Luca Maestri
Analyst · Barclays Capital
Thank you, Ursula, and good morning, everyone. This was a challenging quarter in some respects, given the impact from Japan, but eventually we were successful in offsetting the constraint to revenues and deliver strong EPS. This is encouraging as we look forward to a Q3 where we should see recovering Technology and acceleration in Services. Revenue growth was 2% in Q2 at actual currency, with a 3-point benefit from currency. Services drove the growth and was up 6%, while Technology was flat. In the second half, we expect revenue to be within our 3% to 5% guidance range. Operating margin in the quarter was 10.4%, up 3x year-over-year and up over 1 point from Q1. We saw sequential improvement also in gross margin. However, year-over-year, gross margin was impacted by the mix of business, by the ramp of new service contracts and incremental supply chain cost related to Japan. This impact was more than offset by disciplined expense management. RD&E and SAG ratios improved significantly due to restructuring synergies and improved bad debt trend. We remain on track for our full year objectives of $270 million of restructuring savings and over $120 million of cost synergies. Equity income in the quarter was $34 million, which slightly exceeded our expectations and reflected restructuring benefits at Fuji Xerox, more than offsetting the disruption from the tsunami. The $34 million includes $4 million in Fuji Xerox restructuring costs, which we are not adjusting out this year. Adjusted EPS was $0.27 and grew 13% year-over-year. The only adjustment to reported EPS were the amortization of intangibles and the loss on early extinguishment of liability from the redemption of the trust preferred securities that we mentioned during the Q1 call. As a result, GAAP EPS was up 38% year-over-year. Let us now move to the Technology segment on Slide 9. Technology revenue, up $2.5 billion, was flat at actual currency and down 4% at constant currency due in large part to the impact of Japan on product availability. Segment margin of 11.8% was up over 1 point year-on-year and continues to reflect the benefits from restructuring and synergy savings. Entry install performance is weighted heavily towards developing markets, and as I indicated during the Q1 call, face a difficult compare in Q2, given the 56% install growth that we had during Q2 of 2010. The recent product launches should drive improvement in this product segment during the second half. Mid-range growth continued despite being the product segment most impacted by the Japan shortages. This performance reflects our very competitive color portfolio, which was further strengthened by the launch of our latest ColorQube family of products in Q2, and we expect this favorable trend to continue as we start to address our backlog situation in Q3. In high-end, we saw mixed performance. iGen4 had a very strong quarter, reflecting demand for new features. The 800/1000 Color Press also showed good growth but not enough to offset declines in the Entry Production Color space. We have a product gap in this category, which we anticipate will be helped by a series of product actions, the first of which is the recent launch of the new 8080 product line. In summary, good progress on cost and expenses, offsetting impacts from Japan to drive operating profit growth of 10%. Moving on to Services, Slide 10. Services revenue was up 6%, with BPO up 9% and Document Outsourcing up 10%. ITO revenue was down 10%. BPO's 9% growth was driven by recent acquisitions as well as human resources and healthcare payer services and by increasing customer care and transportation volumes. This growth more than offset declines in government services, lower unemployment claims volume, as an example, and the timing of contract runoff and ramp. BPO signings were at $1.8 billion, which is lower year-on-year but up over 40% sequentially. And we have good prospects and high expectations for BPO signings in Q3, which has started on a strong note. ITO revenue declined 10%, driven by lower third-party hardware and software sales and lower recurring revenue as we have not yet seen the contract ramp from recent strong signings. Document Outsourcing had a very good quarter, with revenue up 10%, thanks to the ramp of the new signings and improving page volumes. Signings of $1.4 billion were also strong, with both renewals and new business up double digits. Overall signings declined 10% on a trailing 12-month basis but grew over 15% sequentially. The trailing 12-months calculation includes the 10-year $1.6 billion California Medicaid deal we signed in Q1 of 2010 as well as the Texas Medicaid renewal that occurred in Q2 of 2010 for close to $1 billion. We continue to see strong growth in our Services pipeline, up 21% including synergies, and this is, of course, a positive indicator for future signings. Segment margin of 12.1% was up 1.8 points sequentially but down 0.5 point year-on-year, reflecting impact from contract start-up cost and lower volumes in some government transaction areas. In summary, overall solid performance in Services with expectations for improvement both in signings and in ITO during Q3. With that, I now move to the balance sheet slide. As we communicated during Q1 earnings, we called our 2027 trust preferred securities in Q2, and we refinanced this amount by a very successful bond offering at lower cost. These securities carried an 8% coupon, and this action will reduce interest expense. Our Q2 ending debt balance increased to $9.3 billion, but to be clear, our interest-bearing liabilities remain unchanged as the trust preferreds used to be reported as a separate balance sheet line. The vast majority of our debt is, as you know, in support of our financing business. Of the $9.3 billion debt balance, $6.3 billion can be associated with the financing of Xerox equipment for our customers. The finance debt is calculated assuming a 7:1 leverage of our finance assets of $7.2 billion, and these finance assets represent committed revenue streams from our customers. We have a debt payment in August, which will get us to our year-end debt balance of $8.6 billion, and with the majority of our debt supporting our financing business, we have a strong capital structure in place, allowing us to return value to shareholders starting in Q3. Slide 12 provides further detail on our cash performance. Cash from operations of $347 million improved over Q1 but fell short of our expectations. Performance was driven by earnings of $327 million, and working capital was a slight contribution to cash flow. Pension and restructuring outflows as well as CapEx of $135 million were in line with plans. While the second half of the year is seasonally our strongest, we are reducing our full year operating cash flow forecast to a range of $2 billion to $2.3 billion to reflect our lower first half performance and some headwinds that are unique to this year. First, we are achieving growth in Services in a slightly different way than we had anticipated due in part to the mix of business and the combination of contract runoffs and revenue ramp. For instance, we're currently ramping multiple Medicaid and transportation contracts, which require a major upfront cost before they produce significant revenue or cash. We're also supporting ACS' investments in several new services platforms, and we are seeing new signings with higher start-up cash requirements. We're also affected by the situation in Japan. In Q2, we have absorbed incremental cost and cash outflows related to air shipments, sourcing from alternative suppliers as well as prepurchasing of materials. This will continue into Q3. The higher-than-normal inventory backlogs and the shift of revenue towards the end of the year also caused a negative impact on cash. As Ursula said earlier, this adjustment to 2011 guidance does not change our 2012 cash from operations guidance of $2.6 billion to $2.9 billion, as we will have year-on-year improvement from lower pension funding, lower restructuring payments and higher net income. The guidance adjustment also does not impact the $1 billion of available cash for share repurchase and acquisitions. Let me walk through the math. CapEx forecast for the year is now slightly lower at $500 million. This estimate is in line with the $246 million that we spent in the first half. Debt reduction and dividend assumptions remain the same at $600 million and $300 million, respectively. The remainder of the available cash is coming from our year-end cash balance. Cash from operations at the end of 2010 came in ahead of expectations, and we exited the year with a cash balance of $1.2 billion. We do not require a cash balance at this level and can make this excess cash available for share repurchases. This gets us to approximately $1 billion of available cash, consistent with our prior guidance of buying back $700 million of stock in 2011. In conclusion, we continue to execute on the strategy Ursula outlined in the beginning. We grew earnings by 15% through a combination of Services growth, operating margin improvement and lower interest expense. And we are focused on leveraging our annuity-based business model to drive cash flow and return value to shareholders with a share repurchase program beginning this quarter. With that, back to Ursula.