XBP Global (NASDAQ:XBP) used its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call to frame 2025 as a transition year following its late-July acquisition of Exela Technologies BPA, with management emphasizing platform integration, an AI-led operating model, and renewed investment in sales. CEO Andrej Jonovic and CFO Dejan Avramovic focused their prepared remarks on pro forma results intended to reflect the combined company, as well as early sales “green shoots” that have not yet flowed through to reported revenue.
Management highlights integration, AI strategy, and sales rebuild
Jonovic said 2025 was “a defining year” for the company after the acquisition, describing three areas of focus: integrating the two platforms “into one XBP Global,” “voluntarily disrupting ourselves to become an AI-led company,” and investing for growth beginning with the hiring of a new Chief Revenue Officer, Mike Shufeldt, along with an expanded sales team.
He also described a shift from traditional software development life cycle processes toward “AI-driven SDLC,” adding that the disruption is “function agnostic” and that employees are expected to use AI to improve output. Jonovic said the goal is “meaningful margin uplift over the coming period.”
AI positioning tied to regulated workflows and private deployments
Jonovic argued XBP Global’s positioning benefits from its presence in “highly regulated environments,” citing sectors including healthcare, banking, financial services, and the public sector. He said these settings create “natural barriers to entry,” contending that “general AI simply cannot replace” the compliance, governance, and security demands tied to “mission-critical mandates.”
He emphasized the company’s view that AI cannot fully replace domain expertise and oversight in complex decisions, describing XBP Global’s model as “anchoring” automation solutions with “human-in-the-loop or human-on-top processes.”
As an example of its approach to privacy and scale, Jonovic said the company “recently deployed a state-of-the-art large language model to a private cloud belonging to a major French insurance company” to support “a plethora of high-value agentic AI use cases.” He said the private-cloud approach was intended to protect privacy and avoid “escalating token costs or token maxing,” and that document processing custom neural networks can work “in tandem with agentic AI” to deliver value.
Jonovic also cited the company’s role in handling “analog data and digital outcomes,” describing a need among many clients for support in processing “large, unstructured, and often physical datasets” into digital workflows.
Pro forma revenue declined in 2025, while margins improved
Avramovic said his financial comments would “primarily focus on pro forma results” given what he called “continued complexity in the GAAP results.” On a pro forma basis, XBP Global reported full-year 2025 revenue of $879.6 million, down 13.6% year-over-year. Avramovic attributed the decline primarily to “project completions and client exits,” partially offset by new client additions.
He said the restructuring of BPA led to “expected restructuring related exits,” as customers were “effectively forced to diversify some of their business away from us.” He added that for much of the year the company “did not have a functioning sales funnel,” which weighed on retention and new business, but said that post-acquisition the company has “turned our sales engines back on” and is focused on ROI.
For 2025, the company posted a pro forma gross margin of 21.9%, up 30 basis points year-over-year, which Avramovic said was driven by “a favorable sales mix” with the higher-margin technology segment lifting results. Pro forma normalized EBITDA was $90.2 million, down 13.7%, with normalized EBITDA margin flat year-over-year at 10.3%.
Avramovic noted operating cash flows in the post-transaction period were negatively impacted by “expected cash outflows related to the transaction and pre-petition liabilities,” which he said exceeded $21 million.
Q4 results reflected restructuring exits; bookings improved sharply
In the fourth quarter, XBP Global reported total revenue of $207 million, down 15.1% year-over-year on a pro forma basis. Pro forma gross margin increased 110 basis points to 22.7%, driven by margin expansion in the Applied Workflow Automation segment, while normalized EBITDA was $19.2 million, down 35% year-over-year. Avramovic said the revenue and EBITDA declines were largely attributable to “expected restructuring-related exits,” along with difficult comparisons to the prior year.
Despite the revenue pressure, management highlighted a rebound in sales activity during the quarter. Avramovic said new TCV bookings in Q4 were up 53.2% year-over-year, more than double the third quarter and 68% above the prior four-quarter average. New ACV bookings rose 37.7% year-over-year, up 89% from Q3 and 47% above the previous four-quarter average.
Avramovic said the improved sales velocity has not yet appeared in revenue because the company is “currently in an air pocket,” as legacy projects roll off while newly signed work remains in an “implementation lag” that can last “anywhere from a few weeks to several months.” He added that the company has seen “a small uptick in our gross margins,” which he attributed to “AI-enabled outcomes.”
Segment and client details: automation-led mix, diversified customer base
Avramovic said Applied Workflow Automation represents approximately 90% of revenue and includes bills and payments, healthcare industry solutions, on-site enterprise solutions, integrated communications, and enterprise legal management. The technology segment, at roughly 10% of revenue, contributes about 30% of gross profit, with gross margin “in the range of 55%-65%.”
In Q4, Applied Workflow Automation revenue declined 15.1% year-over-year on a pro forma basis, while segment gross margin increased 140 basis points year-over-year and 110 basis points sequentially to 18.4%. Technology revenue declined 14.6% year-over-year but increased 1% sequentially to $21.7 million, which Avramovic tied to completion of one-time projects and some client exits.
For the full year, Avramovic said the European region delivered revenue growth of 4.7% year-over-year, with gross margin increasing 130 basis points to 28.1%. He described Europe’s performance as driven by “large-scale deals with high levels of automation,” calling it “a blueprint” for expanding margins across the combined company. He also pointed to consolidated gross margins rising 200 basis points over the last two quarters due to “deliberate application of automation and focus on cost efficiency.”
Jonovic provided additional operating metrics, saying the company has seen about a 70% uplift in speed of output within technology teams as AI-based SDLC is adopted. He also highlighted revenue per full-time employee, stating that XBP Global’s revenue per FTE is about $80,000, compared with an average of about $60,000 for a peer group he referenced, and said this reflects efforts to “decouple growth from headcount.”
On customer concentration, Jonovic said XBP Global has a “diversified base of 2,500+ clients,” with no single client above 7.5% of revenue. He added that the top three clients account for about 17% of annual revenue and the top ten about 32%, and said more than 140 clients have annual contract value of $1 million or more. Jonovic also cited the Department of Veterans Affairs as a long-standing major client, saying the company has delivered AI-enabled services that support veterans’ care.
From a sales standpoint, Jonovic said the company created about $1.4 billion of new pipeline in 2025, up 8% over 2024, and closed nearly $300 million of total contract value for the year, including about $100 million in the fourth quarter. He cautioned that sales cycles remain long and that macroeconomic headwinds persist.
In Q4, Jonovic said the company closed about $34.8 million of new ACV across more than 560 separate deals, with successes including BFSI and manufacturing activity, a “win-back” with a large property and casualty insurance company, a contract with an aerospace and defense contractor, and several banking-related deals, as well as federal and local government contracts across the Americas and Europe.
Looking ahead, Jonovic called 2026 “a pivotal year,” saying the company expects further margin improvement and continued progress toward becoming an “AI-led provider of mission-critical workflows.”
About XBP Global (NASDAQ:XBP)
XBP Europe Holdings, Inc provides bills, payments, and related solutions and services in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and internationally. The company operates through two segments, Bills & Payments and Technology. The Bills & Payments segment focuses on optimizing how bills and payments are processed by businesses of all sizes and industries. This segment also offers automation of accounts payable and accounts receivables processes and seeks to integrate buyers and suppliers, as well as engages in digital transformation business.
