30 million, primarily related to pension expense. We expect a number of elevated noncash expenses impacting GAAP net income and earnings per share later in 2026 related to pension annuity purchases and streamlining certain legal entities, which we will guide on a quarterly basis.

Also, as a reminder, in 2025, we removed hedges on our intercompany balances, which could create noncash FX gains as the U.S. dollar strengthens or losses as the U.S. dollar weakens. These are difficult to guide due to constantly changing rates, but will impact quarterly GAAP net income.

There is no change to our expectation for full year free cash flow of approximately negative $25 million, which translates to positive $72 million of pre-pension free cash flow. This assumes approximate payments of $85 million in capital expenditures, $70 million of cash taxes, $70 million of net interest payments, $30 million in aggregate environmental, legal and restructuring payments and $102 million of postretirement contributions with approximately $29 million of which is expected in the second quarter.

We are focused on continuing to increase our efficiency and profitability during this period to maximize our underlying cash generation levels for investment and capital return.

Before we open the line for questions, Mike has a few additional remarks.

Thank you, Deb. I want to reinforce 3 key points we hope came through in our commentary today. First, our confidence in the guidance ranges we've reaffirmed today is reinforced by our first quarter financial performance as well as the strength of our client signings, book-to-bill and backlog position.

Second, our L&S solutions are durable and we are continuing to make investments to modernize our ClearPath Forward ecosystem and solidify our platforms as a key enabler of enterprise AI. Third, artificial intelligence is not only allowing us to provide more cost-effective solutions for our clients, but creates opportunities for us to help enhance our clients' business processes and end user experience, which creates a variety of new outlets for Unisys.

We hope you'll join us on June 2nd to discuss these opportunities and more at our upcoming Investor Day, which you can RSVP for on our investor website.

Operator, you may now open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question that we have comes from Rod Bourgeois of DeepDive Equity Research.

So it was helpful to hear some of your AI initiatives across your different segments and the accelerator work and the service experience work and so on. I wondered if you could just take us through quickly each of your segments and how AI is -- what are the headwinds and the tailwinds from AI? And maybe the net effect when you look across how AI is affecting you across your key segments?

Great. Yes. Look, I think as we've stated in previous calls, we see AI in general as a significant tailwind for -- not only for us, but I think for the industry in general, but specifically embedded in our segments. And I apologize, I'm fighting a little cold here. So when we think about the impact in DWS, so we've already talked a little bit around some of the headwinds, which is really just the renewal cycle and the reestablishment and cost sharing of applying AI to that renewal.

But moreover, I think we've been able to mitigate a lot of that headwind. Clearly, we've embedded AI into our solutions. We've seen the industry analyst reports on how that's set.

So we think there's some real opportunity there, not only to have that in our solutions, but in our skill sets that we're bringing to market. So we mentioned in our prepared remarks, many opportunities inside of DWS, whether that's infrastructure, AI and the build-out from a field services perspective, all of the work that we're doing with agent force embedded in Salesforce opportunity and application of AI with our team in there and most prominently in DWS would be embedded in our solution experience accelerator and our agentic service desk.

So we're seeing that really resonate, seeing some nice uplifts in pipeline, et cetera, in that particular business segment. So really happy there. And clearly, we think it's net-net, a positive long-term statement for the industry and for Unisys.

From CA&I, you've heard in the prepared remarks in general across the board, the benefit there is clearly around AI application as it applies to modernization, the adoption of AIOps in our intelligent operations framework and the work we're doing around the agentic build of what we consider to be the action layer or the application or even above the application layer, that's been really growing across the board for us.

And we think it's something that will continue to grow and actually probably opens up TAM for us for areas where we can really penetrate with that agentic layer that historically we may not have played in. So really pretty bullish on the application transformation layer embedded in CA&I.

And then in ECS, I mean, it's been a powerful story for the last several years. We've talked roughly around $40 million of increase per year over the prior 3 years of consumption. The work that we've done to continue to embed technology enablement from an AI point of view into the ClearPath Forward ecosystem, we mentioned, in particular, the developer toolkit for AI that really allows for testing and utilization, and I'll say, bimodal data transfer has been really important.

And we continue to develop the AB Suite to again allow for innovation and flexible deployment. So we see the technology continue to enhance the utilization of various aspects of AI in ClearPath.

And again, we've seen that result over the course of the last several years from enhanced consumption and we see that trend continuing. So really happy with how it's shaping up, starting to see a little bit of relief, I think, from the macros, which has again given us confidence in our guidance as we said it.

And just a follow-up on AI in your ClearPath Forward business. You've rolled out these new AI releases. Can you talk a little bit about the impetus to develop those AI releases and what the early client reaction is?

And even to the extent that you're partnering with the AI models on that, just a little more color on the development of those releases and the reaction in the ecosystem?

Sure. Great question. So look, this is not something that we've picked up in the last 3 months in reaction to what's going on in the market. These AB Suite releases have happened over the course of the last couple of years.

This is just the latest release that's going out there. Clearly, there is an ask and road map discussions that we're having with clients. And it's really about access to data, portability of data, continued consumption of data and our ability to continue to build out above the, I'll say, the ecosystem layer or what you would consider the hypervisor layer or core layer of data and usage.

The -- I'll say the issue du jour there is really about maintaining the support and steady run of the base and utilizing the emerging technology, you talk about frontier models as an example, being able to extract this valuable data that's embedded in ecosystem and marry that to frontier models to really help our clients continue to take advantage of that data set and do that in a manner so that they're not putting at risk anything in the ecosystem.

They run the resiliency, the security, et cetera. So we see this as just a continuation of our ClearPath 2050 strategy and it happens to be the emerging technology that's there today. But we do a little bit and continue to work with kind of joint road mapping on some of these providers.

And it extends beyond frontier, right? It's also OEM providers as well as some SaaS applications that sit on top of that ecosystem. So this, again, has been multiyears in the making. And I think from a client perspective, aligned to the expectations that we've set with our clients over the course of managing their road maps.

The next question we have comes from Mayank Tandon of Needham & Co.

This is Brandon on for Mayank. And I'm just wondering, like given the strong quarter, can you talk a little bit more about the reaffirmed guidance? Is that taking into account some macro uncertainty at buffer? And what are the levers that get you to the high or low end of the guide?

Yes. Look, I think, obviously, we've reaffirmed guidance. We talked about Q1 being a little stronger than expectations. Kind of early in the year to be thinking about the impact of that.

Obviously, our guide to constant currency, Deb mentioned in her prepared remarks some of the movement in FX embedded in that. So we'll have more color in Investor Day around how that relates to whether we're maybe moving towards the higher end of that or where we sit from a guidance perspective.

I guess the message that I would want to leave you with is we feel good about Q1. It's a little better than we expected. We assumed in our guidance, as we talked about when we said it, that no real changes in the macroeconomic environment, although it's maybe moving a little more favorably from a macros perspective, I wouldn't consider one quarter to be indicative of the full year.

So when we get a little bit more visibility through Q2, clearly at Investor Day and then obviously, if not Investor Day at our Q2 earnings, we'll talk about what -- kind of how we feel about that guidance range.

Yes. And to answer as far as some of the levers, I mean, it will really -- the signing momentum, if that continues and kind of the conversion timing of that revenue and then field services volumes, those are probably drivers we'd be looking for.

Yes. And just to tie into that, I mean, as we've continued to enhance and improve our gross margin, that we have a lot more control over, obviously, and continue to work our programs and execute against those programs.

And then to Deb's point, as these things become revenue recognition in year and we get to run rate on things that we've already sold and have started to implement, we're expecting some pull-through on margin there as well.

Great. And then you guys also mentioned some cross-sell momentum in the quarter. I'm just wondering how big of an opportunity that is for you guys and the dynamics of the cross-sells? Especially with current clients upgrading IT and infrastructure for these AI initiatives?

Yes. Look, I think -- look, in general, and I mentioned in my prepared remarks one specific client where they had 100 applications sitting kind of on top of our ClearPath Forward ecosystem and we're helping modernize those applications.

And there's a great example of kind of that agentic action layer to modernize that. So we see that biggest cross-sell opportunity embedded in application modernization, and specifically, agentic -- I'll say, agentic AI applied to that action layer, the more of that we see, the more of that we're able to accomplish.

And I think the market's knee-jerk reaction a little bit on SaaS providers, et cetera, we're not a SaaS provider per se, but we certainly play in the area of supporting SaaS application as solution implementers on the SaaS side.

And the ability to use that agentic layer, I think, opens up TAM for us to lean in more heavily in that arena. And the ClearPath Forward ecosystem application construct is really a great proof point of that. We've seen a couple of instances of that recently, and we expect that, that will continue.

The next question we have comes from Matt Dezort of William Blair.

This is Matt on for Maggie Nolan. Congrats on the good results. Can I ask about the strong new business TCV? I think it was up 45% year-over-year, strong backlog too.

I guess, Deb, you touched on it a little bit, but how should we think about conversion timing and ramp periods as well as margin profile of these new wins and your ability to continue to win work at these improved margin levels going forward?

Great. So yes, super happy with the year-on-year uptick there. We mentioned in our prepared remarks about these rapid value assessments. Part of our strategy that we implemented at the tail end of last year and have carried through to Q1 this year is really looking at these point-of-spear opportunities and how emerging technology really avails itself not only in the AI embedded in our solutions, but the skills that we've got around that AI implementation and the conversion of technical debt.

So happy with that uplift. We're seeing some real success in the top end of the funnel as well. Clearly, these solutions are resonating with clients.

Now these RVAs or rapid value assessments are typically more point-of-the-spear things and are typically a little smaller engagements as a means to open the door. So we expect that the transition time will be faster.

We also expect that much of that work is really more kind of time and material or outcome-based pricing. So we don't have the typical 18-month transition on some of those.

And then it's really about the expansion post that RVA adoption is kind of what our focus is on top of that. So we think it will be more volume, perhaps a little smaller value, right, of the actual deal, because it's point-of-spear oriented, but gives us a real jump-off point to expand to other aspects of the business.

So again, strong year-over-year TCV growth in that, as well as top of the funnel pretty happy and aligned to what our expectations were when we made those changes at the tail end of last year.

Yes, I think on -- yes, you also asked about margin. And I just think it's mix depending on kind of the solutions that we're signing. I think we mentioned there are some DSS have lower margins, right, but still are really good entry way into the client.

Yes, that's a great point, Deb. Thanks for chiming in there. Mix is exactly right. And if the TCV is coming from the RVAs, then they're probably already at our accelerated margin profile.

But as Deb mentioned, a good chunk of that pipeline aligns as we talked about, our DSS solution, which have a hardware mix in the solution itself, which kind of impacts the total margin of the contract, but not the services piece of our margin.

Really, it's more the pass-through component of the hardware. But all in all, good line of sight, good progress and feel like the strategy is taking hold.

Got it. As a follow-up, can I ask about pricing and just consumption pricing? I think IBM discussed the evolution they're seeing in the mainframe platforms to account for MIPS and AI and additional consumption parameters.

Are you doing something similar with your pricing in CPF? And how are you maintaining your deserted premium here while adapting to these changing market dynamics?

Sure. So great question. Look, the pricing discussions that we've had over the last probably 4 quarters were really pricing discussions as it pertains to Ex-L&S. Your question, obviously, is L&S pricing.

We have not really had pricing pressure on the L&S side. It is a premium service, our clients view it as a premium service. We continue to get increased consumption out of that business. And most of that consumption increase is really based on the comments that I made earlier around enabling the data sharing and testing and the like embedded in what's going on in L&S.

Typically, from an L&S renewal, as you know, Matt, the revenue recognition and that costing or pricing happens at deal signing and it's usually for the entire duration of that deal and it's upfront from a perspective of usage or consumption.

So -- and we've been able to, over the course of the last 5 years and don't expect this to change, get price increases on those licenses as well as the support of that environment. So it's not really been pricing pressure at all on the L&S side of the business and we're quite confident that, that's going to continue.

The next question we have comes from Anja Soderstrom of Sidoti.

So AI seems to be a strong driver for you. But what kind of margin impact do you expect that to have?

Look, I think we've been pretty consistent that the AI that we've embedded into enabling our solutions continues to have margin expansion and improvement. I think we were probably, what, Deb, almost 600 basis points over the last 3 years in Ex-L&S.

Yes. Yes.

That is a byproduct of embedding that into our solutions. Clearly, when we have a new logo and they're utilizing the new solution, immediately, we get that impact immediately through -- and we've talked about last quarter, as an example, pushing our agentic service desk into the entire legacy base of clients.

We should be above 40% of that base using our agentic service desk by the end of the year. So we still have some improvements that we expect on margin beyond this year for the existing base and we expect that we'll continue to offer this solution at an enhanced margin profile.

So if I look at kind of where we are in the adoption of AI into our solutions, we're probably about halfway there in the existing base. And so again, we're talking about from our guidance, another 100, 200 basis points of potential improvement on the Ex-L&S side. And there should still be more in '27 as we continue to deploy our agentic offerings into our existing base.

Okay. And then can we just double-click on the opportunities you see with the field services?

Yes. So that's one we've been continually bullish on, as you know, and it really comes in 3 flavors. The embedding AI in the way we actually deliver our services from a field service point of view, i.e., location of the technicians, sending data to the technicians on the site with next best case cause of issues, looking and using data to understand how to do preventive things while on site, et cetera. So that's kind of a base used case of traditional elements and how AI is enhancing that.

The second and third, I think, are actually more exciting, right? So one is around the different types of field service deployments. We talked about the work we've been doing on infrastructure and high-end storage and kind of moving up stack from a field service technician perspective.

We talked in the prepared remarks around the data center work for installation and maintenance of things like liquid cooling for GPU chip configuration in a data center in general. And we also talked about the expansion of field services to other areas.

In general, if you think about conference rooms, kiosks, office environments, et cetera, and the data telemetry around IoT devices and how that ultimately aligns to having a field service orientation.

As you know, we're one of the few companies with the kind of global scale and reach from a field services point of view. And we think that, that's a differentiator from our perspective.

And the alignment of that to our agentic service desk, knowledge management, et cetera, and the skills that we've got globally in field service, we've been investing in that area for several years when I think you've seen a lot of the market kind of curtail some of their investment in that space. We're pretty excited about the opportunity it brings to us.

The next question we have comes from Matthew Galinko of Maxim.

I was just hoping you could expand a little bit more on the pipeline for field services around data centers and AI data centers?

I mentioned on my prepared remarks that we had won an engagement there. We've been in the hunt for a couple of others as well. There's billions of dollars being spent in that space. And our goal is to really have our associate base totally prepared to handle significant volume as it pertains to data center construct, installation of racking in there and obviously, the component pieces around immersion cooling, liquid cooling, et cetera. So the pipeline has been, I would say, fairly strong.

Our discussions with clients or prospective clients in that pipeline is going, I think, incredibly well. And we're happy about the fact that we are in the hunt for a whole host of opportunities there with some pretty significant players.

So clearly, the market awareness of our abilities and skills in that space is out there. And again, these deals take a little bit of time to materialize. But I guess what I would say to you is that we're certainly getting significant invites and that we've got really good opportunities in the pipeline to expand that opportunity for the company.

The next question we have comes from Ana Goshko of Bank of America.

I have a pension question. So Deb, you mentioned the -- some charges to come later this year related to pension annuity purchases. And I know those purchases helped to reduce the overall liability and then in the medium to long term also help to reduce the amount it's going to take to reduce the pension deficit.

But it wasn't clear to me that you had already agreed to do the annuity purchases this year. I know those are cashless. So is that kind of a done deal? Or is it still something that you're considering?

Yes. No, it's not a done deal. It's still in our plans. As we laid out last year, we were going to do some annuity purchases. We did some last year at the end of the year and our plan was to do more this year, but it's not locked in.

And that's why we don't know the exact amount of the charge, it will depend on the timing. And so that's why as the year goes on and we get closer to locking that in, we'll give a sense of what that noncash charge would be.

Yes. Ana, it's Mike. So when we talked about -- even when we did the debt, we talked about roughly $600 million worth of pensions annuities. I think we did, Deb, like $375 million, something like that.

And so this would kind of be the other half of that. You're right that is cashless to us. As you know, we've done about 6 of these already. And so when we do them, you make an offer and then you get bids. And there are -- and there has been high interest in those bids.

Normally, we get maybe 4 to 7 folks bidding on that. And then it's really a matter of does the bid come through at a rate that we think is worth it from our perspective. So you're right, it is still a little bit market-oriented, but our availability to do another one starts in Q3.

And so we fully expect to put that offer out in Q3 and we fully expect that we'll get the same level of demand that we've gotten historically and it really comes down to the economics of the rate.

Okay. Okay. Great. Understood. And then secondly, I think I asked the same question last quarter. But the debt market has been just very messy for software-related companies and IT-related companies generally.

So that's kind of created an opportunity potentially for you to buy back bonds at an attractive rate. I know you've got uses for your liquidity, but you do have a strong liquidity position. So I think you bought back just a tiny bit of bonds in the quarter and about $2 million. And just wondering if that's something that has continued after quarter end or just kind of your view is on basically tapping that opportunity?

Yes. So we have windows where we can purchase. And you're right, we did in Q1, purchase an immaterial amount and at an opportunistic value, we feel. And so we'll continue to look at our liquidity, our cash and assess that as time goes on and as the windows open that allow us to do that.

So we'll continue to keep an eye on that and see when the price is opportunistic, look at the overall liquidity picture and make that determination.

The final question we have is a follow-up from Rod Bourgeois.

Yes. I thought I would just ask, in the public services, you had some delays with the government shutdown and some other decision challenges there. The question is, is that starting to turn? And then similarly, on PC refresh, is that also at a point where you should see some upside there as well? Or is it still a little bit of a wait and watch going on? Just those updates would be helpful.

Sure. Look, I would say, in general, public sector has been more favorable than it has in previous quarters. So -- and I would throw higher end in that same viewpoint.

I think some of the noise has started to settle down and some of that project work is starting to return. So again, I wouldn't say 1 quarter or 1.5 quarter is indicative of the future. But I'm encouraged by what we're seeing as far as the loosening of the belt a little bit here and getting back to a little bit more normalcy in that space.

I think they also recognize that in many cases, there are significant laggards from a technology perspective and the utilization of the emerging technologies, specifically this influx of these agentic AI models can help leapfrog them and get them not only up to date from a technical debt perspective, but catch them up for perhaps multiyear lag effect. So that's been, I think, pretty positive in the market.

And then as far as your comment on PC refresh, yes, we saw a little better than expected in Q1. Again, I'm hesitant to say that, that is a byproduct or that's going to just continue throughout the remainder of the year, but there are certainly some elements that would suggest that it should, specifically as we talk about the Microsoft licensing component, et cetera.

So we -- and again, we're coming up against comps of a pretty low year. But I would remind you that, at least for us, the reliance on that refresh cycle is less and we continue to train and educate the workforce on the infrastructure component of the field services arm that is impacted by those PC refreshes.

We've extended that IoT devices to go beyond PC refresh. So it's an important factor. But when we set our guidance, we expected it to be pretty flat and maybe even still a little declining. So -- and it's actually performed a little better than our expectations.

The final question we have comes from Sean Perkins of Deutsche Bank.

I'd like to dig into a little bit more about the data center opportunity that you highlighted to some of the work you have there. Perhaps if you can discuss maybe some of the clients that you're seeing engage with you in those arenas and then how you're -- what the go-to-market strategy for your business is there to as far as given the market -- and to think about the market opportunity size?

Well, thanks, Sean, for the question. I'm not really at liberty to share actual client names, but I would say to you that, obviously, we're engaged with the OEMs in regards to that and they're an entry way into some of these clients.

And I would say, at least for a couple in the pipeline, it's kind of the who's who in that space. So we feel really, again, privileged that those types of clients are engaging with us to talk about the installation and maintenance of such a high-profile investment for them.

And again, there are billions of dollars, as you know, being spent in this space. We think there's a really big TAM. And we've been using this, I'll say, period of the last 12 months to really make sure our workforce is trained up on the utilization of this new technology, not only on how to deploy it, but clearly, the implementation of racking and cabling and immersion cooling is a pretty technical aspect.

And so the recognition of our capabilities to do that puts us in really good stead. And again, I would just say that we're talking about some major OEMs and major players in data center build.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, and welcome to the Unisys Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Michaela Pewarski, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Yesterday afternoon, Unisys released its fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. Joining me to discuss those results are Mike Thomson, our CEO and President; and Deb McCann, our CFO.

As a reminder, today's call contains estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. We caution listeners that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed on this call. These items can be found in the forward-looking statements section of yesterday's earnings release furnished on Form 8-K and in our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. We do not assume any obligation to review or revise any forward-looking statements in light of future events. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as non-GAAP operating profit that exclude certain unusual or nonrecurring items such as postretirement expense, cost reduction activities and other expenses that the company believes are not indicative of its ongoing operations. While we believe these measures provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance, they are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP. Reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are provided in the slides for today's call, which are available on our investor website.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Michaela. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss the company's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. I want to start off with three clear messages that we hope you take away today. First, we continue to execute against a consistent operating strategy, which is yielding improved profitability and free cash flow as we continue to advance our pension removal strategy. Second, the market perception of Unisys and our solution continues to advance among our clients, prospects, partners and industry analysts. And third, which relates to a subject I know that's top of mind for everyone, we believe artificial intelligence is poised to become a powerful driver of long-term demand in the solutions that are core to Unisys as a designer, orchestrator and enabler of modern IT ecosystems.

Before discussing AI, I want to discuss my first message of how consistent execution of our strategy is translating into financial results. Fourth quarter revenue grew 5% year-over-year, resulting in a slight improvement in our full year revenue projections coming in above our revised midpoint. Our non-GAAP operating margin was 18% in the quarter and 9.1% for the year, exceeding the top end of our upwardly revised projections and representing 30 basis points of annual improvement. We had a high degree of confidence in achieving the fourth quarter weighting of our license and support revenue, and we met those expectations.

Full year L&S revenue exceeded our original expectations by nearly $40 million, making this the third consecutive year of substantial upside in our highest margin profit center. Our actions to streamline corporate costs reduced SG&A as a percent of revenue by nearly 300 basis points over the past 3 years. We generated $128 million of full year pre-pension free cash flow in 2025, up 55% from the prior year and above the $110 million we expected. We have strong liquidity with over $400 million of cash on the balance sheet at year-end, up almost $40 million year-over-year. We increased our year-end cash balance, while net leverage, including pension, has improved to 2.8x compared to 3.0x at the end of 2024.

Our liquidity also improved despite using $50 million of cash as part of the discretionary contribution to our U.S. pensions. Our total contributions have reduced our global pension deficit by $300 million to $450 million at year-end and lowered future expected contributions by more than the interest on the incremental debt we raised, improving near-term cash flows. We also executed another annuity purchase, which removed approximately $320 million of gross U.S.-defined benefit pension liabilities in 2025. This, coupled with our liability duration matching strategy, which has successfully removed substantially all-market volatility from the total future contributions and keeps us on a fixed path for full removal of the U.S.-defined benefit pension plan.

I want to shift to my second message, which is that awareness and perception of Unisys and our solutions continues to advance. We're seeing this evidenced by our wins and our pipeline. 2025 was an especially large renewal year, and our team successfully signed $1.7 billion of renewal TCV, securing a large portion of our recurring revenue base. Over $1 billion of renewal TCV was signed in the fourth quarter alone, which included closing a 3-year extension and improved economics with our largest DWS client, who has been with us for nearly three decades. This field services renewal spans U.S., Canada and Latin America and secures the necessary scale for us to provide affordable field services across our client base. Multiyear renewals can be a catalyst for expansion within client account by integrating new solutions that support enhanced client centricity and improved overall margin profile.

We capitalized on these opportunities in the fourth quarter, which was our largest quarter of new scope signings in recent years. Almost all of our largest renewals during the quarter included new scope, evidencing improved perception within our existing client base. For example, during the quarter, we signed a 5-year renewal with one of the largest public university systems in the United States for cloud transformation, migration and modernization services and expanded scope to include centralized application management across campuses and a center of excellence that will leverage AI agents to standardize and modernize application management, streamlining processes for both students and staff. As we discussed last quarter, we've seen some competitors price aggressively to prioritize revenue over profitability and delivery quality. While that contributed to a few significant renewal losses and presents several hundred basis points of growth headwinds for 2026, we're confident our investments in our core areas of our portfolio will continue to drive market and wallet share gains and will both reduce client costs and extend the scope of our delivery for our clients.

In our wins and pipeline, we're seeing more instances of clients placing increased value on delivery quality and viewing it as a real differentiator. For example, in the fourth quarter, we won back a public sector client in Australia with a large scope for DWS solutions after they experienced a decline in delivery quality with one of our competitors. This win sets a powerful new foundation for our business in the region and provides a global playbook for showcasing delivery differentiation. We also added several new logo opportunities to our DWS and CA&I pipeline from chief information officers, who moved to new organization and engaged us immediately to participate in their transformations because they know we're a true partner with all the necessary skills to modernize and reliably manage complex IT ecosystems post transformation.

We're also achieving new heights in recognition and awareness among industry analysts that influence client decisions when selecting IT solution providers. During 2025, we built upon several years of advancing awareness and recognition within the analyst community, again, increasing our total report placements by over 20%, including two new leader recognitions. In the fourth quarter, we received a very significant recognition from Gartner, which elevates Unisys to a global leader position in their outsourced Digital Workplace Services Magic Quadrant for the first time.

Magic Quadrant reports are the culmination of rigorous fact-based research evaluating completeness of vision and ability to execute and provide a wide range view of the relative position of providers. In addition, in its companion critical capabilities for outsourced digital workplace services report, Gartner ranked Unisys as the #1 overall provider for the North American market and the #1 global provider for both service desk and device management capabilities. This acknowledgment is already helping us access more opportunities, giving us an edge, especially relative to the three of our largest competitors that fell out of the leader quadrant.

Unisys was also named to Forbes list of America's Best Midsize Employers in 2026, which comes on the heels of being named Time Magazine's World's Best Companies in 2025. Our culture is reflected in our below-average voluntary attrition, which was 11.4% for the year.

As we look to the future, I want to discuss why we view AI as a powerful long-term driver of demand for our solutions, and how we've invested in solution development and delivery skills to capitalize on it. As I said earlier, Unisys ultimately develops, enables and orchestrates the IT ecosystem. In all three of our segments, we provide solutions that enable emerging technology throughout the enterprise and are agnostic to the placement of AI, software or hardware that make up our clients' environment. As the industry heads into a major multiyear AI infrastructure build-out to supply the technology needed for broad AI adoption, there's a growing shortage of skilled technicians that will provide the design and service layer for modernization and post-modernization support.

Importantly, demand for services will grow regardless of whether clients develop custom AI agents on private infrastructure, leverage standard capabilities from software providers and hyperscalers within private or public clouds or a combination of both within hybrid environments. For us, the scale and reach of AI goes beyond the software and extends to physical AI. The scale and skills of our field service organizations present a unique market opportunity for us. We're already beginning to support private AI builds for OEM partners, requiring liquid cooling skills, complementing the work we already do in maintaining critical hybrid infrastructure such as servers and storage and data centers or IoT devices in everything from conference rooms to restaurants.

We will also continue expanding our existing use of Agentic AI and expect AI agents to continue to be layered throughout our managed service offerings, orchestrating increasingly complex and automated workflows. Clearly, AI is adding complexity to managing the IT estate. Tokenization costs are high, business cases are challenging and measuring returns on investments is difficult. We expect all these factors to increase client reliance on external providers. Unisys can reduce the cost of AI adoption for clients by developing solutions that can be leveraged across a large base of clients with standardized architectures for faster deployment.

In 2025, we launched Service Experience Accelerator, and Agentic AI framework for delivering next-generation service desk. SEA is now in production with some of our largest clients, and we are enhancing our solution to improve its ability to handle input ambiguity. We plan to roll this out to about a third of our existing client base during 2026, which establishes a growing base of leverageable technology to support long-term expansion, continued delivery optimization and enhanced quality.

In CA&I, we're advancing our intelligent operations architecture with an integrated framework for rapidly developing, deploying and orchestrating AI agents to streamline IT operations and aid in financial operation decision-making, especially as it pertains to design and compute. Our alliance partners offer a significant and relatively untapped opportunity to scale distribution and continue raising awareness in the market. Hyperscalers are eager to promote solutions that use their cloud platforms, tools and models to drive AI adoption and development of their AI-enabled cloud ecosystem. For example, in CA&I, we're standardizing our SOC-managed service delivery with Microsoft's Sentinel and Defender Threat Detection as its main components.

We are powering the service layer with AI agents, which helped us engage with Microsoft on development and discussions about joint promotion. Many of our key enterprise software partners are also seeking to accelerate uptake of their AI capabilities. As another example, we are a high-volume user of Agentforce internally, which we adopted to optimize our field service dispatch, and we are engaging with Salesforce to explore how we can jointly offer our internal framework as a service to some of their other clients and prospects. These examples illustrate the repeatable playbooks we developed across our portfolio that we think will help us capitalize on AI-related demand, strengthen our partnerships and ultimately accelerate our growth in L&S solutions.

In the ECS segment, we continue to be highly confident in the enduring value of our ClearPath Forward ecosystem despite hypothetical threats posted by AI development. AI coding capabilities do not replicate decades of development required to integrate processes, code, equipment and environments with unmatched latency, availability, redundancy and security. Our core platform offer an unmatched combination of speed, resilience and most importantly, security, which is of critical importance to the financial services, government agencies, health care and travel transportation companies we serve. Replicating these benefits would require parsing our unified platform into numerous functions and a wholesale reorganization of business processes for minimal benefit, bringing with it significant business risk.

At the same time, we continue investing in our core platforms, which are already cloud compatible, enhancing our value-added products such as data exchange and ePortal, which unlock valuable data and allow it to move across environments and applications powering AI and analytics. These solutions represent increased extensibility and ecosystem expansion that establish ClearPath Forward as a pillar of a modern AI-enabled enterprise solution advancing digital transformation. At the same time, we are leveraging AI to help us quickly assess workforce skills, identify gaps and vulnerabilities as well as assist in cross-training and upskilling talent for the future. We are beginning to leverage our internal engineering expertise into advisory engagements with ECS clients. And while quantum computing may not be imminent in the short term, we are beginning to see tangible client engagement for quantum advisory services we introduced early in 2025.

With that, now I'll turn the call over to Deb to go through our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, my discussion today will reference slides from the supplemental presentation posted on our website. I will discuss total revenue growth, both as reported and in constant currency and segment growth in constant currency only. I will also provide information, excluding license and support for L&S to allow investors to assess the progress we are making outside the portion of ECS, where revenue and profit recognition is tied to license renewal timing, which can be uneven between quarters.

To echo Mike's comments, our results reflect consistent execution of our business strategy and effective derisking of our future pension contributions, making our financial performance and liquidity stronger and more predictable for investors. We have seen an ongoing positive shift in how we engage with partners, clients and industry experts, and we think much of that is related to our agility in adopting artificial intelligence within delivery and solution frameworks. And we expect AI to be a strong long-term driver of demand for our largest solutions.

Looking at our results in more detail, you can see on Slide 6, fourth quarter revenue was $575 million, up 5.3% year-over-year as reported and 2.7% in constant currency, driven by the timing of L&S renewals. For the full year, revenue was $1.95 billion, down 2.9% as reported and 3.3% in constant currency, slightly above the midpoint of our revised guidance range. Excluding License and Support Solutions, revenue was $388 million in the fourth quarter and $1.52 billion for the full year, both of which were down 3.9% in constant currency.

I will now discuss segment revenue performance in constant currency terms shown on Slide 8. Fourth quarter Digital Workplace Solutions revenue of $126 million was flat sequentially to third quarter and down 3.7% year-over-year. For the full year, DWS revenue was $508 million, down 3.1%. Both fourth quarter and full year segment revenue were impacted by PC-related revenue declines, including lower third-party hardware and PC field services volumes. As we mentioned last quarter, Microsoft's extension of Windows 10 support has led to some clients delaying upgrade projects or pushing out purchases of new PCs required for compatibility with Windows 11 and recently, higher PC prices due to memory chip shortages have compounded delays. However, we expect PC price increases to benefit us over time as they increase the significance of device costs within client budgets, potentially leading to incremental interest in our device subscription service, which provides intelligent forecasting and planning and a more flexible and predictable cost model.

PC-related declines were partially offset by growth in higher-value infrastructure field services in areas such as enterprise storage and network infrastructure, which typically have lower volumes, but higher margin and profit associated with them. And as we mentioned before, we believe the PC volume declines have stabilized. Fourth quarter Cloud Applications and Infrastructure Solutions revenue was $191 million, a decline of 4.1% year-over-year. For the full year, CA&I revenue was down 4.8% to $733 million. Similar to what we saw in earlier quarters of 2025, the fourth quarter was impacted by a lower volume of short-term project work at U.S. public sector clients due to federal funding disruptions that have created budget uncertainty in the public sector. This remained a prominent factor in the fourth quarter, the first half of which experienced a federal government shutdown. We were pleased to still be able to secure multiyear renewals in both CA&I and DWS Solutions with several of our largest U.S. public sector clients, some including new scope.

Enterprise computing solutions revenue was $237 million in fourth quarter, up 14% year-over-year. Full year segment revenue was $629 million, relatively flat to 2024. Within the segment, L&S Solutions revenue was $186 million in the fourth quarter, up 19.8%, bringing full year L&S revenue to $428 million, in line with our increased expectations. Fourth quarter revenue for specialized services and next-generation compute solutions, the L&S solutions within ECS was flat sequentially and down 3.7% year-over-year against a stronger prior year comparison. Full year Ex-L&S revenue grew 4.9% year-over-year due to increased project work and business process solutions volumes at financial services clients in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

Total company TCV was $2.2 billion for the full year, driven by strong growth in Ex-L&S renewal signings and new scope bookings with existing clients. Full year new business TCV totaled $491 million, down 38% year-over-year, primarily driven by elongated sales cycles with prospective clients and hesitancy in the public sector. Full year new business TCV includes an approximate $200 million adjustment to reflect a mutually agreed termination of a first quarter 2025 new logo signing in DWS, where contractual terms were not aligned. We were pleased with this outcome as it averts risk of future profit dilution, while preserving a positive relationship with a large prospective client that we anticipate will invite Unisys to bid should they seek new proposals for any portion of this work or for other Unisys solutions. Trailing 12-month book-to-bill was 1.1x for the total company and 1.2x for our L&S solutions. We ended the year with a backlog of $3.2 billion, up 12% sequentially and 11% from prior year.

Moving to Slide 9. Fourth quarter gross profit was $195 million and gross margin was 33.9%, up 180 basis points from the prior year due to L&S revenue growth over a relatively stable cost base. Ex-L&S gross profit was $51 million in the fourth quarter, a 13.2% margin. While this was 540 basis points lower than 18.6% in the third quarter, the majority of the margin compression was due to the aggregate impact of incremental cost reduction charges and timing of variable compensation. Full year gross profit was $549 million, a 28.2% gross margin compared to 29.2% in the prior year period, driven by an increased proportion of lower-margin L&S hardware relative to the prior year, which we expect to be more normalized in 2026.

Full year Ex-L&S gross profit was $255 million, a 16.8% gross margin compared to 17.6% in the prior year period, which includes approximately 40 basis points of incremental cost reduction expenses. Overall, we were pleased with Ex-L&S profitability considering some of the revenue headwinds we faced this year, and we expect lower cost reduction charges and greater efficiency gains in 2026, supported by workforce and technology investments made in 2025.

I will now discuss segment gross profit as shown on Slide 10. DWS segment gross margin was 10.5% in the fourth quarter compared to 15.9% in the prior year period. Nearly 400 basis points of the year-over-year margin decline was driven by onetime items, including transition costs. Full year DWS gross margin was 14.5% compared to 15.7% in the prior year. Over time, we expect a continued long-term shift towards these higher-value infrastructure field services, which typically are at a higher margin. CA&I segment gross margin was 20.7% in the fourth quarter, up 210 basis points year-over-year due to workforce and labor market optimization and increased automation and AI use in solution development and delivery as well as an 80 basis point onetime benefit. Full year CA&I gross margin was 20.2%, relatively flat to the prior year. At a high level, strong delivery gains have been able to offset the slower pace of investment and project work at U.S. public sector clients.

Looking ahead, we are pushing the pace of solution development and standardization in the CA&I segment and sustaining a focus on workforce optimization and rapid adoption of the latest AI models and tools to support additional efficiency gains. ECS segment gross margin was 65.9% in the fourth quarter, up 270 basis points year-over-year, and full year gross margin was 55.5%, a 250 basis point decline related to increased hardware revenue mix, which should normalize in 2026.

Moving to Slide 11. Fourth quarter non-GAAP operating profit margin was 18%, driven by the higher concentration of L&S revenue in the fourth quarter. For the full year, non-GAAP operating profit margin was 9.1%, above the top end of our upwardly revised guidance range. The sustained strength of the trends in our L&S solutions again contributed more profit than we anticipated. Over the past 2 years, we have also diligently executed on a detailed plan to streamline our corporate real estate and central IT costs. We've been able to reduce SG&A by 13% or nearly $60 million. We expect to again lower SG&A in 2026 in absolute dollar terms by at least $10 million to $20 million as we receive a full year benefit from savings, while most of the costs to achieve them are behind us.

Fourth quarter net income was $19 million and $63 million on a non-GAAP basis, translating to diluted earnings per share of $0.25 and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.86. For the full year, GAAP net loss was $340 million or a diluted loss of $4.79 per share. This included an approximate $228 million onetime noncash expense related to a pension annuity purchase occurring in the third quarter. Full year non-GAAP net income was $68 million and non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.93.

Turning to Slide 13. Capital expenditures totaled approximately $20 million in the fourth quarter and $78 million for the full year, relatively flat to 2024. As a reminder, a significant portion of capital expenditure relates to our L&S software, and there is no change to our overall capital-light strategy. Pre-pension free cash flow, which is free cash flow prior to pension and postretirement contributions, was $113 million in the fourth quarter and $128 million for the full year, which exceeded our expectation for $110 million. This is the result of a stronger profit performance and more favorable working capital relative to our assumptions. Full year free cash flow was negative $218 million, which includes a $250 million discretionary pension contribution, and $95 million of required U.S. and non-U.S. postretirement contributions.

Moving to Slide 14. Our cash balance was $414 million at year-end compared to $377 million at the end of 2024. Our cash balance increased by $37 million year-over-year, which is primarily due to our strong pre-pension free cash flow as well as some positive impacts from foreign exchange on cash balances and hedge settlements. As a reminder, our change in cash balance includes a $250 million discretionary pension contribution, which was funded by approximately $200 million of incremental borrowing as well as $50 million of cash from the balance sheet. Our liquidity position is strong with no major debt maturity until 2031, and our recently renewed $125 million asset-backed revolver remains undrawn. Our net leverage ratio was 2.8x, inclusive of global pension deficit, down from 3x a year ago.

I will now provide an update on our global pension plans, beginning with Slide 15. As of December 31, 2025, the GAAP deficit in our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans was $239 million, and our global GAAP pension deficit, inclusive of all U.S. and international plans, was approximately $450 million. This compared to approximately $750 million at the end of 2024 or a $300 million improvement. $250 million of improvement in our global pension deficit was driven by our discretionary contribution with the remaining approximately $50 million resulting from $95 million of planned contributions to our global plans.

On Slide 16, you can see a detailed projection of our expected cash contributions. We are forecasting approximately $350 million of remaining cash contributions to our global pension plans in aggregate through 2029, reflecting stability from the actions we took to remove volatility in our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans.

Moving to Slide 17, we have provided an updated projection of how expected future contributions and the benefits we dispersed to pensioners are expected to impact our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans deficit, both with and without annuity purchase assumptions and the implied cost of full removal at the end of 2029. At the bottom, we've also included our expected deficit reduction in all other plans. However, it is important to remember that while international contributions are negotiated every few years and very stable, the international deficit is impacted by asset returns and has more volatility. These projections are meant to provide a directional indication only of the relative conversion of contributions to leverage reduction in a given year, which will also change if contributions shift between years.

Turning to Slide 18. I'll now discuss our financial guidance for the full year and the additional assumptions we provide. We expect total company revenue to decline between 6.5% and 4.5% in constant currency, which based on February 1st foreign exchange rates equates to a reported revenue decline of negative 3.8% to negative 1.8%. Guidance assumes Ex-L&S revenue decline of 7% to 4.5% in constant currency. We also expect full year L&S revenue of $415 million at a gross margin of approximately 70%. We also continue to expect 2027 and 2028 L&S revenue to average $400 million per year and continue to see artificial intelligence as a driver of consumption and adoption of value-added products within the ecosystem and have detected no change in client commitment to our platform. As a reminder, the timing and exact amount of L&S revenue can be difficult to forecast with precision, and it depends on the renewal timing, term and client consumption levels, among other factors. We expect non-GAAP operating profit margin to be between 9% and 11% for the full year, which reflects a higher margin percentage in L&S, 100 to 200 basis points of improvement in Ex-L&S gross margin and another modest reduction in operating expense in absolute dollar terms.

Looking specifically at the first quarter, we expect approximately $415 million of total company revenue on a reported basis, which assumes approximately $60 million of License and Support revenue. Based on renewal timing during the year, the first quarter is expected to be the lowest L&S revenue quarter, and we expect an approximate weighting of 30% of L&S revenue in the first half of the year and 70% in the second half, with the third quarter likely the largest quarter of L&S revenue.

Based on these assumptions, we expect first quarter non-GAAP operating margin to be slightly positive. We expect a number of noncash expenses impacting GAAP net income and earnings per share in 2026, including pension annuity purchases and streamlining certain legal entities expected in the second half, which we will guide on a quarterly basis. Also, as a reminder, in 2025, we removed hedges on our intercompany balances, which could create noncash FX gains as the U.S. dollar strengthens or losses if the U.S. dollar weakens. These are difficult to guide due to constantly changing rates, but will impact quarterly GAAP net income.

Full year free cash flow is expected to be approximately negative $25 million, which translates to positive $67 million of pre-pension free cash flow. This assumes approximate payments of $85 million in capital expenditures, $70 million of cash taxes, $70 million of net interest payments, $30 million in other payments, primarily restructuring and $92 million of postretirement contributions, consisting of $87 million of pension contributions and $5 million of other postretirement contributions. Approximately $17 million of the pension and postretirement contributions is expected in the first quarter.

We are confident that we have the liquidity we need to comfortably support our pension contributions. We are focused on continuing to increase our efficiency and profitability during this period to maximize our underlying cash generation levels for investment and capital return.

Before we open the line for questions, Mike has a few additional remarks.

Thank you, Deb. I wanted to take a moment to address our 2026 guidance. We're proud of what we've achieved in 2025, but disappointed that we didn't overcome all of the industry headwinds impacting our Ex-L&S revenue. For 2026, our expectations for mid-single-digit decline in Ex-L&S solutions reflects an intentional deeper push into the adoption of emerging technology within our existing base of clients and the macro headwinds impacting discretionary spend in '25 that we expect to linger through the first half of 2026, as we mentioned last quarter.

Relative to 2024 year-end, we have more expansive book-to-bill ratio, more expected full year revenue already contracted and in backlog, and there's less embedded risk from assumptions for timing of revenue ramp on contracted new business. Similarly, for profitability, the majority of the required efficiency gains have already been actioned or identified. Achieving our 2026 guidance ranges keeps us on a path to potential full removal of the U.S. defined benefit pension obligations by 2029, after which U.S. pension contributions would cease, and we expect a host of new possibilities for investments and capital return.

Based on our interactions with existing and prospective clients and the sequential growth in pipeline activity so far this year, we believe we'll achieve positive Ex-L&S revenue growth in 2027.

With that, operator, you can open up the line for questions.

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

I'll start with an AI question. So I want to ask, how are AI and automated code modernization tools influencing the road map that you have and the demand for ClearPath Forward? We've clearly seen some recent concerns that COBOL refactoring may affect IBM's mainframe business. So I want to ask how you're assessing the implications of that trend for the ClearPath Forward platform?

Great. Hi, Rod, thanks for the question. Certainly very timely with the communications that we've all seen. Look, the code factoring component of the dialogue that's, I guess, the issue du jour is not really new. Maybe the tools that we're using are new, but we've been talking about code factoring for a long, long time, years, in fact. And you referenced IBM here, and I think they have a piece out as well kind of reacting to that. It's really only a part of the story, and it really is talking about, in my opinion, the enhancement of the platform. I mean the code modernization is kind of the easy part. That doesn't change the engineering challenge of running the mission-critical workloads at scale and doing it securely. I mean, really, it's about kind of the architecture redesign, the runtime replacement, the transaction processing integrity, the hardware tuning and years of performance tuning that's embedded in the platform. Code factoring does none of that, right? It really is just about the kind of modernization of, what I would consider to be, above the enterprise level of the core. So from a strategic perspective, internally, we talk about ClearPath Forward 2050. I mean that's kind of the time frame that we're looking out for that ecosystem. And we think net-net, it's going to be a positive to kind of drive more demand to the platform. And think of it about -- think of it as kind of the automation above the enterprise level and giving our clients more and more flexibility to that. And I guess, secondarily, I would say that -- the other area that's really important for is the continual kind of documentation of the code base, et cetera, testing and really reverse testing, right, kind of doing scripts in current languages and maybe refactoring them back to COBOL into kind of a legacy mindset. So the reality is we don't view that as any change from the strategy that we're currently on. And I think if you look at what we've encountered, I mentioned in my prepared remarks, three straight years of roughly $40 million of improvement against our expectations in that business. That's a byproduct of longer contracts being signed, additional consumption being signed and the tooling that we've done over the course of the last, say, 5 years in that ecosystem has really positioned it to be AI-enabled. So I don't think it's really changed our strategy at all. And we see it as a continuation of the ability to kind of automate around the enterprise platform layer.

So Mike, I just want to take an extra second on that. I mean what you're saying is that the code factoring threat, I think what you said was automation above the enterprise level actually adds to the usage of your platform. Can you just add more color on that point?

Yes. Look, I think in general, what we've been targeting, and what we've been seeing, is to put tools above the enterprise platform that allows for analysis and data extract, data movement across platforms, et cetera. And so using kind of AI agents, and I'll say, refactoring of code above that enterprise level, really just continues to enable the use of the data. And remember, the data set that we're talking about are standardized data sets and decades worth of data embedded in there, right? So if you're really trying to enhance a large language model, the key is really access of that data, not necessarily what code is written in to get there. So the easier we can make that, the more customized or localized we can make that interface through the use of these particular agents, I think, will be beneficial and cause more use of data, not less.

Got it. Okay. And then just a question about the outlook on -- for bookings in 2026. Last year had a big load of renewal activity. But at the same time, over the last couple of years, you've invested to win new logos. So I'm just -- I want to get a perspective on your latest pipeline and sales efforts, and what the outlook is for your bookings activity and your bookings mix. I mean, will the mix shift towards existing client scope expansion, where I think you had some positive commentary. What's the outlook for the bookings mix for 2026?

Yes. Thank you, Rod. Great question, and I appreciate the opportunity to expand on that a little bit. So you're right. I mean, we signed $1.7 billion of renewals in 2025. That clearly took a lot of the team and the clients' focus to kind of get that behind us, which was great. We've got a really strong backlog and frankly, a higher backlog position going into '26 than we had going into '25 in relation to that. But the corollary or knock-on to that is when you're doing that renegotiation on renewals, typically, clients are not talking about new scope opportunities, right, because you're really focused on what that renewal looks like. So on the heels of that, and we mentioned in our prepared remarks that when we've done those renewals, we've actually embedded into that some new scope opportunities. So as you know, we think of new business as new scope and new logo. So I would say two things. One, our focus on new logo expansion in '26 is enhanced because we've got a lot more, I'll say, bandwidth to really get after that because of the renewal cycle is a little smaller this year, probably about 1/3 of what it was last year. So we'll have some more focus there. And then secondarily, and more importantly, I think, is the new scope expansion opportunities in the existing base will allow us to grow that new business as well. So I think you're right in looking at kind of that new business, and I bucket it that way intentionally because it's not just about new logo, it's really about the proliferation of new scope opportunities, whether that's in our existing base or whether that's with new logo clients. We talk about having roughly a $31 billion TAM in our existing base for new scope opportunities. So that's a really important element to our growth trajectory of the future.

The next question comes from Mayank Tandon with Needham.

Mike, you mentioned the longer sales cycles and some of the competitive pricing dynamics. So maybe if you could just provide a little bit more details around how you counter some of that competitive pricing. And of course, you can't control the overall market discretionary spending slowdown. But how do you maybe counter that with your go-to-market strategy, some of your sales investments to maybe help maybe offset some of that pressure points in the market?

Yes. Thank you, Mayank, for the question. Super important, right? Look, when we think about the sales cycles in general, I would say '25 was a really tough year just because of all of the macros and kind of the adoption of new technology, people a little uncertain around how much to adopt, where to adopt it, uncertainties around whether it was tariff related or, again, other macro-related issues, geopolitical, et cetera. I think that weighed on our -- on the longevity of the contracting cycle a little bit more than the mechanics of what we typically see. And I would say some of that is already starting to ease. We've got a pretty good jump-off point for Q1 as far as our pipeline is concerned, our discussions with clients in regards to that. In fact, just anecdotally, I had some correspondence with hopefully a future client that's talking about setting kind of record pace in their contract renewal cycle, really trying to expedite the use of that. So I think those were a little bit more macro-oriented than they are process-oriented from our perspective. But clearly, we've done a lot from the embedding of tools and technologies and process changes, qualifications of the pipeline and also kind of how we're approaching opportunities to enhance and streamline the first touch point to contract closure. So we are very focused on trying to do everything we can to shorten that cycle and be very prescriptive about how we approach clients and who we approach for what. So definitely are some elements embedded in that. As far as pricing is concerned, look, it's always been very competitive pricing environment. I think what has made it a little bit more competitive is you've got this pause, I guess, or the hesitancy to grow some of the industry, right? We've seen our traditional industry CAGRs from, say, 4.5% or some percent CAGR growth down to flat, which means you've got a lot of folks chasing a smaller pie, right? And so from our perspective, we rarely want to have a discussion or even start a discussion that talks about commodity pricing and base to the bottom, right? All of our go-to-market approach is around enhanced experience and value and quality, right? And so -- and we mentioned a couple of the renewals that we didn't win, and I mentioned those in Q2 and in Q3 that we need to maintain pricing discipline. We know what the value and the market-based pricing is for what we deliver, and we think we're delivering value in advance of that market pricing. So we should be able to get at least market-based pricing. And so not trying to just compete on price, if the client doesn't see the value we offer, obviously, that's going to be a longer-term problem anyway, right? So our point is really to get in front of that early, make sure we can illustrate the value that we bring to our clients, and we have plenty of [ quals ] to support that. So that's kind of how we're addressing the market on both of those fronts.

That's very helpful. And then just a very quick follow-up for Deb, maybe. Deb, given the guidance range, I'm just curious, as you entered this year, have you built in a little bit more buffer in your expectations given some of the uncertainty and macro headwinds, or would you say you basically aligned your guidance with your historical strategy? And in that context, what dictates whether you come in at the low end of the range or the high end? Like what are some of the factors we should be considering?

Right. Yes. I think we definitely -- as Mike talked about some of the revenue pressure, some of the industry headwinds is what we considered as we did the guidance. So I think the things to look for are as some of those macro factors alleviate is what we assumed that later in the year some of those factors alleviate. We had some -- as Mike talked about, the mix of new logo is planned for -- to have a lot more new logo this year as far as renewals. So as we're doing that, we think the Gartner Magic Quadrant will help. And so if we sell new logo kind of faster, that will be another -- an element to look for that would increase what we put out there in our guidance. But we've kind of built in all these headwinds through most of '26.

Yes. Look, I would say, too, like we absolutely took a different approach to our guidance this year. It's not last year's same exact strategy. We saw, obviously, the PC refresh cycle. We were expecting that never came to fruition. And so we've kind of backed that off and looked at the trajectory a little bit when we talk about that cycle. Clearly, we've got the hardware cost components, and we think that, that's going to have some opportunities for DSS, but I would say, in general, there was a little bit more of a conservative approach to the way we set guidance. But I want to just be really clear, related to top line. I think from a bottom line perspective, we have been very consistent in our ability to execute bottom line improvement. We're also calling for another, say, 150-ish basis points of bottom line improvement, good line of sight to that. But we definitely took into consideration the kind of market hesitancy that we have seen. We've kind of carried that through the first half of the guidance. And I think we want to -- as you know, we're -- we kind of pride ourselves on the level of transparency that we put out on a regular basis as it pertains specifically to our guidance. And we really kind of went through element by element to say, hey, is this an area what we feel really good about and kind of how to get there. So a little bit of a different approach on top line. I would say, in general, just taking out some of the things that we thought were going to happen that didn't happen in '25 and expected as they pick up throughout the year, kind of a midyear [ contention ] on that.

The next question comes from Maggie Nolan with William Blair.

I wanted to look ahead a little bit. You talked about several things that you're working on in the script that would help accelerate Ex-L&S revenue growth. And I'm just wondering what leading indicators we can watch to assess this progress? And then what is kind of a realistic timeline, especially given some of the first half pressures you just outlined, what is the realistic timeline for seeing some level of growth acceleration?

Great. Thanks, Maggie, for the question and really good one and intuitive here, too, right? I would say to you, clearly, our new business kind of conversion rate is the, I'll say, earliest indicator on top line. So I look at that really -- I look at that question in two ways. One is really about the top line expansion and the growth. And the other is about the deployment of our embedded technology, right, when we talk about enhancing the capabilities of our bottom line, right? So pushing that technology out to our existing client base, we think will add some ability for us to grow top line through the use of, as I mentioned earlier, new scope opportunities within those accounts. Just know that, that also comes with a little bit of a headwind, right? So leaning into the adoption, and we -- one of the examples I gave was the Service Experience Accelerator adoption that we're looking to push out to 1/3 of our existing installed base. Well, when we push that out, there's going to be some pricing pressure on that top line because clearly, it is -- the Agentic Service Desk that we're using is a lower cost of delivery and some of that we have to share with our client base. So you're pushing out this technology, which is going to put a little bit of a headwind pressure on. But we think we're going to overcome that headwind with the expansion of the opportunity embedded in that client and the addition of new logos to that base as well. So those are the things that we think are really going to support that Ex-L&S growth rate. That's a DWS' example. On the flip side, when I think about CA&I and the example there, we talk about the intelligent operations platform and really adding those Agentic agents to expand our scope within the construct of the hybrid infrastructures that we support and manage. Frankly, when we think about the current drivers, I'll probably misquote this, so I need to change it. But I think there was a recent McKinsey report out, where we talked about a $300 billion to $400 billion TAM in what I would consider to be the above enterprise layer automation of AI agents, right? And we saw a lot of noise in the market around software and service implementers for software. That's not what we do, right? Like we're more an orchestration on that. But when we think about the application of AI agents above the SaaS level enterprise software, that is what we do. That automation component, both to help with transition and to actually orchestrate and manage post orchestration of the IT ecosystem that actually allows us to participate a little more fully in what used to be just solution implementers of ERPs or CRMs or HCMs, where they're taking that customization layer or that integration layer and moving it above the enterprise stack. That's an area we do play in. And that we historically have it, right? So I think it gives us a lot more opportunity to participate in that legacy TAM and in this future TAM on both CA&I and DWS.

For my second question, just on margins. Could you maybe distill for us the main puts and takes on margins in the next year, just kind of excluding the SG&A efficiencies you've gained, assuming that there's not incremental efficiency to drive there in the near term beyond what you've already outlined, the efficiencies that we'll be annualizing.

Yes. Look, I mean, I think it's been fairly consistent from our perspective where we think those are coming from. Primarily, it is the application of emerging technology, right? The embedding of AI into our delivery platform allows us to deliver in a much more efficient manner. So clearly, there's going to be margin benefit from doing that. And as I mentioned, some of that margin benefit comes in the form of a revenue share, if you will, right, giving some of that back to the clients. But clearly, a portion of that stays embedded in our delivery platforms. And as we then add to that platform through the use of top line growth, there's going to be obviously additional margin pull-through from that point of view. So I would say it's primarily in the application of emerging technology. There are still opportunities for us to be more efficient. There are still opportunities for us to continue to look at, I'll say, upskilling or right-skilling or right-shoring components of what we do, and we continue to look at those opportunities as far as the delivery workforce is concerned. But again, the adoption of a digital workforce, working alongside our human workforce, we're kind of working both sides of that equation. And then I would say, lastly, when you think about the mix shift, as we continue to push more and more into some of these newer elements of our solution, and I'll just pick on field services as a very practical example. As we continue to shift the mix of what we're actually supporting with those field service technicians, whether that's liquid cooling, whether that's hybrid infrastructure, whether that's high-end storage, those are just higher-margin elements of work for the same technician moving away from some of the more traditional PC break-fix. So I think those three elements would be what I would point to as the real drivers of where we should expect to see margin improvement, which is, again, why I think we're really confident in the ability to execute it because a lot of the technology is obviously already embedded, and we're already moving it into production. And again, I think we've put a track record out there, almost 600 basis points improvement over the last three years in Ex-L&S gross margin, right? So we're looking for another 150 basis points there in '26.

The next question comes from Ana Goshko with Bank of America.

So first question is on the L&S revenue outlook. I do sense your kind of historical pattern of being conservative and then beating and raising. So back in October when -- I think it was October when you had the ClearPath kind of webinar for us, you had talked about a $400 million CAGR for the next three years, and it looks like you're already kind of beating that with the $415 million expected for this year. But then I think you did comment that you still expect about $400 million in '27, '28. So I just wanted to understand, I understand there's license renewals in there, but it seems that the driver is AI in terms of consumption. So I wanted to understand what you're thinking or expecting with regard to the impact of AI being a continued driver of consumption.

Great. Thank you, Ana, for that call and that call out. I'm going to reiterate a comment I made in an earlier point. We did revisit kind of the way we were putting our guidance together, and this is another good example of that. And so you saw that we actually put out here $415 million of L&S revenue, even though a little while ago, we were talking about an average of $400 million over that three-year period, and we carried that average up, right? I think we started that in maybe in the $360 million to $370 million range, moved it to $390 million, moved it to $400 million and are still saying $400 million in those out years. So -- and you're exactly right also that the driver of that has been consumption and use much more so than just the license renewal schedule. And we do think that, that's the AI comment that I made earlier in regards to Rod's question, right? The more tools and techniques and processes that we can build and put on the front end of that ecosystem or that platform, the more consumption of that data and obviously, the more value that orients to the platform and, frankly, to our clients and to us. So we do expect that trend to continue, which is why we increased that CAGR average for those out years. And I would just note, too, that the $40 million beat over the last three years, which you kindly pointed out as well, you see the $415 million kind of takes some of that now into our guidance to go, okay, this has been a pattern here of continued consumption. So we wanted to bake some of that in, so that we're not -- sometimes it's as bad to continually overperform than it would be to underperform. So we're trying to do a better job at making sure that some of that overperformance that we've seen and expect to continue to see is baked into the numbers.

Okay. But for '27, '28, you just haven't really adjusted that yet for what -- I mean, any of us that are following the AI space or the AI impacts, I mean, consumption levels should continue to increase. Is that fair?

Yes. Look, I would say it's too far out for us to adjust multiple year out consumption estimates. But I would say if history is indicative of the future, then yes, we would expect as we go further down the road that we'll revisit that estimate. But for now, we felt pretty comfortable with -- it's already a $10 million to $15 million step-up from what we were chatting about before. So you can assume there is some consumption baked in there.

Okay. Great. And then, Deb, so just on some of the kind of balance sheet stuff. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding on the free cash flow guide, which is a use of $25 million. So that is largely your expected all-in use of cash, right? So if I just do the simple on your current cash balance, you're going to be approximately $25 million lower at the end of '26.

That's correct. And that translates to pre-pension of $67 million compared to the $128 million we did this year.

And then the slides on the pension outlook are great, really clarifying. So then if I look at the slide on the potential annuity purchases, you really had given us the estimates of what the deficit is going to be. So at the end of the day, whether you purchase an annuity or not, like your pension deficit is going to be down roughly in the $50 million range, right? So net-net, like your net debt is going to be lower at the end of the year because your cash is only going down by like $25 million, but your pension deficit is going down by at least $50 million. Is that the...

Down by that, yes. So it's down by about that much. But yes, in the next few years, $229 million, $180 million, $137 million, it's all on that Chart 17.

Yes. I mean every contribution.

Ongoing net debt reduction. Correct, that's.

Every contribution is going to drive down that deficit value. It's not dollar for dollar, but you will see continual improvement in the deficit and in net leverage.

Okay. And then the annuity purchases would -- are noncash?

Right. We use the plan assets to reduce the plan liabilities, correct.

Okay, okay. And then -- so I know you worked really hard last year to do the bond issuance, and it came at a rate that was a little higher than you probably preferred and your plan at some point is to refinance those lower. Obviously, like the market overall is pretty messy right now. So those bonds are trading below par. Have you thought about using some of your cash to buy back some of that debt at this point because it's a pretty attractive rate.

Yes. I mean we always look at everything. But I mean, at this point, we're always looking to conserve cash, given the pension obligations, given everything. But we're always looking at everything, but it's not something at this exact moment we're planning to do. But we're always looking at it.

Okay. So the preference is just to keep like a solid cash balance, it sounds like.

Yes.

The next question comes from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

Most of them have been addressed already. Just curious, you mentioned that the public sector has been a headwind in 2025. What are you seeing there as we have entered 2026?

Hi, Anja, it's Mike. Thank you for the question. Look, I think I would say that we've seen an improvement in public sector in general across the board. So we're optimistic that we'll get back to some level of normalcy. I mean you can only kick the can so far down the road. These things -- and you know the work that we do is not discretionary work, right? So at some point, we have to get on with business. And so I think in general, so far, the tail end of '25, we've started to see a little bit of easing of that pressure. I think that has continued into '26. And we're hopeful by kind of midyear that we'll get back to kind of our normalcy as it pertains to kind of public sector work that we're doing. In fact, we signed a big deal recently in Australia public sector that was -- in one case, we had a win back from a competitor and another, we expanded a relationship there that was pretty significant in the region. So we're optimistic.

This concludes our question-and-answer session and concludes our conference call today. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Welcome, everyone. And I'm Ana Goshko, and I'm Bank of America's credit analyst for technology and telecom. And this is our 2025 Leveraged Finance Conference. And we're thrilled to have Unisys with us today, and we have Deb McCann, the company's Chief Financial Officer. And also in the audience with us, we have Michaela Pewarski, who's the company's Vice President of Investor Relations. So Deb and Michaela, thank you so much for making the track down here to speak with us and meet with investors.

Great. No, thank you for having us. It was great. We had a great day of meetings today, some familiar faces I see in this room. So it was a great day of meetings. So thank you.

Okay. Great. Okay. So just in case there's anyone new to the story, can you provide a minute or 2 on a brief summary of Unisys and its history, and then we'll dive in deeper.

Okay. Great. So Unisys' history is a good term because we're a 150-year-old company. So we have a long history and an amazing history of transforming itself again and again, and we continue to do so all the time. So just to give a background of what we do, we provide IT solutions to corporations. We kind of have 2. We have what we call a license and support business, so primarily our ClearPath Forward license business, which is really a profit and cash generator of license business. And then we have what we call ex-L&S, which is the ex -- everything excluding license and support, which is primarily 2 areas. It's our digital workplace solutions and then our cloud application infrastructure business. And those are areas that we're trying to grow, have them become more profitable as we're sitting alongside that license business that's a very profitable part of our business.

Okay. Great. So ClearPath Forward, which is your L&S as you lovingly call it, right? About 20% of revenue, give or take, annually right now. Could you just give us an example of the customer base and some of the use cases?

Okay. So L&S, which is ClearPath Forward, is an operating system that many large clients use to run a lot of their mission-critical operations. So examples are airlines that use it for their reservation systems. It's cruise companies that also use it for reservations and multiple other things, banks that use it for mortgage processing. So very -- a lot of financial services, a lot of travel transportation that use that software to run a lot of their mission-critical operations.

Okay. And then in that -- in the revenue, what is the mix of actual software contracts? How much of it is usage-based? And then what's the typical mix of hardware revenue?

Okay. So the licenses are the biggest portion of that license and support revenue, and that is pretty much all usage-based. So it's a contract they sign up for. It's based on a number of MIPS they use for how much they're using that operating system. And it's kind of that set amount. If they go over that amount, they pay more. So it's generally -- when I say usage-based, it's fixed. It's that amount. If they use more, they pay more. If they use less, they still pay that fixed amount. So within that, there is some sporadic hardware that occurs.

If a company is refreshing or moving a data center, they need additional hardware. That's periodic. It's kind of episode-based when someone needs to upgrade or move and that is at a slightly lower margin, but it's not -- it's really not a big portion of the revenue. And then there's the support. So of that operating system, we provide support services, and that's also not that big of a piece. The biggest piece is really the license, which is based on the amount of usage that they're using, but at a minimum amount. So it's a floor amount.

Okay. And then how long are the contracts? And I know the renewals can be lumpy year-to-year and Unisys had a really strong quarter. Just talk about that dynamic.

Okay. No, thank you for asking because that's important. So for the licenses, which are the biggest portion, those are recognized right when the contract is signed. So if it's a -- the average contract time is typically about 4.5 to 5 years for that contract. And when they sign up for that license, all the revenue is recognized for the license portion. The support revenue is recognized over time, but the license revenue is recognized all upfront for the full amount of years that, that is. And so that creates some lumpiness because basically the revenue that we get in every year is based on the renewal schedule.

So when you look year-to-year at our license and support revenue and 1 year, it might be up, 1 year, it might be down. That's not because the business is necessarily growing or shrinking. It's just how many renewals were set to happen in that year. So it's a critical element to understand, and that's why we started breaking out L&S and ex-L&S because when people want to understand the growth of the business, it's important for them to look at the ex-L&S to see how we're doing in our digital workplace and cloud solutions and then the license, which is really just based on the renewal timing.

Okay. So this year, 2025, you've guided to $430 million of L&S revenue. But I think you raised the guidance this year. So what was behind that guidance raise?

Yes.

And it's the third consecutive year at $430 million. So it's been very stable.

Right, it's been stable. So we raised that because it was a few things, but a big portion was hardware. So a client did say that they needed to refresh a data center, some of their hardware. And so that's a portion of it. And that allowed us to -- hardware is at a lower margin. And so that's why this year, you might see the margin -- we say for the L&S business, gross margin is around 70%, which is very strong. This year, it will come in slightly lower because there's that hardware element. So a portion of it was hardware. There's some that was some consumption that was -- had increased a little bit. Sometimes it's timing. There's a few different elements, but a large portion of it was the hardware element. And so that's where we came at the $430 million. But initially, I think it's at $390 million.

Okay. And then for the fourth quarter of this year, it's a very back-end loaded guide. So I think the implied guidance for L&S revenue is $185 million to $190 million out of the $430 million. So that's going to be up a lot, like over 100% year-over-year, also up a lot like 24 -- I'm sorry, 24% year-over-year and over 100% sequentially. So I guess why is it so back-end loaded in the year? Is that -- how typical is that? And how confident are you at this point in the guidance for the quarter?

Yes. Yes. So typically -- and it's just a case of how the contracts were originally set up that many of them end up being in Q4. It's not necessarily a seasonality like any kind of seasonal reason. It's just that's how a lot of the contracts ended up being set up. So we are typically a heavy Q4. This Q4 is even heavier partly because just the way the renewals are falling, but also we had a Q3 contract we had planned on signing that slipped a few days into Q4. So it's made Q4 even larger. That contract that slipped was signed within days of the quarter ending. So that is signed. And we have a lot of visibility into these contracts. We talk to these clients months before the renewal occurs, talking to them about kind of their future path of using the operating system, things we can do to improve their use of the operating system.

So we've been engaged with these clients. They're set to renew this quarter. We typically -- it's so sticky. There's not typically a case where they show up with that renewal and say, I'm not renewing because they're running their mission-critical systems on this operating system. So it's very steady. If anything, sometimes it's not a -- if it's a when, right? Sometimes it can slip a few days like the one did in Q3. And so we are confident as we look at these contracts and the expectation that these will be signed. And so we're pretty confident in it.

Okay. And then for '26 to '28, so for the next 3 years, you've said you expect annual L&S revenue of $400 million. So it is a step down from the $430 million. I mean is that -- are you currently expecting sort of stable across those 3 years? Or is there kind of a linear trend there?

Yes. So it's difficult to say kind of until we finish '25, right, and we'll set the guidance out. I mean it is an average because there can be some differences between years. We don't expect any extreme shifts, but we -- it's hard to say until we kind of get into each year to give the exact year, but that's on average. And again, going from $430 million to $400 million doesn't mean the business is in decline. It just means there's fewer renewals in next year, for instance, than this year. So it's really just a matter of the timing of those renewals and not an expectation of the business.

And then what's the assumption for usage underlying that outlook? Like stable or growing usage or declining?

It's -- we have started to build in because we've seen an increase in consumption in some of the renewals, which is one reason that we've increased. This year was mostly hardware, some consumption. I think last year, a lot of the reason was consumption. So we've seen over the years, consumption driving that overage. So we've gotten a lot more detailed in our forecasting, in talking to the clients sooner and getting an estimate of if they expect to increase consumption. So we feel as if we've built that in more than we had in the past. So I think it's a pretty safe assumption what we have right now. And that is built in as far as that consumption use.

Okay. And then with regard to AI, how is that impacting, if at all, the ClearPath business and usage?

Yes. So it's a great question. So we definitely believe a portion of potentially not all, I think of the increase in the consumption that the clients are using. We definitely think some of it's just basic, more things being digital, more -- if you go to make a -- it used to be that you would just make your reservation maybe online for an airline, let's say. But now they're pushing more online. Right now, you can also order what snack you want, right? So you're just getting more. So some of it's just increased things being pushed more out to use on this operating system. But we do think in talking to clients, there is a portion that they're getting data ready and organizing and using more AI and that also is driving some of that consumption. So we definitely see upside in that license business for -- because it's based on -- the contracts are based on consumption, some increase and some upside for us there.

Okay. So more data, more client interaction, customer interaction among your customer base leads to more.

More consumption, more usage and then more -- when they sign the contracts, including more usage in their base contract.

Okay. And then I had a margin question here, but I think you already touched on it. So the gross profit margin, like what is the natural gross profit or kind of average gross profit margin?

Within license and support?

Yes.

Yes. So gross profit is about 70% of the L&S business.

It can be lower this year, but if we look at...

A little bit lower this year, but expect the 70% for next year.

Okay. Great. Okay. So then the other part of the business, which is actually 80% of revenue. I think it's broadly -- I characterize it as IT services. I hope that's accurate.

That's right.

And you have the digital workplace and then the cloud application infrastructure, so the 2 different segments. So maybe, again, could you just -- I think you do a lot of things for a lot of different kinds of customers, but maybe just give an example of a use case or an assignment in digital workplace and one on the cloud infrastructure side.

Yes. So a digital workplace, if you think of just a company looking to manage all of the devices that their associates use looking at the help desk. So if you -- some companies do that internally, they have help desk, they have IT folks that manage all that and some outsource it to a company like us, where if an employee has an issue with their laptop, they call a help desk. If they need someone to come out and fix it, they have someone come out and fix it. We help clients do Device as a Service, so we can have the devices and we help manage the timing of when people turn those in. So all of those just managing the overall IT device side of the business. So that's one thing we do.

That's some examples of the digital workplace solutions. On the cloud application and infrastructure, it's helping clients manage their cloud environments, their hybrid cloud environments, the applications, how they operate in those cloud environments, security that goes along with that. So those are the types of things we do in our cloud applications and infrastructure business. We also -- there's a part of the ECS business that's also -- which is SS&C that is kind of the managed services that support the license business. That's also -- it's a smaller portion, but that's also in there as well in our ex L&S.

Okay. And then what's like the average sort of either assignment or contract or customer length in...?

Yes. So it really varies because in -- for the full if they're outsourcing to us, their help desk, their field services, clearly, that's a longer project, right, because there's a transition period. There's a lot that goes into that. So typically, those are 3 to 5 years. But then there's also some project work. So in cloud, the cloud business, we have a lot of state and local business and there could just be project work that we do as far as helping build an application, managing, shifting an application into their environment. So there's project work as well. So that -- those are short things. But the longer outsourcing contracts are 3 to 5 years.

Okay. And then so recently, the company has cited some headwinds from, I think, unfavorable market dynamics and constraints on some IT budgets, which you said caused clients to either pause or delay some projects. So you lowered the 2025 revenue guide based upon the non-L&S segment or ex-L&S segment. So I guess my quick math is, I think L&S -- ex-L&S now is guided to be down about 4% year-over-year. So what specifically on the part of customers led to the softness? And has any of this changed, especially since the end of the government shutdown, which was a factor?

Yes. So I think of the guidance reduction we needed to do on the revenue side, the good news is we were able to hold to our profit guidance, which we had increased last quarter and also our cash color that we gave. We did bring revenue down, and it was probably kind of about half and half. About half of it was just simply timing. So things that we believe one contract we had, we weren't sure if the accounting treatment, it was in the cloud business would be treated all upfront or over time, and now that's going to be over time. Another timing thing with some hardware that we thought would sell this year that some of that's going to be -- some shifted Q3 to Q4, but some into next year. So some of them were timing elements. But you're right, some of the things were in our cloud business, some state and local business that we have, even though the federal -- the government shutdowns at the federal level, so a lot of that funding from the state and local business comes from the federal government.

And so that impacted and kind of caused some pause in some of the project work we do at the state and local level. We -- even though the government shutdown, I think, is really -- I think the government somewhat kicked the can down the road. It's not completely resolved. It still could continue. I think it got us through January, but then there could be -- I don't know if everyone is completely certain what's going to happen. So we don't see that alleviating into -- right away. So we still see that, that will have some impact into next year. We're also seeing some hesitancy as far as -- with all the AI, I think people are trying to determine what they should be looking at, what solutions they should be signing up for. So as some people are looking at signing long-term contracts, they maybe are pausing on some of that. And so some of those headwinds, the government pressures as well as some of the AI pausing to think through things, I think we're saying will probably last a few quarters for the next few quarters.

Is there any either evidence yet or just like a narrative that AI could turn into a tailwind for the segment that it ultimately will increase assignments?

Yes. So I think we definitely see a lot of benefits that we'll be gaining from AI. So we have -- within our Digital Workplace Solutions business, we have, for instance, help desk. AI is helping with a lot as far as -- we're infusing that into our solution. We have a service accelerator solution that is really enabling us to reduce the cost and the amount of labor that's involved with the help desks. And so that helps us improve our margins, but it also allows us to stay competitive with our competitors and allow good pricing and to hopefully win on pricing as well. So that AI benefit, we think of it as sharing it with our clients where we get some improved margin from it, but then also are able to be price efficient for them as well. So that's just one example. In the cloud business where we do application development, AI is helping improve the speed and efficiency of coding and programming so there's -- throughout the business, we see lots of benefits to supporting our clients, providing them better service, but also reducing the cost that it costs to provide the service.

Okay. So you already touched on even though you reduced the guidance for the year, you reiterated the margin guide for the year. And part of that, I think, is the SG&A reduction. So how much have you been able to reduce like year-to-date? And then really, as you look into 2026, like what's the potential for additional cost takeout in the business?

Yes. Yes. So definitely, SG&A has been a big focus. We -- when we had an Investor Day a few years ago, we laid out a pretty aggressive over a few years reduction in SG&A. We accelerated that where it was supposed to be finished in '26. We did a bunch and try to get everything actioned by '25, so we'll get the full year benefit of that in '26. And then we also -- given some of these revenue pressures, have looked at -- looking at SG&A even closer to continue to reduce that. So we haven't given out exact numbers, but it's something that we're serious about, and it's something that -- even given some of the pressures this year that, as we've said, will bleed into some of the few quarters of next year and are able to still improve our profitability because of looking at reductions so.

Okay. So then pivoting to kind of the free cash flow performance of the company and also the kind of the pension. So you also reiterated the free cash flow guidance for the year despite the decline in the revenue outlook. So pre-pension free cash flow for this year, it's $110 million. I just want to talk about like what allowed you to affirm that guidance? And then I've got some follow-ups after that.

Yes. So the color we gave is that pre-pension free cash flow at $110 million. And we were able to affirm it because a lot of the -- a lot of our profit comes from, as I talked about, the license and support business. So even though there were some pressure on some of this ex L&S business, it was lower margin, lower impact to the total overall profitability, offset with additional things on the SG&A side and cost side that we're able to manage. So I mean, that's the good thing on the ex L&S side of the business. The cost structure is very variable. So we're able to easily pivot if revenue is not coming in or if we -- on the COGS side as well as SG&A. Did that answer?

Yes.

That allowed us to be able to come in with our color.

Right. So I think fourth quarter is going to be a strong free cash flow quarter based on the guidance. So I think if my math is correct, you're going to end the year with about $390 million of cash if you make the guidance. So how can we expect that cash to be used?

Yes. Yes. So like you said, if we get the $110 million of pre-pension free cash flow, we'd end with $390 million. And for now, we're likely because of some of the headwinds we're seeing that we anticipate will go into '26. And we're saying a few more quarters, but the things could move hopefully more to the positive, right, and that we're hopefully being too conservative and going to have some upside. But if certain things go longer, we'd like to kind of keep that cash for now till we get a better sense of when some of these headwinds will end. So we're being somewhat conservative, but if we do see some upside or things move quickly, then we can look at different alternatives. I mean it's a priority for us to reduce pension and also just to deleverage in general. So as much as we can do that, we'll look at that.

Okay. And then -- so on the pension, so the GAAP pension deficit has been reduced this year from a bunch of things that the company did, including raising some debt and just paying down. So right now, it's $470 million. So what's the outlook for further reductions in that deficit?

Yes. Yes. So over -- and there's -- if you haven't seen it, right after we did the issuance of the senior notes we did, I think it was in July, and you can look on our Events section of our Investor Relations website. And we laid out, and there's a chart in there that somewhat that projects kind of the U.S. deficit. And then taking that because the deficit does decrease just naturally as we're making the annual contributions. It's not one for one because there's lots of actuarial and fees and things in there. But if you take that and then also the international pension deficit decreases as we make payments. So I would say from now till the end of 2029, which is what we lay out, probably about $150 million to $200 million of deleveraging just from making those pension contributions. And then as EBITDA increases, then our goal is to really improve that debt leverage ratio over time.

And further discretionary. And then you're also making annuity purchases to help just overall reduce the pension obligations. What's the outlook for that?

Yes. So we had said when we had raised the incremental debt and did a presentation on what our plans were, we had said about $600 million of annuity purchases, which is transferring a portion of the pension to a third party, an insurance company. And we had said we would do about $600 million in the next 2 years. So in September, we did $320 million. And what's important to note is when you are shifting the liabilities to the insurance company, you're also shifting the assets and sometimes a bit more assets and paying a premium. We actually got really good pricing and the assets we moved were similar to the amount of liabilities. So shifted $320 million. So we plan on doing about $280 million next year. And it doesn't decrease the deficit, but it definitely reduces the overall burden of liabilities on our books.

Okay. And it's cashless?

Cashless, right? So it's the assets that are part of the plan.

Right. Okay. And then in terms of leverage, what is the company's leverage target? So you've got the secured debt and then you've got the deficit, which is the $470 million. So how do you think about leverage and where is the target?

Yes. So the target is over the next few years, we should be able to get -- the goal is to get down to closer to like 2.5x is kind of what we're kind of the near term. And we'll, of course, continue to want to reduce. But over the next few years, about 2.5x. And that includes the pension debt, yes.

Okay. And then -- so now that we've gone through the business, how would you direct investors to think about the sum of the parts valuation for Unisys? What do you think the market is potentially missing?

Yes. No, it's a great question. I think definitely, we talk a lot about the ex L&S portion just because it's the part that we're trying to go out and get new logos. We're growing it. There's lots of focus on it. Gartner just put us in the leader quadrant for digital workplace solutions. So we're really focused on it and focused on growing it and improving the margin. So sometimes we end up talking about that, but I think the license and support business is really our profit and cash generation, the core of the business. And so that's a critical piece.

And so I think sometimes people might miss that how profitable that is and how important that is to the overall valuation of the company. But it's something that we've talked about -- we had an event where we had the leader of that business do a presentation. It's on our website. If anyone wants to take a look, on ClearPath Forward. So we're making sure people understand, even though we like to talk about the other stuff that this is also a critical part of the business. And so some people we're trying to fix that by really making sure we're talking about it more and that that's a very profitable business. It's very stable, very sticky. And I think it's important for investors to understand that.

Okay. And then anything to do or to think about on the M&A side, including -- is there anything that you would be willing to divest or...

Yes. I mean our current strategy is, as we've laid out, we see there's some synergies between DWS and CA&I when a lot of times when we go and sell digital workplace, it's nice for some clients to be able to also get the cloud from us. The license and support business is a little bit separate, not as much overlap as far as revenue. So we -- our current strategy as laid out is our focus. But as any public company, we're -- if people come and there's different ideas on how to better unlock value, then we're always open for that. But right now, our prime strategy is as laid out with all 3 of those business units.

Okay. Great. So I would like to leave a minute just to allow you maybe to hit on anything that we haven't touched upon that you'd like to leave the audience with and just really kind of wrap up with what you're most excited about.

Okay. Great. No, we're very excited about kind of the 2 sides of the business. So the ex L&S, making a lot of progress really showing the value of our solutions. I mean we talk about getting the leader designation in Gartner, but that just doesn't happen, right? That's Gartner spending years with us on looking at our solutions, seeing how competitive they are with our other competitors. And so I think we're proving ourselves in the marketplace and in a position to really win out there. So I think that's what we're excited about. We're also excited about the strength of the license and support business.

Given that it is so profitable, it really allows us to have the ability to invest in that business, and we continue to invest in that and ensure we're keeping that very stable while also investing in some of these growth areas that we're excited about. So I think it's important to -- we're excited about that work. I think from a liquidity perspective, having that cash, right, and having that flexibility of what to do there, I think we're -- we have an undrawn ABL. And so we have a -- we're in a good position from a liquidity perspective, no big notes coming due for at least the next few years. So I feel very good from a liquidity position and just excited for what's to come.

Okay. Great, Deb. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you. Thanks so much.

Good day, and welcome to the Unisys Corporation Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michaela Pawerski, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Yesterday afternoon, Unisys released its third-quarter 2025 financial results.

Joining me to discuss those results are Mike Thomson, our CEO and President, and Deb McCann, our CFO. As a reminder, today's call contains estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws.

We caution listeners that current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs forming the basis of these statements include factors beyond our ability to control or precisely estimate. This could cause results to differ materially from expectations.

These items can be found in the forward-looking statements section of yesterday's earnings release furnished on Form 8-K and in our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC.

We do not assume any obligation to review or revise any forward-looking statements in light of future events.

We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as non-GAAP operating profit or adjusted EBITDA, that exclude certain items such as postretirement expense, cost reduction activities, and other expenses the company believes are not indicative of its ongoing operations, as they may be unusual or nonrecurring.

We believe these measures provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance. However, they are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP.

Reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are provided within the presentation. Slides for today's call are available on our investor website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Michaela, and good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss the company's third quarter 2025 financial results.

We continue to demonstrate our steady focus on improving delivery and operational efficiency, which is helping us successfully navigate the macroeconomic uncertainty in the market and other headwinds impacting revenue.

We remain on track to meet or exceed the midpoint of the improved non-GAAP operating profit margin guidance of 8% to 9% provided last quarter, as we expect to generate $110 million of pre-pension free cash flow for the full year.

We're on track to meet our increased L&S expectations of $430 million for the current year, $40 million above our original expectations, supported by strong retention and consumption trends in our high-value software ecosystem.

These trends have now helped generate upside in each of the past 3 years, and we're increasing our projection for out years to approximately $400 million of average annual L&S revenue for the 3 years of 2026 through 2028.

The quarter also reflects our commitment to executing the pension strategy we laid out and the realization of the benefits we said we would achieve.

We said we would remove substantially all market volatility from our aggregate U.S. pension contributions, and those have remained stable. Our pension debt has come down with our quarterly contributions, and we executed an annuity purchase in September to remove more than $300 million of U.S. pension liabilities, over half of our stated $600 million target by the end of 2026.

While revenue was light relative to the color provided last quarter, much of this was related to timing, including a shift of a large license and support renewal, which closed early in the fourth quarter.

Timing on Ex-L&S hardware pass-through also contributed to the quarterly miss on top line. Additionally, market dynamics affecting the PC cycle and IT budgets continue to cause clients to pause or delay project initiation, slow the pace of transition for some new business, and limit market penetration of newly introduced solutions.

Some of the early signs of improvement we've seen at the U.S. state and local clients lost some steam as concerns about federal funding returned, leading up to the ongoing U.S. government shutdown.

Our revised full-year outlook reflects some additional revenue timing elements, including a shift in expected fourth quarter revenue recognition from upfront to over time, which will generate future revenue.

We could see some of the headwinds that challenged Ex-L&S growth this year persist for a few quarters, so we're acting quickly to adjust our approach to mitigate those impacts.

At the same time, feedback from clients, partners, and industry analysts has only increased our confidence in the positioning of our solutions and our ability to establish baseline Ex-L&S growth over time.

Meanwhile, we're still delivering on profit dollars and free cash flow priorities. The most important elements required to achieve that success are the continued execution of our L&S solution, which we continue to outperform, and the efficiency gains in Ex-L&S delivery, where we're stepping up our efforts.

We have already made significant improvements in our Ex-L&S gross margin and have identified incremental opportunities within workforce optimization and the application of AI-driven productivity solutions.

Looking at all these factors, we believe we're on a path to improving our growth profile over time, continuing to enhance profit, chip away at the pension deficit and liabilities, and ultimately fully remove our U.S. pension liabilities.

Looking at client signings, the third quarter total contract value increased 15% year-over-year, driven by a strong quarter in Ex-L&S renewals. New business TCV of $124 million was in line with the solid levels of new business in the second quarter.

Year-to-date, our new business signings are slightly positive relative to 2024, which was a strong year for new business signings, some of which are still building up their full revenue run rates and are showing expansion opportunities.

The pricing environment remains competitive, which is not unusual. Clients want to share in the AI cost savings, and in some cases, their expectations may be unrealistic.

We've also seen some competitors undercutting on price based on aggressive assumptions for the size and pace of future AI-related efficiencies, and we think that they're taking on a high degree of risk in those cases.

We are seeing these dynamics on a handful of renewals and, in certain cases, have been willing to accept certain attrition, especially at clients prioritizing cost over value and offering limited potential for us to expand into higher-value solutions.

We continue to take a disciplined approach aligned to our priorities of profit dollars and cash flow, and we believe clients are beginning to adjust their expectations as they're gaining knowledge on how the use of the emerging technology applies to their ecosystems, which allows us to build competitive advantages in our portfolio.

We have large new business opportunities within our extensive existing client base, and many of our third-quarter wins highlight our ability to expand those relationships.

In many cases, our wins reflect a close alignment between solution development and our clients' efficiency priorities. For example, in Digital Workplace Solutions, we signed a renewal with a global industrial manufacturing client that included significant new scope to transform and streamline IT support.

As part of this engagement, we will transition the existing service desk to our next-generation service experience accelerator, and we'll also deploy virtual tech cafes and migrate IT service management capabilities to a new platform to streamline IT support without sacrificing quality.

This engagement also includes a new scope in CA&I solutions, such as automating network operations monitoring to both improve processes and reduce costs.

In cloud application and infrastructure solutions, we signed an expansion deal expected to drive significant cost savings for a public sector client in Australia.

Leveraging our deep multi-cloud expertise, we proactively identified an opportunity to optimize their hybrid infrastructure by eliminating a high-cost platform, resulting in migration project work and ongoing managed services revenue for us and millions of dollars of annual cost savings for our clients.

During the quarter, we renewed one of our largest public sector infrastructure managed services contracts, a 7-year extension to managed data center environments for a large U.S. state government.

We also introduced a new cyber vault solution to protect critical infrastructure used by all of the state's cabinet-level agencies, spanning revenue, public health, transportation, and more.

The enterprise computing solutions. We signed a new scope contract with a large European financial services client to consolidate some core systems onto one of our platforms.

We will provide transformation services through our proven migration factory to accomplish this project and help our clients execute their simplification and rationalization program.

Our deep expertise in the financial services sector has been a key driver of new business in the ECS segment. And in the third quarter, that also included a noteworthy new logo win for our modern core banking industry solution with a financial institution in Latin America.

Branch banking remains an important channel in the region, and we've developed a differentiated offering that integrates branch and digital banking with central core banking technology, incorporating capabilities from our recent partnership with Thought Machine.

Our innovative end-to-end offering will consolidate legacy systems for customer management, deposits, loans, accounting, treasury, and compliance into a single secure, scalable solution that will become the backbone of our clients' financial operations.

I now want to discuss our solution portfolio, including some trends we're seeing in client demand and where we're focusing our investment, innovation, and partnership efforts.

We allocate a significant portion of our capital expenditures to our ClearPath Forward solution in the ECS segment, which we discussed in more detail in an investor education session earlier this quarter, a recording of which is available on our investor website.

A core element of our ClearPath Forward 2050 strategy is the continued evolution of our operating systems and the surrounding ecosystem of products, industry solutions, and modernization services.

We are continually expanding several dimensions of ClearPath Forward, including speed, security, and resilience, to maintain a strong value proposition that has allowed us to retain clients for decades and support increasing consumption.

In the third quarter, we released updates to one of our ClearPath Forward operating systems, expanding cloud compatibility and making significant post-quantum cryptography security algorithm enhancements.

Looking at our industry solutions portfolio. In Travel and Transportation, we completed the integration of our in-transit system to our cargo portal, which means our platform now allows detailed tracking across the cargo journey in accordance with International Air Transport Association standards.

In banking and financial services, we're seeing client interest in quantum-enhanced fraud detection for financial transactions, a topic on which members of our ECS team recently published research accepted by the International Conference on Quantum Artificial Intelligence following a rigorous peer review.

In DWS and CA&I, we continue to invest in our AI-driven portfolio that's based on technology-led delivery models. This is beginning to allow us to show up in the market with higher-value offerings at better price points, making us more competitive in the market.

This puts pressure on the top-line growth but allows for reduced cost of delivery and better margin profile.

In Digital Workplace Solutions, we're already seeing this in the uptake of our service experience accelerator. During the quarter, we rolled out this solution to additional clients and continue to see roughly 40% deflections away from human support to automated support handled by our Agentic AI agents.

Data from early client adopters also indicates an improvement in the end-user experience. In a service where marginal change has meaning, we're seeing a substantial 28% increase in user engagement and a 24% decrease in abandonment on average.

Our knowledge management capabilities are identifying gaps in approximately 10% of support tickets and addressing them with automated content generation to improve the accuracy of the training data and the effectiveness of our Agentic AI agents.

In field services, we've invested in Salesforce's agent force technology, which leverages Agentic AI to automate scheduling, rescheduling, and pre- and post-work summaries while continuously learning and making autonomous decisions to improve and optimize dispatch efficiency over time.

During the quarter, Unisys became an authorized Apple product reseller, adding MacBooks and iPads to our existing device subscription service, which provides comprehensive life cycle management with intelligent device refresh and a flexible, predictable cost model.

This partnership enables client decision-making based on the users' needs rather than supplier limitations. In Cloud, Applications & Infrastructure Solutions, our application factory is taking shape and yielding a growing pipeline of new opportunities.

Application development is a bright spot within the public sector, with clients remaining interested in modernizing inefficient platforms, including for criminal justice information, identity access management, and licensing and permitting.

We also continue to cross-sell and upsell new opportunities for our CA&I solutions at existing enterprise computing solution clients, primarily related to ClearPath Forward clients seeking to modernize their application layer and expand digital capabilities.

We're also making a push to cross-sell CA&I solutions into our base of ECS clients in the financial services and public sectors that use our business process solutions, where we believe our workflow and process knowledge, combined with industry expertise, is a unique combination.

In both DWS and CA&I, we continue to view the market of midsized enterprises, those with $1 billion to $5 billion of annual revenue, as a relatively untapped market opportunity where we have all the ingredients to effectively compete and source significant new revenue.

These clients typically value personalized service, which they're not receiving from larger providers, and have less organizational complexity, allowing them to establish their relationship with us at a higher level and more quickly.

Given that our digital workplace solutions are market-leading even for the largest enterprises, we see the mid-market commercial sector as a larger opportunity to build leadership and differentiation, particularly within our CA&I solutions.

A top priority heading into year-end is defining more clearly a set of CA&I solutions tailored for this segment of the market and with a streamlined and repeatable sales motion.

This involves solidifying preferred partners and building more standard architectural solutions and delivery frameworks, just as we've done in IT service management with Freshworks and EasyVista and in licensing and permitting with Clarity.

We are already enhancing our cybersecurity portfolio in this manner, an area where our pipeline is growing and where we're seeing strong secular growth tailwinds and market demand.

We're leaning in with partners like Dell and Microsoft to develop end-to-end security managed service playbooks, integrating security tooling, standardized solution frameworks, and repeatable sales motions.

We've also begun designing a standard architecture for Unisys intelligent operations specific to midsized enterprises that can also incorporate private AI clouds.

Running AI workloads exclusively in public cloud environments is very expensive and cost-prohibitive for mid-market clients. We're exploring potential technology partners with OEMs, data centers, and GPU as a service providers, so we can offer our clients alternative private AI frameworks with Unisys service wrappers to bring down those costs.

Before turning the call over to Deb, I want to provide an update on the industry recognition, including the growing acknowledgment in higher-growth areas of the market.

In the third quarter, we received a new leader ranking in cloud services for mid-market enterprises. We were also recognized for the first time or appeared in new reports in cybersecurity, Agentic AI services, and AI-driven application development.

This was in addition to maintaining leader positions in a number of updated reports put out in multi-cloud, digital workplace, and generative AI services.

These recognitions come from highly respected firms such as Avasant, Everest, IDC, and ISG and give credence to our strategic focus on application development, AI services, and penetration of the mid-market.

The majority of the clients and prospects rely on industry experts in some manner when choosing IT service providers. So our steady rise in many quarters should open up new business opportunities in areas of the market we want to penetrate to support Ex-L&S growth in our new solutions.

Finally, I want to mention that Unisys was named to Time Magazine's 2025 list of World's Best Companies for the first time, recognizing us amongst global organizations that exemplify excellence in today's corporate landscape.

Our investments in upskilling and development opportunities for our employees are an important component of that excellence and support a stable workforce, maintaining our low voluntary attrition, which was 11.7% on a trailing 12-month basis.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Deb to go through our financials in more detail.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone.

As a reminder, my discussion today will reference slides from the supplemental presentation posted on our website. I will discuss total revenue growth, both as reported and in constant currency, and segment growth in constant currency only.

I will also provide information excluding license and support or Ex-L&S to allow investors to assess the progress we are making outside the portion of ECS where revenue and profit recognition is tied to license renewal timing, which can be uneven between quarters.

To echo Mike's comments, we remain in a good position to achieve our increased profitability and free cash flow outlook to maintain our strong liquidity position.

And we took another step forward on the journey to removing our U.S. pensions with the annuity purchase we executed in September.

While we have faced some Ex-L&S revenue headwinds, our license and support cash engine is being powered by our base of high-quality clients who continue to commit to and increase consumption on our platforms.

At the same time, we are fine-tuning our strategy to ensure we capitalize on the advantages offered by technology like Agentic and generative AI and quantum encryption to expand the scope of our efficiency initiatives and deliver innovation that advances our clients' efficiency goals.

Looking at our results in more detail, you can see on Slide 4 that third quarter revenue was $460 million, a decline of 7.4% year-over-year or 9% in constant currency.

We had an approximate $12 million impact from the shift in timing on a license and support renewal that closed just outside the quarter, which will benefit L&S's fourth quarter revenue.

Excluding license and support, third quarter revenue was $377 million, down 3.9% or 5.8% in constant currency.

This was below our expectation of $390 million we shared with you last quarter, due to foreign exchange movement and dynamics I will cover now as I discuss the constant currency segment revenue.

Digital Workplace Solutions revenue was $125 million in the quarter, down 5.8% year-over-year. Year-to-date, DWS revenue is down 2.9%.

The third quarter decline was driven in part by the shift of low-margin hardware revenue, some in the fourth quarter and some into 2026.

Volumes in some of our traditional PC field services were also lighter than we expected, and a pickup in PC refresh activity was dampened by Microsoft's extension of security support for the significant number of devices still running on Windows 10.

Third quarter Cloud Applications and Infrastructure Solutions revenue was $180 million, a 6.8% decline compared to the prior year period.

This segment has our highest public sector exposure, where activity levels have already been suppressed, and the uncertainty around federal funding heading into the government shutdown caused incremental slowing.

That impact continues to be primarily concentrated at U.S. state and local governments, though we were pleased to secure meaningful renewal TCV with some of these clients at an improved margin.

Year-to-date, CA&I revenue is down 5% due to volumes in the public sector.

Enterprise computing solutions revenue was $133 million in the third quarter, a 13.9% year-over-year decline due to the cadence of L&S renewal signings, which have a higher fourth quarter concentration than last year.

Within the segment, L&S revenue was $83 million compared to $105 million in the prior year quarter. Specialized services and next-generation compute solutions revenue grew 1.7%, benefiting from new business and application services we are delivering for clients in both travel and transportation and financial services.

Trailing 12-month signings of approximately $2 billion translate to a book-to-bill of 1.1x for both the total company and our ex-L&S solutions, and we exited the quarter with a backlog of $2.8 billion, flat year-over-year.

As Mike touched on, the complexity and pace of negotiations have continued to elongate cycles on some renewals in DWS and CA&I.

Moving to Slide 6. Third quarter gross profit was $117 million, a 25.5% gross margin, down from 29.2% a year ago as a result of the cadence of L&S renewals.

Ex-L&S gross profit was $70 million, and Ex-L&S gross margin was 18.6%, up 70 basis points year-over-year, largely due to lower cost reduction charges in the quarter.

Excluding that benefit, we continued to make incremental gains in delivery efficiency to maintain profitability despite revenue decline.

Our investments in workforce optimization are helping us hold on in, on incremental opportunities to improve delivery, and we plan to act quickly to capitalize on those.

I will now touch briefly on segment gross profit. DWS's gross margin was 16.2% in the third quarter, essentially flat year-over-year.

As Mike discussed, we are leaning heavily into technology to automate delivery. CA&I's gross margin was 19.6% in the third quarter, relatively flat year-on-year.

We were pleased to maintain profitability, especially given the higher margin profile of CA&I solutions being impacted by public sector uncertainty.

Segment margins continue to benefit from automation and optimizing workforce and labor markets, as well as synergies we are achieving from centralizing application capabilities.

ECS's gross margin was 46.2% in the third quarter, down from 58.2% a year ago, which was due to the timing of L&S renewals and mix from integrated system sales.

As a reminder, our L&S solutions have a fairly fixed cost base, and the very high concentration of license renewals is expected to drive a significant sequential increase in fourth quarter ECS gross margin.

Moving to Slide 7. Third quarter GAAP operating loss was $34 million, which included a $55 million noncash goodwill impairment in the DWS segment related to the near-term industry dynamics, challenging volumes, and the pace of client signings.

Non-GAAP operating profit was $25 million, a 5.4% non-GAAP operating margin, which is in line with our expectations for mid-single digits.

SG&A in the third quarter declined slightly year-over-year and is down 8% year-to-date, driven by our initiatives to streamline corporate functions, real estate, and technology.

We are pushing to accelerate the remaining cost takeouts and increase our overall rationalization program to maximize savings in 2026.

We had a third-quarter net loss of $309 million, which included an approximate $228 million one-time noncash pension expense related to the annuity purchase transaction in the quarter.

As we previously discussed, this is an important element of our pension removal strategy. The quarter also included a $4 million foreign exchange loss.

As we mentioned last quarter, we ended our hedging program on intercompany loans, which removed the cash impact of the hedge settlements but increased P&L FX volatility, impacting GAAP net income.

Adjusted net income was negative $6 million or a loss of $0.08 per share. Turning to Slide 8. Capital expenditures totaled approximately $18 million in the third quarter and $59 million year-to-date, relatively flat year-over-year.

A significant portion of capital expenditures relates to relatively steady levels of solution development for our L&S platforms, while we maintain a capital-light strategy in our Ex-L&S solutions.

Pre-pension free cash flow, which is free cash flow prior to pension and postretirement contributions, was $51 million in the third quarter and $15 million year-to-date.

We generated $20 million of free cash flow in the third quarter, an improvement from $14 million in the prior year period. During the quarter, we made $30 million of contributions to our global pension plans and received a $25 million one-time payment related to a favorable legal settlement in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Moving to Slide 9. Cash balances were $322 million as of September 30 compared to $377 million at year-end, reflecting our use of $50 million cash on hand as part of our $250 million discretionary pension contribution.

Our liquidity position is strong with no major debt maturity until 2031, and our recently renewed $125 million asset-backed revolver remains undrawn.

Our net leverage ratios are 1.8x and 3.7x, including pension deficit. We expect lower net leverage at year-end, given the strong profit contribution we expect from L&S renewals, and expect leverage to gradually come down over time as we contribute to our pensions, though not in a straight line.

I will now provide an update on our global pension plans. Each year-end, we provide detailed estimated projections for expected global cash pension contributions and GAAP deficit relative to our quarterly updates.

These projections change based on factors, including funding regulations and actuarial assumptions. The deficit is also impacted by our planned contributions, some of which go directly towards deficit reduction.

After the upsized senior notes issuance in June and a one-time $250 million contribution, the pro forma 2024 year-end U.S. pension deficit was approximately $500 million.

As of September 30, we estimate the deficit to be approximately $470 million. We are forecasting approximately $360 million of remaining cash contributions to our global pension plans in aggregate through 2029, which includes approximately $24 million of pension contributions in the fourth quarter, including both U.S. and international.

Of the $360 million of contributions we are forecasting through 2029, approximately $230 million is associated with our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans, relatively unchanged from last quarter.

As we discussed on last quarter's call and during our dedicated pension investor education event, the historical pension contribution volatility that was primarily in our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans was substantially removed by increasing fixed income allocations of plan assets to match the duration of plan liabilities.

As a result, our contributions through 2029 are not expected to fluctuate more than 3% in aggregate per annum, providing a high degree of certainty as to our future funding requirements.

During the quarter, we completed an annuity purchase that removed approximately $320 million of pension liabilities, more than half of the $600 million we aim to remove before the end of next year.

This involves transferring $320 million of liabilities and a similar amount of planned assets to a third-party insurer. Annuity purchases reduce ongoing maintenance costs and allow us to remove liabilities at lower premiums than would be paid on a full takeout.

I will now discuss our full-year financial guidance and additional color provided on Slide 10. For the full year, we now expect constant currency growth of negative 4% to negative 3%, which equates to a reported revenue decline of 3.6% to 2.6%, which continues to assume full-year license and support revenue of approximately $430 million.

This implies fourth quarter revenue of approximately $570 million, which assumes $185 million to $190 million of L&S revenue. We expect to come in at or above the midpoint of our upwardly revised non-GAAP operating margin guidance range of 8% to 9%, implying a fourth quarter non-GAAP operating margin in the mid-teens due to the concentration of L&S revenue we expect.

We are pleased that this translates to non-GAAP operating profit that is slightly above our original full-year guidance. This stems from the strength and stability in our ClearPath Forward software ecosystem, as well as diligent execution to enhance delivery and operational efficiency and foreign exchange favorability.

We will continue to act with agility to remove additional costs where needed to align with revenue levels in certain areas of the business.

We continue to expect to generate approximately $110 million of pre-pension free cash flow. This reflects full-year assumptions listed on Slide 10.

As a reminder, pre-pension free cash flow is difficult to predict with precision, as the exact timing of some larger L&S collections and how those fall around year-end could shift collections between the fourth quarter and first quarter of 2026.

Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator instructions]

Our first question will come from Rod Bourgeois of DeepDive Equity Research.

I could ask a long-winded question on AI, but I'll make it short-winded. How are you seeing AI's impact overall on your P&L?

Rod, it's Mike. Thanks so much for joining and for the question. Really appreciate it. Although a short-winded question, it may be a long-winded answer.

As you would expect, lots of impacts in regard to the application of AI. In general, what I would say to you is that the impact of our transformation of our delivery model, which allows us to continue to deliver our solutions in a more, I'll say, cost-friendly way or reducing our delivery cost, certainly helps our margin profile, and we've seen a lot of green shoots in that regard.

As I mentioned in some of my prepared remarks and Deb did as well, there's a knock-on impact to the top line for that. Typically, the AI component of a lower delivery cost means that our clients are seeing some of the benefit of that, and we share some of that savings with our clients, but it makes us obviously a lot more profitable and allows us to be a lot more competitive from a pricing perspective.

We think that's the right way to approach that in regards to the new solution uptake. Then, obviously, as we continue to grow and add new logos to the mix, the application of those new logos certainly has an uplift that is much more top-line and bottom-line accretive because we've already baked that into our model.

We're seeing, as you know, within our L&S business, increases in our consumption rate. We think that's pretty much driven by the application of AI across the board. This whole data abstraction layer, we are seeing some nice improvements in our HPC business.

So clearly, with ClearPath Forward consumption, we've increased that guidance, as you know, and we're actually talking about the increase of the out years '26 through '28.

I think we started that dialogue a couple of years back, thinking that would be about $360 million per annum. And now we're talking about $400 million on average per annum for those 3 years. So significant uptick in L&S related to consumption that we think is AI related.

Certainly, AI in our delivery efficiency and hitting those real strategic objectives of increasing our profitability and our delivery. And in some of those cases, too, Rod, by the way, it's not only about just margin improvement in those accounts.

We're looking at expansion and new scope, and growing those accounts in a bigger way through the application of this technology-led delivery. So the scale is one part of it, but certainly the volume is the other part.

So we're obviously huge believers. We've talked for a while about how we think this is exponentially helping us to continue to compete on a greater and greater scale with some of our competitors.

We've got it essentially sprinkled in throughout our delivery, whether that's in intelligent operations embedded in just AI management and orchestration of compute within CA&I, whether it's embedded in ECS from a ClearPath Forward delivery and navigation and whether it's in field services and/or service desk inside of DWS, all of our solutions essentially have that baked in and continue to grow in that manner.

Then I guess as an extension of that and applying it to the results for the quarter, despite the revenue shortfall, you seem on track to meet your margin and free cash flow targets.

So I'd like to ask what's enabling the margin performance to come through even though revenues are coming in less than planned?

Yes. Great question, Rod. Thanks for that. Well, look, the first and most obvious is the increase in L&S. So that's obviously a higher profit component, and we're seeing a step-up in that, which is giving us margin pull-through.

The second, and probably less obvious, is that there are plenty of green shoots embedded in Ex-L&S for our new solutions. We've had quite a bit of renewal activity this year.

It's probably an unusually high renewal activity coming through in the year and being able to sign those accounts with our new solutions at a better margin profile and in a lot of cases, being able to expand either expansion of the work that we're doing or add new scope to those renewals is also benefiting us from a margin profile.

So I think what you're really seeing here on the top line is you're seeing some reduction or accretion in top line related to either contracts that have accreted off or the slowness of some of the PC cycle or some hardware shifting.

But all 3 of those are lower margin accreted off. And what we're adding is a higher margin addition.

So right now, the top line is suffering a little bit from the accretion being a little higher than the addition, but we feel like that's the right path from our perspective, and we've tried our best here to fully delever what the risk is for the remainder of the year for the impacts that we've been seeing over time, whether that's the PC refresh cycle, whether that's a slowdown in the adoption of Microsoft 10 to 11 or whether that's just the uptake in project work in public sector due to the prevailing issues there in the U.S. with the government shutdown and others.

So a little bit of a balance. But in general, it's allowed us, and I think it proves our margin continues to improve in our new solution delivery. I mean, just as a reminder, over the course of the last 3 years, we've improved that gross margin in Ex-L&S by almost 600 basis points, and we continue to see an opportunity to continue to see that expansion, regardless really on what's going on, on the top line.

And also, Rod, this is Deb. Just to add, we also increased some of the SG&A savings we talked about at Investor Day; we're accelerating some of those.

Some of those were through 2026. We've accelerated some of those into '25, and we're ramping up our efforts overall on rationalizing our cost base.

Yes. Look, I think Deb mentioned too in her prepared remarks around the variability of that workforce.

So clearly, we're going to take some level of action to make sure that we continue the margin improvement that we've been seeing over the last couple of years.

And then just a final quick one here as inputs to the modeling. Can you give your view on the pace of your delivery improvement going forward, and how that would impact Q4 cost reduction charges specifically?

Yes. Thanks, Rod. So look, I mean, we've always been and continue to refine our delivery costs. And so there is some level of BAU cost reduction that you normally see.

I would expect that you'll see some of that increment in Q4, and the cadence will probably be a little higher in Q4, just to mirror the variability in the workforce.

I don't think it's going to be like a crazy significant increase in that, but there certainly will be actions taken to mitigate the exposure that we've seen on top line or some of the derisking efforts that we're going to do to maintain the margin profile.

The next question comes from Mayank Tandon of Needham & Company.

This is Brandon on for Mayank. I guess I was just wondering what are you guys seeing on the demand front in cloud spending, particularly on the AI front.

I know you guys mentioned like increased competition. But I guess what are you guys doing to navigate those increased competition dynamics that you guys are seeing?

Brandon, thanks for the question, and thanks for your participation in the call.

Look, the demand is certainly there. I will tell you, I was just on the road, frankly, in Europe, and met with a whole host of clients and just had what we call a CIO and CTO forum and had a big discussion with 20-some-odd potential clients and existing clients in that forum.

So clearly, the demand is there for the application of AI. I think what we're bumping up against is the application of that technology into an ecosystem that is very sensitive.

There are many attributes that need to be addressed, security being one of the primary ones involved with that. So there's money there, certainly to be spent. The demand is there.

We continue to get validation from clients and industry analysts that our solutions are there and what they want. And as I mentioned, the competition continues to be fairly aggressive in that.

So we've got to really make sure from a defensive posture that education is key and really having those dialogues around what that output looks like and why our client-centricity model and being, I think, a little bit pragmatic in how it gets adopted, where it gets adopted, and the time of adoption is really important.

So there's an equal amount of hype as there is an equal amount of practicality in the adoption of these AI models. And I think from our perspective, we're taking a tack to really try to be very conscious around setting the right expectations with our clients, not promising things we can't deliver.

And in some cases, where those expectations aren't met, then we have to attrit that potential client opportunity because we're not looking for a race to the bottom here.

We're really talking about adding value and experience to our clients. And one of the stats I like to use when having discussions with our clients and potential clients is that for our top 50, on average, we've serviced those clients for roughly 20 years.

You don't have that level of experience with the client base because you're looking at a short-term adoption of a technology. 

We really like to think our technology is state-of-the-art, and we want to talk about the future and how we get our clients to the future. So the demand is certainly there. Our solutions certainly meet that demand. And the key is really about client education and setting an adoption road map. 

Then I know you guys last quarter, you guys touched on the public sector, I think specifically for the cloud business.

I was wondering if you guys mentioned the call a little bit, but any update on that with the government shutdown in terms of client conversations and client demand with the shutdown? 

Yes. Great question. Thanks, Brandon. So yes, we did talk about that last quarter. In fact, last quarter, we mentioned that we started to see a little bit of green shoots in the public sector and thought that sector was coming around a bit from a project orientation. That has reverted.

That I'll say, the influx of project work is basically really quiet. Now, Deb mentioned in her remarks, and I think it's important, we've got a lot of renewals and have had a lot of renewals this year in the public sector, and are doing well to renew those particular accounts.

But we're not seeing the uptick in the project work that we had started to see. 

So there are a couple of areas where we're leaning in. We talked about that a little bit on the call, but we talked about the justice system. We talk about access management and things like that.

There are what I would consider nondiscretionary areas in the public sector where the demand is fairly constant, and there's some project work in that space. But clearly, there continues to be a pause in project work in the public sector, specifically related to the U.S. public sector. 

I wouldn't say that holds true across the board. We mentioned on the call about an Australian client that we had some good success with an expansion in other regions.

But the U.S. public sector is also where a good chunk of our CA&I business is allocated. So there's definitely been a pause in project work there. And so the green shoots that we started to see in Q2 have really subsided.

And I think there's a little bit of a wait-and-see approach here, and we expect that that's going to continue for a couple of quarters. So we're sitting tight. We're having good conversations with folks, but there's a lot of uncertainty there. 

The next question comes from Anja  Soderstrom of Sidoti. 

A lot of them have been covered already. But I think you mentioned you're starting to see pricing pressure. Is that something you only started to see now in the third quarter? Or can you talk a little bit more about that? 

Yes. Now, we did mention that. I wouldn't say it's something we're just seeing in the third quarter.

As you know, this is a highly competitive space that we're in. I would say in the third quarter and especially as we go through renewal cycles with clients, there are more and more players in that renewal cycle.

And frankly, in a couple of instances, we've seen competitors really just undercut pricing to, in my mind, levels that we're just not willing to go to. 

We've made a commitment as a management team that we're going to stay disciplined in the contracts that we're signing. We know we've got value. We know that we can bring that value to our clients.

But we're not just going to sign contracts to maintain a top line if it's not helping our bottom line. Our objectives were very clear, and we continue to follow them. We're trying to grow profit dollars.

We want that margin percentage to increase. We're increasing cash flow, or obviously moving positively in the cash flow arena. And we think that's the better way to drive shareholder value.

And so that pricing pressure, I think, is certainly relevant and continues to be relevant in our discussions. But please don't take that comment to think that we're not competitive in pricing. We are.

We're right there in every deal that we're talking about, but there's a limit to how far we're willing to go. And from our perspective, if the client doesn't have the capability for us to grow or the capability or want to move to our next-gen solutions, we're really not interested in just resigning a contract at lower values for the old delivery model. 

And then also, just maybe go over some puts and takes for the free cash flow for 2026. 

Sure. Deb, do you want to take that? 

Yes. So, as far as 2026, we're not giving guidance at this point for 2026, and we'll discuss that when we report the fourth quarter. But there are, to your point, a lot of moving pieces.

So obviously, with the capital market transformation we did, right, we lowered our pension contributions, but the interest expense will move higher. And so there are moving parts that, as we're formulating our plan for '26, we'll lay out to you when we report that next quarter.

But I think the key thing is the biggest driver, L&S, is clearly a big driver at a 70% margin. So as we finalize that number, we said on average $400 million, and those are 70% margins. So those have a big impact. 

But I think what's most important is we feel we have a really strong liquidity position. So as we go into 2026, right now, our cash balance is $320 million.

If you look at the cash color we've given to hit about $110 million pre-pension, that puts us about $390 million of cash by the end of the year. So we feel like we'll be entering 2026 in a good place from a liquidity perspective. And we also have that $125 million ABL, we just renewed that, which is also undrawn.

So we feel good from a liquidity position. And as we shape the algorithm, what that's going to look like in '26, we feel confident in that. 

And then also, if I understand correctly, the lower L&S this quarter was due to some being pushed into the fourth quarter and into 2026. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit and what you're seeing there? 

Yes. So just to be clear, the push in the quarter got signed in the early days of Q4 for L&S. So that's not anything into '26.

That is really just a shift of something we thought was going to sign by September 30, signed in October. All of it was signed, all of it is in-house. So, no real issue from an L&S cash perspective, just the quarterly timing.

Deb, anything?

Yes. No, no, that's just all within this year. 

[Operator Instructions].

And our next question will come from Arun Seshadri of Forza. 

Just a couple from me. It sounds like the book-to-bill is still pretty strong. So does that reflect confidence, I guess, were there timing impacts in Ex-L&S as well? And sort of what are you seeing in terms of that renewal activity?

You talked a little bit about renewal activity being enhanced this year. I guess those 2 are potentially related. But any color there? 

And then secondly, is there any way you could size that renewal in L&S that moved over to Q4, that would be helpful? 

Yes. So I'll start that, and Deb, I'll ask you to kind of chime in here with some color as well.

So you're right, the book-to-bill, I think we were at 1.1, is what we're talking about on book-to-bill. And clearly, that's a solid book-to-bill and happy with that, and aligned to our contracting models and our normal modeling for our forecasting.

So, the renewal cycle that I talked about, and I was actually talking more about Ex-L&S. L&S, we've talked about the renewal cycle quite a bit. 

And as we've indicated, that renewal cycle is actually increasing our L&S expectations over the next 3 years. So I'm going to discount that for a second, Arun, and based on your question, and really speak about Ex-L&S.

So, for this year, just to give you a sample, the Ex-L&S renewal cycle for this year is about 3x what it will be for next year. So it gives you a sense of the baseline that we're actually renewing this year.

And if you think about that, the resources it takes to go after all of those renewals are also obviously putting some pressure on the work that we're able to do in new logo acquisitions. 

So there's a pretty high renewal cycle this year. We've been very successful in that renewal cycle. Now I'm not saying we've renewed every single contract that was out there. And a couple of them, as I've mentioned, we didn't because the investment that the client was looking for us to make was not conducive to the pricing that we expected to get.

So, a couple of those contracts we did not renew. But the lion's share we did, and for many of those, we've actually renewed them at better margin profiles and have increased some scope and/or expansion in those accounts. 

We've been pleased so far with the ability to renew those and to renew that work under our new delivery model. That's really key that we're converting these clients upon renewal to the delivery model that's technology-based, and that's an important element of that cycle because that brings in the enhanced margin profile. 

So again, happy with the current book-to-bill, happy with the progress we're making on renewals. We have quite a bit of renewals coming up in Q4.

Progress on those has been very good. So again, pleased with where we're at there. Would I have liked to win every single one and get them at higher margins? Sure. Is that a realistic assumption? Probably not.

Deb, anything you want to add to that? 

Yes. Just as you can see, I mean, the TCV year-to-date, right, Ex-L&S renewals, is $572 million versus last year, $321 million. So, a 78% increase over last year, just to demonstrate how big the renewal cycle has been this year.

And then, related to your point on the L&S renewal that shifted out, that was just a few days after the quarter. That was about $12 million we had mentioned of revenue that shifted out in 1 quarter. But it will not impact the full year. 

And you also have a fairly significant expectation, I think, for Q4 that's factored into the numbers, and it sounds like your confidence is pretty high in terms of those Ex-L&S renewals in Q4. 

Yes. I think Deb's comment on the renewals was the L&S component. And of course, we're super confident in the L&S component. And we're also confident in the Ex-L&S component of renewals.

So look, everything that we're not confident about has been baked into our updated guidance. So we feel pretty good about what's out there to close. And obviously, at this point in the year, we have pretty good insight into how the next couple of months are going to close out. 

Yes. But to your point, Arun, the L&S renewals, a few days slip, can shift. And so we mentioned that throughout the script, right, that we do have high expectations for Q4, which we feel confident in, but there is always that slip of an element. 

Yes. Wonderful point, Deb. And really, if you think about it, Arun, our talk on that has always been around not if, but when.

So we're really confident that it's going to renew, and we're very confident that it's going to renew in the timing that we expect it to. But as we've just seen in this quarter, a shift of a couple of days makes a difference. 

The next question comes from Matthew Galinko of Maxim Group. 

If we see the other side of the government shutdown in the relatively near future, do you expect a quick return on forward momentum on project work that's been gummed up? Or how quickly do you see the market responding to things opening up? 

Matt, thanks for the question. Good to talk to you again. Look, I don't think our expectations are that it's going to be a light switch effect where the government opens back up and all of a sudden, all this project work starts to open up immediately.

As we indicated last quarter, we just started seeing some green shoots on that work, and then it shut back down. So we think that's going to linger, frankly, for a couple of quarters. 

So do I think it's going to be like a Q1 recovery if the government opens up before then? No, I do not. We've got to reengage. They've got to reassess what the outputs of that government work are.

The focus is going to be on nondiscretionary work first and then project work second. So we're baking into our expectation that, that's going to be several quarters prolonged. 

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

Thank you, operator. Before we wrap up, I just want to reiterate a few key points we hope you take away from today's call.

First, the trends remain strong in our most powerful profit and cash driver, which is L&S Support Solutions. We plan to meet our increased expectation of $430 million for this year and have increased our expectations for the average annual L&S revenue in our years from '26 through '28 to $400 million per year. 

Second, while the market dynamics posted headwinds in our Ex-L&S business that we don't expect to dissipate overnight, we're adjusting our approach to mitigate those impacts. And importantly, we're continuing to deliver on our profit and cash flow objectives. 

Then lastly, we're building momentum in our AI-led solutions with technology-first delivery models. This is making us more competitive, supporting our margins, and enabling us to scale our most differentiated innovation more quickly.

And we're seeing more and more clients and industry analysts support the belief in that momentum. So I'd like to just make sure we take away those 3 points from today's call. And operator, thank you for your time, and you can close the call. 

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

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

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our ClearPath Forward operating systems and surrounding ecosystem, including ClearPath Infrastructure, Products, Industry Solutions and Services. These solutions comprise the majority of the Enterprise Computing Solutions segment, which additionally includes certain business process solutions.

Similar to our past sessions on our Pension Strategy and Digital Workplace Solutions segment, the purpose of today's event is to educate investors and dive deeper into a specific element of our strategy or portfolio and allow you to hear from our extended leadership team.

Joining me today are Chris Arrasmith, Unisys' Chief Operating Officer; and Sean Tinney, who leads our Enterprise Computing segment. Following our presentation, we will be joined by Unisys' Chief Executive Officer and President, Mike Thomson, for a live Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]. Slides for today's event are posted on our investor website.

Our discussion and presentation may reference license and support revenue or profit. This includes our ClearPath Forward operating system licenses and support, ClearPath Forward products such as DataExchange ePortal and AB Suite and ClearPath Forward Hardware. The majority of L&S revenue is related to license and support, with license revenue and profit recognition tied to license renewal timing, which can be uneven between quarters and years.

We also provide ex-L&S information to allow investors to evaluate our performance in the remainder of the business, including ClearPath-related specialized services and industry solutions discussed today. Ex-L&S also includes ECS Business Process Solutions, our Digital Workplace and Cloud Applications and Infrastructure segments and all other.

These metrics and any other non-GAAP financial metrics discussed are given to provide a more complete understanding of our performance but are not meant to be a substitute for GAAP. Non-GAAP measures are reconciled to the related GAAP measures and are provided within the presentation.

Before turning it over to Chris, I'd like to remind investors, certain statements today may contain estimates and forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. Current expectations, assumptions and beliefs forming the basis of our forward-looking statements include factors that are beyond our ability to control or estimate precisely. This could cause results to differ materially from expectations.

With that, I will turn it over to Chris.

Thanks, Michaela, and good day to those of you attending. Today, we'll be presenting material focused on our ClearPath Forward ecosystem of platforms, products and services, as Michaela stated. We'll be speaking to you about ClearPath Forward as a vibrant and essential part of Unisys and how it is a centerpiece of value creation for our clients.

Over the course of time, we continue to see clients investing in their ClearPath Forward environments, in many cases, increasing their commitments around transaction volumes as they look to take advantage of the value of data in these systems. Additionally, clients are frequently working to reinforce their security posture and available capacity for their compute needs and often look to their Unisys ClearPath Forward estate as a trusted source to accomplish these goals.

We have enjoyed decades-long relationships with many of our ClearPath Forward clients, and we are committed to continuing our journey with them for decades to come.

I'm joined today by Sean Tinney, our Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Computing Solutions, to take us further into the ClearPath Forward story. Sean, over to you.

Thank you, Chris. For the listening audience, starting on Page 3 of the handout, I'll be sharing an introduction to a key Unisys solution, ClearPath Forward, which will also be referred to as ClearPath or simply CPF. During this time, you'll learn about the modern mainframe ecosystem and the strategic role ClearPath plays in Vital Enterprise solutions. Next, you'll see a market perspective overview and learn how that perspective relates to clients' requirements and outcomes.

From there, you'll be introduced to client journeys that illustrate the mission-critical role ClearPath Forward solutions play within different client environments. Finally, you'll discover how our long-term road map drives modernization, aligns with clients' short-term and long-term needs, delivers a platform that enables current productivity and future growth and eliminates risks and complexities of a service journey.

Throughout this discussion, you'll understand why Unisys is viewed as a trusted partner committed to the growth and success of global clients relying upon ClearPath technology.

As we turn to Slide 4, we're going to discuss the ClearPath Forward modern ecosystem. Defining the modern mainframe and the attributes associated with the modern ecosystem are key challenges across the market. You may be picturing an image of a giant computer system with boxes and wires designed to run an entire company's computing needs. And historically, that was correct.

These systems provided unparalleled security, performance and reliability for our company's most valuable data. Mainframe systems also created challenges for dynamic change. As we look at our play fast forward modern ecosystem, we enhanced these long-standing principles with capabilities to increase deployment flexibility with on-premise and cloud options, enhanced security features, new real-time data processing and AI capabilities for analytics and system management.

These enhancements provide clients with a secure, performative and resilient environment required with the flexibility to adapt to market and customer needs. As we prepare for the future, the CPF environment stays on the leading edge by introducing formal computing resistant security capabilities, high-performance computing speeds with AI-driven optimization for workload management, need of the AI functionality for operations, self-healing and rapid application development.

Our road map ensures that Unisys' clients will continuously be at the forefront of performance, security and resilience. With critical data remaining adaptive, these clients are positioned to address ever-changing technology capabilities and market dynamics while minimizing additional overhead costs.

As we go to Slide 5, we're going to discuss in a little more detail our ClearPath Forward portfolio. Our ClearPath Forward portfolio is a system of modern platforms and solutions accounting for about 20% of Unisys' annual revenue. ClearPath Forward is a fully self-contained computing environment built by Unisys that enables the deployment of extremely secure high-volume data processing. Examples of long-standing core business processes that run on the ClearPath ecosystem include core banking operations such as mortgage processing as well as core airline operations such as ticketing and reservations.

ClearPath Forward is rooted in well-established traditional programming languages, but the ever-evolving environment enables modern workload and language execution. Our ClearPath history can be traced back to the 1986 formation of Unisys, where the Burroughs and Sperry product lines were brought together. In many cases, ClearPath Forward clients have been using CPF or our predecessor system for over 50 years.

Unisys introduced the ClearPath Forward brand in 1996, and we'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary in 2026. And we start in the top left quadrant. The ClearPath Forward ecosystem offers multiple deployment options from on-premise to private cloud and public cloud environments. These solutions also enable data use for analytics and AI pursuit. These solutions create a compelling modern front-end experiences and integrations to expand value and ensure modern relevance.

As we go to the bottom left of the slide, in addition to our core computing capability for transaction processing and application hosting, the ClearPath portfolio includes value-added solutions. DataExchange and ePortal enable clients to access data and systems external to ClearPath and share data with other systems. These value-added solutions allow clients to leverage ClearPath to gain a complete view of critical data and use this data in new ways that support ever-changing business needs.

AB Suite is another key solution, providing advanced application development capabilities that help clients modernize and manage mission-critical business processes within the ClearPath ecosystem. These solutions also serve as excellent value levers for Unisys, compelling long-term use and account expansion.

As we look to the top right corner of the slide, in order to offer clients maximum flexibility, we offer a diverse application environment, allowing our clients to run Unisys proprietary applications, their own applications or third-party applications within our operating environments.

Moving to the bottom right corner, we also offer a series of robust professional and managed services as well as support services to maximize our clients' investment.

As we go to the next slide, we're going to take a bit of a deeper dive into these 5 core components. And we're going to start with what is an operating system. An operating system is software that interfaces between users, applications and hardware to execute programs and transactions. Some simple examples include leveraging Apple's operating system on our personal or professional devices with applications like Safari or leveraging a Linux operating system that traditionally commercially runs on many servers.

At Unisys, we have 2 primary operating systems, OS 2200 and MCP, both of which offer similar functionality and operate under the ClearPath portfolio. The operating systems are designed to process high-volume, mission-critical workloads or simply put a client's most important transactions and most sensitive data. Security and performance are standout features of our operating system, driving a seamless and contained end-to-end business process flow that minimizes points of failure and security vulnerabilities.

As we move to Slide 7, we'll dive a little bit deeper into ClearPath and what it delivers on a day-to-day basis. ClearPath clients are in a variety of industries where workloads demand secure, highly available and high-volume processing. Many clients use daily batch jobs to process millions of transactions in tight time windows. For example, financial institutions must clear checks daily and process inter and intra bank transactions before the next business day.

ClearPath excels at this due to the efficiency of the operating and database management systems to execute and monitor queues of transactions. ClearPath is designed to support real-time processing demand such as managing airline passenger reservations, storing and retrieving voice mail messages and global cargo tracking.

In every one of these examples, security matters. And where ClearPath processes workloads for tax processing and medical records, security remains critical. ClearPath can be scaled to process 1 million transactions per minute and to do this continually with a system availability of over 5 knots, which means processing can take place 24/7 365 with very minimal downtime for maintenance.

Due to the built-in security features of ClearPath and the fact that data has never been forcibly extracted, clients can continue to rely on ClearPath for their most sensitive and time-critical workloads.

ClearPath Forward environments help clients achieve amazing outcomes. To illustrate the depth and breadth of these capabilities, a client in the financial vertical securely processed over $56 trillion of annual interbank transactions and another relies on ClearPath to process 70% of all mortgage transactions in Brazil. Examples in the travel and transportation industry include booking and tracking of 7 million annual cargo shipments and processing of 732 million passengers in 2024. As enterprise business demands increase, ClearPath will continue to deliver uncompromising security, performance and speed.

As we turn to Slide 8, we're going to take a deeper look at the multiple deployment options that ClearPath offers. When contemplating where to host applications, operating systems, services and data, there are a multitude of options and considerations. There are cloud-based hosting options, which leverage Internet-based and third-party managed remote servers to store and manage data as opposed to on-premise solutions, which leverage local servers and are managed by the organization.

An on-premise solution is fully customizable and allows data to remain on site but comes with higher upfront cost and a reliance on an in-house IT department. A private cloud creates a dedicated environment, offering greater levels of customization, but this comes at an increased cost. Public cloud options share resources on a remote server with other companies, offering a cost advantage, but also creating a potential security exposure from the shared and outsourced environment.

The final option is a hybrid cloud solution that combines public, private and on-prem options based on the specific needs of the business. This hybrid option is used to balance cost, security and flexibility that can create integration and governance challenges.

The ClearPath Forward modern ecosystem is capable of running in public, private or integrated on-premise systems. This flexibility allows clients to take advantage of multiple deployment options while [indiscernible] relating to integration challenges, security and future-proofing investments as deployment strategies evolve.

As we move to Slide 9, we'll explore the application environments that the ClearPath Forward ecosystem supports. So starting with what is an application. An application is a discrete software program that is designed to execute a specific action or activity, much in the same way we're leveraging Microsoft PowerPoint today for this presentation.

An application environment is a series of applications that may or may not be interconnected. These applications are designed to run and manage a company's operations. The ClearPath Forward modern ecosystem supports 3 types of applications to meet the needs of our clients' operations. Unisys developed applications focus on maximizing the benefits of the operating system, inclusive of contemporary and customized app development as well as data sharing to and from the environment for AI and analytics purposes.

We also support client-created applications that are developed within our ecosystem and customized to specific business processes. We also support third-party developed applications that are created outside of the ClearPath Forward ecosystem that can be introduced to our secure environment such as mortgage origination software. This unique application flexibility allows ClearPath Forward clients the ability to maximize valuable data, customizing and feeding the data to supporting applications and ensuring continuity and security.

As we go to Slide 10, we're going to explore some more of Unisys' value-added solutions. ClearPath Forward operating systems are at the core of driving a client's most valuable data in key business processes. Access to the data that flows through this end-to-end environment is vital. Unisys offers about 30 different solutions to support a client's access to and use of data to drive meaningful business outcomes.

The ClearPath Forward operating systems drive a seamless and contained end-to-end data flow ingrained into the business process. This process creates an exceedingly structured and actionable set of data that catalogs inputs, decisions and outcomes, which is the cornerstone for training AI models.

There are 3 main solutions that make enterprise-grade AI possible to clients in the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. Our ePortal solution allows for data to be connected to internal and external applications, opening up new markets, channels and customers. Our DataExchange solution focuses on structuring data by highlighting critical process linkages to properly classify and engineer data across applications. And finally, our AB Suite solution that provides a low-code development platform to rapidly spin up new performative and available applications as business needs emerge.

These value-added solutions provide the ClearPath Forward client base with the ability to rapidly leverage and monetize valuable data sets without sacrificing performance, security or introducing additional costs.

As we move to Slide 11, we'll take a bit of a deeper dive into the ClearPath Forward service portfolio. Unisys is the creator of the ClearPath Forward ecosystem that operates across multiple industries on a global scale with a dedicated team of researchers and engineers across multiple coding language competencies. These attributes uniquely position Unisys to help create client differentiation within their representative markets.

We offer a variety of both professional and managed services to support clients' business needs. Application enrichment or modernization services focus on custom application development and application modernization to help clients transform environments without disruption. Our Technology Consulting Services team offers operations, technology, quantum computing and security advisory solutions from strategy to design, development, implementation and support. This includes both hardware, software and business process projects.

Finally, our Outsourcing and Managed Service offering provides clients with the ability for fully hosted and supported solutions. These best-in-class services deliver infrastructure and application environments that not only provide access to on-demand talent, but also a scalable and sustainable workforce and the ability to optimize consumption. We also directly address the challenges posed by the ongoing workforce retirement wave.

Our offerings provide clients with multiple options to achieve business leads without taking on additional internal projects or resources. The ClearPath Forward environment establishes the definition of the modern ecosystem, providing a secure, performative and resilient environment for our clients' most valuable and sensitive data while allowing for flexibility, scalability and extensibility that the traditional mainframe environment previously lacked.

As we move to Slide 12, we'll dive back into the overall ClearPath portfolio. As we saw in the preceding images, ClearPath is a secure, scalable platform designed to protect and scale core business processes. Along with services and applications such as ePortal, the ClearPath Forward ecosystem provides a pathway to the future in an environment that will evolve with client market needs. The next topics include how Unisys delivers on this commitment, along with client case studies that show the business outcomes possible with ClearPath Forward.

As we go into Slide 13, we're going to talk a bit about the market and the market specifically for mainframe computing. Mainframes play a vital role in global business and will do so for decades to come. The market perspective from IDC shows most Fortune 500 companies rely on mainframes to operate their business. It is impressive to see that over 90% of Fortune 500 financial institutions operate on mainframe.

Today, ClearPath provides the foundational attributes that have driven the historic use of mainframes. These attributes are resilience, security, scale and speed. This means ClearPath can reliably and rapidly execute extreme volumes of transactions while being incredibly secure.

Unisys is committed to evolving ClearPath and adopting modern tools and technologies to maintain these foundational attributes. Critical in sustaining mainframe relevance, Unisys invests in research and development activities in post-quantum security, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Bad actors are poised to gain access to quantum computing capabilities as well as current security algorithms used across the world. And ClearPath is prepared to adopt new quantum security protocols to continue protecting our clients' data as the most secure operating systems in the world.

The data contained in workloads executed by ClearPath point to additional value streams. By embedding AI into the ClearPath ecosystem, Unisys supports clients in unlocking further value from the significant quantity of data processed. This enables companies to operate more efficiently and bring new capabilities to market. We are committed to serving our clients at the highest level possible. Unisys will retain these foundational attributes of the ClearPath ecosystem in a post-quantum world and adopt innovative technologies to drive strong business outcomes.

Unisys will continue investing in strategic areas of growth such as AI, and most importantly, will continue to provide the right skill sets and expertise to execute our market vision as part of our ClearPath Forward 2050 initiative.

As we move to Slide 14, we'll illustrate ClearPath in day-to-day life as part of a services journey. A leading cruise line operator and Unisys have partnered for nearly 5 decades to meet the needs of a growing and evolving business. ClearPath has been at the heart of this technology strategy from the time this partnership started when the client had one ship and one port. Today, this cruise line operates 29 ships across 19 countries with 12.5 million guests.

The scalability of ClearPath aligns with the cruise lines' growth and expansion goals and provides the operational productivity required to achieve those goals. ClearPath data management capabilities enable the client to rapidly deliver across a complex global environment. And the deployment of DataExchange and ePortal provides seamless data access internally as well as with guests and suppliers.

The strength of ClearPath empowers secure management to global reservations and the ability to analyze demand and prices in real time, maximizing revenue. ClearPath also provides flexibility for the client to integrate and interface with external booking and pricing systems to expand booking avenues. As the cruise line operator further expands and offers innovative services to guests, Unisys will continue to be a trusted partner delivering results with ClearPath.

To put these capabilities into context, as we move to Slide 15, we'll show how ClearPath supports the journey of our cruise line's guests. ClearPath enables guests to cruise line touch points, starting with providing options on schedules, prices, routes and other services and amenities. All this information is stored and managed by ClearPath and is quickly made available upon requests through online channels, travel agents or the cruise line's reservation center.

Each transaction is processed by ClearPath as a system of record, and the integrity of the database is also managed by ClearPath. As the booking process continues and travel plans are committed, ClearPath continues to process these transactions and integrates with other systems to share passenger data. ePortal supports guests through interfaces that manage voyages, make payments, provide journey information and so on.

Internally, the ClearPath system provides data to authorized crew members and forms guest communication efforts. DataExchange is used to connect various data sources and is the hub for running analytics and other operations in the data warehouse. ClearPath continues to process transactions once the ship leaves port, including providing notifications about ship events and stops. Once the cruise is ended, ClearPath supports AI-enhanced engagement strategies, including guest surveys, marketing campaigns and so on.

From a management perspective, ClearPath measures profitability and drives internal analysis efforts. The ClearPath ecosystem is used to securely and reliably provide full operations support to achieve the objectives set by the cruise line. And as the cruise line moves into new markets and it takes on new ports, it drives new volume through the ClearPath ecosystem.

As we move to Slide 16, we'll look at this journey through the lens of financial institutions. So much like the cruise line journey, ClearPath is also a key component in mortgage processing, including loan origination, settlements and closing and post-settlement processing. As a system of record, ClearPath maintains the business rules, processes and data associated with the end-to-end mortgage process. It also securely manages the end customers' personal data, keeping a record of every data item and transaction.

Via the configurable AB Suite environment, ClearPath provides the ability to maintain business rules in the mortgage processing journey based on varying regulations across the globe. ePortal provides the system of engagement for mortgage customers to securely document and indicate process status throughout the approval. DataExchange provides connectivity with the external systems such as credit checking and provides access to all mortgage data for reporting and analytics purposes.

Obtaining quick results for mortgage approval is the goal for both the lender and the mortgage applicant. ClearPath ensures fast access to all data and rapid transaction processing times in support of this goal. Post settlement, applications running on ClearPath managed mortgage servicing transactions, including payments and mortgage portfolio analysis to assess the risk of default.

The mortgage processing and cruise line journeys demonstrate how the ClearPath ecosystem is integral to each client's business and how the management of the data is a key service that supports analytics and AI-based solutions to improve profitability. ClearPath provides the integration across data sets, allowing clients to seamlessly leverage data across systems, driving efficiency and profitability.

As we turn to Slide 17, we'll examine why ClearPath Forward is so persistent. The total cost of ownership to replicate the ClearPath environment is extremely high, risky and usually takes more time than anticipated. The end result does not provide the same attributes as ClearPath, the resiliency, security, scale and speed. ClearPath is purpose-built to deliver on these attributes, which is not the case outside the mainframe market.

To move into a different environment, the first hurdle is usually modernizing the application to run on a cloud-based infrastructure. And this typically means rewriting the application that contains thousands of business rules and processes. The business case to rewrite these applications, given the large-scale risk of software development, is usually not strong and may not be worth the incremental investment.

Additionally, the data must be migrated, which means moving more data to a new database. It means restructuring the data so it's secure and still provides fast access and response times. Data migration must also account for post-quantum security in addition to the current security measures.

Moving to a new infrastructure, even if it is private cloud, brings the risk of security, performance and scalability degradation. The biggest infrastructure risk is providing the resilience of ClearPath, [ our 5 9s ] or more, which could lead to increased infrastructure costs along with prohibitive management costs. To execute a migration program of this magnitude is expensive, and the proof points show that many of these engagements extend for decades without achieving the desired result.

[ To put ] the magnitude of these transitions into perspective. This type of migration is akin to attempting to stand up a new ERP system, a CRM system, a middleware and data layer and a workflow system while simultaneously changing the business processes in a single approach. At Unisys, we demonstrate a strong commitment to our clients through the long-term development and the ClearPath Forward 2050 strategy.

Clients recognize the value in these plans to evolve and improve the ecosystem that bring the advantages of modern programming languages, artificial intelligence and new innovations. Incrementally migrating to a new environment is a lengthy exercise that brings a multitude of significant and costly risks.

As we turn to Slide 18, we'll examine our long-term ClearPath Forward 2050 road map. Looking ahead, ClearPath Forward is on a journey to become the ecosystem of the future. And what does it mean for our clients? It means a platform that's not just secure and resilient, but also flexible enough to run anywhere. With elastic scaling built in, organizations can adapt quickly to changing needs. Security will always be at the heart of what we do in ClearPath Forward.

We're advancing zero trust architecture, quantum-safe cryptography and AI-driven threat detection. So our clients' data stays protected even as new threats emerge. Data is becoming ever more valuable and more distributed. ClearPath Forward's road map includes a unified data fabric, making it easier to integrate with external sources and leverage privacy-preserving analytics. This opens the door for enterprise-level AI transformation, helping organizations unlock new insights and efficiencies.

Speed and automation are also front and center. We're focused on instant processing, predictive automation and continuous delivery, so our clients can innovate faster and minimize downtime. ClearPath Forward will support cloud-native development, low-code tools and modern languages like Java and Python to create new applications without having to change the existing underlying code base. This means organizations can use their current skills today and prepare for tomorrow.

Resiliency is being taken to the next level with autonomous failover, cross-cloud recovery and AI-driven self-healing. The goal is to deliver an always-on infrastructure that supports mission-critical workloads without interruption. As we look even further ahead, we're investing in the enhancement of digital system administration assistance, containerized cluster management, micro services and Gen AI-powered development. These innovations will help clients stay ahead of the curve, no matter how technology evolves.

Unisys is committed to evolving ClearPath Forward to meet the demands of tomorrow while preserving our reliable core strengths, resiliency, security and performance.

At this point, I'm going to hand it back to Chris Arrasmith to take us through the rest of the presentation. Chris, over to you.

Thanks, Sean. Turning to Slide 19. Let's cover the key takeaways of this presentation. To recap, you've been introduced to ClearPath Forward. This key Unisys solution is a highly secure, performative and resilient environment for a client's most valuable data and business processes. You learned how ClearPath Forward, a modern ecosystem, plays a vital role in enterprise workloads, providing flexibility, scalability and extensibility.

Through the market perspective, mainframe market stability was demonstrated and tied to client journeys that exemplify the role ClearPath Forward solutions play within critical client environments. Rounding things out, you learned how Unisys solution planning drives modernization, aligns with client short- and long-term needs, delivers an evolving platform that enables current productivity and future growth and eliminates the risks and complexities associated with a services migration.

ClearPath Forward initiatives tie solutions, people and services with emerging technologies while remaining firmly rooted in the long-standing company principles of security, performance and resilience.

In closing, ClearPath is a foundational offering in the Unisys portfolio and a key structural element of multiple facets of the global economy. ClearPath provides unparalleled mission-critical performance, security, speed, scale and resilience, powering the most crucial global workloads. Long-standing client relationships illustrate why Unisys is viewed as a trusted technology adviser for these vital enterprise workloads.

With a focus on the future, ClearPath will play an essential role within client ecosystems for years to come through continued ecosystem modernization and technologies, including AI, quantum and hybrid computing.

At this time, we'll open up the meeting for questions and answers. For this portion, Sean and I are joined by Mike Thomson, Unisys CEO and President.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Rod Bourgeois with DeepDive Equity Research.

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

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

Thanks, Chris. So as Chris mentioned, there are multiple drivers that have allowed us to exceed our projections over the previous years, all of which is really related around increased workloads with our clients. One of the first reasons is geographic expansion. So as our clients expand into new markets, new geographies, that workload increases and that volume increases with them. So as they grow, we grow in a correlating fashion.

Also, the push around AI and data monetization results in increased MIPS top-ups and increased utilization of the data flowing through the system. And lastly, really, the -- we have the ability to -- we've seen some longer renewals. So this is a variety of reasons. There are reasons that factor into locking in better pricing points, looking at the broader integration and application efforts. So there's been several factors that have been driving our ability to outperform our original projections.

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

Yes. Rod, this is Chris again. Thanks, Sean. The -- really, the varying levers that Sean was talking about kind of ebb and flow. And so we don't see a generalized slowing down. But as we go year-on-year, we see different of these levers being pulled. So Sean mentioned the expansion of the utilization of data for AI pursuits. We definitely anticipate that continuing on.

In other cases, some of the value-add solutions that we talked about in today's presentation are more attractive for expansion at particular clients. And then we also see differing commitments in terms of time and consumption volumes in a combination of those things as we go forward. So we just continue to see strength in a variety of these areas. And because they're diverse, in some years, we have more strength in one of those levers than another. So we think there's a continuing trend of strength as it relates to the total portfolio.

Sorry, I just wanted to add a little tidbit there, too, and you and I have spoken about this in the past. And I think Chris talked about it here in the value-added solutions. So I would look at it this way. So a lot of the volume or consumption increases are clearly tied to our clients' growth, right? I love the travel and transportation story, right? You can see how their business continues to grow and then their utilization of our ecosystem continues to grow.

And I think Sean and Chris both touched on that. But the purposeful design of ePortal, DataExchange, AB Suite, these are products designed to give access to and from our standardized platform of data to enable this data abstraction layer, which, again, is continued calls back to and from the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. So it's kind of purpose-built forced integration back to the ecosystem, which is obviously a consumption driver. And then it's the volume components, whether it's geographic expansion or just business expansion of our clients' ecosystems.

And I think the reason we gave the illustration of both the travel and transportation and financial services because it's pretty clear throughout their journey, whether it's the UX/UI component at the end user level, all the way through pricing and follow-up communications, all of that runs back and forth from a consumption perspective. So I would say a chunk of it is purposely defined and a chunk of it is really tied into helping our clients grow.

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

Yes, absolutely, Rod. And I'll start us off and then Sean would love to get your perspective as well. We have mentioned on several occasions today, the value of the data inside of the systems, the volumes of data from decades of transactions processing and relatively uniform data schemes is really make these super valuable troves of potential insight for our clients to unlock. And we think that is a significant -- well, we know, in fact, it's a significant driver of continued consumption benefit.

But as well, there's enterprise value to be mined from that, that we're really still just kind of in the early days of tapping. There are clearly some risks involved as it relates to certain trends in the market that would be familiar to all of us around the rapid decline of mainframe compute resources as a result of AI-based reengineering of code.

And Sean talked earlier today about the scalability, the reliability, the security of these systems. And really, they continue to be unmatched in many regards in that way. And so while there is a risk there, we don't really see that manifesting in an overnight capacity. And in fact, some of the data points Sean shared, many of the transformations, migrations, however you want to refer to them, really hit a reality check over the course of time, significantly overblown costs, time, effort and risk as it relates to realizing those transformations, whether they're AI-led or more traditionally led.

Sean, do you want to add some color there? Those are at least a couple of examples.

Yes. I mean we mentioned several times about how AI can be leveraged in the SDLC and how to actually derisk a lot of the changes and whether it's resource changes or technology changes in the ecosystem. The risk of AI to migrate away from these systems is really minimal. And it's really because of the integrated nature of the code base because it's tied to so many different layers. It's integrated at the database layer, it's integrated at the infrastructure layer, it's integrated at the application layer and workflow layer that drives the sort of next best action, which is ultimately linked to the business process.

And if you try to use Gen AI or some other sort of artificial intelligence to convert it, it's really much more than converting the code base. In a lab, that may work converting one code style to another. But when you have to then factor in all these dependencies and then layer on top of that certain geographical considerations, industry considerations, client-specific considerations, you're looking at AI that would need to be trained on so many different factors of data that is largely not readily available.

So there -- while the system -- the data that flows to the ClearPath ecosystem is largely structured. When you're getting into business process rules, these usually sit in people's heads. So when you think about making a business case to use this, you now have to train multiple different AI agents, correlate those different AI agents, account for geographic considerations, account for industry considerations, account for client considerations.

Your business case gets inverted really quickly. And then to make up for these gaps in the data, you usually create synthetic data. And when you create that synthetic data, you're trying as best you can to replicate a thought train. And when you get to that point, you're really now introducing more inaccuracy and less reliability into it. So all this is compounding in Virtu business case. So the threat of using AI to really get away from these systems is really minimal.

Yes, Rod, I would also say the repatriation aspect of what we've seen over the last, I'll say, year and continuing from an industry perspective, I think it's largely due to this, right? Because as we noted in here, 70%, right, of the Fortune 500 data is sourced from a mainframe application, right, whether that -- and predominantly, they're on-prem or hybrid. Well, it's a heck of a lot cheaper from a FinOps perspective to bring the AI to the data.

And the data sits largely in a repatriated or private on-prem viewpoint, whether it's an integrated system hardware and software. But the key is getting to that data abstraction layer. And so I think industry-wise, we're seeing a little bit of push back to that. I think Chris and Sean certainly talked about kind of the muted point from a risk point of view. But I would say from a practitioner point of view, that's what we see more is bringing the AI to that data source and doing the compute there.

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

Just 2 or 3 for me. One, just wanted to understand when you look at your recurring revenue and your revenue performance, you've held revenue stable and modestly growing. Could you walk through the drivers of that, like recurring revenue, I assume, is in the mid-80s or higher and then pricing and churn, just the components that make up the revenue performance starting from, I guess, churn all the way to pricing and logos and expansions, whatever breakdown you can give?

And then the other 2 pieces, if you could talk about should we expect gross profit margin dollars to be generally stable for the future? Or do you expect to see continue? I think we saw a modest degradation in gross margins -- gross margin, but the profit dollars are pretty stable. And then finally, CapEx. How do we see -- how do you expect to see CapEx? What is the CapEx associated with CPF? And how do you see that trending?

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

Yes, sure. Good to hear from you. Thanks for participating on the call. I believe all of your questions are really tied into CPF, right? We're not talking about the total company here. We'll deal with that in the normal earnings cycle, which will be in a couple of weeks here. So I'm taking the context of your question, all CPF related.

The revenue, as you know, when we talked about this business, back in the 2023 days on Investor Day, we were talking about the top line here being roughly 3-year average of $365 million, et cetera. We've continued to bump that average up over the course of time in the last couple of years, we've moved it up to $380 million, $390 million. You see in this deck in the appendix that we're actually calling for $400 million on a top line perspective.

So I think the increase that we see in that business is really 2 component pieces of that top line. One is what we just talked about with Rod that you're seeing additional consumption on the existing base upon renewal and in some cases, early renewal and upsizing that consumption. The other is you're getting the pricing power based on how integrated this is in the business operations, as Sean eloquently explained here through the process, right?

This is how you run your business, right? And the point of this call was really to illustrate to the investors. We talk a lot about how sticky this business is, why we have pricing power and ultimately, while we have renewal rates that are in excess of 95% in this space. So we don't lose these clients because we've built an ecosystem that allows them to continue to modernize all aspects of data use, AI, quantum protection, speed and you see how integral it is into the way they function, the way they perform their business.

So from a revenue perspective, we've seen this continual increase and a lot of that on the consumption side. The margin component that you asked about is a little different, and that is aligned year-to-year based on renewals. So when you see a slight step down, don't think of that step down as necessarily being a pricing issue. A lot of times, it might be a refresh component and there may be a higher mix of hardware in an integrated system, therefore, taking away some of that margin in that particular year on that refresh.

But for the software component or the ecosystem component that we've talked about today, you've not -- you don't see that margin declining. In fact, we see pretty strong strength in the continued ability for us to gain and maintain pricing power, both on the support side of the ecosystem as well as the operating side of the ecosystem. I mentioned in there our continued 95-plus percent renewal rate. So we really don't see churn. That rate goes up when you talk about our top 50, that type of thing.

So when we do see churn, it historically is from a much lower, I'll say, profile entity and typically in relation to an M&A where our client may not be the acquirer. So very little churn, maintaining all of the margin profiles that we've seen historically, increasing the top line.

And then your last question, I think, was in relation to CapEx. We've been running a pretty steady CapEx input to support this ecosystem. Of course, we're always looking to kind of run a lean ship here. But the investment that we put into this ecosystem, we believe, is warranted. And it's as much as we need to ensure that we can stay at the cutting edge of technology, give our clients what they need from a road map perspective and have this product be viable.

We -- our internal mantra here is ClearPath 2050, right? We really talk about how this thing develops over the course of the next several decades, not next year's road map type of thing. So hopefully, Arun, that gives you your revenue component, your pricing power, your churn, your gross margin and your CapEx answer there. But if I missed anything, feel free to weigh in here.

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

Yes. Thanks, Arun. So we have not broken out historically that component. So I'm going to stay away from the mix of support versus growth on the CapEx side. But we talk about our CapEx essentially in 3 buckets, right? You've got your normal gross PP&E add. You've got kind of the CapEx for the R&D component, which is largely this, right? This is our primary IP. And we really talk about that kind of being 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.

So our CapEx number, historically, we've been running in the $95-ish million or slightly under that from a total company perspective. So think of about 1/3 of that being dedicated to the continual invest into this -- the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. It's really hard to discern the maintenance and support component from the growth component because it's the shared team because, obviously, the integration between those is so tight.

So they do work together. And that ebbs and flows, right? A lot of our growth development are at the request of clients, and we're talking about what they want to see over the next 10 years. And so as we have those discussions, we see an ebb and flow there. But I would say at a macro level, it's been a pretty consistent spend to continue this ecosystem.

The next question comes from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

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

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

Sure. Thanks for joining. Appreciate the question. Yes. Look, I think Chris teed it up perfectly, right? So we're giving that 3-year average from a modeling perspective. I'll just remind the audience listening here, I know you know this, but I'll say it for purposes of others as well, that typically, what happens in these scenarios is clients have extended use beyond what they thought they were ultimately going to need when they've contracted.

So the reason the revenue recognition is upfront on these license renewals is because they get the full consumption value day 1, right? And so when they get to a use perspective and they're going to run out of use or MIPS by the time their contract is done, typically, our contracts would revert to list pricing, which is significantly higher than the contracted pricing that we're talking about. So normally, they'll come to us for early renewal. And we don't have a lot of control as to when that happens. That's much more indicated by the way they run their business.

So typically, it ends up being a pull forward. And then recently, what we've seen experience-wise, and I think Sean alluded to this in his dialogue that there's been extensions on top of those early renewals. And so we're starting to see a blending of that. So although we project it out based on the renewal schedule, and we have great line of sight to what the next 5 and 10 years looks like, that can get disrupted by someone's business taking off and their consumption being much higher and then having to force an early renewal and then throw on top of that and an extension of that contract.

So really difficult, which is why we give out by quarter and first half, second half every year and try to give the 3-year view. We feel pretty comfortable that we've got a good line of sight to that window. Beyond that, it's a little hard to predict.

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

Yes. Thanks, Anja. I can take that one, and then Sean will ask for a little insight from you, too. There's really a mix. In some cases, clients have a keen eye for performance and scale enhancements as it relates to their ever-growing kind of volume transaction requirements. In other cases, clients have historically been looking for diversification of deployment options. Perhaps they want to leverage a public cloud deployment of a software series of our platform rather than an integrated on-premise system. And so there are a mix of those things.

And then Sean mentioned today earlier some of the most recent advancements in post-quantum cryptography that some clients have described an interest in.

Sean, do you want to give a few other kind of insights into what clients are asking for as it relates to road map and continuing evolution?

Yes. There's a couple of key themes, and you touched on a couple of them. The first one is around artificial intelligence and how to leverage these capabilities within our ecosystem. So there are clients who focus on how do we reduce the software development life cycle within that. So how can we accelerate the speed to value there as they look at it as how do we upskill and cross-skill an employee base with modern coding language development and remediation and self-healing.

So there is a theme around how do we get more out of the ecosystem, how do we connect data between these ecosystems. Now for us, from a road map perspective, it's building these capabilities natively into the ecosystem. So as these modernization journeys, these app transformation journeys typically would have been a services journey, which adds accretive costs and projects into our clients' ecosystem, we just take them on a product journey. So we're mirroring our product road map and future state road map to this modernization journey, allowing them to take advantage of a regular release cycle to gain these benefits.

The other one Chris touched on is the security element. That's always sort of been a stalwart of the ClearPath Forward ecosystem. But as there's advances in quantum computing, as there's the emergence of new types of bad actors, security is still always at top of mind. And for us, that means looking not only at post-quantum cryptography to ensure and prevent against [ steal ] now decrypt later, but also different ways of micro encrypting the data. And that really just means how can we further parse data to make it extremely tough to correlate between these.

And then the last one is the performance aspect. And if you look at, again, another stalwart performance speed, the ability to take a look at continuous computing, the hybrid computing elements. So how do you blend traditional computing with high-performance computing and quantum computing capabilities to leverage that speed. So pretty much all those 3, when you look at them together, it's just how do we get more data moving through our system for analytics and AI, how do we secure that data and then how do we supercharge the speed in which we can leverage that data.

I think the other thing I would add there is this really necessary mix of things that we consider to be important in terms of platform evolution that we bring to clients as clear illustrations of ongoing value and then the balancing point around what things clients are specifically asking us for an ongoing basis. And that really speaks to the intimacy that we have with many of our clients.

We talked about the decades-long relationships that we have in so many instances. And that just enables us to have an ongoing dialogue and create a right balance of things we think are critical for platform evolution versus things clients think are most important today and into the future. Thanks for the question, Anja.

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

Thank you, operator. First, I just want to thank everybody for joining us today. You've seen and heard over the course of this last hour or so that we have a compelling value-rich ecosystem in ClearPath Forward that powers enterprise scale business globally. Our team of engineers continues to evolve our capabilities to keep us aligned to technology advancements, security and regulatory requirements and client demands for compute power. As stated in our introduction today, we plan to continue driving value for ClearPath Forward clients for decades to come.

This concludes our presentation and discussion. Thanks again for investing the time to learn more about the key role ClearPath Forward Solutions play in the complex and evolving modern mainframe market. For additional information, please reach out to Unisys Investor Relations.

Operator, you can close the call.

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

Good day, and welcome to the Unisys Corporation Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Michaela Pewarski. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Yesterday afternoon, Unisys released its second quarter 2025 financial results. Joining me to discuss those results are Mike Thomson, our CEO and President; and Deb McCann, our CFO. As a reminder, today's call contains estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws.

We caution listeners that current expectations, assumptions and beliefs forming the basis of these statements include factors beyond our ability to control or precisely estimate. This could cause results to differ materially from expectations. These items can be found in the forward-looking statements section of yesterday's earnings release furnished on Form 8-K and in our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. We do not assume any obligation to review or revise any forward-looking statements in light of future events.

We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as non-GAAP operating profit or adjusted EBITDA that excludes certain items such as postretirement expense, cost reduction activities and other expenses the company believes are not indicative of its ongoing operations as they may be unusual or nonrecurring. We believe these measures provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance. However, they are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP. Reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are provided within the presentation. Slides for today's call are available on our investor website.

And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Michaela, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss the company's second quarter 2025 financial results. Before I discuss the quarter, I want to briefly touch on the meaningful steps we have taken to accelerate our path to removing our U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plans.

In June, we issued $700 million of senior secured notes, refinanced our existing debt and used $200 million of proceeds and $50 million of existing cash to make a $250 million discretionary pension contribution, which reduced our U.S. deficit dollar-for-dollar. We then shifted our asset allocation within the plans to primarily fixed income securities that match asset and liability movement, essentially removing market and interest rate volatility in our U.S. contributions. We believe removing significant pension volatility simplifies our story and improves our ability to attract new investors. The actions we've taken are accretive to cash flows over the next 5 years and the reduction in our 5-year contribution exceeds the interest expense on incremental borrowings.

Our discretionary contribution will also allow us to continue to remove liabilities through additional annuity purchases, both lowering the cost of future premiums and full plan removal as well as accelerating the time line for full removal. These steps reflect our commitment to enhancing long-term shareholder value while protecting financial flexibility and allowing for continued investment supporting innovation and growth. We discussed all of these actions in more detail and provided updated projections for our contributions and deficit during a July 24 webcast that's available on our investor website.

Turning now to our results. Second quarter reported revenue increased 12% on a sequential basis and 10% in our Ex-L&S solutions, in part due to some acceleration of revenue expected in the third quarter. Total company revenue was also up 1% year-over-year as reported and in constant currency. This exceeds the expectations we shared last quarter. We again benefited from our strong 2024 new business signings and saw a sequential improvement in project work, business process solution volumes and revenue related to the PC cycle.

Second quarter L&S revenue was also stronger than anticipated, driven by both increased consumption and some accelerated integrated system purchases. We were pleased with the growth in the Digital Workplace segment, which had faced some headwinds in recent quarters from volume declines in lower-margin field services. Those declines have stabilized, and we continue to see increases in higher-value infrastructure field services such as enterprise storage and network services. We expect increases in those volumes in the second half to drive year-over-year growth as we lap PC service volumes declines, especially in the fourth quarter.

While some of the items we benefited from in the second quarter are expected to moderate in the third quarter, we have a clear line of sight to achieving the full year Ex-L&S target implied in our revised revenue guidance, and we are raising our outlook for full year profitability.

We're pleased with the results this quarter, especially in light of continued headwinds in the industry stemming from the ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. As we look to the second half, our updated guidance does embed some incremental impact from elongated decision-making and slower ramp-up of implementations or transitions. While this is shifting some Ex-L&S revenue out of the current year, we're not seeing any impact to the total expected revenue generation over the life of these contracts or any contraction in our ability to expand these relationships in the future.

We are encouraged by the recent progress on trade negotiations. And while we're not building improved client sentiment into our outlook, these trade resolutions should reduce uncertainty and help expedite client investment decisions. Looking at client signings, we saw a slight increase in sequential total contract value, or TCV, based on higher renewal levels offsetting a decline in new business signings, which is coming off a strong first quarter. Importantly, our first half new business TCV was up 15% compared to the first half of 2024.

Project work made up a larger portion of our new business signings during the quarter. And as a reminder, this work is generally shorter duration with lower absolute contract value but moves to revenue recognition more quickly. Improved project levels are not attributable to a single factor, some clients are shifting budget towards Windows 11 upgrades and refreshes, others are moving forward on overdue work they deprioritized for AI pilots and some are simply resumed project flows that had been paused during renewal negotiations on their larger long-term services contracts.

We're also converting follow-up opportunities on new logos we added in 2024, and we continue to have a good pipeline behind those. As we've said before, the precise timing of renewals and new business signings can be uneven, and we did see some signings shift out of the second quarter due to typical complexities in negotiating large long-term contracts. We expect contract signings on most of these by the end of the quarter, which would lead to improved new business TCV in the back half of the year.

I want to share a few client wins from the second quarter that help illustrate how we're expanding within the key clients across our segments. In Digital Workplace Solutions, we're expanding IT support to three hospitals recently acquired by a U.S. not-for-profit hospital system. Under our existing scope, we provide IT support for around 200,000 end users, including frontline health care providers and support integration of several acquisitions each year.

In Cloud, Applications & Infrastructure Solutions, we're expanding data center management services with a global financial institution, adding two additional data centers in Asia Pacific to support increasing transaction volumes in their card services business. We also extended our existing agreement for data center management and the network services we provide in 58 countries globally.

In Enterprise Computing Solutions, we'll be leading a project to upgrade core banking systems to the next generation of ClearPath Forward systems. This is a large-scale transformation, including new data center, adopting networking standards and building a new architecture designed for reuse and scalability, all crucial to maintaining service and 24-hour support for roughly 50 million customers checking and savings accounts.

Shifting the discussion to our solution portfolio. We continue to invest in innovation and operationalizing AI to scale our delivery. We see an outsized benefit from AI as it begins to shift our delivery from a labor augmented by technology model to one that is led by technology and augmented by labor. AI gives us the ability to scale delivery and shrink the size advantage historically held by larger competitors, which makes it easier to penetrate the market with differentiated solutions.

In Digital Workplace Solutions, our Device Subscription Service, or DSS, provides an early example of how we can combine AI with unique data sets, domain expertise and specialized services to attract some of the largest organizations to Unisys. Similar momentum is building within our Service Experience Accelerator, or SEA, the technology framework powering our next-generation service desk.

SEA harnesses generative and agentic AI, service data, analytics and intelligent workflow automation to provide highly automated omnichannel service desk within a client's trusted network. SEA is resonating with clients and prospects in part because of its differentiated knowledge management capabilities, which enhances the accuracy and efficiency of issue resolution. One of the biggest impediments to AI adoption is the cost and challenge of building and maintaining quality training data for AI models, which is leading to hallucinations and pressuring business cases for deployment. SEA uses our custom-developed machine learning models along with LLMs to automate the cleansing of low-quality or outdated information, identifying knowledge gaps and self-generating content in response to new issues, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of virtual agents.

SEA is in production for several clients. And while it's early days, we're seeing end-to-end automation resolution increase from an average of 15% to 40%, translating to a better client experience while lowering the cost of high-quality delivery. We're currently pursuing multiple patents for the IP related to these differentiated capabilities.

In field services, we are continuing to scale our specialized capabilities in high-value infrastructure services, including high-end storage, networking and liquid cooling. We have a robust pipeline in these higher-margin opportunities and expect demand for these services to grow alongside the underlying demand for data center and private cloud capacity.

In Cloud, Applications & Infrastructure Solutions, we're leveraging our centralized application capabilities and hybrid multi-cloud capabilities to execute transformations at scale for some of the largest global enterprises and governmental agencies. We recently shared two client stories that highlight the transformations we've led for two of our premier clients, Omnicom and Benjamin Moore. I encourage you to take a look at the videos and marketing materials on our website to hear more about our impact directly from the CIOs of those organizations.

We have a robust pipeline in cloud services and are continuing to enhance our cloud managed services and our data center managed services, which we collectively refer to as intelligent operations. This unified foundation is our framework for delivering seamlessly integrated AIOps to manage hybrid infrastructure environments and leverages best-in-class partner technology, coupled with Unisys accelerators. The result is a highly automated intelligence-driven delivery model that enhances performance and resilience while driving efficiency and cost optimization at scale.

Cybersecurity continues to be an area of focus and urgency for our clients, and we continue to evolve our offerings for SOC transformation, cyber recovery, continuous threat exposure management, digital identity and access management, managed detection and response and secure network access services.

In ECS, we are advancing our ClearPath Forward 2050 strategy to expand our proprietary ecosystem to enable the modernization of hybrid infrastructure and applications and unlock valuable data residing on our platforms as well as increasing the speed of deploying security encryption algorithms to respond to dynamic threats.

We recently migrated several clients to the newest version of our ePortal, which connects the structured data on our platforms to front-end applications to power insights throughout the enterprise. Our ClearPath Forward strategy enables us to maximize value by integrating our platform evolution while delivering features and capabilities specifically requested by clients and provides cross-selling opportunities.

Alongside solution development, we continue to advance our alliance partner strategy. One element is going deeper into a smaller set of alliance partners to forge a more impactful and mutually beneficial relationship. Some of our larger alliance partners are starting to view solutions such as DSS and specialized field services as additive capabilities our partners can provide to their clients, and they're bringing us into some of their pipeline opportunities.

Last month, we received three prestigious awards at Dell Tech World, signaling our growth influence with one of our largest alliance partners. This included being named Dell's 2025 Global Alliances Growth Partner of the Year. We are also expanding our access to addressable markets by adding partners that increase the range of solutions we can offer to better help clients leverage their existing technology or provide them lower cost alternatives. ITSM partnerships with EasyVista and Freshworks are one example that we discussed last quarter. And in the second quarter, we expanded our DSS offering into Apple devices and are exploring expansion into peripheral devices beyond PCs. We're continuing to see increased awareness and recognition with both industry analysts and advisers.

In Q2, we appeared in seven major industry reports and received new and improved rankings in state and local and higher education digital services. We were named a leader in new report on attack surface management, retained our designation as a leader in data center security and innovator in application services and improved our position in applied AI services.

In digital workplace, we received Best Service Improvement Initiatives awards from the Help Desk Institute. And finally, I'm especially proud that Newsweek recently named us one of the Global Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces. This recognition highlights our dedication to fostering a dynamic, empowered workforce, which is apparent in our very low trailing 12-month attrition rate of 11.7%.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Deb to discuss our results in more detail.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, my discussion today will reference slides from the supplemental presentation posted on our website. I will discuss total revenue growth, both as reported and in constant currency and segment growth in constant currency only. I will also provide information excluding license and support revenue or Ex-L&S, to allow investors to assess the progress we are making outside the portion of ECS, where revenue and profit recognition is tied to license renewal timing, which can be uneven between quarters.

We are pleased with the sequential improvement we were able to achieve on both the top and bottom lines, allowing us to raise our non-GAAP operating margin guidance and pre-pension free cash flow expectations. For top line, we tempered our growth outlook to reflect macroeconomic-related uncertainty impacting the broader industry as well as some shift in timing of backlog conversion. At the same time, many of our most innovative solutions support the type of efficiency goals being broadly prioritized and are resonating with clients.

Looking at our results in more detail, you can see on Slide 4 that second quarter revenue was $483 million, an increase of 1.1% year-over-year or 1.0% in constant currency. Excluding License and Support, second quarter revenue was $396 million, essentially flat year-over-year and in constant currency. We exceeded the sequential growth we expected starting the quarter with revenue up 8.5% in constant currency and 6.5% in Ex-L&S solutions.

We continue to expect a stronger back half with a higher weighting of license and support renewals and improvement in our Ex-L&S solutions. We have visibility into more upfront revenue and project work associated with certain signings, primarily in the fourth quarter, though some of this is subject to final deal terms that could impact revenue recognition. Our updated revenue guidance range accounts for some of this revenue to be recognized over time.

I will now discuss our segment revenue, which you can find on Slide 4 in constant currency terms. Digital Workplace Solutions revenue was $138 million, a 4.6% increase compared to the prior year period. Year-to-date, revenue was down 1.4% year-over-year due to the higher volumes of PC-related field services in the prior year period, but we are pleased with the segment's 13% sequential growth in the second quarter.

Growth was driven by 2024 new business and ramping volumes in high-end storage field services, while PC-related services have stabilized and project work related to Windows 11 upgrades has begun to materialize. The quarter also benefited from some accelerated PC hardware revenue, which we expect to result in a slight sequential decline in third quarter segment revenue.

Cloud, Applications & Infrastructure Solutions revenue was $185 million in the second quarter, a 4.9% decline compared to the prior year period. This segment has our highest public sector exposure, where client sentiment remains somewhat muted due to funding and geopolitical concerns. We saw some lower volumes at clients where projects ended and new investments are being approached cautiously. However, the segment revenue grew 2% sequentially, and we expect year-over-year growth to inflect positively in the fourth quarter. We are encouraged by the strength of CA&I pipeline growth with many of our new opportunities coming from public sector clients, including in higher education, which could be a sign of easing pressures. These opportunities span projects and multiyear contracts in cloud transformation, data center management, application services and security.

Enterprise Computing Solutions revenue was $140 million in the second quarter, an increase of 8.2% compared to the prior year period. Within the segment, L&S revenue was $88 million, up 7.7% year-over-year in constant currency. This exceeded the $70 million we had expected for the quarter, largely due to some acceleration of revenue we expected in third quarter, which included integrated system sales. Increased client consumption provided additional benefit, extending the favorable trend from recent quarters.

Specialized Services and Next-Generation Compute Solutions revenue grew 9.3% on some higher volumes and project work in business process solutions, some of which we expect to moderate in the back half. Trailing 12-month book-to-bill is 1.0x for both the total company and our Ex-L&S solutions, which is relatively flat sequentially. We exited the quarter with a backlog of $2.9 billion, up 5% year-over-year. As we mentioned previously, 2025 is a higher renewal year with much of that TCV concentrated in the fourth quarter. So we expect this to be a low point of the year for both backlog and book-to-bill.

Moving to Slide 6. Second quarter gross profit was $130 million, a 26.9% gross margin compared to 27.2% last year. Ex-L&S gross profit was $70 million and Ex-L&S gross margin was 17.6%, down 110 basis points on a year-over-year basis. We discuss gross margins on a GAAP basis and higher restructuring items in the second quarter were fully responsible for compression in Ex-L&S gross margin in the quarter. Excluding the restructuring charges, Ex-L&S gross margin would be relatively flat compared to the prior year.

I will now touch briefly on segment gross profit. DWS gross margin was 16.9% in the quarter, up 70 basis points year-over-year and up 270 basis points from the first quarter. This was driven by delivery improvements, especially in field services, where we have made significant investments to modernize our platform and are benefiting from the ramp-up of higher-margin infrastructure volumes.

CA&I gross margin was 20.8% in the second quarter, up 10 basis points year-over-year. We continue to focus on workforce optimization initiatives, achieving synergies within our recently centralized application capabilities and are increasing our use of automation and AI. These initiatives have helped us maintain profitability despite some of the revenue headwinds in the segment.

ECS gross margin was 53.5% in the second quarter, up slightly from 53.3% in the prior year.

Moving to Slide 7. Second quarter non-GAAP operating profit margin was 7.6%, up from 6.1% in the prior period, driven by higher L&S revenue as well as improved operational efficiency. Operating expenses in the second quarter declined 6.2% year-over-year and are down 10% in the first half, driven by savings from the ongoing execution of our SG&A reduction initiatives, which are nearing the later stages and should give us close to a full year benefit in 2026.

Second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $61 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.7%, representing a 50 basis point margin expansion year-over-year. Second quarter net income was negative $20 million, translating to diluted loss of $0.28 per share. Adjusted net income was $14 million for the quarter or diluted earnings per share of $0.19.

Going forward, we expect increased volatility in GAAP net income and earnings per share due to foreign exchange gains and losses. This is due to actions we have taken to unwind currency hedges on intercompany loans. This will not impact adjusted net income. These hedges have historically offset currency impact in our income statement, but caused volatility in our cash balances. This change in hedging strategy reflects our priority to reduce cash volatility to support the execution of our pension strategy.

Turning to Slide 8. Capital expenditures totaled approximately $20 million in the second quarter and $40 million year-to-date, relatively flat year-over-year. As a reminder, a significant portion of capital expenditure relates to relatively steady levels of solution development for our L&S platforms, while we maintain a capital-light strategy in our Ex-L&S solutions.

Pre-pension free cash flow in the second quarter, which is free cash flow prior to pension and postretirement contributions, was negative $58 million, driven by some fluctuations in working capital that we expect to reverse in the third quarter. Free cash flow was negative $337 million in the second quarter compared to negative $19 million in the prior year period. This reflects the $250 million discretionary contribution that we made to our U.S. qualified defined benefit plans in June as well as approximately $28 million of our previously communicated 2025 contributions.

Moving to Slide 9. Cash balances were $301 million as of June 30 compared to $377 million at year-end, reflecting our use of $50 million cash on hand as part of our $250 million discretionary pension contribution. $200 million of that contribution was proceeds from our upsized senior notes issuance of $700 million, which was also used to extinguish our existing $485 million of senior secured notes. This transaction has shored up our solid liquidity position by extending our largest maturity to 2031 and renewing our $125 million asset-backed revolver, which remains undrawn.

These actions are net leverage neutral and including all pension obligations, our net leverage ratio is 3.4x, relatively stable on a year-over-year basis. The $301 million cash balance and our free cash flow does not include the $25 million legal settlement proceeds received on July 1.

I will now provide an update on our global pension plans. Each year-end, we provide detailed estimated projections for expected global cash pension contributions and GAAP deficit relative to our quarterly updates. These projections change based on factors, including funding regulations and actuarial assumptions. We estimate that as of June 30, our global pension deficit is approximately $500 million, down from $750 million at year-end. We expect to make $55 million of additional planned contributions to our global pensions in 2025, which includes both U.S. and international.

As Mike discussed, we shifted the investment strategy within our U.S. plans to remove substantially all contribution volatility. Going forward, we expect the aggregate of our planned contributions through 2029 to move less than 3%, although there could be some movement between years. You can find updated annual forecast to the expected contributions to our global pensions for the next 5 years on Slide 16.

Turning to Slide 10. I will now discuss our financial guidance for the full year. We are updating our total company revenue growth guidance range to negative 1% to positive 1% in constant currency. Based on foreign exchange rates as of the end of the second quarter, this equates to reported revenue growth of negative 0.5% to positive 1.5%, an increase compared to our expectation last quarter.

As Mike mentioned, we have a resilient base of diverse and recurring revenue, though there are some modest headwinds that have continued to impact Ex-L&S constant currency growth. Our guidance now assumes Ex-L&S constant currency to be relatively flat on a year-over-year basis, though still positive on a reported basis at quarter end currency exchange rate.

We are increasing our assumption for L&S revenue by $20 million to approximately $430 million for the full year. This reflects continued strength in client consumption as well as higher levels of hardware. We continue to expect approximately $400 million of L&S revenue in 2026. As a reminder, the timing and exact amount of L&S revenue can be difficult to forecast with precision for a given quarter as it depends on the renewal timing and size, which can change based on client budgeting decisions, consumption levels and duration preferences, among other factors.

We are pleased to be raising our full year non-GAAP operating profit margin guidance range to 8% to 9% from a prior range of 6.5% to 8.5%, reflecting the higher L&S mix and improved operational efficiency. We also expect to execute one or more annuity purchase transactions this year to remove up to $400 million of U.S. pension liabilities subject to market conditions. This would result in a settlement loss of up to $290 million impacting GAAP net income and earnings per share. This is a noncash expense of accumulated other losses associated with the pensioners being transferred to a third party, which requires accelerating that portion of amortizing pension expense.

For 2025, we now expect approximately $110 million of pre-pension free cash flow. Our cash outlook assumes most of the incremental L&S revenue will be collected in the first quarter of 2026. We also now expect net interest payments totaling $3 million, reflecting a shift of our second half interest payment into January as a result of our recent refinancing. Additionally, we continue to expect capital expenditures of approximately $95 million, cash taxes of approximately $70 million and a net positive $10 million inflow from environmental, legal, restructuring and other payments. This is inclusive of the $25 million onetime payment we received in July related to our favorable legal settlement negotiated in the fourth quarter of last year.

We will also make approximately $55 million of additional pension contributions in the second half or $27 million per quarter. Looking specifically at the third quarter, we expect approximately $390 million of Ex-L&S revenue coming off a stronger-than-expected sequential comparison. Based on renewal timing, third quarter L&S revenue is expected to be approximately $95 million.

For total company, we expect a year-over-year reported revenue decline in the low single digits and non-GAAP operating margin to be in the mid-single digits. While our guidance implies a strong inflection in the fourth quarter growth, we have a high level of visibility into a very strong increase in L&S revenue and profit. And in Ex-L&S, the vast majority of 2025 revenue is already in backlog. New business is continuing to ramp, and we expect increased sales services volumes and upfront components on our back half signings. All of these factors will contribute to what we expect to be a strong positive inflection in fourth quarter revenue growth.

Operator, you may now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question we have is from Rod Bourgeois of DeepDive Equity Research.

Okay, guys. And thank you for the detailed update on top of the call that you did recently on the pension front, which was also very helpful. I want to start just by asking if you can break down the components of the change in your new revenue guidance for 2025. If you can just break down the specifics there, that would be helpful.

Rod, it's Mike. Thanks for the question. I appreciate it, and I appreciate you joining the previous call as well. Very helpful to have your questions and embedded into our dialogue here. So I appreciate that. Look, I think in general, the tempering of that guidance was largely related to the macros, right, just budget uncertainty. As you know, we're pretty heavily weighted in CA&I and public sector and pushing in public sector and higher ed. And that's the area where we're seeing some of that, I'll say, muting of contract decisions.

Deb mentioned in her prepared remarks, which I think is important to note that we're continuing to see increased pipeline. So we hope that pressure is easing and that we'll see some of the relief from this kind of buildup that we've seen over the last, I don't know, 18 to 24 months in general. I think we all feel from an industry perspective that there's a little bit of a backlog there certainly, some of the discussions recently on the trade elements, et cetera, getting certainty back into the market, we think will really ease that. But that's the primary issue from a macro point of view.

Tied to that, I would say there's a component piece related to backlog conversion, right? So we sign a contract and there's a transition period. And that transition period can also be a little muted, right, from converting that backlog, how many countries we bring on, what services we bring on first, et cetera. So I think some of that, I'll say, hesitancy in the market, we're also seeing in a little bit of our backlog conversion. But importantly, I'll note that, that has no bearing on the overall contract value that we're going to see or the term on that contract. So we expect it all to come in, in the same manner that we signed it. It's really just how quickly it ramps.

And then lastly, as we looked at things in the queue, there's a revenue recognition component of contracts that we're currently negotiating, which, again, we feel like they're kind of an in-call perspective from our point of view. And those contracts have elements to them that could be upfront or over time from a revenue recognition perspective. So we thought it important to at least have our guidance reflect the overtime view of those particular contracts as opposed to an upfront view.

And so those are really the three primary reasons why we tempered that guidance. But the flip side of that is increasing our profitability and increasing our pre-pension free cash flow value. We feel really good about the continued strength we're seeing in L&S and the pull-through there. And again, those other elements in our view, are timing elements, not realization elements.

Okay. Great. And it sounds like there's some green shoots happening in the DWS segment. There had been some struggles in that business in recent quarters on volumes, and it sounds like there's some turn there. Can you elaborate also on the DWS volumes and also your progress in ramping the high-performance compute business as well?

Yes. Thanks again, Rod, the questions. You're exactly right. I mean we've had several quarters of kind of pressure on the traditional field service or PC work in that business. We've seen those volumes from a PC service perspective kind of level off, and we're encouraged that we're seeing some of this PC refresh continue to come in. The conversion to Windows 11, I think, is helping that. So that's one byproduct of the, I'll say, the traditional component of that.

And we continue to see increases on the field services high-end storage and network services. So that volume we're seeing continually ramp. Again, we think that, that's aligned to not only what we've got in the pipeline for contracts we've signed, but aligned to what we're seeing from an industry perspective as we continue to build out these data centers from supporting of AI and the like, right? So there's a lot more high-end type field services work, and we're really well positioned to take advantage of that, largely because of a lot of work we've done over the last 18 to 24 months, getting our field service technicians trained up to handle a lot of that high-end storage.

And then lastly, the back part of your question in relation to high-end compute. Our L&S business obviously continues to outperform. We've outperformed in 2023, '24, again here in 2025. And we're not really calling down anything from the future years. So '26 is still being projected at $400 million. So we're seeing advanced consumption in that business. We continue to have good pricing power in that business. We continue to modernize our CPF infrastructure or ClearPath Forward infrastructure really to support that enhanced data analytics and use of the data on our platform. So that continues to be really strong from our perspective.

And you should expect, Rod, that we're going to do similar to the investor education session that we did in Q2 in relation to pension and capital structure, we're going to do one for ClearPath Forward to just try to help educate the investor community more on really the strength of that business because L&S margins are 70% and again, continues to outperform.

The next question we have is from Anja Soderstrom of Sidoti.

So you actually answered one that I had about the L&S and the growth for next year and the implications for the margins and cash flow there. It seems like you still expect that to be around $400 million.

Yes, Anja, that's correct. We're still calling for that to be $400 million. But again, if history is indicative of the future, we hope that, that will continue, right, outperform '23, '24 and '25. And again, the consumption is the story there.

Okay. So most of the upside you've seen this year has come from the increased consumption and not really pull-ins from next year?

Yes, that's correct. And again, I think that's been a very consistent trend. And again, I think it's consistent in the sense that there's this data layer, right, when we talk about the application of AI and the utilization of this data set. Well, we have this tremendous long-standing data set embedded in our platforms that we're seeing this continued use or additional use from the ClearPath Forward ecosystem.

And don't forget, too, that those ecosystems as they get refreshed, are more than just a production environment, right? Typically, there is a test environment, a development environment. We talked about a little bit of a pull forward in relation to an integrated system that was shipped in Q2 that we thought would have been shipped in Q3. That is a hardware, software component integrated package. So there's a little bit of improvement in Q2 that came from Q3. But again, we've taken those elements up. I think, Deb, keep me honest here, but I think we originally started the year at $390 million and now we're calling $430 million.

Correct.

So the increase in that is really all consumption-based, even though there is a little shift quarter-to-quarter.

Yes. And also at Investor Day, we were saying more around that $360 million average per year, and we've clearly outperformed, as we've said.

Okay. And also, what's your ability to add new logos in this kind of environment?

Look, we're pretty happy with the pipeline that we're seeing from a new logo perspective. We've talked a little bit about the muted aspect of people actually like getting to the point of signing the contract, but we're really happy with the pipeline. I mean, remember, our new business is up 15% first half this year versus first half last year. So we feel really good about what's in that pipeline and really good about the new logo.

Our DWS offerings, we talk about DSS, we talk about intelligent operations or Service Experience Accelerator, all resonating in the market, all real value propositions from a client perspective. These are complex long-term contracts, 3 to 5 years in general, and they're multi-BU from our perspective, usually have a component of CA&I and DWS in them. And they just take a good amount of time to work through the logistics, but we're seeing, again, a strong pipeline, a strong pipeline in the areas where we think we're differentiated, and we're still bullish on our growth in new logo for the year.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, we have no further questions, and that concludes the Q&A session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mike Thomson for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Before we wrap up, I want to emphasize three key points we hope you took away from today's call. First, we're increasing our profitability outlook as a result of continued upsides in our L&S solutions and successful implementation of operational efficiency initiatives, including AI adoption.

Second, while we're not immune to some of the macro uncertainty weighing on the industry growth, the impacts are primarily timing, and we've got a clear line of sight to achieving our full year objectives.

And finally, the steps we've taken to transform our capital structure have removed substantially all volatility in our U.S. pension contributions, and they provide a more defined path to reducing leverage and ultimately removing our U.S. qualified pension obligations in the next 3 to 5 years. So thank you for spending time with us today and the great questions, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. With that, operator, you can close out the call.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good day, and welcome to the Unisys Capital Structure and Pension Strategy Discussion Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Michaela Pewarski, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm joined this morning by Mike Thomson, our CEO and President; and Deb McCann, our Chief Financial Officer, both of whom will discuss our capital structure and pension strategy.

Today's remarks and question-and-answer session will not include any information related to the company's second quarter results, which will be reported after market on July 30 and management's call to discuss the results will take place at 8 a.m. Eastern Time on July 31.

As a reminder, certain statements on today's call contain estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. We caution listeners that the current expectations, assumptions and beliefs forming the basis of our forward-looking statements include many factors that are beyond our ability to control or estimate precisely. This could cause results to differ materially from our expectations.

Please refer to the forward-looking statements section of today's presentation furnished on Form 8-K and in our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. Today's presentation also includes forward-looking statements and projections relating to future deficit and contributions for our U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plans.

These projections were prepared by the company's independent actuary, WTW and are based on certain estimates and actuarial assumptions that are subject to change. We do not, by including these statements assume any obligation to review or revise any particular forward-looking statements or projections relating to our pension plans referenced herein in light of future events.

We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as net leverage or adjusted EBITDA that excludes certain items such as post retirement expense, cost reduction activities and other expenses, the company believes are not indicative of its ongoing operations as they may be unusual or nonrecurring.

We believe these measures provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance. However, they are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP. The non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the related GAAP measures, and we have provided reconciliations within the presentation. The slides accompanying today's call are available on our investor website and in the presentation furnished on Form 8-K that we filed this morning.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Michaela. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss the meaningful steps we have taken to remove U.S. pension volatility and accelerate the path of full removal. With the recent debt transaction, we have transformed our capital structure to continue the progress we have made over recent years in executing a strategy to reduce the size and volatility of our pension with the end goal of removing it from our balance sheet.

The series of transactions we've just completed clears the way for both us and our investors to focus more squarely on operational performance without the ongoing distraction of managing volatility in the pension deficit and the corresponding contributions. While our U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plans are still underfunded, we have practically eliminated the volatility of our aggregate cash contributions related to market and interest rate movements down to 3% of what we're providing today. This marks a meaningful step forward in simplifying our financial profile and enhancing long-term visibility into future cash flows.

Turning to Slide 4. I'll start by discussing our strategic capital structure objectives listed here. The actions we took in the second quarter were guided by these objectives. Some were achieved immediately while others require a little more time. We believe this creates a clear path to full removal of the U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plans and accelerates the time it takes to execute our plan.

First, we've been very focused on reducing the size of the U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plans for many years now with the goal of removing it completely in a cost-efficient manner. Since the inception of our strategy, we have executed many pension risk transfer transactions, reducing liabilities by approximately $1.5 billion.

Second, we're focused on creating more certainty in our future cash requirements, particularly as it pertains to our pension contributions, which have seen material fluctuation due to financial market volatility. We believe that this volatility has been a significant barrier to attracting new investors.

Third, maintaining a solid liquidity profile with strong cash balances and having access to short-term borrowings through our asset-backed revolver are important elements for managing the peaks and troughs of working capital and mitigating risk from potential unforeseen pressures on the business.

A fourth key objective is to reduce net leverage, which we believe will ultimately result in improved credit ratings and increased access to capital at more favorable terms. Fifth, although we would like to remove the pension as quickly as possible, we believe it's important to take a balanced approach in order to maintain debt capacity for growth opportunities.

Finally, once these other objectives are met, we'd like to increase the attractiveness of the company to investors and expand our shareholder base by implementing a capital return program either through stock repurchases or a stock dividend.

Turning to Slide 5. I'll summarize the key actions we've taken. First, we issued $700 million of debt maturing in January 2031. Most of the proceeds were used to refinance our pre-existing $485 million notes, which removed the near-term risk of accessing the high-yield markets, which can be very episodic. The remaining $200 million of proceeds, in addition to $50 million of company cash were used to contribute $250 million to our U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plan.

Please note that this discretionary contribution is incremental to our 2025 planned contributions, which we expect to fund with cash generated from the business. We also amended our $125 million asset-backed revolver, extending its maturity to June 2030. The last element of what we've completed is to reallocate pension plan assets such that the movement in assets matches the movement in liabilities, practically eliminating the market volatility. Looking ahead and now that the volatility has been mitigated, our strategy will focus on liability removal through annuity purchases, which Deb will discuss in more detail.

At the same time, as we make contributions, the deficit will continue to decline. These two components, total liabilities and deficit determine the ultimate cost of removal. The second of our next steps is to increase our capacity to fund the cost of removal. We currently expect to achieve this through a focus on increasing our EBITDA and generating excess cash.

Turning to Slide 6. I want to quickly run through the benefits of the $700 million issuance and pension actions we've just completed and how that removes pension overhang in near term while advancing us towards the goal of full removal.

First, I want to reemphasize that the $250 million contribution combined with recent changes to our U.S. investment strategy removed substantially all volatility in total contributions projected for the next five years. Deb will discuss in a moment how our asset allocation has changed and how this factored into the timing of our issuance.

Second, the onetime contribution brings our funded ratio above thresholds that are required for continued annuity purchases which, as I mentioned, are an important part of the next phase of our strategy. This represents a continuation of the strategy that brought us to the point that allowed us to carry out this transaction. We expect to remove additional liabilities of approximately $600 million through annuity purchases by the end of 2026, removing approximately 1/3 of the remaining U.S. plan liabilities.

Another benefit of our transaction is a meaningful reduction of both U.S. GAAP deficit and future contributions. The $250 million incremental contribution we made reduces the pension deficit dollar for dollar, which keeps the transaction roughly leverage neutral and significantly lowers projected contributions between 2026 and 2029.

Importantly, this is cash flow accretive over the next five years because contributions have come down by more than the interest on the incremental $200 million of debt we issued. We have included detailed calculations of the post-transaction deficit and contributions later in the presentation. And again, the aggregate contributions will have minimal volatility going forward.

Lastly, we expect this transaction will enable us to fully remove our U.S. qualified defined benefit pension plans in the next 3 to 5 years as we execute on the next steps of reducing the cost of and increasing our capacity to fund full removal. We hope that this session provides a deeper understanding of what we've achieved and where we expect to go and that it charts a clear course to putting our pension exposure fully behind us in a relatively short time while not overlevering the company. This reflects a commitment to protecting financial flexibility and creating long-term value for our shareholders.

I'll now turn it over to Deb to discuss some specifics around the new debt and the analysis supporting these transactions, which is really the culmination of years of planning and execution that the team has put in to mitigating the pension.

Thank you, Mike. We truly believe this is a transformative change, which will result in a stronger company and increase flexibility going forward.

Turning to Slide 7. I won't go through all the terms of the new debt in detail, but I do want to highlight the redemption terms. During the non-call period, we have the ability to pay up to 10% of the debt, approximately $70 million every 12-month period at a redemption price of 103%.

It's important to note that the analysis on the following pages does not assume any early debt repayment or additional discretionary pension contributions. However, with excess cash available, having the flexibility to either reduce debt and/or further fund the pension plans provides meaningful upside. These options will make the financial outcomes, we'll review in a moment even more favorable.

Turning to Slide 8. The initial overall impact of these actions is largely leverage neutral. Just a quick note, as we haven't reported our second quarter results, the table on this page and my commentary reflects values as of March 31, except for pension deficit figures, which are as of year-end 2024. Gross leverage declined slightly driven by the use of balance sheet cash for the pension contribution.

On the other hand, net leverage increased modestly due to transaction-related fees. Importantly, our liquidity position remains strong with a cash balance of over $300 million and full availability under our $125 million asset-backed revolver.

Turning to Slide 9. This slide outlines the recent changes we've made to the U.S. pension plan investment strategy, changes that are expected to significantly reduce volatility in both contributions and deficits going forward. Historically, the plan maintained a 65% allocation to growth assets which introduced considerable asset volatility. Under the new strategy, we've retained a modest allocation to growth assets for diversification, but the portfolio is now structured to hedge liability movements.

Importantly, the risk premium associated with growth assets has declined in recent years, making this an opportune time to derisk the investment strategy as the spread between the return we can secure and the expected return at our previous asset allocation has narrowed. This was an important factor considered as we timed our issuance.

While this shift does result in a lower expected return, which may result in a modest increase to the contributions in the years following 2029 compared to prior estimates, we expect to fully remove the U.S. plans within the next 3 to 5 years subject to market conditions prior to reaching those outer years.

Turning to Slide 10. This slide illustrates the cash flow benefit of raising an additional $200 million and using $50 million of balance sheet cash to fund the discretionary contribution to the pension plans. As a result of this contribution, required contributions to the U.S. plans are expected to decline by approximately $165 million through 2029.

Offsetting this, the incremental interest expense on the $200 million of new debt along with the lost interest income on the $50 million of cash is expected to total about $95 million. This results in a net cash benefit of roughly $70 million through 2029. And importantly, this benefit could increase further if we choose to use excess cash from operations to either pay down the debt and/or make additional pension contributions.

With the volatility reduction, we have achieved by changing the asset allocation, the aggregate expected contributions through 2029 could shift from the forecast on this page by about 3% in aggregate, though there could be some additional movement between years.

Turning to Slide 11. We've outlined the projected cost of fully removing the U.S. pension plan by 2029. This projection includes an assumed annuity purchase premium of 10% to 15% over the accounting liability. For context, our historical annuity transactions have averaged a premium of just 3%. So if we're able to continue executing annuity purchases over the next five years at or near historical levels, there's a significant opportunity to reduce the total cost of full removal of the U.S. plans.

This underscores the value of our proactive annuity purchase strategy to reduce the cost of full removal of the U.S. plans.

Turning to Slide 12. This slide summarizes the multiple benefits of the transformation we've been discussing and the key points we hope you take away from today's discussion. While the transaction is clearly cash flow accretive, the real value lies and the impact on the pension plan. By significantly reducing the volatility around both contributions and the deficit, we've created a more stable and predictable financial profile.

We believe this positions us well for continued progress towards fully removing the U.S. plans while maintaining strong financial flexibility.

With that, I'll turn it back to Mike, and we can take questions.

Great. Thank you, Deb. Operator, please open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And the first question will come from Rod Bourgeois with DeepDive Equity Research.

Thanks for this update and the details here. I have a scenario question to start with. Going forward, if there were to be the same type of extreme interest rate moves as occurred in 2022, what would volatility in your contributions look like in that kind of extreme scenario, would the maximum volatility still be around 3%, even in that extreme situation?

Thank you for the question. One of these days, we'll get your last name right, as Bourgeois, but we'll get there eventually. And I love how you -- we start off with the softball question. So thanks for that. You always have the good one. That's for sure. Great question and I'm glad you asked it. It's super important to -- so I'm going to try to answer it plainly, and then I'll give a little more color. And if you want me to dive in even further, we can do that as well.

The short answer is no, we don't believe the volatility will be affected by the market movements that we've talked about. And I think it's important that we understand what happened in '22 and that will help explain how we've mitigated that currently. So really what happened in '22, and I know you know this, but for the audience here, we essentially had an increase in our contributions of about $800 million. And that was really related to the 25-year average interest rates that are used for funding purposes.

And so we saw a significant rise in interest rates, as you've indicated, from a market perspective. We are now doing our forecasting on market-based rates as opposed to the 25-year average for that. And we've also seen, and it's really part of the process here, when we saw that movement in rates, essentially, what that does is it creates a distortion between the rate used for forecasting purposes in the contribution schedule as opposed to the real interest rate.

And so the fact that we were able to kind of understand that, that was the implication of it. We looked at the movements to market rates, and we're really timing the reduction of the risk transfer rate. So when you look at our, our return on assets, there is a portion of our assets that are really tied into the equity side of the portfolio, which is our risk return. And the spread there has tightened considerably, right? So we're only about 2 basis -- 2 points away from our fixed rate return versus our equity rate return.

So moving all of those assets over to fixed rate, ensuring that we've got a matching between that asset portfolio of assets and liabilities and changing the plan, so that it's moving at market rates. You have a balance between the asset return and the movement in the liability and by shifting all the assets into fixed, you eliminate the possibility for that kind of volatility to happen in the future.

So in order to do that, we also needed to put an infusion into the plan, which is why we borrowed the additional $250 million. So putting that $250 million in, increasing the assets in the plant, shifting all the assets over while we saw that reduction in the risk-related returns and an increase in the fixed component allows us to mitigate that volatility from a future rate perspective.

And so I think and being able to get the additional $250 million, obviously had to be tied into the timing of the high-yield markets being available to us, being available to upsize and doing it in a period where we weren't going to pay a premium or a penalty for refinancing early.

So we had a bunch of different market conditions that we had to wait for in order to execute this plan. And in the interim, as you know, we've removed over $1.5 billion worth of gross liability from the plan. So the fact that the plan is significantly smaller, the deficits significantly smaller that reduces the exposure. And now the assets all being in fixed income reduces the volatility.

And so look, I'll commend the team for their continued effort that we've put in over the course of the last three years, waiting for these conditions to be in the right that we could execute this. And when the conditions were right, we basically executed it flawlessly.

So really happy with the team's performance and really happy that we've removed the volatility from the plan. We do not believe it can extend in the aggregate greater than that 3%.

This is Deb. Yes. Just a quick clarification, we borrowed an incremental $200 million and used $50 million of our cash on hand. So just a quick clarification. But thank you for the question. And I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead.

No, no problem. That's just an impressive technical details on pension coming from a CEO. Am I 25 years of asking CEOs questions. I think that might have been the most technical detail in terms of an answer. Listen, on that note, Mike, a big picture question, right? You've been working on this pension strategy stuff since I think even before you were Unisys's CFO a number of years ago. So I just want to ask your overall take on what this pension news means for you and Unisys? In other words, what's the most important thing that you see stemming from this transaction when the company goes forward from here?

Yes. Thank you, Rob, for that, and thank you for the kind words. Look, this is something we've been working on for a long time. It's been a significant overhang from the company's perspective.

We have definitely seen and heard from equity holders that the complexity and valuing the company and valuing this pension was barrier to increasing the share participation in the stock. So I think it marks really a tremendous upside from the company perspective. It really, again, solidifies our position. I hate to say it in this manner because it's never autopilot, but it's basically going to be on autopilot.

We'll continue the annuitizations as we talked about during the plan here to continue to mitigate any future exposure as far as the full remediation of the plan. By my calculations with the $1.5 billion that we've already taken out and the anticipated $600 million that we're targeting, that would allow us to remove this plan at about $200 million, $210 million less of cash out the door to get this off our books.

So it has taken a tremendous amount of time, effort, management thought process, et cetera. And I think this really just allows us to focus 100% on the business and hopefully allows the investor community to really focus 100% on the business. But -- so I think it's really a milestone for the company, and I'm thrilled to be part of it.

Your next question will come from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

Your next question will come from Arun Seshadri with Forza Investment Group.

Just a couple of questions from me. Try to understand the -- have you put in anything in place today that allows mechanically for the removal of the U.S. DB in 2029? Is there something specific that you had to do? And then secondly, the capital return program that you talked about potentially either buybacks or dividends. Is that, I guess, following the retirement of the U.S. plants.

Great. Thanks Arun. Appreciate the questions. I'll do the second one first because it's a little more direct. Yes, it is following the retirement. Look, we've always said that we wanted to be on this kind of path to normalcy as it pertains to our capital structure and the like. Many of our competitors obviously have one or more of those types of programs.

We think that's an important element to ultimately attract new investors to the stock. And so that's something that we wanted to make sure we were clear about that is in our future road map, but it is post us essentially taking care of the pension obligation.

As far as your first question, the mechanics to do that is really just the passing of time and the execution of our existing planning structure, right? So there's nothing specific that we have to do from a mechanics point of view to execute in that time frame other than to continue what we've been doing. So again, we mentioned the annuity purchase programs that we're looking at over the course of the next I'll call it, two years, that $600 million takedown.

Everything we do in that at the -- average of 103% that Deb talked about earlier on the call, is 10% to 12% better than a full annuitization would be. So we'll continue down the path. We've been on -- we'll get that to a point where it's a manageable value, and then we'll execute the transaction to remove it from our books. But there's nothing else that has to happen from a mechanics point of view for us to execute that.

And then on the new, I guess, the sort of restructured profile of the assets, what is the duration or the average duration of the treasury and the corporate bond portfolio that you've used now? That's all I had.

Yes. Deb, do you want that one?

As far as the duration of the new -- the planned liability duration is about 7 years, and bonds are similar to the liabilities.

Your next question will come from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we could hear you.

I'm sorry about earlier. Thank you for making this call. First, I'm curious about if you could talk about how you approach the decisions of when to time this transaction and what the optimal size of the deal in contribution was?

Yes. So the timing actually was kind of tied into the dialogue that we have with Rob's question as well on you. So essentially, we needed a couple of things to happen, right? We needed to have that spread ultimately shrink between the rate premium for the risk assets and the increase in the fixed assets.

We needed the timing of the debt to be aligned to our ability to refinance, because we would have had to do that to upsize. And thank you, Deb, for the clarification on the upsize there to get that additional $200 million in. And then -- because we needed to make that additional contribution to that asset before we could shift those assets over from a fixed perspective.

So there were a handful of, I'll say, technical barriers from a timing perspective, and we needed to wait for that alignment to happen to execute. The $250 million, which was made up of the incremental $200 million that we borrowed plus $50 million of cash off our balance sheet. All of our modeling told us kind of the sweet spot on the contribution was between $250 million and $300 million.

And so we are really just waiting to see what the rate structure would be on the new debt to determine how much we wanted to actually incrementally borrow to do that and the other little nuance there is anything we had to contribute at least 200 to get our funded status up in the plan, so that we can continue the annuitization program.

So the size was really dictated by how much on the annuitization program, how it balanced our overall cash contributions over the next five years. We knew it was going to be between the $250 million and $300 million, and then the determination to go from a contribution of $250 million or the extra borrowings of $200 million was really going to be rate determinative as to what the market would bear.

Okay. That was helpful. And then I'm also curious, you said you see about a 3- to 5-year path to fully removal of the plan. What gives you confidence in that? And what are the biggest risk that's not happening.

Well, the confidence is -- so we know what that contribution schedule looks like. That is now fixed. We also, as I mentioned, have already done $1.5 billion worth of risk transfer. So we're very confident in our ability to continue those annuitization. Clearly, we'll want to do that at the historic rates that we've been working under, which was the 103 that Deb mentioned, but confident that we'll be able to execute those in the same manner that we've been doing over the last five years.

And then the rest of it is really just the execution of our operating plan and continuing down that path. So executing our plan that we're on, and continuing on the annuitization path that we've been doing for the last five years, positions us to have that additional improvement in EBITDA, the additional improvement in cash flow generation, which allows us to be confident in that 3- to 5-year removal.

The last point I'll make there, just to close it out is doing that over that time frame, we think is very prudent as opposed to paying a much larger premium at the end. So I mentioned in the construct of the question with Rod that we've already taken $1.5 billion off the gross liability, at a 10% premium, right? That's $150 million of cash that we would have to pay if we hadn't done that program. And we're talking about an additional $600 million, which, again, at a 10% additional premium would be another $60 million.

So we think this is a really prudent way for us to do that ultimately reduces the amount of cash that we're going to need to totally diffuse the pension obligation, and they're aligned to the contributions schedule that we've already provided.

Next question will come from [ Kelyn Deliva ] with Jefferies.

So sorry, just to put a hopefully, final point on that removal plan over the next 3 to 5 years. So in terms of the way in which to achieve that. So it will be the $600 million of annuity purchases.

And then just the annual contributions and then business as usual to take you into a position that you feel like you can get rid of the entire U.S. plan by the end of that 5-year period. Or are there other deals or actions that need to be executed to achieve that?

I think, [ Kelyn ] I'll record that and play it back because it was perfect, so I think...

Okay.

Your next question will come from [ Matt Swope ] with Baird.

Can I just -- sorry to continue this, but when a -- when she laid those three pieces out, the third one was business as usual. When we think about business as usual, does that mean the production of a certain amount of free cash flow over those 3 to 5 years to handle that last piece?

Yes, it does. And again, so we've laid out plans in our '23 Investor Day. So I was probably being a little too flippant with my response to [ Kelyn ]. There's always a risk that we don't perform in the matter in which we expect to perform. But I would say to you that the business as usual component -- that's why we gave a 3- to 5-year viewpoint in removal.

If we do exactly like we set out to do from a business as usual performance, it's going to be closer to the 3-year window. If we have some slippage or movement in that business as usual performance, that may extend into year 4 or year 5. So we can't -- I don't have a crystal ball in the construct of how everything is going to play out over the next 3 to 5 years. But what I meant by that is we don't need any other mechanical thing to happen.

We don't need any extraordinary component of our business to change in any manner to do it. It's really just the timing to get to the point of the free cash flow generation that allows us to ultimately take that pension obligation out. There are other avenues beyond business as usual. That would be our preferential way to do it. But if you look at the normal contribution schedule that we've got over the next couple of years and the annuity purchases that we've been doing, clearly, there could be a situation 2 or 3 years down the road, where maybe we would borrow or do other means of capital to get the premium component to take the rest of that obligation out.

So I think we'll have a lot of flexibility over the course of that 3 years. But in a perfect scenario, we operate against our current plan and we have the excess cash to do it without any incremental borrowings or other means of raising capital. There's no requirement that we have to do it in 3 to 5 years. We could just let the continued contributions go out to its natural progression as well.

Is there -- is it possible to put a number or a range of numbers on the free cash flow that you need to generate for that business as usual 3 to 5 years?

Yes. Look, what I would say is we've already put out in our Investor Day what we think that cash flow projection would look like. We're talking about a pre-pension free cash flow this year in the $100 million-ish range.

And then we projected that out to have some growth in it in subsequent years. But we're not talking about doubling and tripling that correspondence. If you look at Slide 11 in the materials we provided, you'll see what those free cash flow projections look like and I can call them out here if you need to see them.

No, that's helpful. I see them...

5, 10, it was, I apologize, not 11.

Yes, slight impact to the cash flow.

Yes. Got it. Can I just make -- I don't know, maybe this is too nitpicky, but when you're doing the analysis here, Deb, on the sort of the cost benefit of this, wouldn't it make sense to also bake in the increased coupon that you have on the new bond versus the old 6 and 7, 8, that you had?

Yes. Well, we were going to need to refinance anyway. So that was what we had anticipated already and was built into our long-term plan. So this is just incremental to that. And as far as the rates that we had built into our long-term plan, they're fairly similar to what we ended at and similar with the credit spread.

The credit spread is similar to what we had done on our last -- our 485. So, that was already built into our long-term plan. This is just demonstrating that incremental amount versus what we saved on the pension contributions.

I say. No, that's certainly fair. Obviously, you got an extra 3 years, so you have to factor that into. And to the point on those bonds, those have traded really well. 105-ish kind of dollar price now. As you go through all this, does it make any sense to tap that new issue and try to raise a little more cash while the market is pretty excited about that?

Yes, -- we're always looking at it. Go ahead, Mike.

No, I was going to say basically the same thing. We looked at it. Our concern here has been that we don't want to over-lever and there's really no need for us to over-lever at this point.

We think we're on a really good trajectory here. We've got it where we needed to execute this plan. And so the opportunity is there. Of course, if we needed to, but we really hit all the elements of the execution of the strategy that we wanted to.

And could I just ask one last one. Mike, you referenced the 103 a couple of times that Deb mentioned -- are you just talking about the 103, 10% call that you have up to the call period? Or were you referencing something else with that?

I'm sorry, I was referencing the amount we were paying on the annuitization. So the average of the $1.5 billion that we already took down, typically, there's a 3% premium to offload those off your books. It does happen it corresponds in the 103 for the noncall provision in the debt instrument itself.

But the context was really around the annuitizations being done at the same historic rate that we've been able to execute in the past.

This will conclude our question-and-answer session as well as our conference call for today. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.