“We expect Confluent will be accretive to adjusted EBITDA within the first full year and to free cash flow in year two.”

In context

“o our infrastructure platforms, and how we drive our own productivity. As a result, a standalone Gen AI metric no longer reflects the full scope of how AI is driving value across IBM. For the full year, we expect IBM's operating pretax margin to expand by about a point. Our software portfolio mix and ongoing productivity initiatives continue to drive margin expansion and mitigate Z product cycles. And the impact of dilution from acquisitions. Our operating tax rate for the year should be in the mid-teens. And the timing of discrete items can cause the rate to vary within the year. Let me give a little bit more color on Confluent dilution dynamics. We anticipate absorbing about $600 million of dilution from Confluent in 2026. Driven largely by stock-based compensation and interest expense. We expect Confluent will be accretive to adjusted EBITDA within the first full year and to free cash flow in year two. Post close. We have multiple levers that underpin our confidence in these accretion targets. Including revenue synergies, operational spend synergies, and ongoing productivity savings. Revenue synergies include both the ability to accelerate revenue leveraging our go-to-market distribution platform, as well as drive product synergies, which play out over time. We expect to realize about $500 million of operational spend run rate synergies by 2027. We continue to accelerate our productivity initiatives and now expect an incremental $1 billion of productivity savings this year. Driving $5.5 billion of annual run rate savings by 2026. Taking this all into account, we are confident in our ability to expand operating pretax margin by about a point in 2026. For free cash flow, we expect to grow”