Pitney Bowes - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 delivered margin improvement and EPS growth despite an 8% revenue decline; GAAP EPS was $0.30 and adjusted EPS $0.31, with adjusted EBIT up ~4% YoY to $107.3M.
• Results came in slightly below S&P Global consensus: revenue $459.7M vs $467.4M*, and EPS $0.31 vs $0.315*; management attributed the variance partly to forecasting process issues they are overhauling.
• Full‑year outlook narrowed: management now expects Revenue, Adjusted EBIT and Free Cash Flow near the low end of prior ranges; Adjusted EPS near the midpoint (ranges unchanged).
• Capital returns accelerated: authorization lifted to $500M; YTD buybacks reached $281.2M (~8% of shares retired in Q3 alone); dividend raised to $0.09 from $0.08.
• Catalysts: execution on Presort customer wins/pricing reset, realization of $50–$60M cost savings, and continued buybacks/debt optimization could drive estimate revisions and sentiment.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Profitability traction: Adjusted EBIT rose to $107.3M (+$5M YoY), with EBIT and EBITDA margins expanding materially YoY (mix, cost actions).
• Capital allocation discipline: Repurchase authorization increased to $500M; 25.9M shares bought for $281.2M YTD; quarterly dividend raised to $0.09.
• Management urgency and alignment: CEO emphasized fixing forecasting and driving profitable growth; “we are making significant progress... my optimism about the future of Pitney Bowes only continues to grow stronger”.

What Went Wrong

• Top‑line pressure: Revenue fell 8% YoY to $459.7M; SendTech –6% and Presort –11% on client losses and market decline, weighing on operating leverage.
• Presort decremental margins: A $17M revenue decline YoY led to outsized EBITDA/EBIT pressure, reflecting the high fixed cost nature and lost volume from prior rigid pricing.
• Forecasting miss: Management conceded process deficiencies contributed to outlook adjustments (now low end for several metrics), and is rebuilding forecasting to improve guidance reliability.

Transcript

Speaker 5

Hello, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2025 Pitney Bowes Inc. Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today are Chief Executive Officer Kurt Wolf, Chief Financial Officer Paul Evans, and Director of Investor Relations Alex Brown. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Director of Investor Relations Alex Brown.

Speaker 3

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Included in today's presentation are forward-looking statements about future business and financial performance. Forward-looking statements involve risk along with uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from our projections. More information about these items can be found in our earnings press release, our 2024 Form 10-K, and other reports filed with the SEC that are located on our website at www.pb.com and by clicking on Investor Relations. Please keep in mind that we do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information or developments. Also included in today's presentation are non-GAAP measures, specifically EBIT, EBITDA, EPS, and free cash flow, all on an adjusted basis. You can find reconciliations for these items to the appropriate GAAP measures in the tables attached to our press release.

We have also provided a slide presentation and a spreadsheet with historical segment information on our Investor Relations website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Kurt Wolf.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Alex, and thanks to everybody who is joining today's call. I trust that everybody has had a chance to review our press release and my letter. That said, I'd like to touch on a few key points before going to Q&A. We reported continued profitability improvements for the quarter. However, we expect the year to come in around the low end of our range for revenue, EBIT, and free cash flow. To be clear, this is primarily due to issues with forecasting and has nothing to do with operational factors, which have in fact been more positive than negative during the quarter. With respect to the forecasting issues, these are problems that have long plagued the company, and I'm working closely with Paul and his team to fix our forecasting process. Moving to our strategic review, we are making significant progress.

We continue to enhance our talent, structure, and processes to support future growth of the business. Additionally, we are compiling and evaluating a set of profitable growth opportunities. What we are learning in the strategic review is giving increased optimism about the outlook for the business, which supports our decision to spend an additional $161 million on share repurchases during the quarter. In summary, we are still tripping up on past mistakes, but are aggressively attacking and fixing issues as they arise, making us a stronger company. For this reason, my optimism about the future of Pitney Bowes only continues to grow stronger. With that, let's open the call for questions.

Speaker 5

Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research.

Speaker 2

Hey, good afternoon, Kurt. Kurt, just wanted to get a little bit more insight into SendTech. Obviously, the revenue declines are decelerating, which is a positive. You've talked about, obviously, the IMI migration as we move past that. As you look at that business, what do you anticipate the trajectory over the next 12-18 months for that business?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Hey, good afternoon, Kartik. With respect to SendTech, as you did mention, the IMI migration, we're largely getting past that. You can see that results this quarter. We do expect that should continue to be a benefit in Q4. By Q1, it should be fully lapped. I think, by and large, the impact of the difficult comps from the IMI migration are largely behind us. The revenue decline we saw in Q3 probably is a realistic look of where things stand for now. The question becomes, I'm incredibly excited to have Todd Everett join the company from the board. He has a strong background in the shipping space. He's an incredible operator. He was excellent at operating logistics before it was sold to Pitney Bowes. I think he's done a lot of great work already. Happy to answer more about the work he's doing.

He's evaluating opportunities to accelerate growth, but again, one of the big focuses is profitable growth going forward. The outlook for various parts of the business may be a little different than previously discussed. One of the big areas I would highlight is we've been so focused on our shipping solutions that so much attention has gone there that we've probably underinvested in opportunities that exist within the Mailing business. I don't want to speak on Todd's behalf, but I think there are some things that we could be doing given our position in the market to help decelerate the decline of the postal business. We have no illusions about the fact that the space is declining, but I think there's things we can do to slow that decline.

Speaker 2

Kurt, in your letter, you talked about the Presort Services business. It seems like some of the smaller competitors might be having some issues. I'm wondering your ability to continue to consolidate that particular business. Are there opportunities, or is it just better to go get the business on your own and just win the market share?

Speaker 0

I would say we're pursuing an all of the above strategy. For some context, in July 2024, there was a significant increase in the work share discount. Profitability across the industry became significantly improved starting in Q3 of last year. As we continue to talk to potential acquisition targets, given the trajectory of their business, those conversations largely died out. One of the reasons we do talk about some of the issues we're seeing, we won't get into too many details, but there are signs of financial issues with some of these companies. We are all of a sudden getting callbacks from companies that six months ago, a year ago, were saying they had no interest in selling. There's definitely more interest given the way that pricing competition heated up and has depressed margins for a lot of these players as well as for us.

Speaker 2

Just one last question, maybe just on a free cash flow standpoint. I think you maintained your guidance. I think that would imply a pretty big fourth quarter free cash flow quarter. If you could just walk through how you're getting to that or maybe what some of the puts and takes are for that.

Yeah. Okay. This is Paul. Good afternoon to you. Look, I mean, where we're sort of coalescing around is around the standard 30s. I mean, as we sort of stress tested our forecast for Q4, it'll come in plus or minus 1% of that before we really get a date. The quarter ended midweek, and obviously, there were payments that came in shortly thereafter the quarter happened. We've had a very strong pickup in the first part of this quarter, and that gives us confidence. We've still got work to do, but we have confidence that we'll sort of coalesce around the $330 range.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Kartik.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our next question is from Anthony Lebiedzinski with Sidoti.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and thank you for taking the questions. First, I just wanted to know if you guys could maybe just comment at the, just curious about the cadence of revenue. As you went from July through September, were there any variations? I know, Kurt, you talked about some flaws in your forecasting. Just wondering if there were any big variations from month to month as you went through the quarter in both of your segments.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Anthony, I appreciate the question. There's been nothing really that stood out from a month-to-month variance. The first indication we had is what we're seeing internally, the business is operating well. As an example, within Presort Services, I believe we've not lost a single customer since June, and we've been picking up our business. As we were progressing through the quarter, it did become a point of question of how are we operating well and not getting the financial results we were looking at. At that point, Paul and I got heavily involved, started to dig into the processes involved with forecasting, identified some process issues. You're an analyst. You do forecasting yourself. There's just a lot that goes into it, particularly when you're at a company. We have access to tremendous amounts of data, just understanding how we were processing data, assumptions we were making, etc.

That sort of is what brought it up. It wasn't any sort of monthly variation. It just was the fact that the business is performing well and the financials weren't going as expected relative to budget. When the operations are doing as well as you expect and the financials aren't quite as strong as you expect, there's clearly an issue with our forecasting. I can assure you, Paul and I are very serious about this. We both stepped in. This has been a problem that's plagued the company for far too long. During 2022 and 2023, it was something that I talked quite publicly about, the problems with forecasting. It's something that I've now been able to come to understand what the issues are. We are taking this very seriously.

We brought in outside help on it, and we're doing a lot internally to fix this once and for all so that we can be much more accurate in our forecasting. This isn't just about providing guidance. We need to make significant investment decisions, business decisions. If we don't have incredibly accurate data, we're going to end up making worse decisions. It's unfortunate that we had this issue with our forecasting, but it's emblematic of what we're doing within the organization. We continue to identify issues. We aggressively get after them, fix them, and it makes us a better company for it. It's frustrating to once again not be able to give great news on the forecasting front like we might have hoped for, but I think we're a better business as we continue to uncover these issues.

Speaker 1

That makes a lot of sense. Turning to Presort Services, it sounds like you have been able to win back some previously lost clients. With that in mind, when would it be reasonable to assume that Presort Services gets back to sales growth on a year-over-year basis?

Speaker 2

Anthony, I'll take that question. I think that assumption right there, and that's one thing that Kurt and I really dug into numbers, and we looked at the budget that was the basis of our forecast. One, it wasn't anticipated that how our competitors would use the sort of the, if I can call it a premium on the rate case, to sort of go take share from us. They bought that share. Obviously, how long does it take to get that back? That's, will it come back to us? You know, it hasn't come back to us yet, but we're aggressively going after it. There's a lapse in time. You lose it. They get with somebody else for a while. We go back in. What can we do better? You know, then there's a bidding opportunity, and we're close on some to take it back.

I think that, you know, I'm optimistic about the volumes for Presort Services next year.

Speaker 1

That's good to hear. Thinking about the new cost cuts, the $50 to $60 million that you talked about, will those be mostly through corporate and allocated, or will that flow through the different segments? Just maybe help us understand how to model those cost cuts.

Speaker 2

Sure. I mean, it's across the company. Some of them are in the, for your model, are in the G&A level. Some were sort of hit higher up. We went across all, all Kurt's leaders looked at that. It was really a management-led effort to refine our costs. Through that, we identified some very good opportunities. Look, we'll get to the point where we're always going to look to drive cost out of our business. Every healthy company should do that. I'm new to the role. Kurt's relatively new to the role. He's got a whole new, relatively speaking, new leadership team. We challenged everybody as operators to look at what you have and what do we really need really going forward. That's what you're seeing here. These benefits should be all realized by the end of 2026.

Speaker 1

Okay. Got it. Okay. Lastly, just actually just returning quickly to Presort Services, you know, given the competitive dynamics there, it sounds like there are some struggling operators. Would those be opportunities perhaps for acquisitions for you, or do you just want to focus on getting back to sales growth at Presort Services before you start looking at potential acquisitions?

Speaker 0

No, Anthony, these acquisitions are so accretive that we're always looking at them. By the way, as I said, that's sort of one of the signs that we're seeing that the pricing is really affecting players in the market is the fact that nine months ago, none of these players had any interest in selling. We're starting to get inbound calls from people that are looking to potentially sell their business. We're always in the market to make these acquisitions. They just drop to the bottom line. Again, it's one of the frustrations over the volume that we did lose. This is a high fixed cost business in the short term. Losing the volumes that we did, the amount of, you know, the profitability that we lost by not retaining those customers was pretty dramatic.

Bringing in these new, you know, if we do make acquisitions, the degree to which revenue drops to the bottom line, particularly given that we now have a little bit of excess capacity in our facilities, is just incredibly high. We're absolutely in the market to make acquisitions.

Speaker 1

All right. Sounds good. Thank you and best of luck.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Anthony.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Kimson with Citizens.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks for having me, guys. Kurt, you mentioned in the letter that you recently completed your review of the leadership team. Obviously, there have been a lot of changes at the executive and board level since you took the reins in May. Are you comfortable with the leaders you have in place now? If we think a level down about your direct-to-directs, do you have any thoughts on when the business may have the continuity you desire and be operating more of a BAU state?

Speaker 0

Absolutely. Aaron, welcome to the call and thank you for joining. As far as the leadership team goes, I'm incredibly happy with the, as Paul mentioned, I have seven direct reports. I'm incredibly happy with the team we have. It's the right people. Those who were bought into the level of accountability and drive for excellence that we expect of everybody at this organization. Anybody who wasn't bought into that's no longer with the company, at least within the executive team. Everybody who is here is 100% bought in. As you can imagine, anything starts from the top down. We have the right leadership team. That leadership team, and by the way, that informed the $50 to $60 million in cost cuts after I was, as I worked through this process myself, Paul and the rest of the leadership team did the same within their organization.

I think it's really important to highlight that previous cost cuts were an effort largely driven by outside consultants to say, "Here's an opportunity to reduce costs." This wasn't an effort to reduce costs. This was an effort to get better as a business. This is leaders that are restructuring their organizations. I could go division by division, but almost every corporate function and almost every business unit has changed their organizational structure to better meet the needs of the business. Within that, they've addressed what processes, or they're addressing what processes don't we need to do, and how can we be better on a go-forward basis. That's really what has driven the $50 to $60 million of cost cuts. It was not the pursuit of cost cuts per se, but just this effort being pushed down the organization.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have the leadership team that I do that's doing such an excellent job of it. I think we have stability within the leadership team. As they're working with their group, I think stability is developing the next years down. I would say just as a general comment about Pitney Bowes, I maybe say this too much, but I can't emphasize enough as a shareholder how happy everybody should be with the employees that represent the company that you're an investor in. We've made a lot of changes in the last 18 months, a lot of cost cuts, a lot of challenge to these employees. Everybody shows up with a good attitude every day. Everybody asks what more they can do to help this company.

I know there's been a lot of change, but what I would say is I don't think there's any change needed in terms of the bulk of the employees at the company. We have a great employee base, do a great job. I think they provide stability even as we've been changing some of the leadership.

Speaker 6

That's really helpful. As a follow-up, can you dig a bit further into the misalignment of incentives in Global Financial Services and how you're approaching the realignment and future of that organization?

Speaker 0

Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. GFS, you know, was not its own business unit. It was a loosely organized, it was like, I don't even know what you want to call it. It was a part of our structure, and things financial would go through GFS. You'd have situations, and things like this would come up where, you know, as SendTech would try to sell a meter, GFS would ultimately have approval over the actual credit, you know, because we're leasing these meters. If we were offering them purchase power for revolving credit to use that meter, that was all through GFS.

What could end up happening is if GFS's attitude was, "We don't want any credit loss," and SendTech saying, "This is an incredibly lucrative deal," you had two peers essentially looking at each other in a standoff saying, "This, you know, we're not willing to," you know, they created issues. What we've done is, you know, SendTech, ultimately, GFS was reporting through SendTech financially. Todd now owns SendTech. The credit decision, if it's going, if something's going on to the SendTech balance sheet, for lack of a better word, the approval of that, it's a business decision by Todd that he can evaluate how much the opportunity in the sale and what's the credit risk. Before, those two decisions were differentiated. It led to incredibly low credit losses in the past, but it also led to a lot of failed sales that would have been profitable.

It's led to a lot of difficulty in the sales process. What should be a very seamless customer experience became incredibly difficult going through two different organizations that were focused on different aspects of a deal. It just was, it was just unworkable. It just was really incredibly inefficient. Hopefully, that gives just one example of a problem that would arise.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Aaron, if I could say what it's really, and somebody pointed this out to me, it's analogous to, you know, we were selling the car and also the gas. We were okay to sell the car, but then when it came to sell them the gas, the other side said, "We don't think they're creditworthy to sell them gas." That really hit home with me. Obviously, that inefficiency, that decision now rests in Todd's world. It doesn't mean that we're going to lower standards or that we want to take on excess counterparty credit risk. We won't do that. We'll still be rigged, but we're not going to let this misalignment of interest stop us from servicing a customer.

Speaker 0

Not to overharp on this point, but at one point, after we were already trying to fix the problem, I received an email from a customer that had bought multiple meters from us that was complaining that they could not use their meter because they weren't getting approved for the use of purchase power. It just doesn't make, it just was really, and that's what I mean in terms of this opportunity in Mailing. We have the best product. We have the best services. We're peerless in every way, but we were creating a nightmare for our customers. That's what I'm driving at. A lot of this restructuring we're doing is trying to get better as a business, and the $50 to $60 million of savings is a side benefit.

Speaker 5

All right. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Swope Woodbeard.

Speaker 1

Hi, guys. Could I go back to Presort? Kurt, I think you alluded to it, but I think we all maybe underestimated the decline this quarter there. To see a $17 million decline in revenue drive a $13 million decline in EBITDA and EBIT, I know you talked about fixed cost absorption, but can you talk about sort of how that incremental margin or decremental margin maybe in this case works?

Speaker 2

Here's what happens. I mean, once you overcome your fixed cost and that business is a high-volume business, and you recognize that your labor has a capacity, you can sort of sweat them. Any additional throughput you have from that really is just profit, and it will fall, in large part, it just falls to the bottom line. A decline in that sort of that part of the stack will sort of have a direct impact to your EBIT. It's a very certain part of it's a very high contribution margin business. Once you've overcome your cost, then you're really into the land of super high margin work.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Matt, just another couple of points on that. If you look at our Q3 of 2024 compared to our Q2 of 2024, so it's sequential, not year over year, you can see that impact. The price increase, I believe, hit July 17, maybe, in 2024. Almost all of Q3 of 2024 had this higher price. You can look at it. Our revenue was up $19.5 million, and EBIT was up $19.2 million. It's essentially, you know, that was coming through, I guess that was coming through as price. Bottom line, I guess we've seen it on the opposite side with volumes where, you know, as these volumes come through, you know, to use an example, you know, Debbie's system is optimized, you know, for a certain level of, so the rent we pay, the equipment we buy, all of those things are pretty much fixed.

As we optimize our system, you know, if we're running 100% volume versus 90%, you still have the same labor force on the work, you know, on the floor. Maybe there's a small incremental increase in electrical costs or whatnot, or maybe, you know, the equipment's going to break down a little faster if you're running it more. In the end of the day, that lost volume, you know, our contribution margin is incredibly high on volumes. Obviously, you know, as you get to certain volumes, you have to add fixed costs. At this point, given that we're not fully utilizing our system, you know, it heavily drops to the bottom line.

Speaker 1

That comment on price from last July, Kurt, makes a lot of sense. It feels like this was as much volume-driven as price, though. Could you talk, maybe if I ask a question in a different way, if the 11% revenue declined, are you able to just roughly break that into price and volume?

Speaker 2

Yeah, we certainly know what it is. I mean, look, we had a big loss in volume relative to our budget. That, for me, explains most of the story, what's going on. Obviously, we'll see some reversion of that volume in our next year numbers. It's really more about the volume and how that incremental volume, what that meant to the bottom line.

Speaker 1

Okay, no, that's helpful.

Speaker 2

What our mind is on this as we looked is how did our competitors, you know, use that rate case, the new funds associated with that rate case. They used it to go out and bid share. We didn't use it to bid share, and because of that, we lost volume. We are the low-cost provider. Now what we're doing is, okay, fine, we'll use our position as the low-cost provider to go back and win back that lost volume.

Speaker 1

When you talk about the key drivers, obviously, you guys have talked extensively about the prior rigid pricing strategy. What about the comment about broader market decline? What is that piece of the key driver?

Speaker 2

I mean, there is a decline in the space, but from decline, you can grow through decline. You do it two ways. You can bid share and you can buy share. Through that, you need to make sure that you're the low-cost provider, which we believe we are.

Speaker 1

I see. The market decline is just sort of the standard secular pressure that you face in the business.

Speaker 2

Yes, that is. You know, how can we believe we can grow through that decline?

Speaker 1

Right. You guys clearly have done so for many years.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we've done that for many years. We've done it through a lot of acquisitions. As Kurt mentioned, our competitors are smaller competitors who are enjoying the benefits of the rate case. They weren't reaching out to us. Now that's sort of worked itself through the system, and now they're sort of calling back again. One of the reasons why we've upsized our revolver is so as those opportunities present themselves, we can move quickly.

Speaker 1

Great. Could I switch to the capital allocation part of Kurt's letter? One question, Paul, maybe for you. You guys are pretty quickly after the Q2 earnings interaction, you guys did a convertible bond. Could you talk a little bit about the philosophy of doing that convert and sort of where that fits into your capital structure?

Speaker 2

Yeah, we wanted to. It was another market that was open to us, very attractive, effective yield on that. That will sort of yield some additional benefits to us. It's known in the market that it will come along with coverage. We will pick up coverage from a number of firms, but that's not the reason we did it. I mean, it's the stated coupon and it's 1.5%. Think back to the time where we had a stated coupon of over 10% on some of our debt. An attractive opportunity for us in a market that wasn't previously open to us.

Speaker 1

Do you see yourself doing more in the convert area?

Speaker 2

Not sure yet. I mean, obviously, after this week, I'll be with Alex Brown in New York, and we'll go and meet with all our lenders. We'll see. What we're blessed with is lots of options today. We'll evaluate it, but we don't know for sure.

Speaker 1

On the debt front, you bought back another $12 million of your 2027s, I know. You had an interesting comment about just being in a position to retire that 2027 issue in full, at par in March of next year when the call price drops. Is that the plan, that you would just use effectively cash on hand to deal with the 2027 maturity?

Speaker 2

That's one option to us. We might do it that way. We might do a smaller refinancing. We'll lock down what's our plan in the coming month or so.

Speaker 1

Just the last one.

Speaker 2

If we have the liquidity, if we wanted to take it out, we could take it out.

Speaker 1

Right. As you continue to sort of weigh debt versus the shareholder cash out, whether it be dividend or share buybacks, how are you, now that you've been here for a few months or in this seat for a few months, how do you think about giving money to shareholders versus reducing your overall debt?

Speaker 2

I look at it on an implied return on investment. Given where our stock is trading, it's a very attractive investment to do that. That's in part why we continue to, we increase the size of the facility from $400 million to $500 million. We still like that. Obviously, we're value buyers on our debt, and if it hits our bid, we'll buy. Obviously, we know it's going to go to par in a couple of months. That will open up opportunities for us. I'm looking at that. I'm also looking at what is our maintenance CapEx, which is very manageable for us. If there was an actual acquisition in front of us, we would evaluate that relative to share buybacks or debt buybacks, but that's not there right now.

With that, our best course of action is to continue to buy back our shares, and also where it's economic, we'll buy back our debt.

Speaker 0

Matt, just to be clear, with respect to capital allocation, we're always going to be incredibly opportunistic. One of the things we're pushing as an organization is to be nimble in everything that we do. We'll evaluate whether the debt markets are available, what sort of pricing. We'll look at where our stock price is. Paul mentioned acquisitions. Any acquisition we do is almost certainly going to be pretty small in size. That's not going to be a major use of capital, but we still want to consider that as part of capital allocation. I would just keep that in mind as we move forward that we're always going to look at how best to maximize that. Currently, one thing that I will say is we believe we can carry a lot more debt based on our outlook for the business than the market does.

We are very cognizant that the market sets, the market drives everything. I think the market's comfortable with about a 3.0 leverage ratio. That's written into our current covenants. If that's where the market, the debt market is for us, then we want to make sure that we're getting below that 3.0 from time to time to reset our covenants, but also just to keep the debt markets comfortable with a level of leverage. We have very strong conviction longer term, we can carry heavier debt. Until the market agrees with us, we're going to make sure that we meet the market's expectations with respect to our debt.

Speaker 1

That's great. Thank you very much, Kurt. Thank you, Paul.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Matt.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Justin Dopierala with DOMO Capital Management.

Speaker 2

Good afternoon.

Speaker 1

Hey, Justin.

Speaker 2

Most of my questions have been answered. I just have a couple. I haven't had a chance to work through all those huge share repurchase numbers you guys had. I'm just wondering, do you have an idea, or can you give an approximation of where we stand today as of shares outstanding?

Speaker 1

About approximately $160 million.

Speaker 2

Perfect. Thank you. Lastly, to me, this is a cash flow story. There kind of seems to be an impression in the market that this year's cash flow is sort of a one-time event fueled by the over $100 million you freed up with the Pitney Bowes Bank receivable purchase program, even though that really shouldn't have any impact on free cash flow. Can you confirm this and also confirm there haven't been any material one-time impacts to free cash flow in 2025 that wouldn't be unrepeatable for 2026?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Now, Justin, to tick those off, with respect to the receivable purchase program, that does not impact cash flow. It just frees up what used to be restricted cash, makes it unrestricted. No, our current, our free cash flow forecast is not impacted by that. With respect to any sort of one-time items, tax assets has come up as something we've talked about. As we look at it, the degree to which we've been able to take advantage of our deferred tax assets, we expect to be able to do for another couple of years. I don't think that's in the, at some point we won't have the same benefit, but for years to come, perhaps two, three years, we expect to be able to recognize the same cash benefit from our tax asset. With respect to other one-time items, I don't know if Paul has this number handy.

I'm trying to look for it. Working capital is a significant use of cash this year. Based on our business, I think it's going to be a much larger use of cash this year than it normally would be. If you were to normalize our working capital in the current year, our free cash flow would actually be a fair bit higher. Just looking at it, $205 million working capital use? Okay. I'm being told that year-to-date working capital has been a use of $205 million. That will somewhat reverse in Q4. I believe Q4 of last year, we had free cash flow of about $145 million. I'm not saying we'll be exactly there. I guess based on our guidance, I think it may actually be, I think we're expecting a higher level of free cash flow in this Q4. That will be some reversal of that use of cash.

Bottom line, if anything, one-time items are actually restraining our free cash flow this year due to working capital as opposed to the opposite.

Speaker 2

Got it. Based on that and the other things you've announced, you know, the cost savings, etc., it sounds like free cash flow for 2026 should really be greater than 2025 then.

Speaker 0

Yeah. We're not giving guidance for 2026. I would just say, you know, everybody on this call is pretty proficient with Excel. If you look at where we are, you have some sense of where revenue should be, some sense of how that flows through the income statement. Look at the $50 to $60 million of cost out. Paul can correct me on this. It should all be done by the end of 2026. The vast majority is being implemented currently and should be done by the end of 2025. I think the run rate in 2025 is going to be awfully high. There'll be a significant improvement. I will say, just, you know, full transparency, there's obviously offsets to that.

I think when you look at merit increases, you look at benefits, some other factors, there's maybe $15 to $20 million that we're anticipating in additional costs, just, you know, cost of living adjustments, etc. Still, that's a significant cost reduction. As you say, we haven't modeled it out yet, but this is an unusually high use of working capital this year. I'm not, you know, I'll let you draw your own conclusion, but based on all that, I would say that where you're coming out makes a lot of sense to me.

Speaker 2

Perfect. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate your time.

Speaker 0

Absolutely. Thank you, Justin.

Speaker 5

Thank you. I'll now hand the call back over to Chief Executive Officer Marc Lautenbach for any closing remarks.

Speaker 0

All right. Thank you, everybody, for being on this call. I just want to make one last comment. I know I say it a lot, and I can't say it enough. As an investor in this company, I hope everybody appreciates the employee base that we have at this company. As I said already, we've gone through a lot of changes at this company. This last round of taking out another $50 to $60 million of costs impacts a lot of people and a lot of lives. The employee base, like I said, is impressive. People show up every day ready to work, asking how they can be of help. As an investor, hopefully, you have some confidence in the leadership team. As investors, I hope you appreciate just how special a workforce we have here at Pitney Bowes.

The position we have in our markets, the products we have, the services we have is something special, but the employees we have at this company is as well. I hope everybody appreciates that. A special thank you to our employee base for everything that they do for us. Thank you all.

Speaker 5

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.