Pitney Bowes Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Pitney Bowes EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.32
• Consensus EPS: $0.16
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.16
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Pitney Bowes Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: $509.65 million
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Pitney Bowes Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/11/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI), a shipping and mailing company, provides technology, logistics, and financial services to small and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises, retailers, and government clients in the United States and internationally. It operates through Global Ecommerce, Presort Services, and SendTech Solutions segments. The Global Ecommerce segment provides domestic parcel services, cross-border solutions, and digital delivery services. The Presort Services segment offers mail sortation services, which allow clients to qualify volumes of first-class mail, marketing mail, marketing mail flats, and bound printed matter for postal work sharing discounts. The SendTech Solutions segment provides physical and digital mailing and shipping technology solutions, and other applications for sending, tracking and receiving of letters, parcels, and flats as well as financing alternatives to finance equipment and product purchases. It markets its products, solutions, and services through direct and inside sales force, global and regional partner channels, direct mailings, and digital channels. The company was formerly known as Pitney Bowes Postage Meter Company. Pitney Bowes Inc. was incorporated in 1920 and is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.

Pitney Bowes Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon and welcome to the Pitney Bowes Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Release Call. Your lines have been placed in listen only mode during the conference call until the question and answer segment. Today's call is also being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect your lines at this time. I would now like to introduce the participants on today's conference call.

[Operator]

Mr. Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member Mr. John Wittick, Interim Chief Financial Officer and Mr. Alex Brown, Director of Investor Relations. Mr.

[Operator]

Brown will now begin the call with a safe harbor overview.

[Alex Brown, Director - Investor Relations at Pitney Bowes]

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Included in today's presentation are forward looking statements about our future business and financial performance. Forward looking statements involve risks along with uncertainties that can cause actual results to be materially different from our projections. More information about these items can be found in our earnings press release, our 2023 Form 10 ks annual report 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, we do not undertake any obligation to update forward looking statements as a result of new information or developments.

[Alex Brown, Director - Investor Relations at Pitney Bowes]

Also included in today's presentation are non GAAP measures. You can find reconciliations for these non GAAP measures to the appropriate GAAP measure in the tables attached to our press release. We have also provided a slide presentation and a spreadsheet with historical segment information on our website. Finally, in our prepared remarks, revenue comparisons will be on a constant currency basis with other items such as EBIT, EBITDA, EPS and free cash flow on an adjusted basis. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Lance.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thank you, Alex, and good afternoon, everyone. 2024 was a transformative year for Pitney Bowes. We made swift and meaningful progress on all four of our strategic initiatives, exiting GEC, dramatically reducing costs and excess overhead, freeing up trapped cash, and deleveraging our balance sheet. Pitney Bowes is now a more efficient and focused company on a path to sustained value creation. Our full year results bear this out.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Revenue was $2,027,000,000 in line with our expectations for a softer point in Centek's product cycle and down 3% year over year. Adjusted EPS was $0.82 up $0.21 or 34% over the prior year. Adjusted EBIT was $385,000,000 up $77,000,000 or 25% over the prior year. And free cash flow was $290,000,000 which excludes $86,000,000 of restructuring payments. Before I dive in further, I want to say how excited I am to have Bob Gold joining us next month as our new CFO.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Bob's background and experience make him an excellent fit for Pitney Bowes. In his prior roles, he has helped successfully transform companies into more efficient, cash generating and profitable organization and has significant capital allocation, cost containment, debt management and transaction experience. He's an excellent addition to our management team as we work to enhance value for our shareholders, and I look forward to introducing many of you to Bob in the coming weeks. I also want to extend my sincere appreciation to John for his exceptional service to Pitney Bowes over the past six years, most recently as Interim CFO. John has been a wonderful partner since I joined the company, and he and his team have been instrumental in achieving each of our strategic objectives.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

John is retiring at the end of the quarter, and we wish him continued success going forward. With that, let's shift to an update on our strategic initiatives and then discuss why we are so excited about the opportunities for Pitney Bowes in 2025 and beyond. Exiting the global e commerce segment was a critical step in simplifying our business structure. As we near the completion of the wind down, we have been able to firm up details around one time costs, which are now expected to be approximately $165,000,000 1 hundred and 20 million dollars of these costs were paid out by year end, with the remainder expected to be paid out in the first half of twenty twenty five. The $165,000,000 in exit costs are offset by a tax asset of approximately $164,000,000 recorded in 2024 GAAP earnings.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We expect to realize this asset predominantly over the next three years by reducing cash taxes. Moving on to cost takeout. We removed approximately $30,000,000 in annualized costs during the fourth quarter, which brings our run rate exiting 2024 to approximately $120,000,000 in annualized savings. We now expect to achieve a total of $170,000,000 to $190,000,000 in net annualized savings, up from the previously announced target of $150,000,000 to $170,000,000 The remaining savings will be realized over the course of 2025 and into 2026. These cost reductions will be primarily driven by further overhead reductions, IT system simplification, reduced vendor spend and facility consolidation.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Going forward, Pitney Bowes will operate with a mindset of continual improvement and cost savings. Lastly, we have focused on simplifying and strengthening our balance sheet through cash optimization and deleveraging. On cash optimization, with the GEC wind down largely complete, we now anticipate needing to hold approximately $100,000,000 less in cash on our balance sheet. We have also reduced the amount of cash we hold offshore by approximately $90,000,000 and now plan to hold around $50,000,000 overseas. Further, the Pitney Bowes Bank receivables purchase program has accelerated the net realization of $41,000,000 of cash from leases in 2024, freeing up approximately that amount of cash flow to the parent company level.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Overall, these initiatives have unlocked more than $200,000,000 that we can deploy more efficiently. On the deleveraging front, our goal was to prioritize our high cost debt and our near term maturities. We have made excellent progress in both areas. Over the past three months, we paid off our most expensive debt in its entirety, the $275,000,000 in Oaktree notes, and we paid it off with internally generated cash. In addition, this month, we successfully refinanced our near term maturities through the issuance of a new revolving credit facility, a $160,000,000 term loan A and a $615,000,000 Term Loan B.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Our nearest maturity is now our notes due in March 2027. I'd like to thank our internal teams and our outside advisors for working so effectively together to deliver these successes in each of our four key initiatives. Let's now talk about why we are so excited about the future of Pitney Bowes. We started 2025 with strong momentum and a solid foundation from which to grow cash flow and earnings. The core tenets that will guide us this year are what I call the three S's simplicity, speed and sales.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Leadership will be measuring the organization's rate of continued evolution and improvement based on these priorities, and you'll hear me refer back to them periodically. Pitney Bowes has historically been a complicated business, so we will continue to drive simplification by breaking down silos and focusing on a narrower set of high margin opportunities. Our exit from GEC was an important step in simplifying our company. In 2025, we are taking additional steps to simplify our operations, systems and processes throughout the company. Speed goes hand in hand with simplifying the company, and I believe we have demonstrated our ability to operate with urgency.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Prioritizing both of these tenants has already enabled us to have greater flexibility with capital allocation. In terms of sales, we are evolving Pitney Bowes from a business in slowly declining markets to a growing company with exciting long term prospects, and we intend to do this without the need for transformative M and A or excessive growth related spend. In particular, we see meaningful opportunities to grow our cash generating and profitable business segments, Centek and Presort, as well as Global Financial Services, and have already been doing so in earnest. In Centek, our growth engine is our shipping technology business, which includes product offerings in office shipping, enterprise fulfillment software and e commerce. Each of these offerings include SaaS subscriptions with additional revenue streams including hardware, professional services and carrier rebates.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Our Shipping360 platform integrates our offerings, is carrier agnostic and brings our clients significant cost savings and advanced analytics. In the fourth quarter, shipping technology related revenue grew 18%. To accelerate our growth in Semtech, we have reorganized much of our sales force from a geographically based organization to a vertical market organization to benefit from our differentiated product offerings in mailing and shipping technology. Our key vertical markets include healthcare, banking and financial services and government. The Pitney Bowes presort business has grown in 11 of the last twelve years declining only during COVID.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Presort's adjusted EBIT grew nearly 50% in 2024 driven largely by a combination of higher revenue per piece and cost reductions. In 2025, we will look to continue to profitably grow Presort, both organically and through tuck in acquisitions that provide the opportunity to gain greater economies of scale. We recently closed the acquisition of Royal Alliances presort business, which has added 100,000,000 pieces of first class mail to our presort business annually. We are continually looking at similar tuck in acquisitions that would be rapidly accretive and expand our capabilities and markets. At Global Financial Services, we are looking to expand the depth and breadth of our offerings to our base of over 500,000 customers, while continuing to generate significant cash for Pitney Bowes.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Due to our growth initiatives and based on our current forecasts, we believe that we are on track to reach an inflection point where Pitney Bowes will become a growing company and we will provide more context around that in future quarterly updates. In light of our improved financial position, our leadership team and Board have given a great deal of thought to capital allocation. There are four elements that comprise our go forward capital allocation framework. First, we will continue to invest in organic growth initiatives that generate a risk adjusted return that is well above our cost of capital. Second, we will target opportunistic tuck in acquisitions that are quickly accretive and can generate a very attractive risk adjusted ROI.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We do not currently anticipate any large transformative acquisitions. Third, we will continue to retire debt on a reasonable timeframe as we seek to maintain an optimal leverage profile, which we believe is three point zero over the next two years. And fourth, we will return capital to shareholders through our dividend and through share buybacks, utilizing our newly authorized share repurchase facility of 150,000,000 I want to emphasize that we are fully committed to prudently increasing the amount of capital that we return to shareholders, and we intend to do this on a consistent basis, beginning with today's $0.01 per share increase in dividends and moving forward by utilizing our new share repurchase facility. In future quarterly calls, we intend to provide relevant updates on each of these buckets in a clear and coherent fashion. In closing, I want to emphasize that we are committed to continuing our strong execution and identifying additional ways to maximizing value for shareholders.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Now, I'll turn the call over to John to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results in greater detail.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thanks, Lance. As Lance alluded to, this has truly been a great year for Pitney Bowes and we are now on a much improved trajectory. Let me start by providing an overview of our full year results followed by the fourth quarter. For the full year, revenue was $2,000,000,000 down 3% year over year. Adjusted EPS was $0.82 an improvement of $0.21 over the prior year.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Adjusted EBIT was $385,000,000 up $77,000,000 over the prior year. Free cash flow was $290,000,000 and excludes $86,000,000 of restructuring payments. Now turning to the quarter. Q4 revenue was $516,000,000 down 2% versus the prior year. Adjusted EBIT was $114,000,000 a 33% increase versus the prior year showcasing our strengthened profitability as we continue to simplify our business.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Fourth quarter year over year comparison benefited from higher presort profit contribution and lower costs across the company from our cost reduction initiatives. Fourth quarter adjusted EPS was $0.32 up $0.12 year over year driven by higher EBIT. Fourth quarter free cash flow was $145,000,000 and excludes $32,000,000 of restructuring payments. An important note, the variable compensation we recorded across our reporting segments was a headwind to our 2024 segment results and a tailwind in 2023. From a year over year perspective, variable compensation in the fourth quarter was a $2,000,000 headwind to Presort, an $11,000,000 headwind to Centek and a $5,000,000 help to corporate expenses.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

For modeling purposes, assume that the year over year headwinds for the segments are roughly split fifty-fifty between 2023 benefit and the 2024 headwind. Now turning to business segments. Beginning with Centek, we completed the IMI migration in the fourth quarter. As we previously guided, the last tranche of transactions produced higher cancellation rates than we typically see. Going forward, we expect our cancellation rates to revert to normalized levels, which are mid single digits.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Equipment revenue in the quarter declined 16% year over year in line with our expectations. Shipping related revenues in the quarter grew 18% and comprised 17% of full year Semtech segment revenue. For the fourth quarter, we drove significant growth in our subscription base and ended the year with almost 200,000 paid subscribers. This resulted in a 33% year over year improvement in SaaS subscription revenue in the quarter. Semtech gross profit declined $10,000,000 in the quarter versus prior year, primarily due to the decline in revenue.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

However, gross margin percentage increased to 67.1 from 66.4% compared to the prior year. Operating expenses for the quarter increased $11,000,000 year over year, primarily as a result of non recurring items. However, operating expenses for the full year declined by about $12,000,000 Moving to our global financial services within Centek. In the quarter, we sold $19,000,000 of securities at PB Bank. This resulted in a $3,000,000 realized loss in our P and L.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We are reinvesting the proceeds from the sale into higher yielding finance receivables in line with our growth strategy in financial services. Finance receivables were $1,150,000,000 at the end of the year, down 6% year over year. Shifting to presort, revenue for the full year was $663,000,000 up from $618,000,000 the prior year. Revenue in the quarter was $180,000,000 up 10% over the prior year from pricing, mix and a higher five digit qualification. Volumes were flat year over year.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Adjusted EBIT for the full year was $166,000,000 up 49% versus the prior year. Adjusted EBIT for the quarter was $52,000,000 an increase of 52% year over year. Outside of the business units, corporate expenses were $34,000,000 in the quarter, $31,000,000 lower than last year. Our cost reduction initiatives drove most of this improvement. Now let's turn to guidance.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

In 2025, we expect to generate between $1,950,000,000 and $2,000,000,000 in revenue, representing a modest decline year over year. This decline is mainly driven by revenue headwinds in Centek as we turn the page on the product migration. Other operations include revenue from certain GEC operations we exited in 2023. We expect these to be partially offset by growth in presort and shipping related revenues in Centek. Moving to profitability, we expect to generate between $450,000,000 and $480,000,000 in adjusted EBIT in 2025, mainly driven by additional savings from our cost reduction initiatives and growth in presort and Centek shipping.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We also expect 2025 adjusted EPS to be between $1.1 to $1.3 per share. We expect our effective tax rate for adjusted earnings to be between 2731%. The $164,000,000 tax assets associated with the GEC wind down were already recorded in 2024 and will benefit cash taxes on the cash flow statement. We expect interest expense to decline year over year as a result of our recent pay down of the Oaktree notes and refinancing. From a cash flow perspective, we expect 2025 free cash flow to range between $330,000,000 and $370,000,000 Free cash flow excludes restructuring payments and CapEx.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We expect CapEx to be comparable to 2024. We've made great progress in starting our cost reduction initiatives in 2024. As of the end of twenty twenty four, we had removed approximately $120,000,000 of annualized cost, contributing a $52,000,000 benefit to our full year bottom line. As Lance mentioned, we are increasing our target to a total of $170,000,000 to $190,000,000 in net annualized savings. Now let me add more color on our 2025 guidance.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

First, Centek. As previously guided, we expect 2025 to be a transition year due to the end of its migration cycle. Our upfront equipment revenue will decline from lower transaction opportunities. Our revenue profile will shift to more recurring revenue from a higher mix of lease extensions. From a modeling perspective, we expect Centek revenue and gross profit to experience a similar rate of decline in the first half of twenty twenty five as we saw in the second half of twenty twenty four.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We expect this to moderate in the second half of twenty twenty five. We expect shipping to continue to grow at double digit rates and partially offset the product migration headwinds. Turning to Presort. Presort had a great 2024 and we expect to continue strong financial performance in 2025. In addition, we have a robust pipeline of tuck in M and A opportunities.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

These are not factored into our expectations and would be incremental to guidance. Since this will be my last earnings call with you, I want to conclude by saying that it's been an honor to serve as the Interim CFO at Pitney Bowes and that I'm proud of everything the team has accomplished in recent months. I look forward to helping Bob with his transition and welcome him to the company. And with that, I'll pass it back over to Lance. Thank you.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thank you, John. To sum up our message today, we have come a long way and have a solid foundation for the future. I see 2025 as a year of continued progress following the transformative changes we made in 2024. We have a lot of work to do, but as I shared earlier about our growth strategy, we see many exciting opportunities before us and are forging ahead with simplicity, speed and sales as our guide to becoming an even more profitable and efficient organization. And now we'll open it up for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our first question comes from Anthony Liubzinski with Sidoti.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for taking the questions. Certainly nice to see the outperformance in the quarter and the guidance looks pretty good as well. And John, best of luck in your pending retirement. So first question here for me, I guess, going back to the pre announcement that you guys had a couple of weeks ago, and also that's when you announced the final pay down of the Oaktree debt.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

In that release, you guys talked about the EBIT being better because of some one time in nature items. So maybe I missed it, but maybe if you could just maybe just clarify what those one time items was and kind of how much of that was because of some one time items?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Hey, Anthony, it's John. Nice to hear from you. So the outperform was really twofold, Anthony, I'll get to the one time in a second. We actually had better performance in the business that was beginning to layer in at the early part of the quarter. So that was a big part of the outperform.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We also had some additional savings that quite frankly became more clear to us as we became more aware of what the business looks like in a more simple fashion with just two business segments. So as we were organizing ourselves and going through the savings process, we recognized that there was more savings than we previously had thought. It was primarily overheads, Anthony, things that were third party related and they started to actually fall into place. And quite frankly, they fell into place a lot quicker than we thought that they would.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

Okay. That sounds good. And then with respect to presort, so the EBIT margins used to be historically in the range between anywhere from mid teens to kind of low 20s. Now the last two quarters, you're in the high 20% range. So is this kind of the new normal?

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

Do you think these higher margins are sustainable as we look forward? I know there was a benefit from pricing here. Just how do we think about that?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. I mean, in the quarter, we ended up from a full year perspective, our EBIT margins about 25% versus about 18% last year. So I think what you saw in the second half of this year is where we'd like to think going into the first half of next year should be. I mean, and that's a combination of two things. One is pricing, the mix of the volumes that we're seeing.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

And also we keep mentioning the productivity. Let's not forget about the efforts that the team is putting in around the CapEx that we've invested and the return that we're getting on that productivity return.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

Got you. Got it. Okay. And then as far as SendTech, so I know you guys talked about the product migration. So it looks like that's going to be a bit of a headwind here, more so in the first half versus the back half of the year.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

But just so as we look forward to 2026, is that a period where you think that you as you fully anniversary all of that and then you grow the shipping revenue, you'll start to see improvements in margins in Centek by that point?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. I mean, by the time the way we see it on the longer lens, Anthony, keep in mind it is a longer lens. We actually start to see the continuum of the shipping growth and we talk about shipping growth rates continue to be double digit going into 2025. And by the time we get to 2026, we're really expecting the improvement in shipping year over year to outweigh the decline on the mailing business. So that's kind of where the lines cross and that's how we've been seeing it.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

And I think that's what our view is right now.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

Got you. And then just to follow-up about shipping. So obviously it is a growing subsegment of Centek. Do you guys have a goal in mind as to how much of segment revenue that could be, whether it's next year or the year after that? I just wanted to get your take as to what you think the goal is or what you think that could be?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Hey, Anthony, it's Lance. We're super excited about the shipping technology business within Centek. And that's not something that sort of grows and then stops growing. We have a very long term optimistic view of that portion of that business. And it's a very nice sort of high margin business.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

It's largely SaaS revenues and kind of related revenue lines. And I think that that's something that could continue to perform over the long run. It's also a much larger market and the TAM, the total available market in shipping is far larger than it is in mailing. And so we're, I think increasingly going to take share of a larger and growing market.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

All right. Well, that's great to hear. And then I guess last question before I pass it on to others. So I guess now that the business is more predictable, how should we think about the quarterly distribution or the seasonality of earnings throughout the year? Just wondering how if there's anything that we should be aware of just as far as the quarterly cadence of the business throughout the year?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes, I think you'd see a similar sort of cadence and pace on the restated business as you've seen in the past. And Anthony, you're familiar with some of the seasonality with presort, with peak in the first quarter and first class and marketing mail in the fourth quarter. I'm sorry, did I say first class? I meant first quarter for first class and marketing mail in the fourth quarter. And then in the fourth quarter, fourth quarter has typically been a seasonally high quarter for us.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

So I think that's what we've seen and I don't really expect much deviation from that.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

All right. Well, thank you very much and best of luck.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thanks, Anthony.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from David Steinhardt with Contrarian Capital.

[David Steinhardt, MD & Portfolio Manager at Contrarian Capital Management]

Hey, great work so far. In terms of capital allocation, the Board has authorized $150,000,000 to be deployed into share repurchases. Can you give us any idea of the cadence for that deployment and what the company will be looking at and the Board will be looking at to determine when to repurchase shares?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Hey, David. Thanks for the question. I'll put it into context, which is that the $150,000,000 authorized program is over the course of the next three years. And we're guiding to $330,000,000 to $370,000,000 in free cash flow for 2025 alone. So, we don't have specific timing on executing it.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We've got a board and a leadership team that's got a lot of experience in the capital markets and is looking for opportunities to take advantage of kind of market situations that make sense for us. So we'll be opportunistic, we'll be prudent and we'll regularly report back on our progress.

[David Steinhardt, MD & Portfolio Manager at Contrarian Capital Management]

Great. And in terms of your debt, you'll have significant free cash flow theoretically over the next year. Can you give us a sense of which debt securities you might be tackling first in terms of paying them down or

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. I mean, I would say similarly we'll be opportunistic, but we'll continue to prioritize nearer term maturities and also more expensive debt. There might be opportunities in some of our longer standing debt if there are again kind of market situations that enable us to purchase them at attractive prices, we'll be open to that. But as you mentioned, deleveraging remains important for us and we do have an expectation of significant cash generation that can continue to deleverage our balance sheet.

[David Steinhardt, MD & Portfolio Manager at Contrarian Capital Management]

So giving more color into the future of the Centek business, as you've mentioned on this call, you expect to see growth opportunities. Perhaps it makes sense to have a wider Investor Day to perhaps increase the reach and voice of the company, but other people might understand the value that's at play here.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. No, I appreciate the thought and I think that makes a lot of sense. It's something that we'll be looking at going forward. I think that the Centek business is super exciting. And I think as you're kind of alluding to a little bit misappreciated and we're going to be attempting to do just a better and better job giving clarity to that business and continuing to be transparent about what exactly we do and what the opportunities are.

[David Steinhardt, MD & Portfolio Manager at Contrarian Capital Management]

Great. Thank you so much.

[Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC]

Thanks, David.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research.

[Kartik Mehta, Executive MD & Director of Research at Northcoast Research]

Hey, good afternoon. John, just on the presort business, I know you talked a little bit about the pricing. I'm wondering what your volume expectations are for 2025?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes, we expect to see hey Carter, it's John. So we expect to see similar volumes in presort going forward and it's really about the mix of the four buckets that we track between first class and marketing mail and flats. So we're going to see that and quite frankly Kartik, I think we've mentioned this before, in certain quarters and in particular this past quarter, we've seen a fair amount of project work. So work that comes up sort of, I'll say a bonus if you would for from a volumes perspective, sort of unplanned for our clients based off of events that they serve and that could actually play into some of the mix that we might see going forward. It certainly played into some of the mix we saw in the past year.

[Kartik Mehta, Executive MD & Director of Research at Northcoast Research]

Hey, Lance, it seems like you guys have done a great job on the capital side, paying down debt, getting this authorization from the Board. And I'm wondering maybe what metrics you'll need to see or the Board will need to see for them to feel comfortable in executing the authorization?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. I mean, we're tracking closely, first of all, around the constraints of our debt covenants. So we successfully renegotiated several lines of our debt, our revolver, our TLA and our TLB. And as part of doing that, that freed up and provided the company with a lot more flexibility going forward. It really brings our covenants back to a more market like package.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

But as I mentioned, we'll be operating within those constraints. So at least earlier on, there are certain limitations as to what we can do. But as we evaluate it, we'll be looking closely at what our leverage ratio is, what our cash flow generation is, what market opportunities there are and hopefully making good and prudent decisions.

[Kartik Mehta, Executive MD & Director of Research at Northcoast Research]

Perfect. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Justin D'Auberala with Domo Capital Management.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

Yes. Hi. Thank you. First off, incredible quarter execution, incredibly thoughtful shareholder value and enhancing initiatives. Absolutely love it.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

Maybe I missed it, but did you comment on what you expect 2025 CapEx to be?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Hey, Justin, it's John. How are you? We're quoting a very similar 2025 and maybe a little better, but we're just let's just say it's very similar to 2024.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

Okay. And correct me if I'm wrong, but your EBITDA of $385,000,000 for the year, that was $25,000,000 more than what you got it to in mid November, right?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

It was $20,000,000 better than the high end, yes.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

Okay. So I guess along those lines, my math is leading me to an adjusted EBIT of around $490,000,000 and $25,000,000 but that was before you blew away all of your previous guidance and added additional cost cuts. So I mean, I easily have you over $500,000,000 in EBIT now. I guess therefore, my question is, do you think you're kind of consistently being overly conservative with the guidance?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

So Justin,

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

I really appreciate your enthusiasm. I'm enthusiastic as well, but I'm going to stick to my range of what we quoted earlier $450,000,000 to $480,000,000 and look, there's a lot of logic behind what we're seeing. We talked about some of the headwinds that are probably backing off what you might see, but I'm going to stick firm and appreciate your comments.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

All right. And then lastly on the share repurchase, I know a lot of it has already been asked, but I guess maybe just two things. Is it fair to say that at $10 per share you view the shares of the company as significantly undervalued?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes, we won't specifically answer that question. But I will say that we see a lot of great opportunity for our company going forward. I think that there's continued strong cash generation. I think that we see continued strong earnings growth and we're excited on the new business segments and opportunities on the revenue side.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

Okay. And I know you talked about the covenants. So based on what you renegotiated, is it fair to say that, I mean, if you chose that you would be able to repurchase the entire $150,000,000 worth of stock in 2025, at least from a covenant standpoint?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. What I would say is that the credit agreement and its details are going to be filed in an eight K shortly. And so that will go kind of covenant by covenant and give you all the details that you need. There's just a lot of put and takes and it's hard to kind of overly simplify that question.

[Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management]

All right. Thanks a lot. You have the great work.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Appreciate it, Justin.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Peter Sakan with CreditSights.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

Hi, good evening. I had a question regarding the corporate expense, significant decline in the fourth quarter. Was that just a cost savings that you've announced or has there been any reallocation of corporate to the business units?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Hey, Peter, it's John. That's straight from cost savings. We have and don't forget, I mentioned earlier in my remarks in the fourth quarter, there was a little bit of a push down of how we accrued for comp that was about $5,000,000 in the quarter. But aside from that, the vast majority the vast majority of that is, if not all, the remainder is all about our cost savings. Keep in mind that our cost savings primarily was wrapped around in overheads, the corporate overhead.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

So that's where you're seeing it.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

How many employees would you say you've got at corporate today versus maybe a year ago?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

I didn't catch the first part of that, Peter.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

How many employees do you have roughly at year end versus a year ago?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Oh, gosh. I know that in we've announced a reduction of force over the year of an excess of 2,000 people, but a lot of that was wrapped around GEC. So I mean, I think we can probably follow-up with you on that one offline. I mean, it's all that data is going to be the K and the K is going to be out within about ten days.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

Okay. And then could you elaborate on this pension charge and help me to better understand it?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. So we actually had a lump sum campaign in The U. S. And in Canada. And what that did was it actually positioned us better from a risk balance for pension, keeping in mind that our pension in The U.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

S. Is about 99 and change funded and in Canada we're over 100% funded. This puts us in much better position. And the $91,000,000 was a non cash item. We recorded that in GAAP and you won't see that in the adjusted, but what that was is to really account to true up for the campaign reduction.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

And it really and again, it just puts us in better position from our assets and liabilities.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

So maybe to simplify it, your the amount of it is reduced. So there is volatility in the market, the amount of volatility is going down because you have people that have been taken off the books, if you will. Is that the right way to think about it?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

That's exactly so. It represented at about 10% of the planned assets.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

Okay. That's all I've got.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

So

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

as you reduce your exposure on the plant itself, you reduce your exposure in the market.

[Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights]

Understood. Thank you.

[Operator]

We have time for one more question. The final question comes from Matthew Slope with Baird.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Congratulations guys on a great year. I was wondering, John, how do you think about the 2027 and 2029 notes now that you've chipped away at so much of the capital structure? Are those bonds we could see you refinance either one or both of this year?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

So I'm going to hey, Matt, how are you? I'm going to refer back to something Lance said earlier. So as we think about our capital allocation strategy, I mean, we're going to look at all of the notes, all of the debt. And of course, we'll probably have a closer eye on the nearer term debt. But I mean, we're going to be opportunistic when that comes available to us as we go through the year.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Were you concerned about announcing the sort of move towards at least more distributions to shareholders before you have the whole cap structure taken care of? I know it's sort of a tenuous dance back and forth, but coming out of the last few years, everything that the debt has gone through and then the amazing recovery you've had in the last eighteen months or so, was there any hesitation in announcing the shareholder distributions now?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

I don't think, Matt, there was ever any hesitation in any announcements, but there was hesitation in doing anything while the company was not achieving the kind of cash flow that gave us confidence to put a program like that in place. Looking back the past couple of years, GEC was just such an anchor to the business and such a drain of cash and there was a lot of excess spend in the company and we just really couldn't do it. Now that we've repositioned the company, we have an opportunity and it's a great thing for us to take advantage of.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

No, that's very fair and you guys really have done a great job. Can I ask a nuts and bolts one, John, on the you talked about free cash flow without CapEx, without cash restructuring? That free cash flow number does include cash taxes, right? Do you have an estimate, especially with the savings you have now on cash taxes for 2025 or maybe even the next couple of years?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Yes. I mean, so look, the bulk of the tax asset is going to be recognized in the cash flow primarily over the next, I'd say $25,000,000, 20 6 million dollars and probably trickle a little bit into $27,000,000. So think about it, if you think about it that way, not to disclose the absolute number right now, but I'd say it's probably evenly distribute going out in the next three years.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Okay. And then as far as the cash restructuring, I know that I think you said you paid $120,000,000 out of the $165,000,000 Is it right to use about a $45,000,000 cash restructuring number for 2025?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Well, that reference was on the GEC exit costs, so if we're talking about the same thing. So yes, against the $165,000,000 we paid out about $120,000,000 and that's what we that would be the math on the go.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Right. Okay. Right. That makes sense. And then how about as far as other cash restructuring charges to achieve the cost savings you're getting?

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Well, I'd tell you that a lot of the cost savings that we've done that would accompany a restructuring payment, a lot of that is behind us in 2024. So I'm not going to predict or forecast the restructuring payment, the cash out today, but I tell you that most of that is behind us on the trend from $170,000,000 to $190,000,000 a lot of that is behind us already.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Great. And then Lance, just one last one for me. You mentioned in your prepared comments about sort of moving towards an inflection point where full company revenue goes positive. Is that something that happens in 2025, you think, or 2026? How do you look at that?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

We guided our revenues in 2025. So we're not anticipating that in 2025, but we're working hard to make it happen and really very, very excited about heading toward that day.

[Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co]

That's great. Well, congratulations again guys. Thanks.

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thanks, Matt.

[Operator]

At this time, we have no further questions. Mr. Rosenzweig, any additional remarks at this time?

[Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thank you, everyone, for joining for our quarterly call. Thank you for the excellent questions and thank you particularly to John for your partnership and your phenomenal service to the company. Looking forward to updating everyone next quarter.

[John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer at Pitney Bowes]

Thanks Lance.

[Operator]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Your conference has concluded. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Alex Brown, Director - Investor Relations
• Lance Rosenzweig, Chief Executive Officer
• John Witek, Interim CFO & Chief Accounting Officer

Analysts

• Anthony Lebiedzinski, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC
• David Steinhardt, MD & Portfolio Manager at Contrarian Capital Management
• Kartik Mehta, Executive MD & Director of Research at Northcoast Research
• Justin Dopierala, Founder & President at DOMO Capital Management
• Peter Sakon, Senior Analyst at CreditSights
• Matthew Swope, Managing Director at Robert W. Baird & Co