DXC Technology tumbles as investors fret over latest restructuring plan  Yahoo Finance
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America’s military-industrial complex took center stage at AI Expo for National Competitiveness, where a fire-breathing panel set the tone
On 7 and 8 May in Washington DC, the city’s biggest convention hall welcomed America’s military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that’s not how they would describe it.
It was the inaugural “AI Expo for National Competitiveness”, hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the “techno-economic” thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference’s lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that’s best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump’s family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces.
The conference hall was also filled with booths representing the US military and dozens of its contractors, ranging from Booz Allen Hamilton to a random company that was described to me as Uber for airplane software.
At industry conferences like these, powerful people tend to be more unfiltered – they assume they’re in a safe space, among friends and peers. I was curious, what would they say about the AI-powered violence in Gaza, or what they think is the future of war?
Attendees were told the conference highlight would be a series of panels in a large room toward the back of the hall. In reality, that room hosted just one of note. Featuring Schmidt and the Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, the fire-breathing panel would set the tone for the rest of the conference. More specifically, it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death. The vast majority of people there fell into group one.
I’ve written about relationships between tech companies and the military before, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything I saw or heard at this conference. But when it ended, and I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been completely sucked out of my body.
Swarms of people migrated across the hall to see the main panel, where Karp and Schmidt spoke alongside the CIA deputy director, David Cohen, and Mark Milley, who retired in September as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, where he advised Joe Biden and other top officials on war matters. When Schmidt tried to introduce himself, his microphone didn’t work, so Cohen lent him his own. “It’s always great when the CIA helps you out,” Schmidt joked. This was about as light as things got for the next 90 minutes.
As the moderator asked general questions about the panelists’ views on the future of war, Schmidt and Cohen answered cautiously. But Karp, who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock.
He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.” Members of the audience laughed when he mocked fresh graduates of Columbia University, which had some of the earliest encampment protests in the country. He said they’d have a hard time on the job market and described their views as a “pagan religion infecting our universities” and “an infection inside of our society”. (He’s made these comments before.)
“The peace activists are war activists,” Karp insisted. “We are the peace activists.”
A huge aspect of war in a democracy, Karp went on to argue, is leaders successfully selling that war domestically. “If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any armies in the west ever,” Karp said.
Earlier in the panel, Milley had said that modern war involved conflict in “dense urban areas with high levels of collateral damage”, clearly alluding to the war in Gaza, but too afraid to say it. But every time Karp spoke, Milley became more bombastic. By the panel’s end, he was describing Americans who oppose the war in Gaza as “supporting a terrorist organization”.
“Before we get self-righteous,” Milley said, in the second world war, “we, the US, killed 12,000 innocent French civilians. We destroyed 69 Japanese cities. We slaughtered people in massive numbers – men, women and children.”
Meanwhile, Schmidt mainly talked about the importance of drones and automation in war. (He is quietly trying to start his own war drone company.) For his part, Cohen urged the room to see the 7 October attack as a “big warning” about tech in military settings. Although Israel had invested “very heavily” in defense and surveillance technology, it had failed to stop the attack, Cohen noted. “We do need to have a little bit of humility.”
This didn’t seem to be a common view. The prevailing attitude of the conference was when systems fail, it just means you need newer technology, and more of it.
I walked out of the panel in a quiet daze. Milley’s comments about the second world war echoed in my head. It was, frankly, jarring to hear a recent top US official defend Israel’s mass killing of Gazan civilians by invoking wartime massacres that not only preceded the Geneva Conventions, but helped justify their creation.
All around me, I overheard upbeat conversation between hundreds of people who had just heard the same things I had – easygoing comments about lunch, travel or the next panel. I felt like we were living in totally different realities.
After pacing around for 10 minutes trying to enter a social headspace, I plugged my phone into an outlet and said hi to the person next to me, a man who appeared to be in his late 50s. I asked what he thought about the panel. Smiling meekly, he said it was “interesting” to hear Milley describe the second world war that way.
“Have you seen Oppenheimer?” he asked.
No, I said, but I’d read The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
I thought he was going to talk about the hubris of people who build weapons of war. Instead, he told me he works in nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos laboratory. Reaching into his backpack, he handed me a few Los Alamos pens and stickers.
After chatting for a few minutes – he wouldn’t get into much detail about his work, but did show off pictures of his expensive-looking rental car – he started packing up his things. “I just thought of something,” he said abruptly, laughing. “I am the new Oppenheimer!”
I managed to force a laugh as he started back to the Los Alamos booth.
Throughout the conference, I wandered to different booths. I ended up running into two people I knew from college. At the NSA booth, a young woman told me that the agency is great for “work-life balance”. I also stopped by Palantir’s career booth, where an employee, Elizabeth Watts, told me that the kind of person who works for Palantir is someone who wouldn’t be scared away by Karp’s panel. “People who are interested in national security, who understand there aren’t black and white solutions,” she said. “People who want to defend western democracies.”
In Palantir’s cavernous main booth, I tried on a VR headset to test Palantir’s new augmented reality tool for soldiers. I was told I’d be able to direct a truck or drone while continuing to see the world around me. But when I put on the headset, my field of vision became shaky and out of focus. It reminded me of goggles they made us wear during Dare anti-drug programs in middle school, meant to simulate being drunk.
Many people had been trying on the headset that day, a Palantir employee explained to me. In order for you to see things clearly, the headset has to fit your head and eyes perfectly. He didn’t offer to adjust the headset, so my hi-tech soldier vision remained out of focus.
On the evening on the first day, Palantir had a social event with free drinks. The only options were two IPAs, and I had one called “the Corruption”. It was, bar none, the worst beverage I’ve had in my entire life. I ended up talking to a Canadian man named Sata, who appeared to be in his mid-20s. He said he was an investor in Palantir, so I asked how he had gotten the money.
“I got in a car accident,” he said. After getting a small payout, he invested. So far, he said, he had made money from the investment, but lost money from this trip.
To my knowledge, the only other journalist covering the conference was my friend Jack Poulson, who said I should join him at a panel discussion about ethics and human rights. It was being held as far away from the rest of the conference as it could get while remaining physically inside the building. You had to exit the main exhibit hall, walk down two extremely long hallways, and enter a door at the very end to find it.
By the time I arrived, they were ending the panel and starting the Q&A. Jack stood up at the first opportunity. He talked about the “provocative remarks” made throughout the conference about “exporting AI into places like Gaza”. Voice shaking, he mentioned Karp “unabashedly supporting” the ongoing killings in Gaza, and said Karp’s comments about “winning the debate” were clearly a euphemism for crushing dissent. A couple of audience members laughed quietly as Jack asked: could the panel respond to any of this?
The moderator decided to let everybody else ask their questions and let the panelists choose which to answer. Unsurprisingly, no one directly answered Jack’s question.
Later, as I entered the main conference hall, I found myself right behind a group of kids with tiny backpacks. They appeared to be in first or second grade. I asked a teacher, a blond woman with glasses, if there was an exhibit for kids. She said no, but one of them had a dad working at the event.
A slim man with dark hair approached the kids. He had a Special Competitive Studies Project pin on his suit. Beaming, he took a picture with them. About 30 minutes later, I found him taking the kids on a tour. He was squatting down to their height and pointing at something in a booth for a military vendor. I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
I also went to a panel in Palantir’s booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two “privacy and civil liberties engineers” – a young man and woman who spoke exclusively in monotone. They also used countless euphemisms for bombing and death. The woman described how Palantir’s Gaia map tool lets users “nominate targets of interest” for “the target nomination process”. She meant it helps people choose which places get bombed.
After she clicked a few options on an interactive map, a targeted landmass lit up with bright blue blobs. These blobs, she said, were civilian areas like hospitals and schools. The civilian locations could also be described in text, she said, but it can take a long time to read. So, Gaia uses a large language model (something like ChatGPT) to sift through this information and simplify it. Essentially, people choosing bomb targets get a dumbed-down version of information about where children sleep and families get medical treatment.
“Let’s say you’re operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza,” I asked the engineers afterward. “Does Palantir prevent you from ‘nominating a target’ in a civilian location?”
Short answer, no. “The end user makes the decision,” the woman said.
Only one booth, a small, immersive exhibit with tall gray walls, seemed concerned about the ordinary people affected by war. It was run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
A door-like opening brought me into an emergency shelter for a young family caught in a conflict zone. There was a small couch with an open sleeping bag on top, and children’s toys in the corner. A yellow print-out warned the inhabitants to “STAY IN DESIGNATED SAFE ZONES”. A radio on a kitchen table seemed to be playing the news, but the connection was spotty.
The exhibit was small, but in a conference largely celebrating the military industrial complex, it stuck out. It felt like a plea for someone, anyone, to consider the victims of war.
Outside, I talked to an ICRC employee, Thomas Glass. He was attentive and engaged, but he seemed tired. He said that he had just spent several weeks in southern Gaza setting up a field hospital and supporting communal kitchens.
I asked how people at the conference had been responding to his exhibit. Glass said that most people he met had been open-minded, but some asked why the ICRC was at the conference at all. They weren’t aggressive about it, he said. They just genuinely did not understand.

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DXC earnings call for the period ending March 31, 2024.
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DXC Technology (DXC -2.33%)
Q4 2024 Earnings Call
May 16, 2024, 5:00 p.m. ET
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the DXC Technology Q4 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to John Sweeney, vice president, investor relations.
You may begin.
John Sweeney — Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. I’m pleased that you’re joining us for the DXC Technology’s fourth quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. Our speakers on the call today will be Raul Fernandez, president and CEO; and Rob Del Bene, our EVP and CFO. The call is being webcast at DXC Investor Relations website, and the webcast includes slides that will accompany this discussion today.
Today’s presentation includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information to our investors. In accordance with SEC rules, we provide a reconciliation of these measures to their respective and most directly comparable GAAP measures. These reconciliations can be found in the tables included in today’s earnings release and in the webcast slides. Certain comments we make on the call will be forward-looking.

These statements are subject to known risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed on the call. A discussion of these risks and uncertainties is included in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings. I’d now like to remind our listeners that DXC Technology assumes no obligation to update the information presented on the call, except as required by law. And with that, I’d like to introduce DXC’s president and CEO, Raul Fernandez.
Raul?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. I will give a brief introduction, review our financial performance, update you on the progress we are making with our offerings, then Rob will take us through the fourth quarter financial results and discuss our fiscal year ’25 guidance. I will also make some final remarks before opening the call up for questions. In Q4 of fiscal year ’24, total revenue declined 5% on a constant currency basis, above our expectation; adjusted EBIT margin of 8.4%, down 50 basis points year over year.
Non-GAAP EPS of $0.97 was also above our guidance range. Free cash flow equaled $155 million for a total of $756 million for the full year. This is the third consecutive year that DXC has achieved free cash flow of more than $700 million. While we met or beat expectations in Q4, we know we can operate at a higher level and are not satisfied with the current state.
In my five-month tenure, I have met with more than three dozen customers globally, along with thousands of our employees in small and large settings, in-person and virtual. I’ve engaged with dozens of investors and have successfully recruited very strong, experienced executives to join our team. I believe we have a global team that is reenergized to make the company better and more effective. I’ve also gotten a deeper understanding of all of our business units, so let me quickly recap a few thoughts, starting with Insurance.
DXC is the largest provider of insurance software and insurance business process services globally from origination to claims processing. We are the category leader providing software and services in three out of four insurance segments: life and wealth, global specialty, and reinsurance. As an example, our technology and services process one in five property and casualty transactions worldwide. Our global customer base includes 21 of the top 25 global insurance carriers.
In short, we are a key strategic technology partner, supporting global insurance companies with their customers, their agents, and their employees. The strong recurring and reoccurring revenue, coupled with 90-plus percent customer retention and an average customer tenure of 18 years, makes this a very interesting business unit for me to focus on. As Rob will comment, the insurance software and services business, representing approximately three-fourths of the total insurance revenue, grew at a very respectable 4.5% in the quarter. It’s an incredibly strong foundation to build on and continue to grow and also to rotate our revenue mix more toward SaaS and reoccurring services.
So, we are actively working on a focused plan to further accelerate the growth of this business unit and also highlight the value of its leadership role in the industry and its mix of software and reoccurring services. Continuing with GBS, we’re bringing together the best capabilities of our Analytics and Engineering and Applications business, now called Consulting and Engineering Services, with industry veteran Howard Boville as our general manager. Our Consulting and Engineering Services business has a rich and extensive history of driving transformative change for some of the world’s biggest brands. In financial services, we provide core banking solutions to numerous banks globally.
Within automotive and manufacturing, we are deeply involved in their digital transformation. We enable major auto brands to operate their research and development efforts for autonomous driving on our platform, enabling the ingestion and analysis of large data sets. We have built and run in-car infotainment systems across most of the luxury brands. While our technology solutions and operations are critical for our customers, our execution is below average, and we are focused on improving the profitability of our Consulting and Engineering Services business unit.
Moving on to security. A key thing to note about our security business is that it is an enabler of many of our other services. Customers in our ITO and Modern Workplace rely on us to provide services in a secure, resilient way. Our security teams embed themselves in those offerings to do that in cooperation with our clients.
We have over 3,000 security professionals operating across eight global security operations centers where we provide around-the-clock coverage for our customers. As cyber threats increase by the day, not a week goes by that our teams are not called in to assist companies dealing with a security incident. The pace and complexity of these attacks are growing as the regulatory requirements for companies dealing with them. Our focus in the security business is to continue to leverage our expertise to enhance our GBS and GIS offerings while also focusing on accelerating growth of our stand-alone services.
With the recent addition of several industry veterans, we expect to enable that growth. Moving on to Cloud and ITO. For our Cloud and ITO offering, we provide business and mission-critical services for some of the world’s most essential workloads. As I have spent time in the business, I meet more and more customers who reiterate how critical our work is.
Many of the world’s largest airlines, energy companies, financial institutions, along with government organizations, count on DXC for the systems at the heart of their business. Our teams around the globe work 24/7 to keep their operations running seamlessly and securely. This is a core competency of the company. We operate across the entire technology domain from legacy core mainframes all the way through the most cutting-edge serverless cloud environments on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
As our customers modernize their estates, moving on to more cloud and modern architecture, often with the help of our GBS business unit, we are well positioned to help them securely operate across multiple environments. This is the foundation we are building on as we pivot our focus of this business to high-quality, profitable, cash-generating service revenue and away from the heavy hardware, software, and data center outsourcing style deals of the past, which drove higher revenue at the expense of profit. Continuing with Modern Workplace. We support over 7 million devices and employees all day every day.
The employee experience is more mission-critical than ever. Today, we operate services with a combination of human and nonhuman workforce globally and at scale. Driven by AI, we believe we will reach a point soon where at least 75% of our workforce capacity is nonhuman. We are building and demonstrating expertise in how to manage the nonhuman workforce at this scale.
In dialogue across our customer base, the message is clear, embracing AI technology is a central part of their digital strategy going forward, and we are well-positioned to lead this. As I mentioned before, and it’s even more clear to me now, there were missed opportunities in the past to rationalize systems, processes, legal entities, go-to-market, and delivery functions. Therefore, to strengthen our market position, we are undertaking a restructuring initiative aimed at simplifying and enhancing our operational efficiency. We will simplify our processes, increase visibility to eliminate redundancies, reduce costs, improve resource management, and ultimately drive a more streamlined, agile, and competitive organization.
One specific example of this enterprise initiative is consolidating our five acquired enterprise business systems and optimizing our back-end office functions. We anticipate not only a material reduction in our operating costs but also improvements in our service delivery and responsiveness to our customers. We are also aligning our organizational structure to support streamlined operations with improved and faster decision-making. This realignment will make us more competitive.
Now, Rob will walk you through the financials.
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Raul, and good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. Today, I’ll review our fourth quarter financial results and then provide you with our outlook for the full year and for the first quarter of fiscal ’25. Total organic revenue growth declined 4.9% year to year, ahead of our fourth-quarter guidance. GBS revenue was nearly flat, while GIS top line declined 9.3%.
Adjusted EBIT margin was 8.4%, above the top end of our guidance, representing an 80-basis-point improvement sequentially, driven by our cost reduction initiatives. Margin was down 50 basis points year to year, primarily driven by lower noncash pension income and the impact of gains from asset sales booked in the fourth quarter of fiscal ’23. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.97, down $0.05 from last year’s fourth quarter. The year-to-year change was driven by a negative $0.13 adjusted EBIT impact, higher taxes of $0.08, and a noncontrolling interest impact of $0.03.
These reductions were partially offset by a $0.19 benefit from our share repurchase program. Free cash flow, defined as operating cash flow less capex, for the quarter equaled $155 million compared to our expectation of about $200 million. The shortfall was due to a combination of a smaller benefit from working capital and higher-than-anticipated cash tax levels. For the year, our free cash flow totaled $756 million, which was the third straight year above $700 million, demonstrating consistency of cash generation performance.
And now I’ll turn to our fourth-quarter key financial metrics. Gross margin equaled 23.6%, flat year to year as we continued to drive workforce optimization and reduce our real estate footprint in the face of declining revenue. SG&A was 8.7% of revenue, down 70 basis points year to year, largely driven by ongoing spending management and a $10 million nonrecurring insurance reimbursement. Depreciation and amortization was flat year to year as a percent of revenue, down $17 million, reflecting continued capital discipline.
Other income for the quarter was $39 million, a year-to-year reduction of $48 million, which is a 120-basis-point impact to EBIT margin, driven by lower pension income of $26 million and lower gains on asset sales of $19 million. Now, turning to our segment results. For GBS, organic revenue performance was nearly flat year to year, with the deceleration largely driven by the ongoing challenging market environment for Analytics and Engineering and Applications. GBS profit margin equaled 13.3%, down 40 basis points year to year but up 140 basis points sequentially, primarily driven by a more favorable mix of higher-margin services revenue.
For GIS, organic revenue declined 9.3%, largely consistent with our performance throughout the year. We have taken a very disciplined financial approach with new deals and renewals, and this has been reflected in our bookings and revenue performance of both Cloud and ITO and Modern Workplace. GIS margins declined 40 basis points year to year, with operational improvements more than offset by a lower level of pension income. Let me now provide some detail on our individual offerings, first in GBS.
Both Analytics and Engineering and Applications organic revenue declined 1% year to year as performance continues to be impacted by the current challenging market environment. While the revenue declined, the book-to-bill ratios for these two businesses were 1.0 or better, with strong renewal activity that does not provide incremental short-term revenue but provides longer-term revenue stability. Insurance organic revenue increased 1% year to year. Embedded in this performance is our insurance software and services business, which represents approximately three-quarters of the total, that continued its strong momentum, up 4.5% in the quarter.
Normalizing for a significant large perpetual license sale in the fourth quarter of last year, the insurance software and services business grew approximately 9% year to year. The insurance book-to-bill was 0.8x. As a reminder, bookings in this business can vary significantly quarter to quarter based on the timing of large renewals. For example, last quarter, we had two significant renewals, and our book-to-bill was 1.58.
Now, moving to our GIS segment. Security declined 9% year over year on an organic basis with a book-to-bill ratio of 0.96. Cloud infrastructure and IT outsourcing organic revenue declined 7%, an improvement from double-digit declines we saw in the prior three quarters due to a significant resale transaction delivered in the quarter. The book-to-bill was 0.75x, a result of the ongoing challenging ITO market and our selective approach to new deals.
Modern Workplace organic revenue declined year to year in the mid-teens impacted by resale revenue, which was down 30%. Book-to-bill performance this quarter was a strong 1.29x due to several large renewals. Now, turning to our financial foundation. We sequentially reduced our total debt levels by $450 million, and for the full year, our total debt levels have been reduced by $300 million.
Net interest expense for the quarter was $20 million, up $3 million year to year, reflecting the higher interest rate environment on our short-term borrowings. Restructuring and TSI expense was $21 million, and for the full year, it was $118 million, about half of the level spent in fiscal ’23. Operating lease payments of $84 million were down $9 million year to year due to the management of our real estate footprint. The fourth quarter capital expenditures were $125 million and lease originations were $21 million.
Our finance lease and asset financing payments continue to trend down, and as a percentage of revenue, capital expenditures and lease originations declined to 4.3%, down more than one point year over year, representing a multiyear low. Turning to capital deployment. As I mentioned, in the fourth quarter, we deployed approximately $450 million of cash to reduce our debt levels. We accomplished this by retiring our outstanding balance of commercial paper and continuing to decrease our lease portfolio.
We returned $138 million of capital to shareholders, repurchasing 6.2 million shares at a weighted average price per share of $22.30. For the full year, we repurchased over 18% of our shares outstanding at a total cost of $883 million. Since the beginning of the fiscal year ’22, we have reduced our share count by more than 30%. As we enter a new fiscal year, I would like to provide clarity on our updated financial priorities.
Our plan is to deploy our capital to accomplish two things. First, given our recent revenue performance, we will execute a restructuring program to address excess capacity, largely concentrated in GIS, and rightsize our infrastructure throughout the company to improve profitability. The second priority is to further reduce debt levels, including significantly minimizing finance lease originations. Now, turning to our full year ’25 guidance.
We expect our total organic revenue to decline 4% to 6%. In GBS, we expect our full-year outlook to be slightly positive, with the first half performance in line with our fourth quarter of fiscal ’24 and with a return to growth in the second half of the year. In GIS, given last year’s bookings and the resulting impact to opening backlog, combined with continued expected lower resale revenue and deal selectivity in fiscal ’25, we anticipate full-year organic revenue to decline in the low double-digit range. Our guidance for adjusted EBIT margin is 6% to 7%.
This guidance primarily reflects the impact from lower year-to-year revenue and investments we’re making in the business to drive productivity improvements. Additionally, we will be executing on the previously mentioned restructuring action to improve margins on a sustainable basis going forward, with the impact of the savings largely materializing in late fiscal ’25 and into fiscal ’26. As I’ve mentioned on previous calls, we continue to rationalize our real estate portfolio. These potential sales will provide a cash inflow outside of free cash flow but will have a negative impact on our adjusted EBIT margin.
The potential loss on these sales is not included in the guidance as the market remains difficult and the timing is uncertain. And with this expected adjusted EBIT margin levels, our full-year non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance is $2.50 to $3 with an assumed non-GAAP effective tax rate of 30%. Our free cash flow guidance for fiscal ’25 is about $400 million. There are two main drivers contributing to the lower year-over-year level, and without these changes, free cash flow would be at levels consistent with fiscal ’24 performance.
As I previously mentioned, we will be reducing our debt levels in fiscal ’25, and a component of our debt reduction strategy is significantly reducing finance lease originations, which were $185 million in fiscal ’24. This change in funding approach will reduce our overall debt levels but will increase our capital expenditures, impacting free cash flow. Also impacting free cash flow will be spending related to the increased level of restructuring, which will be an increase of approximately $250 million year to year. Our expectation is that the restructuring savings will put us on a sustainable path of free cash flow generation above fiscal ’24 levels in fiscal ’26.
As a reminder, our Q1 free cash flow is seasonally lowest primarily due to the timing of bonus payouts and certain annual supplier payments. Consistent with prior years, cash flow generation will be strongest in the second half of the year. And now, our first quarter outlook. In GBS, we anticipate that revenue performance in A&E and Applications will continue to reflect the current challenging market environment.
And in GIS, services revenue will decline in the mid- to high single-digit range, with resale taking the GIS decline to double digits. With these factors, we expect total company organic revenue to decline 7% to 8%. We anticipate adjusted EBIT margins in the range of 5.5% to 6%, a function of the lower revenue and first-quarter seasonality, which has consistently impacted our results in prior years. And finally, non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.55 to $0.60.
With that, let me turn the call back over to Raul for key takeaways.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Rob. There is quite a lot to do to operate at a higher level. That’s why I’m so happy with the additions to our executive team in the last 60 days. They are all industry veterans with proven track records.
We will define success by continuing to perform better every quarter while we transform as quickly as possible. Thank you for attending the call. Operator, we’re going to open it up for questions.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Bryan Keane — Deutsche Bank — Analyst
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Raul, maybe you could just help us understand how your restructuring might be different than many of the CEOs that came before you that had a lot of restructuring as well. It seems like every five years or so, a CEO comes in, looks at the business, and restructures it.
Just trying to get a sense of how maybe your plans might look different than what we’ve seen over the last few decades at CSC and now DXC.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. OK. Great question. Thank you.
I know that, as you’ve mentioned, in the short history of this public company, there have been previous restructurings. But as someone who just got here and have really spent a lot of time operationally looking at our systems, our processes, our entities, our distribution of head count, it’s clear to me that the previous restructurings did not set a real, clean, solid, fully integrated baseline for profitable growth. You can look at that in multiple ways: number of systems still in place that were acquired over time, never integrated, never deduped; number of business processes that got stacked on top of each other; number of legal entities. I think anyone that came in would look at the previous work, and again, I know the history is there so I’m not running away from it, but I can tell you that this is a real reset.
It is bottoms up. It is a strong foundation to go from and it is absolutely needed because otherwise, we just continue to carry a really not fully functional organization that can take advantage of the opportunities that we have.
Bryan Keane — Deutsche Bank — Analyst
Got it. And then just as a follow-up, any of the restructuring charges, are those through the P&L, so they’re in the margin targets that we’re looking at? Or are those outside those targets? And then secondly to that, just on GBS, a little bit of a recovery, I think you talked about in the second half of the year. What gives you confidence in that GBS recovery for positive organic growth in the second half? Thanks.
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Bryan, this is Rob Del Bene. Thanks for the question. First, on restructuring, restructuring is not included.
Consistent with the approach taken since the beginning of the company, restructuring is not included in the adjusted EBIT margin. It obviously is included in the free cash flow numbers. So, that’s the answer to your first question. On the GBS first half to second half dynamic, with a difficult marketplace, we do see the first half of the year performance similar to the back half of fiscal ’24.
We have some encouragement. Our pipelines have been improving, and our conversion rates are consistent. So, with that improved pipeline and conversion rates, we see us going from low single-digit negatives to low single-digit positives in the second half of the year.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
And it’s all built on, again, new leadership there, new life cycle management in terms of opportunities. So, pre-proposal, proposal, pitching smarter, better, faster, and also eliminating, frankly, some self-inflicted delivery issues that we have had and, in some cases, we’re still working our way out of. As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t one lever. This is a lot of little levers.
And I think one of the things that has given me additional encouragement that I’m looking at it correctly and the team is looking at it correctly is that, as we’ve brought on great new experienced executives from great companies that have been succeeding in the marketplace all over the world, they have confirmed that it’s a very opportunity-rich environment, meaning we have a lot of things that we can be doing better. And if we do those things better, again, not rocket science, operational excellence, and I’d say, in some cases, just getting to average, that will show up top line and bottom line and conversion and show up in gross margins, net margins, etc. So, I feel like we’ve got a way to go to get to a base and then from that base, we’re going to continue to grow off of it. But I think we’ve got the right people, the right structure, and now the right go-to-market model and incentives, and I’m encouraged.
Bryan Keane — Deutsche Bank — Analyst
Great. I’ll pass the line. Thanks.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang of JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Tien-Tsin Huang — JPMorgan Chase and Company — Analyst
Hi. Thanks so much for going through all this. I’m just curious on the bookings side, how that came in versus plan in a little bit more detail, and what we might expect as the fiscal year plays out here in terms of replenish either new logo or renewal.
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. So, Tien-Tsin, thanks. So, the bookings relative to the last forecast we gave 90 days ago were pretty consistent and actually a little better in GBS. And that was really, really due to renewals in A&E were strong and it’s the second quarter in a row they’ve been strong.
And in my remarks, I mentioned that those renewals, they don’t translate into revenue growth in the first half of the year, but they do provide a solid foundation for the second half. So, we did a little better than anticipated. We did as expected in GIS. And going into fiscal ’25, we expect a very similar picture where we have strong renewal activity in both GBS and GIS and then new content and, based on the pipeline, new content in GBS filtering in throughout and improving throughout the year in fiscal ’25.
Tien-Tsin Huang — JPMorgan Chase and Company — Analyst
Perfect. Thank you for that. And then maybe, Raul, just quickly, my quick follow-up, just with the additions to the management team. I know you’re bringing some people in from familiar places.
Are you done with some of the additions? Do you expect some other turnover or maybe new roles that should expand into the management team? Just curious what your thinking is there. Thank you.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. And look, you’ve seen some of the releases, right? So, we’ve obviously announced some publicly, and then there are others that we didn’t announce but they’ve joined the team across the organization. I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of great executives over my 25-plus years in technology. And in that journey, we’ve had the opportunity to work together, and many of the executives that have come here, we’ve had the opportunity to compete together, work together, and win together.
So, yes, we got a few more that are coming. But in terms of looking at the people that we need to execute, building on top of the team that’s here, the great team that’s here, and adding some great executives that are fit for the roles where we need an additional horsepower, I feel like I’ve gotten the team 90-plus percent in place.
Tien-Tsin Huang — JPMorgan Chase and Company — Analyst
OK. Good to know. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Bryan Bergin — TD Cowen — Analyst
Hey, guys, good afternoon. Thank you. First question just on free cash flow. So, understanding you have, I believe, the $250 million restructuring headwind that seems to be the biggest chunk in the year-over-year bridge, but can you talk about otherwise maybe the levers for free cash flow sustainability amid ongoing top line and potentially margin pressure? And can you also talk about maybe the annual outflows associated with capital lease payments going forward, too, after free cash flow?
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. So, in terms of free cash flow, we start from a base of strength three years in a row, over $700 million, $750 million in fiscal ’24. And we have that solid base moving into fiscal ’25. And as I mentioned, the two impacts to that number are the increase in restructuring of $250 million and then the curtailment or significantly curtailing new lease originations, which does shift the spend over to capex, impacting our free cash flow number in the year.
Now, we do have operating leverage with working capital. So, there is room for improvement in working capital. We’re going to be taking advantage of that in fiscal ’25 and beyond. And again, the purpose of the restructuring is to shore up EBIT moving forward, ’25 into fiscal ’26, and curtail that headwind that we faced for the last couple of years.
So, that’s the plan. In terms of cap lease payments, we’re in the low 200s, and that will continue to wind down. In ’26, it will go from a $200 million range to a $100 million range and then down from there.
John Sweeney — Vice President, Investor Relations
And just to foot-stomp this, the lease originations will go from $185 million in FY ’24 to zero in ’25.
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
So, a very small number.
John Sweeney — Vice President, Investor Relations
And that’s a $185 million reduction in the free cash flow.
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes. Thank you, John.
Bryan Bergin — TD Cowen — Analyst
OK. That’s very helpful. OK. And I guess a follow-up, just as we think about the top line, the ’25 guide, as we try to unpack some of the factors you considered here as it relates to kind of revenue retention and whether you’re also working to actively prune out any unfavorable basis of business contracts, any pieces of business you’re looking at and assessing that’s not strategic to the company? Anything that you’re working through kind of here to be mindful of as you build the outlook?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, especially in ITO and Modern Workplace where, historically, there’s been the packaging of less-than-optimal profitable reselling of products, reselling of software. That guidance or that direction changed when I got here, and we are going to have profitable contracts, profitable relationships. To the extent we don’t have them right now, as we get into renewals of contracts, we’re going to address that and then put them on the right footing. But the mandate is clear now that this isn’t growth, growth at all costs, growth at a loss, this is growth with real profitability and a real foundation.
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. And Bryan, just piggybacking on that, we’ve incorporated that selectivity into our guide on revenue, so that’s included, along with continued reduction of low-margin resale. All of that is packed into the GIS element of the guide.
Bryan Bergin — TD Cowen — Analyst
OK. If I missed it, I apologize. Did you quantify that piece, just so we can kind of parse that out?
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Didn’t quantify specifically the various elements. But in my opening remarks, I mentioned that we’ll be high negative single digits in GIS. And with the resale, it will be negative double digits, low double digits.
Bryan Bergin — TD Cowen — Analyst
OK. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Paul Obrecht — Wolfe Research — Analyst
Hi. Thanks. This is Paul Obrecht on for Darrin. Can you just provide some color on what you’re seeing in the broader macro environment and client behavior and maybe how that relates to three months ago? And as you built your fiscal year ’25 outlook, were you assuming any improvement in the broader demand as we go through the year?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Look, I think there are a couple of factors, right, with companies that are operating at different levels of efficiency. And I think our issue is being more effective across the whole life cycle of capturing business, new business, solutioning it correctly, pricing it correctly, as well as on our existing business, obviously, winning the recompetes and being able to create the right economic model for those recompetes. We have plenty of opportunity in the universe that we operate in.
I think from a macro standpoint, I echo what others have said in the space that some discretionary spending is paused and has lightened up. I do think that that is less of a headwind for us than optimizing our go-to-market and sales functions and getting those better. We have our destiny in our hands by being better against the opportunities that we get to compete on, and that will be a bigger factor for us in the near term than the general macro environment.
Paul Obrecht — Wolfe Research — Analyst
Got it. That’s helpful. And then as a follow-up, you mentioned in Modern Workplace, you could see or you’ll reach a point where 75% of the workforce is nonhuman. Can you just touch on the path to get there and what you’re doing right now in the business to improve efficiency?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. If you think about a lot of the work there, it’s a lot of resolution, small resolution of items across multiple people, humans, devices, countries, companies, etc. If you look at the focus of AI, specifically Copilot and the ability for agents to use large language models, small language models, real precise models, to really proactively and interactively answer and deal with questions, that’s the shift where we’re going to be using AI in a manner where we can handle the workload, same or more, with a greater infusion of technology and not relying on an increase of humans or people for that. As we transition that, you’ll go from a ratio of roughly 40% to 70-plus percent and that’s the reference that I made there.
But that’s real. That’s happening. It’s actionable. We’re experimenting with it across multiple accounts.
And the other piece of good news is that the speed of compute behind AI is doubling every six months. So, the speed, accuracy, and multimodal ability for a virtual agent to really be a great partner in delivering these services at a high quality is there today and getting better, and we’re going to take full advantage of it.
Paul Obrecht — Wolfe Research — Analyst
Great. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Lee with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is open.
Jonathan Lee — Guggenheim Securities — Analyst
Great. Thanks for taking our questions. I appreciate the level of detail here. You talked about working through some of the resale dynamics to help profitability.
Can you help us understand any other levers you have across contract profitability, whether that’s pricing or delivery?
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes. So, Jonathan, I think there’s leverage across the board, in particular, in the ITO business. I’ll just take that first. We’ve been on a march to reduce physical capacity with the revenue reductions we’ve experienced, and we will continue that this year as well.
And the $100 million of restructuring between the $250 million year-to-year growth and the base of $350 million, that $100 million is predominantly on physical capacity. So, that’s one element that will deliver savings into the future. The second element is just efficiency and infrastructure at the account level, and we are going after that with the restructuring funding. So, while we’re very good at our service delivery levels, we’ve got high NPS scores, our restructuring is designed to eliminate the overhead within the accounts as opposed to the direct delivery population that we have.
And still, we’re firmly on that track, and that’s how we’re going to execute the restructuring. In the GBS business, we have room to improve margins. And specifically, in the Consulting and Engineering business, our margins are below competition, and again, the restructuring is designed to help us narrow that gap to competition in that business unit. That’s another lever for us.
Jonathan Lee — Guggenheim Securities — Analyst
Great. Thanks for that. And just as a follow-up, as you think about the realignment of the company on a business unit basis versus geographic prior, can you talk about some of the client receptivity there?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. And it’s really the intersection, right? Because it’s the intersection of the talent, the managers of delivery at the geography in tight coordination with the offering. And so, what you’re getting just from the beginning of the life cycle is better pre-bid solutioning, better solutioning, better deployment once you win. One of the things that companies can trip themselves up on, and we certainly have, is not being timely in the staffing or fully staffing of something that’s won.
That leads to SLAs. That’s completely self-inflicted, 100% avoidable. If you plan better, you execute better. So, that’s another example of seeing a lot of little things that other organizations can do, and I know we can do better, that can have an impact.
And that impact will be every month, every quarter, and we’ll see that. So, those are just some of the elements that I think our new go-to-market really resonates with, both the local geography, engaging the offering at a global level, and ultimately, the most important thing, which is the customer. And in my several dozen conversations in the last 150 days and talking through why we think this is a better way of serving our customers, it’s been very receptive and very engaging with our customers.
Jonathan Lee — Guggenheim Securities — Analyst
I appreciate that clarity. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Spencer Anson with Susquehanna. Your line is open.
Spencer Anson — Susquehanna International Group — Analyst
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Raul, you had some relationship callouts on the insurance business. Can you just speak to any broader strategic or even tactical opportunities you see there with the insurance business? Thanks.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Great. Yeah. As I looked at every business unit, I think very early on, it became clear to me that we have an outsized opportunity in terms of a return on effort with our insurance business unit. With that opportunity in hand, we’re exploring a small select, and experienced group of partners that could help us accelerate growth with a good SaaS and reoccurring services mix while maintaining control of that business unit.
So, we’re in that process right now. It’s a great foundation. It’s a great set of customers, a great history with those customers, and really a critical partnership across the world in every aspect of supporting the different product lines that our customers bring to the marketplace.
Spencer Anson — Susquehanna International Group — Analyst
Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
James Faucette — Morgan Stanley — Analyst
Thank you very much. I wanted to ask about go-to-market and sales process. I know, Raul, in past conversations, you talked a lot about improving and tightening up the message to customers so that they understand the value that DXC can deliver, etc. And it sounds like with some of the changes that you’ve made, that the pipeline is expanding but conversion rates are pretty stable.
And it sounds like that’s kind of the assumption for right now. But like how should we think about the process and the time to start to even improve conversion rates and how that may be helpful to getting the business back to growth?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think it’s a function of the fundamentals, right? The fundamentals that we’re operating under in ITO and Modern Workplace, the new leadership and the focus on key vertical solutions, replicability in Consulting and Engineering Services. And also, in talking to customers, if it’s an ITO customer or a Modern Workplace, I always come prepared to discuss something relevant in another business unit that they may or may not be aware of. And frankly, it’s a good surprise, but I’m surprised that many of our existing customers where we’ve got tens, in some cases, hundreds of millions of business in one division, do not know and do not appreciate the talent, the experience that another division has.
So, just the more effective cross-pollination, cross-sale in existing accounts is something that I see as an opportunity, and it’s relatively low-hanging because, again, in my several dozen meetings, I’ve always tried to say, “Hey, as you’re thinking about this, did you know we did this?” And most of the time, the answer is, “Oh no, I didn’t know that. Please, let’s follow up.” So, if you scale that and then operationalize that, we’re going to be able to get incremental demand from our existing base because in many cases, we’ve got a great beachhead, a great history, and a great relationship with one offering and a customer, but that should be a gateway, an effective gateway, a fast gateway to compete with the other offerings. And that mechanism, that orchestration, that collaboration, that packaging up of stories, as I’ve mentioned before, all of that is happening as we speak. And frankly, it wasn’t happening at a good level before.
James Faucette — Morgan Stanley — Analyst
And it sounds like then for the most part, I mean, you’ve talked about some incremental partnerships, for example, on the insurance side. But it sounds like you feel like you have all the, or at least a majority of assets, to be able to execute and deliver that cross-sell. Is that fair? Or are there other things that you think you’re going to need to add into the mix?
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
No. We have what we need to compete. We have what we need to compete profitably and grow. We have to get some internal systems aligned.
We’ve got, as I mentioned earlier, dedupe, streamline, and do some work that should have been done before that wasn’t, but we’re going to get it done with speed. And we’ve got to perform every day, every week, every quarter, while we transform and transformation is the restructuring, and we’ve got to do both quickly.
James Faucette — Morgan Stanley — Analyst
Great. Thank you so much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Bradley Clark with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Bradley Clark — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst
Hi. Thank you. This is Brad on for Keith Bachman. I want to ask about your thoughts on GIS and market growth over time.
You’ve alluded to sort of participating in this broader GIS market growth rate, implying perhaps low single-digit decline over time. Is that still how you’re thinking about potential growth of both the market and/or GIS longer term given the changes you’ll be making to the business?
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Bradley, I think that’s about right. We have a very realistic view of the market. And our goal is, after rationalizing the portfolio and focusing on exiting unprofitable contracts and being selective, to get to market growth rates, which we see in the low negative single-digit range.
So, that’s where we’re pointing the business in that direction.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
And just to be clear, we’re operating at a worse level than that. So, the first goal is to get to “normal” or more baseline with other competitors. And once we get there, then obviously the next step is just to find another target and try to meet and beat it. But in the near term, it is to get in line with our competitors with regards to our growth rate, where it is today, and where it should be as a comp.
Bradley Clark — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst
OK. I appreciate your insight.
Operator
This concludes the question-and-answer session. I’ll turn the call to Raul Fernandez for closing remarks.
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate all of the employees that come together every day to deliver great services for our customers and value, all the investors. I definitely also appreciate the sense of frustration and urgency to get things done, and that is what I’m 100% focused on. So, thank you very much for attending today.
Operator
[Operator signoff]
Duration: 0 minutes
John Sweeney — Vice President, Investor Relations
Raul Fernandez — President and Chief Executive Officer
Rob Del Bene — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Bryan Keane — Deutsche Bank — Analyst
Tien-Tsin Huang — JPMorgan Chase and Company — Analyst
Bryan Bergin — TD Cowen — Analyst
Paul Obrecht — Wolfe Research — Analyst
Jonathan Lee — Guggenheim Securities — Analyst
Spencer Anson — Susquehanna International Group — Analyst
James Faucette — Morgan Stanley — Analyst
Bradley Clark — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst
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