“The strong start to the year drives our confidence in delivering constant currency revenue growth of 5-plus percent in 2026 and free cash flow growth of about $1 billion year-over-year.”

In context

“nerated $2.2 billion of free cash flow, up about $300 million year-over-year. The primary driver of this growth is adjusted EBITDA, up about $600 million year-over-year, partially offset by higher net interest expense and increased investments in CapEx as we expected coming into 2026. We exited the first quarter with a strong liquidity position and a solid investment-grade balance sheet with cash of $11.8 billion. We invested $10.5 billion in acquisitions, driven by the closing of Confluent and returned $1.6 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends. Our debt balance ending the quarter was $66.4 billion, including debt of $12.8 billion for our financing business, with the receivables portfolio that is 80% investment grade. Let me now pivot to discuss our expectations going forward. The strong start to the year drives our confidence in delivering constant currency revenue growth of 5-plus percent in 2026 and free cash flow growth of about $1 billion year-over-year. Given where we are in the year, we believe it is prudent to maintain our guidance even as the underlying performance and execution are off to an encouraging start. The combination of our focused portfolio, investment in innovation and our diversity across businesses drives the durability of our performance. Our revenue expectations are underpinned by our accelerating software business, which we now expect to grow 10-plus percent this year. In consulting, the quality of our backlog and momentum in GenAI with backlog penetration at about 30%, continue to support an acceleration in revenue growth to low to mid-single digits for the year. We are off to a great start with z17. And 4 quarters into z17's launch, we prudently continue to expect infrastructure revenue to be down low single digits”