Conduent Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Q1 adjusted revenue was $751 million, down 8.5% year-over-year, while adjusted EBITDA rose to $37 million and margins improved 50 bps to 4.9%.
  • Full-year 2025 guidance remains unchanged, with expectations for sequential Q2 revenue growth and margin expansion in the second half of the year.
  • Three divestitures in 2024 generated nearly $800 million, of which 85% was deployed to reduce $639 million of debt and repurchase 61 million shares, and management now targets an additional $350 million in proceeds.
  • Government segment revenue declined 16% due to lapping a large terminated contract, though management highlights expanding state-level opportunities amid administrative efficiency and fraud-reduction initiatives.
  • The company is accelerating its AI and GenAI deployments—from call centers to eligibility platforms—and has launched a dedicated fraud reduction line of business in partnership with Microsoft.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Conduent Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Conduent Q1 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, David Chen, VP of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

David Chen
David Chen
VP of Investor Relations at Conduent

Thank you, Operator, and thanks everyone for joining us today to discuss Conduent's first quarter 2025 earnings. I am joined today by Cliff Skelton, our President and CEO, and Giles Goodburn, our CFO. This call is being webcast, and a copy of the slides used during this call, as well as the press release, were filed with the SEC this morning on Form 8K. This information, as well as the detailed financial metrics package, are available on the Investor Relations section of the Conduent website. During this call, we may make statements that are forward-looking. These forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs, assumptions, and expectations, and are subject to a number of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. Information concerning these factors is included in Conduent's annual report on Form 10K filed with the SEC.

David Chen
David Chen
VP of Investor Relations at Conduent

We do not intend to update these forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments, except as required by law. The information presented today includes non-GAAP financial measures. Because these measures are not calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP, they should be viewed in addition to, and not as a substitute for, the company's reported results. For more information regarding definitions of our non-GAAP measures and how we use them, as well as the limitations to their usefulness for comparative purposes, please see our press release. I would like to turn the call over to Cliff.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Thank you, David. You've just heard a new voice in David Chen, our new Head of Investor Relations. David has been with the company for a few years and also heads up our Mergers and Acquisitions team. Given the continuation of our portfolio rationalization efforts, we thought a strong connection between M&A and IR was important, so welcome, David. Now, as you can tell already, you'll also hear the voice of Giles Goodburn, our former Head of IR and FP&A, who now succeeds Steve Wood as our Chief Financial Officer. Steve has done a great work over the last four years, has been a critical confidant to me, and has been preparing Giles for this position along the way as his successor. I'd like to thank Steve for his hard work, wise counsel, and strong leadership as he moves on to another phase in his career.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

As always, I'll preamble the quarter, turn it over to Giles for the detailed numbers, and I'll close with some strategic thinking on why we feel optimistic in what some may call uncertain times. Let me start by saying Q1 represented a strong start to the year for us. We feel good about the adjusted revenue print of $751 million, and particularly good about adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA margin of $37 million and 4.9%, respectively. Nevertheless, we need to keep the pedal down in Q2 to meet those first-half revenue expectations we laid out last quarter. We remain optimistic and still see Conduent achieving those guidance numbers and our 2025 exit rate metrics. New business signings were improved year on year, and we're expecting a relatively strong Q2 in sales.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

The good news is that while many suffer through macroeconomic uncertainty and the known and unknown effects of tariffs, we feel somewhat fortunate not to feel most of those headwinds. We only have one business, transportation, where we have very slight exposure to tariffs regarding equipment sales and implementations. For the most part, we are insulated. Of equal or more importance is the fact that while government efficiency efforts may create headwinds for some, despite what may be the perception in the market, we see far more opportunity on the horizon, given that nearly all of our government business is conducted at the state and local level, and some of the federal entitlement push-down efforts like Medicaid and SNAP fraud reduction expectations play well for us as we roll out new and improved fraud prevention capabilities. I'll talk about that here in just a few minutes.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Now, for the past two years, we've discussed the character of the company as one of significant breadth. With breadth of products, services, industries, and public versus commercial segments comes higher costs in the center, management bandwidth consumption, and higher technology costs. We've consistently stated that a comparison of scarcity value on the outside versus synergy and growth opportunities on the inside will help us craft our portfolio rationalization plan. We've said that the rationalization efforts will allow for accelerated growth and use of proceeds that can reduce debt, increase profitability, and/or free up cash and capital for other efforts such as share buybacks and, in our case, buying out our active shareholder.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Over the past six months, we've considered where we are on the journey and concluded there are more assets to adjudicate, and the cost in the center can come down, coincident with running the company in a more segmented way. Let's turn to slide five and talk about what we have done. We completed three divestitures in 2024, generating nearly $800 million of net proceeds. We said we'd deploy roughly $1 billion, and 85% of that target is complete, resulting in $639 million less debt and 61 million shares repurchased. Yet still, we believe there's more to do in 2025. We've targeted assets we think will generate another $350 million of proceeds, then surpassing our $1 billion target. Importantly, it's the capital deployment and the reduction in growth impediments that will add real value.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

While these potential rationalized assets would benefit greatly from the scale and synergies outside of Conduent, when the dust settles, we'll be in a far more opportunistic place. Slide six depicts that transformation journey, where we land on an optimized portfolio, two operating units serving different markets, a thin center with a strong balance sheet, and positive growth. Meanwhile, in a minute, I'll describe why I'm excited about where we're doubling down with respect to talent, portfolio growth opportunities, and proof points for the future. First, let me turn it over to Giles for the numbers. Giles?

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Thanks, Cliff. As we have done in the past, we are reporting both GAAP and non-GAAP numbers. The reconciliations are in our filings and in the appendix of the presentation. Let's discuss our key sales metrics on slides seven and eight. We had a stronger start to the year in 2025 than we did in 2024, with first quarter new business ACV up 14% versus the prior year at $109 million. With Q2 shaping up strongly, we expect to be well positioned at the midpoint of the year. In the quarter, we signed 10 new logos and expanded relationships with 20 existing clients through new capability sales. Government ACV was up sequentially again this quarter, and we believe this trend will continue in Q2.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

New business TCV was up 96% versus the prior year at $280 million, with approximately one-third of that TCV being generated by an eight-year deal in our international transit business with our client in Lima, Peru, which also helped drive the average contract length up to 4.2 years for the quarter. The net ARR activity metric, our combined measure of wins, losses, pricing effects, and other contractual changes, was positive and sequentially higher again this quarter at $116 million. Our qualified ACV pipeline remains strong at $3.2 billion, which is up 16% year over year and 3% since the beginning of 2025. Both our government and commercial segments have grown their qualified ACV pipeline significantly over the last 12 months, positioning us well to hit our growth targets in the near term. Let's turn to slide nine and review our Q1 2025 P&L metrics.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Adjusted revenue for Q1 2025 was $751 million, compared to $821 million in Q1 2024, down 8.5% year over year. This was predominantly driven by our government segment, which we foreshadowed in Q4 earnings, and I'll discuss in more detail in a moment. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $37 million, as compared to $36 million in Q1 2024. Our adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.9% is up 50 basis points year over year and sequentially higher versus Q4 2024. There were an unusually high number of one-time items in the quarter, which on a net basis and due to the mix of items drove almost a half-point of deterioration in revenue, but had a positive impact on adjusted EBITDA margin of almost a point. Let's turn to slide ten and review the segment results.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

For Q1 2025, commercial segment adjusted revenue was $402 million, down 4.1% as compared to Q1 2024. New business continues to outpace lost business in this segment. However, we are experiencing some volume degradation in our largest commercial client, which is driving revenues lower. We previously announced the decision to add around 2,500 additional seats of capacity in some of our offshore delivery centers, which go live later this quarter. To date, we have increased approximately 1,500 revenue-generating seats in these geographies to fill some of that capacity. Adjusted EBITDA was down 11% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 10% was down 70 basis points year over year. The drivers here were lower revenue, higher usage of central technology costs, as well as some residual impact of stranded cost as we complete the transition of the casualty claims business to the buyer.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Government segment adjusted revenue for the quarter was down 16% at $216 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $38 million, down 31% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.6%. We laid this out in the fourth quarter earnings, where we said total company revenue would be down in the first half of 2025, with most of the impact coming from the government segment in the first quarter. The primary driver here is the effect of a large government healthcare contract, where the contract was terminated for reasons other than performance in Q1 2024, which at this point has now been fully lapped. This segment was also negatively impacted by approximately $8 million top and bottom by the one-time items I mentioned earlier, predominantly related to the establishment of reserves for operational service levels.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Our government services business, in partnership with Microsoft, has been making strong progress with their investments in AI for earlier identification of fraud activity in our payments programs, and we're starting to see the return on these investments in our financials with decreasing fraud expense. This is just one of a number of solutions that could benefit our government clients as they look to drive efficiency and savings. Cliff will discuss this topic in more depth later in this presentation. Transportation segment adjusted revenue was $133 million, down 7.6% year-over-year, while adjusted EBITDA was $6 million in the quarter versus $1 million in Q1 2024. Segment adjusted EBITDA margin was 4.5% for the quarter, up 390 basis points versus Q1 2024.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

This segment benefited from stronger operational performance levels in the quarter and also from the absence of employee termination costs incurred in the prior year relating to the non-retained portion of a tolling contract. In the first quarter, our tolling business played an integral role in implementing congestion management pricing in New York City, the first of its kind in the United States, by facilitating the toll transactions and payment processing through our market-leading Vector platform. This contributed to our Q1 financial results and also enabled significant revenue for our client. Unallocated costs were $47 million for the quarter versus $65 million in Q1 2024. This included an $8.5 million benefit from the recovery of legal costs from one of our insurance carriers related to the state of Texas matter that settled in 2019, as well as positive impacts from our cost efficiency programs across our corporate functions.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Finally, in relation to the previously disclosed cyber event, while we did not experience material financial impact to our operations, we did incur $3 million and accrue $22 million of non-recurring expenses in the first quarter related to the event based on potential notification requirements, and we do maintain a cyber insurance policy for any excess. Let's turn to slide 11 and discuss the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with approximately $293 million of total cash on balance sheet, and our $550 million revolving credit facility was largely undrawn. As a reminder, we are generally a user of cash in the first half of the year, with positive cash generation in the second half. Our adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was negative $74 million.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

This is significantly better than Q1 2024 when adjusting for the positive impacts of the tax refund and the operating cash flow from divested assets in the prior year. On April 30, we received the final payment of $50 million relating to the curbside management and public safety divestiture. This completes the receipt of proceeds from phase one of our divestiture program. Sequentially, our net leverage ratio went up from the prior quarter to 2.7 turns. We've said before that this will increase for the next couple of quarters as we annualize the divested adjusted EBITDA in the calculation, which will be partially offset by the sequential recovery in adjusted EBITDA as we work through our stranded cost and efficiency programs.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Once this work is completed during the second half of 2025, you'll see this net leverage ratio returning to around 1.5 turns and then moving more towards the one turn we've previously outlined in our midterm outlook as we exit 2025. Capital expenditure for the quarter was 2.7% of revenue, and we have no concerns in meeting our near-term debt maturity commitments. Let's turn to slide 12 and look at our 2025 outlook. Our full year 2025 outlook remains unchanged as we stated in Q4 earnings. The assumption built into this guide is one of broadly stable macroeconomic conditions. Since we established this guide in February, there has been significant uncertainty relating to tariffs on international trade. However, our exposure to trade tariffs is minimal and contains a very small element of the supply chain in our transit business supporting our U.S. clients.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

As a reminder, the majority of revenue in the transit business is generated internationally with supply chains outside the U.S. The government segment is predominantly centered on state and local government, where we provide technology, eligibility, and payments programs that support essential services for their constituents. To date, we have not seen any material impact to these programs from the shifting federal administration landscape and remain engaged with our state and local clients. We expect Q2 2025 revenue to be sequentially higher than Q1, but slightly below Q2 2024, and adjusted EBITDA margin to be in the range of 4%-4.5%. We continue to expect to post top-line growth in the second half of the year and margin to expand as we work through our cost programs.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

These outlooks have not been adjusted for any phase two divestiture activity that Cliff discussed earlier and therefore are representative of the company as it exists today. Lastly, I would like to thank Cliff and the Board for the opportunity they have given me as CFO of the company. I would also like to thank Steve for his partnership over the last four years, and I wish him well in the future. That concludes the financial review of first quarter 2025, and I'll hand it back to Cliff for his broader view of the business. Cliff?

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Thanks, Giles. While it was good to hear the continuation of a British accent from our CFO, the numbers just described while now executed represent what we've been foreshadowing for the last two years. We continue to be on track.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Also, I thought it would be important to outline some other real opportunities going forward. If you'll turn to slide 14, you'll see some of the non-financial performance proof points. Overall, AI and GenAI remain at the forefront of what we're utilizing on behalf of our clients and their end users. As I've mentioned before, AI in our space is not hyped or sold. It's used to drive quality. We've rolled it out in our Life at Work portal, in our call centers, and in our payment fraud space, which I'll talk about here in a minute. In commercial, we're seeing the fruits of our labor with our new client-partner enterprise sales model driving sales, pipeline, and client stat, evidenced by all-time high NPS scores and Supplier of the Year awards.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

We've also been tapped by many of our commercial clients to help them achieve their efficiency and cost reduction initiatives. The government business is turning the corner just as we said it would. Strong sales pipeline, improved retention, and new talent are lining up for the turnaround we were planning for. In transportation, we're seeing particular progress and market share improvement in transit, where our new fare gates and card tap-and-go fare collection capabilities are selling well. We recently finalized and signed our new scope and plan with our biggest flagship client in the state of Victoria in Australia, and new avenues are opening up in tolling as well. Just take a look at Governor Hochul's success in New York City with congestion management pricing. That's our technology, and many other states are watching closely as that is a perfect way to reduce congestion and drive revenue to the states.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Now, let me focus for a minute on government efficiency. Where like in AI, there is perhaps a misconception or two. The reality is as follows. We work primarily for the state governments. While federal entitlement funds often flow through the states, entitlements have not been challenged, and we get paid by states to help them administer those funds and the eligibility for them. As eligibility oversight increases, so does our work. By their very nature, entitlement programs are guaranteed programs, so the work we do is non-discretionary. Most of the limited federal work we do is as a sub for the Direct Express program utilized primarily for Social Security benefit distribution. Again, a program that sees no signs of reduction regardless of what vendor the program relies upon. Meanwhile, the president did say he is not touching Social Security payments.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Absent this subcontractor business, less than 1% of our revenue is contracted with the federal government. We provide support to states for SNAP or food stamps, as well as Medicaid eligibility work. As you know, a good portion of Americans across the political spectrum rely on programs such as SNAP and Medicaid. Regardless, even if there is a reduction in funding pools, our business model is not dependent on funding per recipient. On the Medicaid side, we implement and manage states' Medicaid technology administration platforms and process eligibility requests and enrollment programs, both which likely become more voluminous if eligibility and fraud are further scrutinized. Regarding SNAP, we earn revenue based on the number of cases, not the funding size per recipient. Here's the bottom line. If unemployment rises, it's an opportunity for us.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

If states increase their focus on Medicaid fraud and illegal recipients, it's an opportunity for us. If Medicaid expansion goes away, it's an opportunity for us to re-register end users. If work requirements get further scrutinized in Medicaid or unemployment insurance, it's an opportunity for us. As payment programs work to eliminate paper checks through DOGE for efficiency purposes, it's an opportunity for us. Finally, turning to page 15, the biggest opportunity for us is in fraud reduction writ large. The administration's efforts to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse fall into areas we can help solution. For example, we have proven in our AI project in collaboration with Microsoft in our payment card business that we can and do drastically reduce fraud by increasing fraud detection before it happens. We increase fraud detection rates and account takeover efforts by 150%.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

DOGE and the Government Accountability Office are focused on fraud in government programs like Medicaid and SNAP. We believe there are value-added services around account takeover, fraud prevention, and strengthening eligibility determinations using this address verification AI tool. There are almost 42 million SNAP recipients in this country, representing roughly 12% of the population. Notwithstanding administrative costs, when fraud occurs, generally the recipients suffer the monetary loss, not the government. We intend to help solve this problem with EBT chip cards and other fraud prevention capabilities being rolled out in our new card platform. We've now stood up a fraud prevention line of business where we intend to attack these problems in concert with administration efforts.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Let me close by saying we're at a strategic inflection point in the following ways: our renewed portfolio rationalization plan, leveraging government opportunities, new go-to-market program in the commercial space, congestion management programs, tap-and-go, and new fare gates, and new fraud reduction business, and more. Meanwhile, our 55,000 associates work hard every day to make Conduent the best in quality and efficiency across our technology and business process outsourcing landscape. We have a strong suite of technology solutions that, when coupled with our hardworking and dedicated associates, provide outstanding results for our clients and their end users. In all cases, we want to be the best. Along the way, we intend to hit those 2025 exit rate marks and build the confidence we need in our current and potential investor base. Thank you for listening today.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

That concludes our program, and I'll now turn it over to the operator for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for your questions. Our first questions come from the line of Pat McCann with Noble Capital. Please proceed with your questions.

Pat McCann
Pat McCann
Equity Research Analyst at Noble Capital

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the quarter. A real quick congrats to Giles on taking over as CFO. My first question had to—absolutely, Giles. My first question had to do with what you were just talking about, Cliff, with regard to the government business. I understand what you said, that much of your government business is at the state and local level, albeit some of that flows from the federal government, from federal programs. I guess I'm wondering if you could give a little bit more detail as far as how some of these aspects of the push for efficiency in the government actually lead to an opportunity for you in that space rather than a detriment to your business there. Maybe I'll leave it at that for now.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

It's a good question, Pat. Look, there's two ways to answer the question. A lot of the federal funds for entitlements are distributed through the states.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Both Congress and the president have said they're not going to mess with or touch entitlements. The administrative costs for the states are where the opportunity is for us. You take SNAP, for example, where we have 21 states distributing food stamps. We see that not diminishing. In the case of summer SNAP, 16 of those have summer SNAP programs. Most of those have renewed the summer SNAP programs. All those dollars are federal dollars, but the administrative costs are shared between the states and the feds. All that is being reviewed, but all that looks to be not touched. All the indications are that they're not going to be touched.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Where the opportunity arises is in areas like fraud that I mentioned during my script, which, if you think about the fact that what DOGE and the administration has said is, "Look, there's fraud going on. There are people receiving Medicare benefits that shouldn't be getting them. And there are people that are getting unemployment insurance benefits that shouldn't be getting them." The opportunity for us is to find those folks that are not getting them and help the states ferret out the issues and the problems and get paid for that process. We see it as upside. As I mentioned with respect to fraud, we've looked at address takeover fraud in our payment business. We found a lot of duplicate addresses that should not have been in the mix where people were receiving duplicate payments fraudulently.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

We see the same kind of fraud process to address people that should not be getting Medicaid benefits, for example, because they have duplicate addresses as a way to generate revenue for us. Finally, you have seen in the press where MCOs oftentimes are getting paid twice for the same Medicaid member because people move and they do not change their address. What is happening is these MCOs are receiving federal funds that they should not receive. They try and pay those back, but that is another area where we can ferret out areas where the federal government is paying too much money to the states or MCOs. Those are sort of an overview of how we are attacking the problem.

Pat McCann
Pat McCann
Equity Research Analyst at Noble Capital

Great. Thanks. I also wanted to touch on the cyber event. Could you say a little bit more about what actually happened? I'm getting the sense you guys are pretty much maybe through it. Can you touch on that as well? Is this pretty much behind you now?

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

All the costs of the cyber event are already baked into our P&L. That's number one. Number two is there was essentially no operational impact, virtually no operational impact to the cyber event. We were, in some cases, only down for a couple of hours. The environment was restored almost immediately. The issue we're dealing with is the records issue. How much PII and PHI, if any, has been exfiltrated? That's a very complex process that we're underway with now with our clients. Yes, the event is behind us. All the aspects of what happened are behind us. All the protections and the vulnerabilities, if there were any, were mitigated. But the examination of the data is still underway, and that's why we've put a reserve into the mix.

Pat McCann
Pat McCann
Equity Research Analyst at Noble Capital

Great. Thanks so much. I'll leave it there and jump back in the queue. Thanks a lot.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

You bet.

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Chris Sakai with Singular Research. Please proceed with your questions.

Chris Sakai
Chris Sakai
Research Analyst at Singular Research

Yes, hi. Good morning. I'm in for Gaushi. Given your progress in AI-driven solutions like fraud prevention and GenAI assistance, have you encountered any regulatory hurdles in deployment, particularly in sensitive government or healthcare applications?

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

You know, Chris, we really haven't. We're using AI in a couple of different ways. Much of it in the commercial space, but as I previously mentioned with respect to fraud, we're also using it in the government space, primarily around fraud.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

In the commercial space, we use it for language smoothing, for language translation, for IVR enhancements, for portal enhancements, and as I said, for fraud reduction efforts in the public sector. No, we really have not encountered issues around privacy or mistakes from GenAI. We are not using it as a replacement for people. We are still heavily reliant on people. Where we are in the people business, we continue to see the same amount of need for people in the complex environments. AI is not really and does not appear to be a substitute for that. The answer to your question directly is no. We have not seen any regulatory hurdles in the way.

Chris Sakai
Chris Sakai
Research Analyst at Singular Research

Okay. Thanks for that. You mentioned that your business is relatively insulated from macroeconomic and geopolitical shocks. Are there any less obvious second-order effects, such as shifts in client procurement cycles or changes in government funding priorities that you're monitoring closely?

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

We're not really experiencing that, Chris. I can tell you that what Giles and I mentioned was the one area of slight vulnerability for us is in our transportation business, transit specifically, where we buy equipment and deploy equipment for fare gates and the like. Most of that business is international, country-to-country, as opposed to international to the U.S. or China to the U.S. There's a little bit of transit business in the U.S., but very small in the grand scheme of things. So we're not really vulnerable to the tariff situation.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

With respect to other government programs, one of the decisions Congress made yesterday was that the Fed matching rate for Medicaid technology and technology implementations where the federal government supplies 90% of the funding for all those implementations and technology in the Medicaid space at the state level will not be touched. So we're not really feeling any hurdles to the progress that Giles laid out. In fact, as I mentioned, we see real opportunities.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

I think the other piece, Chris, is that we maintain close relationships and close communication with our state and local government clients as well so that we know what's going on with them and how we can support and help them as things move forward.

Chris Sakai
Chris Sakai
Research Analyst at Singular Research

Okay. Great. And then last for me, what criteria are you using to identify assets for divestiture? How do you plan to balance future proceeds between debt reduction, reinvestment, and potential shareholder returns?

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Let me take the first part of it, and the second part I'll turn over to Giles. Look, we've said all along that the secret sauce is to figure out how we can be not as wide or as diverse and be more focused on synergies and growth capabilities internally. By the same token, we believe there are synergies and scarcity value on the outside for some of our assets. The test we've put in place is where are those scarcity value opportunities, where are the maximum multiples we can get if we look to divest, versus what we can do internally with those same resources.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

We've identified what we see as another roughly, let's call it $350 million of opportunity along that process flow that we intend to pursue in 2025. Giles, why don't you cover that?

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Yeah. I think on the capital allocation side, it'll be similar to the first phase, Chris. We'll continue to maintain a balanced approach. We've only got $85 million of debt left on the term A. We'll also continue to make investments internally, which is what we've done through phase one.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

If you look at some of the investments we've made internally around some of the things that Cliff alluded to earlier with AI, with increasing our seat capacity in some of our international delivery centers, investments in our GHS Medicaid modularization platforms, and then what we've done with our Vector platform as well to support the New York congestion management pricing, a significant investment that we've made, but we've been frugal in the way that we allocate capital internally. I think you can look to see kind of similar characteristics as we used in the first phase of the rationalization plan as far as capital allocation is concerned.

Chris Sakai
Chris Sakai
Research Analyst at Singular Research

Okay. Great. Thanks for the answers.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

You know, Chris, just one last point, Importantly, to follow on Giles' point, what it really provides for us is a remaining portfolio that's more nimble, easier to manage, lower costs in the center, higher growth rates. That's the bottom line on where we want to land.

Chris Sakai
Chris Sakai
Research Analyst at Singular Research

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Please proceed with your questions.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

Hey, good morning.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Hey, Marc.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Hey, Marc.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

So first of all, congratulations both to Giles and David for the changes there, and certainly look forward to continuing working with you there.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Thanks a lot.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

I was wondering if we could.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Go ahead, Marc. Absolutely.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

I was wondering if we could start a little bit on the opportunity set and kind of dovetail to your comment, Giles, around the connection to your state and local contacts and what have you. Maybe could you share a little bit as to maybe what you're hearing from them and how that ties into the opportunities that you're seeing? I mean, maybe it's a little early, but I was wondering if you're getting much in the way of feedback from your state and local contacts as to the headlines and maybe what areas are taking the lead as far as priority of concern there.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

It's a mixed bag, Marc. I mean, some states are more progressive in trying to get out front and work with the administration to figure out how they can ferret out fraud and reduce costs from a disbursement point of view. Other states are sort of in a wait-and-see. It's quite varied. All the states are looking for efficiencies and always have been. It's a mixed bag.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

I can tell you that there's a specific effort around more efficiency in the administration of federal funds. The exact details are going to vary state by state. I can tell you one governor sent me a letter recently saying, "How can you help us more with SNAP or food stamp fraud?" As I mentioned in my narrative, the individuals that receive this funding are the ones that eat the fraud. You have seen many examples where people who have had their card skimmed or address takeover or various ways that fraud occurs. The states are very agitated over the fact that their constituents are the ones that are taking the loss because those funds are generally not replenished. It is a mixed bag. I mean, the one I just referred to is Utah.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

We've got a lot of capabilities around our new card platform that has chip cards in it. It has card turn-off and turn-on capabilities for other fraud reduction tools. But as I said, some are more out front, and it's a very significant opportunity, and others are sort of holding back, waiting to see what really happens. Because if you look at the DOGE efforts, this target of a trillion-dollar cost reduction is just not manifesting as fast as advertised. I mean, I think I saw numbers in the neighborhood of $155 billion out of the $2 trillion have been realized in some of the federal cost reduction efforts. So it's going a little bit slower. So there's a wait-and-see kind of demeanor out there as well.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

Thank you for that. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the new business wins being up year over year and maybe some of the catalysts that were behind that, as well as maybe progress in the I know we've talked in the past about efforts as far as gaining share of wallet. I mean, was that part of some of the new business win efforts, and how do we see that going forward?

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Yeah, Marc, I think there's a couple of things there. I think one is we've invested wisely in new talent in our sales organization with some element of new structure with client partners and getting closer to the clients and really driving more new capability opportunities through that group. The second is some of the investments that we are making that we have discussed earlier around Medicaid and increasing the seat capacity out in some of our delivery centers. We are filling those up. Clients are still looking to us to help them solve some of their cost issues. We continue to see that into the second quarter as well. I think Q1, we were off to a relatively good start. Q2, we should be a little stronger. We will see that continue throughout the year.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Marc, I have mentioned this in the past. If you think about new business, it comes in three venues. It comes in a new logo. It comes in a new capability for a current logo. It comes in with add-on volume from the same capability. That add-on volume typically comes from our account management teams. That has been pretty consistent.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

In some quarters, that's been better than others. What we saw in Q1 and hope to see even more so in Q2 is that new logo, new capability, with a particular emphasis on this new capability and expanding our share of wallet. With roughly 1.6 products per client in the commercial space, we think that should be double. That's why we've invested heavily in this client-partner arrangement, where client partners and enterprise sales executives can look at the breadth of the opportunity in a current client base. We've got many of the healthcare clients. Most of the healthcare clients out in the market are our clients. We see expanded opportunities from that client-partner team and then an enterprise sales team. We're just getting started. I mean, yes, it was a good quarter and new logo.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

We need to do even more of that because the new logos are your future. If you don't feather that nest with new logos, you're not going to have add-ons to be available. We are very focused on it. We expect to see some pretty good progress in Q2 and more so in the back half of the year.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

Just to sort of complete a loop there, I just wanted to double-check on the leverage being at 2.7 times, and this was covered in the prepared remarks, but just to confirm, that was as of the end of the quarter, and then subsequently you got the $50 million in April. That's already knocked down from where you were at the end of the first quarter, correct?

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Yeah, that's correct, Marc. We should see that net leverage count come down as the adjusted EBITDA for Q2, Q3, Q4 starts to increase with the cost efficiency programs that we've got going on. As I said, I think we'll see it trend towards more kind of one and a half turns as we think about the second half of the year. As we exit 2025, we're targeting that one turn that we've always put out there as a target.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

Those cost efficiency efforts, Marc, as you know, have lag effects to them. That's a benefit we're going to see in the back half of the year. Yeah.

Marc Riddick
Marc Riddick
Equity Analyst at Sidoti

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Cliff Skelton
Cliff Skelton
President and CEO at Conduent

You bet.

Giles Goodburn
Giles Goodburn
CFO at Conduent

Thanks, Marc.

Operator

Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session. With that, we'd like to bring the call to a close.We do thank you for your participation. We wish you a great day. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Cliff Skelton
      Cliff Skelton
      President and CEO
    • Giles Goodburn
      Giles Goodburn
      CFO
    • David Chen
      David Chen
      VP of Investor Relations
Analysts
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