Morning, guys. My name is Erik Woodring. I lead the U.S. IT hardware team here at Morgan Stanley. I am pleased to welcome Chuck Butler, CFO of Xerox, to the stage. Before we start, I just have to read this safe harbor agreement. Please, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. Do you guys mind shutting the doors back there? I apologize.
No problem.
Thank you. Sorry. Delighted to be joined by Chuck Butler today, CFO of Xerox. He was previously CFO at Lexmark, and once the teams obviously joined, became CFO of the combined entity in December of last year. Thank you for joining us today, Chuck.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Cool. A lot to talk about here. I think maybe just to start, I'd love to get maybe your views on, you know, what drew you to Lexmark? What brought you into... Obviously we know what brought you into Xerox, but initial kind of impressions of the combined company, opportunities to lean into strengths, opportunities to improve things. Just start very high level, and we'll run from there.
Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks for having me again.
Sure.
Yeah. When I think about the combination of the two companies, you know, I've been at Lexmark for 21 years, so I'm familiar with the space, been involved in the space, and started here pretty early in my career. Xerox was always the name that carried a large weight in that space coming up, right? You know, I grew up in the age where you would hear people say, "Let's go make a Xerox of that," and it was...
Yep
... synonymous with the word copy. You know, to be able to be a part of that was exciting to me. Probably back around 2020, I became CFO of Lexmark. We started talking to Xerox about what a possible combination would look like. Finally came to fruition there at the end of last year, which to me, I use the analogy the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. I kind of think the same thing about the acquisition. This is an acquisition that makes sense. How do we lean into each other's strengths?
What Lexmark brings to the table and what Xerox gets to purchase when they purchase Lexmark is they get their own IP, they get their own technology as it relates to the A4 technology. Now we own our A4 technology now. We own in-house manufacturing now. We own a GBS in-house capability. GBS is Global Business Services. As we're largely Xerox was outsourced in the past, and those bring significant cost synergies and savings. The other thing, the other attractive thing is we have enough commonalities where there's significant cost savings-
Mm-hmm
... but not so much where you worry about any revenue dyssynergies.
Okay
because we don't overlap in every single space. Lexmark was largely a large enterprise, go-to-market, and Xerox would play a little more on the A3 side of things and would be able to attack that space a little bit higher. Lexmark was, has a presence in Asia. Xerox didn't have a presence in Asia. Xerox has a really good name in Asia.
Mm-hmm.
Now we open ourselves to a market that's really big, and we're under-indexed and which allows us to grow here.
Maybe just to start. That's a very helpful starting point. I'll go back to, like, the point of change, which is, you know, there's been a not change in strategy necessarily, but now there is, there's Lexmark, there's Xerox, there's a Digital Services opportunity. You know, what are maybe the most important changes under the hood going on at Xerox right now that kind of better position the company, the combined entity of all of these for the future?
Yeah, that's a good question. At first I would say the strategy hadn't changed, right?
Right. Right.
Xerox underwent a reimagined strategy a couple years ago, and we continue to execute that strategy today. On that was the culmination of the two acquisitions, ITsavvy and Lexmark. What does that do for us? That ITsavvy brings us a more end-to-end product proposition that we can take to our customers. We can now... It's not just print. We can fulfill them all the way from the, if they want hardware, if they want software, if they want a service. We have all those capabilities and can go in and really help them manage their IT budget and what they wanna spend their money on going forward. It gives us a bigger wallet share inside of these customer bases. We're really focused on executing that along with... The goals for Xerox are pretty straightforward.
We wanna stabilize the top line, we wanna expand margin, and we need to delever the company, and the combination of these companies allow us to do those.
Perfect. You know, I asked on the earnings call, and I wanna kinda circle back to this, which is there is also a lot going on, and we're kind of talking about that. As CFO, and kind of partnering with Louis and partnering with Steve, like, how do you prioritize these moving pieces to make sure that we're kinda being successful on all fronts and not taking our eyes off the ball?
Well-
... on any other front?
I appreciate you saying that because I'm the one that says, "Don't take our eyes off the ball." You know, you get people that are broader range and think bigger and wanna grow, wanna expand, let's buy more, let's do more, and I wanna refocus people on, let's think about the goals of the company. It's to stabilize the top line, it's to expand margin, and it's to delever the company. Sometimes you have to clear out the clutter for the broader employee base to make sure you don't lose focus, and we have those conversations pretty often.
You have a lot of great one-liners. I love these. Let's start on the print business and obviously close to you because obviously you come over from Lexmark. Also, like, when we talk about stabilizing top line, and we'll move into the ITsavvy and all of what that can do.
Sure.
what is stabilizing, you know, what is the stabilizing the print business really mean? Is there a path to growth? just help us kind of unpack all of those together into one.
Yeah, I appreciate that. When you say, when we say, when you hear, the print is shrinking-
Mm-hmm
...we can't shy away from that it is. The market overall is declining, low mid-single digits. It's not declining everywhere. Like I mentioned earlier in our conversation, Lexmark has a presence in Asia Pac, that we bring to the table in this integration. Xerox's name means a lot in there.
Yep.
When you're really under-indexed in the broader space, even if it's shrinking, there's opportunity in those spaces. When you go up through, where it's shrinking and where it's growing, there's these segments, like on the color side of things...
Mm-hmm
...that do drive growth. Lexmark brings the technology that allows us to penetrate in those. Xerox brings the brand recognition to help us. Will print decline? It probably will decline. We can offset some of the decline with these opportunities that I just mentioned. You have the IT Solutions that isn't declining. It's growing 5% to 7% a year. That's where today they have 12,000 customers on that side of the business.
Mm-hmm.
There's 200,000 customers on the print side of the business. Now they have direct access to 200,000 customers and can start to penetrate that and get a bigger mind share with that customer base.
Okay. That's important. I wanna touch on Asia in kind of multifaceted question, somewhat related but somewhat unrelated. One is pricing aggression from peers in Japan. What does this combined Xerox Lexmark entity do to combat that pricing aggression? Then second, you know, talk to me about that Asia opportunity because obviously following the Xerox JV dissolution, you know, Xerox wasn't necessarily in the region, now they are, so you have a brand, you have a product. What is the opportunity there when we talk about stabilizing top line and kinda how long does it take to get there? I imagine it doesn't happen overnight, but it's a, it's a big opportunity it seems.
Yeah. Yeah. No, you touched on all the right things there. Let's go back. What's the first part of the question?
Just Asia price aggression from competitors.
Yeah.
How do you combat that?
Honestly, we watch pricing very closely because we wanna be reactive to that and make sure we're not outpriced in the marketplace. It's been pretty static.
Okay.
There hasn't been irrational pricing. You have to know that Xerox and Lexmark, the combined company, Xerox, we don't play in the very low-end segment.
Mm-hmm
of printing, kind of that A4, less than 20 pages a minute. We don't play in that meaningfully. Those would be more price sensitive than some of the upper-end parts of the segment. Once you move up that stack, you actually become total cost of ownership, and it's not so much price out of the gate. It's serviceability, total cost of ownership that you take your value proposition to the customer. We've been able to do that through that, through focusing on a total cost of ownership, and we sell that to the customer when we go to them. When you talk about the market in Asia and how fast do you penetrate it, what I can tell you is the Xerox name is big.
Mm-hmm.
You're right, it takes time. First thing we have to do is integrate the products, and we have to get, you know, Xerox's name on products that go into that marketplace, but we're starting that work right now, and I anticipate it to be like a snowball rolling downhill. I think it's gonna catch momentum pretty quickly.
Okay, perfect. Okay, amazing. Just areas of innovation or differentiation within print. Obviously, you talked about kind of the manufacturing side, that's an important one, especially as it relates to margins. From a share shift, ability to be different from your peers, where are you guys leaning into? Where are the opportunities that you guys see as this combined entity now?
Yeah. It's a little bit on what I touched on at the beginning of the last question. We try to take total cost of ownership and serviceability into account.
Okay.
We go to our customers with that value proposition in mind, and we sell them on that, right? You, We're not trying to be the lowest place in town on any product that we sell, but we wanna be helpful to the customers. We don't want the customers having to touch the box over and over again. If you think about it over the life of the program, are they more cost out of pocket or less cost out of pocket? Our value proposition would say you're less out of pocket.
Okay. Maybe just wrapping up the conversation on print before we move to other aspects of this story. As CFO, how have you factored in, you know, let's say, market performance, share shifts, pricing, any one-timers? Just like if we add those all together, how will we think about each factor to ultimately get at how you think about the world in 2026 from a guidance perspective?
You know, if you think about the different segments we play in, we talked about print declining in low to mid-single digits. We talked about IT solutions growing 5%-7%. That market, the total addressable market that we play in growing 5%-7%. We think the Xerox legacy print will move about with market, low to mid-single digits.
Okay.
We think Lexmark will move slightly better than market.
Mm-hmm.
You can think of it to neutral to slightly down. We think IT solutions will outpace the market.
Okay. So let's move into kind of digital and IT solutions. A major initiative, obviously a smaller business today, but clear intentions to make that a bigger, more relevant business. You know, what new services or are you kind of cross or upselling? It's a very competitive market, obviously, very fragmented. How does Xerox win? What's. Basically, the question is, you take an ITsavvy, you bring it into Xerox. What's the special sauce that Xerox now uses to make this again a 5%-7%+ grower?
Yeah. Good question. First, I would say it's not a material piece of the business. When you combine IT Solutions with Digital Services, you're over $1 billion of business per year.
Okay.
It is material as you think about it.
Yep
-in totality. When you bring, and I mentioned it a little bit earlier, when you bring IT Solutions and ITsavvy into Xerox, you're moving from a 12,000 customer reach to a 200,000 customer reach.
Right.
That cross-selling. These are partners largely in the large enterprise space. These are partners that Lexmark and Xerox have maintained for 20-plus years. Deep relationships in here. Now we're giving at least a voice, at least giving ITsavvy, IT Solutions, a seat at the table to say, "Look, we can do more for you than print." They already trust us. They've stuck with us this long. It gives you that foot in the door to help drive that value proposition, to give you the end-to-end product portfolio that I talked about.
What is the goal or target for the size of this business? Where do we say...? Again, I know that's gonna be a moving target, I understand.
Sure
over time. The initial target that we, I think it's we want this to be 20% of the business. It's just. I think that's the answer. Just timeline to get there, size.
Yeah.
Important. You know, just maybe outline that for us.
Yeah. I think midterm, 20% makes sense to say.
Okay.
I don't even wanna throw a number out there. What I would say is we're sitting about 10%-15% today, and that will grow meaningfully-
Okay
over the next, you know, midterm and long term.
Maybe acquiring ITsavvy, kind of leaning into this Digital Services and IT services opportunity does give you kind of a broader exposure to other parts of the IT market, PCs, infrastructure, software services, everything again that you can kind of cross-sell beyond what the combined entity could have done before. I realize I'm asking the CFO kind of a demand question, but I'd love to just understand what you're seeing from a demand perspective on the services side, because there are kind of crosscurrents of there's still refresh opportunities, there's cross-sell opportunities, there's also memory headwinds and pricing headwinds. Like, what are the conversations going on with customers right now? What does the pipeline look like? Just broad perspective on what that business is seeing today.
IT solutions is seeing significant growth in gross billings. Last year it was double digits. We anticipate growth, significant growth this year in terms of billings. What do we see? The first thing we do when we go into a customer is we lead with advice. We see what their priorities are, and we help work with them to say, "How, how should you think about this now in light of the things you just mentioned?" If RAM is an issue, is it the right time to refresh hardware, or should we look at spending your IT budget in other areas? Because now we have a broader product portfolio-
Mm-hmm
that allows us to have that conversation. It's very helpful. while infrastructure is always gonna be a critical need.
Mm-hmm
The demand is not perishable. It's not going away.
Right.
Might it shift? Yes, it might shift.
Right.
We wanna keep the same wallet share in that IT budget spend that we can.
Right. Okay. Is there a way that you can maybe help us understand? 'Cause I think the comments that you made are very important, going from 12,000 kind of customer purview to 250,000 customers. Is there a way you can understand how that breaks down between, like, large enterprise, SMB, government, public or something like that? What I'm ultimately trying to understand is on the IT services side of the business, you know, where are you seeing growth tailwinds from in each of these cohorts? Where are you seeing maybe some caution? I'm just trying to understand how that kind of builds up into the confidence that you have for this business.
Yeah. We do. We attack it from an industry vertical.
Okay.
I don't know the exact numbers, so I don't wanna quote them right now.
Okay. Great.
If you think about legacy Lexmark, it was largely enterprise, good, heavy presence in retail. Legacy Xerox has a big presence in schools, a big presence in SLED, federal government, big presences there. We're attacking from all those angles. I mean, IT Solutions is hungry.
Yep.
Now we don't wanna spread them too thin that you don't ever make any traction anywhere, we try to identify opportunities where there's kind of a fish on the hook.
Mm-hmm
Say, "Let's go after this one because we think there's a real opportunity here.
From a spending standpoint, can you just help us understand, you know, are large enterprises leaning into spend now, or SMBs may be more aggressive and more agile? Is government kind of coming back after the kind of budgetary discussions of last year? Just maybe a little bit of flavor of what your customers are intending to do right now.
Yeah. We haven't seen any meaningful shift. We actually have really good demand on the large enterprise space right this minute.
Okay.
Good demand on the government space right now. Education can be a bit lumpy depending on where their budgets reside in that moment, right? We haven't seen anything slowing it down really, but we're watching it cautiously. They might be the first one to kind of drag a little bit, so we'll continue to watch it. As you move down that stack, just like I mentioned on the pricing being more sensitive as you move down, SMB will be the first one to kind of look at where they're spending their capital, and that's where we'll come in and try to advise them on maybe other ways to spend their IT budget.
Okay. Okay. As we as kind of investors and analysts think about this opportunity to kind of shift the portfolio from being print-heavy to having this kind of tailwind from IT solutions and services, what are the milestones we should be, like, looking for or holding Xerox accountable for? I know there isn't a target mix, but, like, what are the milestones we should be kind of aware of that you guys have maybe set for yourselves?
Well, we wanna outpace the market, right? Market's growing 5%-7%. We wanna make sure we outpace that. We wanna watch gross billings very closely. If we can get billings to increase kind of near that double-digit range, then you're starting to get a bigger share of wallet inside these customers, and we wanna monitor cross-selling initiatives very strongly, too. How much of the legacy customer bases are we penetrating, and how much are we not penetrating to make sure that activity is there? We mentioned we're sitting about 15% today. 20%'s a good near-term goal. We'll continue to watch that growth and continue to evolve it as we move forward.
I wanna move maybe away from demand and revenue and focus on the margin front, which almost might be more important, more interesting, a lot to do there so as we can get back to where this business once was. On top of the initiatives that you have to stabilize print, kind of accelerate IT Solutions, the question is, can you drive gross margin expansion while you do that? Just maybe unpack the opportunities to get margin as we think about what you're trying to do before we get to the cost actions you're taking, but just from the end market perspective, what does that mean for gross margin?
Yeah. A stabilized revenue growth, right? We wanna stabilize revenue, we wanna expand margins, we wanna delever. I continue saying that mantra internally and externally, so it comes off the tongue pretty easy.
Yep.
When we stabilize revenue, you might see a little decline in print and increase in IT Solutions. The margin expansion that we're gonna see, they're gonna be through higher value products on the IT Solutions side or through the cost synergies that you mentioned. We talked about realizing publicly over $1 billion of reinvention savings through time. We talked about the synergy savings out of the acquisition of Lexmark driving $300+ million in synergies and exiting this year with a run rate of already $200 million+ already being realized. Those will drive significant margin enhancement. Those are coming from both consolidation of workforces where you see overlap, and they're coming from the fact that we have in-house manufacturing now.
The reason that's important is you have a significantly decreased cost basis on your A3 product, number one, that comes in. We do our in-house manufacturing out of Mexico.
Mm-hmm.
which is USMCA compliant.
Okay.
It's not exposed to the tariffs.
Okay. Perfect. You know, reinvention has kind of taken a lot of twists and turns over time. First it was, as you mentioned, workforce reduction, now it's workforce consolidation as we bring Lexmark in. What are the kinda key building blocks in 2026 of reinvention? What is reinvention trying to solve in 2026 that hadn't necessarily been touched prior, so to speak?
Yeah. It's the execution. Right now, we're in charge of our own destiny now.
Mm-hmm.
We own the technology. We've made the acquisitions that we've made for that purpose. We have an engine that can now stabilize the top-line revenue growth. Now it's our job to execute and realize those savings and see that expand the profitability on the bottom line. Reinvention started a couple years ago, Xerox has executed every step they said they were gonna execute, right? They changed the way they go to market. They did workforce reductions to accommodate that. Big acquisitions in ITsavvy, big acquisition in Lexmark. They talked about standing up a GBS environment, which they did early, and now you buy a captive environment from Lexmark that allows you to not be so outsourced and drive significant savings too.
Mm-hmm.
I only say all that to say all the pieces are in place now.
Got it.
We've acquired them. We have to go execute now.
All right. Maybe said differently, Most of the heavy lifting in terms of reorganizing things and changing what you guys want to do is done. Now it's, you know, let's put the pedal to the metal. Let's make sure.
That's right.
-we execute. Okay. Okay. Super helpful. I'm gonna ask you the one kind of annoying memory question, that I'm basically asking everyone, which is, you know, just how are we thinking about the impact of memory cost inflation, as having on Xerox? Not a ton of exposure within core print, right? It could have an impact on IT solution or IT services. Just how are you thinking what role memory inflation plays in the outlook for both revenue and margins?
Yeah. Yeah. We talked about a little bit earlier on the IT solution side of things. Infrastructure's always gonna be a core tenant of any IT, you know, house, and they're gonna have to upgrade it, but maybe now is not the time, so maybe that shifts.
Got it.
We advise and help them find the right priorities for their current IT budget spend. Our goal is to keep the same wallet share that we would've had before, and if it's a different product we're selling, we're okay with that because we have the ability to do that. If they still want to invest in the infrastructure because they're at a critical time where they need it, that's a pass-through cost that would go to the end customer on the IT solution side. On the print side, the amount of impact it has on the bill of material can be anywhere from $2-$100 per box.
The reason I quote the absolute dollar amounts is the absolute cost of a printer can go anywhere from $250 all the way up to, you know, tens of thousands of dollars.
Mm-hmm.
-on a printer. It's not a highly material piece, but it's enough to where we'll watch it very closely, and if we need to go work with our customers and say, "Hey, if a printer stays in the field and continues to print supplies, I'm okay if I wait another year before you refresh it.
Right.
We'll do some diagnostic tests with them. We'll say, "Look, this one can last a little bit longer if you wanna make it last a little bit longer," to help both parties. We wanna help our customer, and it also protects our bottom line as well, especially on the A4 side of things. The A4 is a little more margin negative out of the gate when.
Right.
place the printer as the A3 makes a little money. Even on the A3, the annuities and the post-sale are always more profitable.
Okay.
If the ESR remains under pressure a little bit, we're okay. We can absorb that, right? As long as the printers that are in the field today continue to print.
Okay.
We continue to get the post-sale from it.
Right. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Let's kinda combine all these two and bring it down to the operating margin level, which there is a clear initiative, at least from my perspective, outside of what we've talked about at the revenue side to improve operating margins. Just the... Help us understand the building blocks that get us there. I know on the revenue side, but just at a very high level, what's the goal? How are we gonna get there?
Yeah. Yeah. I think historically, the... We've been anchored into this 10% number. I don't get as anchored into 10%. I want, I wanna get there. I would like to get further than that. I get anchored into I wanna set targets that de-lever our company and allow us to fulfill our obligations going forward. It's a very disciplined approach that I've always tried to use. We know what our expected outflows are gonna be over the next several years, right? So we can back into exactly what we need to do from a bottom line in order to hit those and then develop the actions underneath that. Then we'll... Look, I think there's tons of opportunity here. 10%'s a great target to get to. It'll be done through cost synergies, and we have the opportunities to drive those.
Okay. Then, maybe a related question is just turning that away from the income statement to the cash flow statement and in cash flow. You're guiding to $250 million of free cash this year. Maybe first part is just the underlying drivers of getting to $250 million of free cash flow. What is kind of core free cash flow generation driven by everything that we're just talking about, and then other factors, such as the receivables factoring, not to say factor twice, but what are the two building blocks that we get there, and then just a follow-up to that.
Yeah. finance receivables this year, we stated are about $335 million is the impact, that we anticipate to receive out of that. We're facing headwinds in the cash flow from several areas. One is the interest that we pay.
Mm-hmm.
on the debt that we have outstanding. The more we de-lever the debt comes down.
Yep.
accordingly, number one. Number two, the pension funding. We've talked about $150 million-$160 million a year that we're having to fund in the pensions. That'll be happening for another year or two, and then you'll see that start to decline. You look at some of the capital investments that we're making right now, because we're bringing manufacturing in-house. We're changing some stuff with our IT stack. As that passes us, that will come down. There are tailwinds that will come to help offset as that finance receivable becomes less each year.
Mm-hmm.
as it already is doing, that will drive to more free cash flow driven from the operations.
I don't wanna kinda pin you down on a number or anything, but is there a rule of thumb or a target in mind when it comes to, like, core free cash flow conversion? Again, not now, but when we move beyond this and think about all the initiatives you have in place and where you wanna kind of get to, is there a target that we should be, again, not holding you to, but, like, that you'd like to get to?
I don't know that I've ever put a number on it, so I wouldn't-
Okay. Fair.
-quote 1 right now. I want it to be better than what it is this year.
Okay.
I want it to be, of course, enough to fulfill the obligations of the company and service the debt that we have on the books.
Okay. Very helpful. Let's talk about de-leveraging. Just a very big focus internally, obviously. Maybe the question is, target leverage, how long does it take to get there? And maybe just so we can think beyond kind of more tactical is, like, if. Assuming that you get there, right?
Mm-hmm.
Assuming that you get to where you want to go, what's next? What's after that when we think about capital allocation?
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, midterm range is to be 3x gross leverage.
Okay. 3x gross.
Yep. You know, we'll continue to be opportunistic in ways to try to do that, going forward here. After we get there, you could see, we'll have to evaluate what's possible.
Mm-hmm.
You could see us looking at some tuck-in acquisitions underneath the IT solutions to make sure we can expand revenue even further.
Okay. Okay, great. I wanna maybe be a little bit more specific there and just touch on some of the moving pieces. The pro rata warrant work that you guys did recently, you had a $450 million JV with PPG that you recently announced. Just at a high level objective behind these initiatives, how are these kind of contributing to exactly what we just talked about?
Yeah. Well, the key tenet on both of those, right, is balance sheet improvement.
Mm-hmm.
Both those are intended to provide balance sheet enhancement. Number one, let's talk about the warrants. The warrants, what we think it does is it gives us a balance sheet-friendly way to de-lever, and to reduce our debt. It gives our bondholders optionality in how they wanna participate with the company. They can turn their debt into equity and participate in the upside, and it gives our equity holders true tangible value because the warrants are worth something in the marketplace that can be traded and drives value for them. We think of it as a win-win-win for all parties.
Mm-hmm.
If you wanna get a little more technical with it, you can think of it. They can turn their gross debt into the price of the stock today to mirror whatever the debt is trading at today.
Mm-hmm.
That's what they're trying to do, and it gives them that kind of optionality. We think it's a low risk, balance sheet-friendly way to help de-lever the company quicker. The JV that we had set up was to shore up the balance sheet here in the near term. If you followed the print industry long enough, you know that the first half of each year tends to be working capital negative for several reasons.
Mm-hmm.
The back half tends to be working capital positive. In addition to that, Xerox is facing debt amortizations in the first half of this year as well. It just gives us a little bit of headroom as we go through that to navigate it. At the same time, we're gonna continue to look at opportunistic ways to leverage that to de-lever overall.
Okay. Last two questions from me. One, this is just maybe focused on you. What, for everyone that didn't follow Lexmark that is new to you, what is your kind of role as CFO? I mean, what kind of CFO are you? I'd love to just maybe get a better understanding of not what should we expect, but where do you find your strengths lie, to kind of drive this evolution of everything that we just talked about?
Yeah. Yep. I love the business. I love being involved in it. I love the operations of the business. I tend to approach things with transparency-
Mm-hmm.
Discipline, and I wanna make sure everybody understands the direction we're heading, and how we're going to get there and make sure everybody stays focused on that. There's a lot of buzzwords, right, that we throw out. We talk about the warrants, we talk about the JV, we talk about reinvention, we talk about the synergy savings, and you get all these moving pieces that are happening, and I don't want people to get distracted.
Yeah.
Hit the numbers. Execute.
Yeah.
If we execute, everything else takes care of itself. That's the way I typically operate. I don't like to be surprised. I'm not gonna tell you I can do something unless I believe we can do it.
Okay.
I don't shoot-For things like that, right? If I think I can do it, I will tell you I can do it, If I can't, then we'll just have to have a difficult-.
Okay
...difficult conversation about why I got surprised.
Okay. Okay. Very fair. I love that accountability. Just as a quick follow-up to that is the KPIs that we should all be focused on to kind of hold you accountable to what you say you should be doing, is that revenue growth and operating margins, is that operating profit dollar growth? Like, what are the focus KPIs we should all be looking at to say, you know, Xerox is doing what they said they were doing?
Stabilize the top line, expand margins, and delever the company. You know, we put guidance out to the street. We said we'd be greater than $7.5 billion this year.
Yep.
We said we would be between $450 million and $500 million of operating income. I feel very encouraged about those. I hope to be coming back to you at some point during the year and saying, "We did that, and we can do a little bit more. We'll see how the year unfolds." That's the goal. Hold me accountable for what I told you I could do.
Awesome. I love that. I love that. Last question, and this is maybe just the kind of wrap-up for everything is we covered a lot. There's a lot that's changing. There's a lot that you guys are leaning into. Just maybe what, when you look out in the investment landscape, what are investors perhaps not fully appreciating or not fully understanding that you kinda wanna communicate that message to everyone to say, like, "Here's why we should be excited about the future. We have to execute through it, but here's kind of what you might not fully appreciate about what we're doing under the hood.
Yeah. I think it's the same thing I just mentioned about internally when I have these conversations. It's confusing sometimes right now. There's a lot going on. We've executed a couple big acquisitions. We did the JV. We did the warrant distribution, there's just... It keeps... What I want people to know is through all that-
Mm-hmm
right, we're in charge of our own destiny now.
Yep.
We own the technology now. We own the capabilities, from a back office structure and a shared service center. We have access to markets we didn't have before, right? Everything is in our control. We have to go execute now, but we have everything in our control to go do that, right? I can understand completely if you look back at the history of what's happened over the last couple years and how we've done on earnings versus what we've said to Street, why people would look at us with a raised eyebrow. We're in control of it now.
Yep.
We're gonna execute accordingly.
Okay. I think that's a great place to end.
Awesome.
Thank you. Chuck, thank you very much.
I appreciate that, Eric. Thank you.