XBP 글로벌(XBP) 2026년 2분기 실적 발표 콘퍼런스 콜: 사상 최고 마진 및 수주 호조

핵심 요약

• 2026년 2분기 매출은 1억 9,130만 달러로, 예상된 기존 고객 이탈 및 물량 감소가 반영되며 프로포마(pro forma) 기준 전년 동기 대비 14% 감소했습니다.
• 조정 매출총이익률은 전년 동기 대비 290bp, 전분기 대비 140bp 상승한 24.9%로 사상 최고치를 기록했습니다. 정상화 EBITDA는 전년 동기 대비 8.4%, 전분기 대비 40.6% 증가한 2,190만 달러를 기록했습니다.
• 총 계약 가치(TCV) 수주는 전년 동기 대비 51.6% 증가한 1억 2,130만 달러를 기록했습니다. 신규 연간 계약 가치(ACV) 수주는 57% 증가한 3,600만 달러를 기록했으며, 6월 30일 기준 파이프라인은 17.2% 증가한 25억 달러에 달했습니다.
• XBP 글로벌은 연간 운영 효율화 목표를 기존 5,500만~6,000만 달러에서 6,500만~7,500만 달러로 상향 조정했으며, 2026년 당해 연도 이익은 약 3,500만 달러에 달할 것으로 예상됩니다.
• 경영진은 마진 확대와 판관비 절감에 힘입어 2026년 하반기에 매출 반등을 이루고, 하반기 및 2027년까지 정상화 EBITDA 성장이 지속될 것으로 예상하고 있습니다.
• 회사는 앞서 발표한 전략적 대안 검토 절차를 위해 금융 자문사를 선정했습니다.

주요 재무 데이터

사업 및 운영 실적

응용 워크플로 자동화(Applied Workflow Automation) 부문 매출은 전년 동기 대비 16.7% 감소한 1억 6,680만 달러를 기록했습니다. 경영진은 매출 감소의 원인으로 물량 감소, 일회성 프로젝트 종료, 예상된 계약 종료를 꼽았습니다. 해당 부문의 조정 매출총이익률은 120bp 상승한 19.2%를 기록했습니다.

테크놀로지(Technology) 부문 매출은 일회성 프로젝트 활동 증가에 힘입어 9.8% 증가한 2,450만 달러를 기록했습니다. 조정 매출총이익률은 전년 동기 대비 690bp 확대된 64.2%를 기록했습니다.

경영진은 4분기 연속 마진 확대가 고마진 및 자동화 중심 사업으로의 전환, 자동화 도구의 활용 확대, 우호적인 2분기 매출 믹스를 반영한 결과라고 설명했습니다. XBP 글로벌은 헬스케어, 공공 부문, 금융(BFSI) 분야의 규제 대상 워크플로를 위해 결정론적 규칙 엔진, AI 모델, 인간 감시(human oversight)를 결합하고 있습니다.

고객들이 데이터 주권 제어 및 인간 개입(human-in-the-loop) 감시 기능을 갖춘 안전한 온프레미스 자동화를 모색함에 따라 헬스케어 및 공공 헬스케어 분야의 수요가 강화되었습니다. 회사는 또한 고객사의 프라이빗 클라우드 내 정비 수명주기 기록을 위한 에이전틱 AI(agentic AI) 인프라가 포함된 항공사 계약을 강조했습니다.

직원당 매출은 전분기 82,000달러에서 약 89,000달러로 증가했습니다. 경영진은 2026년 말까지 약 100,000달러 달성을 지속적으로 목표로 하고 있습니다.

경영진 가이던스

XBP 글로벌은 인건비 및 제3자 벤더 비용 절감을 포함하여 연간 운영 효율화 목표를 6,500만~7,500만 달러로 인상했습니다. 경영진은 2026년 중 약 3,500만 달러의 당해 연도 이익을 예상하고 있습니다.

회사는 2025년 말 대비 2026년 말까지 약 20%의 인력 감축을 지속적으로 전망하고 있습니다.

경영진은 2026년 하반기에 매출이 변곡점에 도달할 것으로 예상하고 있습니다. 지속적인 매출총이익률 확대 및 판관비 절감과 더불어, 회사는 2026년 하반기와 2027년까지 정상화 EBITDA가 증가할 것으로 기대하고 있습니다.

리스크 및 주시 영역

이전 구조조정과 관련된 기존 계약 이탈 및 물량 감소로 인해 매출은 전년 동기 대비 및 전분기 대비 모두 낮은 수준을 유지했습니다.

경영진은 주로 지정학적 불확실성으로 인해 공공 부문 계약의 시점이 여전히 변동성이 크다고 밝혔습니다. 테크놀로지 부문의 성장은 일회성 프로젝트의 수혜도 입었으며, 이는 기간별 비교 가능성에 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다.

실적 발표 전화회의(Earnings Call) 전문

전체 실적 발표 컨퍼런스 콜 녹취록

경영진 발표

Operator

Thank you. Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the XBT Global Second Quarter of 2026 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After this speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. At the question and answer session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message if your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again.

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded online. To hand the conference over to your first speaker today, David Shamins, Head of Investor Relations.

Unknown Speaker

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to XBP Global's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me are Chief Executive Officer Andrey Yonovich and Chief Financial Officer Dan Abramovich. Before we begin, please note that today's remarks may contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our future performance, outlook, and strategy. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. For a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our proxy statement and other filings with the SEC, copies of which are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.xppglobal.com. During this call, we will also reference certain pro forma and non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release and the appendix to our investor presentation, which are available on our investor relations website.

Andrej Jonovic

With that, I'll turn the call over to Andre. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. When we spoke last quarter, I highlighted our deliberate evolution, converting our legacy workflow platforms into high-margin, agentic AI pipelines, executing our self-disruption, and making targeted go-to-market investments. Today, I'm pleased to report that our second quarter performance represents a clear step up in profitability and operational momentum, with normalized EBITDA of 21.9 million and adjusted gross margin of 24.9%, our highest level to date. Our profitability trajectory and our pipeline quality give us reason for optimism. At XGP, we orchestrate essential mission-critical workflows in heavily regulated end markets, such as healthcare, public sector, and BFSI, where processing, precision, regulatory compliance, and auditability are non-negotiable. Our client base is rapidly moving past simple AI experimentation and aggressive ROI promises the clients naturally discount.

Clients want production-grade partners who deliver real-world execution. Rather than falling into the common software trap or abandoning our operational DNA, we anchor our strategy in deep domain expertise. We leverage adaptive process orchestration in combining deterministic rules engines with intelligent AI models to guarantee precision and compliance in high consequence environments. When our AI pipeline encounters a complex exception, it doesn't fail. It routes the transaction to our subject matter experts. In mature deployments, this is the approximately 50 percent of edge cases, which our specialists adjudicate, resolve, and feed that judgment back into the model to continuously retrain it. We aren't replacing our people. We are elevating them into high-value adjudicators.

By converting manual volume-heavy workflows into high margin intelligent AI pipelines under this model, we are building a more durable, repeatable, and profitable growth engine. Underpinning this operational shift is our ability to capture breakthroughs in the broader AI ecosystem. The era of open weight models is upon us. With multiple enterprise-grade open weight models launching recently, we're Our X-Train protocols allow us to rapidly integrate these models into our deployed agentic pipelines. This delivers significantly higher value to our clients while guaranteeing that data remains strictly within the enterprise boundary and compliant with advanced directives like the EU AI Act. Now, let's turn to slide four of our investor deck, where you can see how this operational transformation is translating into tangible financial results. We're raising our targeted annualized operational efficiency range to 65 to 75 million, up from 55 to 60 million, as a result of identifying additional opportunities for efficiencies throughout the organization.

We have an expected 2026 in-year benefit of approximately $35 million. This transformation is correlated with our financial results this quarter. ADJUSTED GROSS MARGIN EXPANDED FOR THE FOURTH CONSECUTY QUARTER TO 24.9%, MARKING OUR HIGHEST LEVEL TO DATE. Normalized EBITDA stepped up to 21.9 million, and consequently the normalized EBITDA margin increased to 11.5%. The improvement reflects both a favorable revenue mix in the quarter and our AI-first automation efforts delivering structural margin expansion. The second part is what should compound over time. Skipping ahead to slide 7, I'd like to acknowledge that revenue remains down year-over-year and sequentially and that is expected.

It reflects the legacy contract exits and volume reductions largely tied to last year's restructuring. Our forward-looking metrics are improving across multiple parameters, especially sales. During the second quarter, we achieved a meaningful growth in bookings and pipeline quality. We closed $121.3 million in total contract value, representing a 51.6% increase year-over-year and up 12.2% sequentially. OUR NEW ACV BOOKINGS REACHED 36 MILLION, UP 57% YEAR-OVER-YEAR AND 32.1% SEQUENTIALLY. OUR TOTAL PIPELINE STANDS AT 2.5 BILLION AS OF JUNE 30TH, A 17.2% INCREASE YEAR-OVER-YEAR. With respect to our pipeline, we're seeing significant AI interest in the healthcare and public sector practice groups, which centers around our healthcare payer and provider solutions.

Demand from healthcare and public sector healthcare has been strengthening as clients are actively seeking secure, on-premise hyperautomation with strict data sovereignty guardrails and human-in-the-loop oversight. Despite strengthening public sector healthcare demand, the timing of overall public sector contracts is volatile, primarily as a result of geopolitical uncertainty. To highlight how AI interest translates to enterprise deals, we recently won a deal that will deploy a Gentic AI infrastructure to manage the maintenance lifecycle for global airline fleet. Every maintenance item will be vectorized and stored in a private vector database inside the client's private cloud. Our agentic solution will manage data access, allowing seamless reproduction of records when aircraft go off-lease or are sold. This is an example of turning data into a private, secure cloud with strict enterprise controls, which can be replicated across the airline industry. In short, we feel that our current trajectory strategy is working.

We're building a high-quality, repeatable growth engine and applying automation into the way we operate, which should positively reflect in our results in the coming quarters. I WILL NOW TURN THE CALL OVER TO DAN, OUR CFO.

Unknown Speaker

Thank you, Andre, and good afternoon, everyone. As in previous quarters, my comments will primarily focus on pro forma results to evaluate our operational performance on a comparable apples-to-apples basis. Starting with slide 9, total revenue for the quarter was $191.3 million, down 14% year-over-year on a pro forma basis. This decline remains consistent with expected client exits and volume reductions associated with legacy contract restructuring. On a consolidated basis, our reported gross margin was 21.5%, which was up 80 basis points from a year ago. We introduced a new metric this quarter, adjusted gross margin, which normalizes for one-time charges such as severance and non-recurring restructuring related costs, which can materially impact our cost of revenue. We believe that using adjusted gross margin provides a clean apples-to-apples comparison of our profitability across the reported periods.

In Q2, our adjusted gross margin expanded to 24.9%, up 290 basis points from a year ago, and 140 basis points from the first quarter, reflecting our highest gross margin to date. Normalized EBITDA reached $21.9 million, reflecting an 8.4% increase year-over-year and 40.6% increase sequentially, with normalized EBITDA margins expanding to 11.5%. Turning to our segment breakdown on slide 10. In the applied workflow automation segment, revenue was 166.8 million, down 16.7 percent year-over-year, driven by lower volumes and completion of certain one-time projects along with expected exits. Adjusted gross margin for this segment reached 19.2%, up 120 basis points year-over-year. Our technology segment revenue was $24.5 million, an increase of 9.8% year-over-year, driven primarily by higher one-time projects in the quarter. Our adjusted gross margin expanded to 64.2%, growth of 690 basis points year-over-year.

Turning to the next slide, where we illustrate our recent quarterly performance. Our margins have increased for four consecutive quarters, and this is driven by our shift to higher margin, higher automation business, combined with expanded utilization of automation tools, along with some favorable mix in the quarter. Our normalized EBITDA growth this quarter is a validation of this shift, showing a material step up from Q1, both in terms of dollar amount and as a percent of revenue. We expect an inflection in our revenue in the second half of the year. Combined with continued expansion of our gross margins along with SG&A savings, this positions us to further grow normalized EBITDA into the second half of 2026 and into 2027. Moving to slide 12, we continue to project an approximate 20% workforce reduction by the end of the year relative to the year-end 2025, and our updated efficiency target currently stands at $65 million to $75 million in annualized run rate efficiencies. The increase versus last quarter was primarily driven by non-payroll initiatives, including third-party vendor savings.

I will now hand the call back to Andre for closing remarks. Thanks, Dan.

Andrej Jonovic

Turning to slide 13, I want to emphasize the long-term impact of our AI operating model on labor productivity. As I talked about it last quarter, legacy business process services operated under a headcount dependent framework. TODAY, XDP GLOBAL IS LEADING THE PEER GROUP IN LABOR EFFICIENCY. DRIVEN BY OUR AI FIRST TRANSFORMATION, OUR REVENUE PER EMPLOYEE GREW TO APPROXIMATELY 89,000, UP FROM 82,000 LAST QUARTER. We continue to project that our revenue per employee will approach $100,000 by year end, which meaningfully exceeds our peer group average of roughly $60,000 per employee, proving that our transition to high margin automated execution is taking firm hold. On slide 14, one thing I really want to emphasize is a low client concentration. Our top 10 clients represent only 34% of our revenues.

Additionally, we're diversified across client verticals, which is a natural hedge for us. And our average client tenure among the top 25 clients is around 15 years. Skipping ahead to slides 15 and 16, as I mentioned earlier, we've seen positive momentum in our bookings and the overall pipeline health. new and total bookings continue to tick higher and the breadth of our opportunities remains diversified across industries. In closing, our profitability trajectory has inflected positively, driven by expanded use of AI and automation tools, which have led to our highest adjusted gross margins to date. Our commercial momentum is solidifying, backed by a stable $2.5 billion pipeline and strengthening in the late-stage pipeline. Our focus remains firmly on value over volume, building upon relationships with our clients to deliver the outcomes they need while ensuring we deliver the expected margin profile to our shareholders. Finally, with respect to our strategic alternatives process, which we announced last quarter, we have engaged a financial advisor.

We will provide updates on this as appropriate. I'd like to thank our dedicated team for their continued efforts, and with that, I'll turn it over to the operator to open up Q&A. Operator?.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you have a question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And I'm showing no questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect.

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[Call has ended.]