Rackspace Technology, Inc. (RXT)

ITEM 2 - MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION

AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations ("MD&A") is intended to help readers understand our results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and should be read in conjunction with the condensed consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (this "Quarterly Report") and with the audited consolidated financial statements and the related notes included in our Annual Report. References to "Rackspace Technology," "we," "our company," "the company," "us," or "our" refer to Rackspace Technology, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

The following discussion contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. See "Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" contained elsewhere in this Quarterly Report.

Overview

We are the operator of the full enterprise AI stack from governed private cloud to AI inference and agents in production. With an Outcomes-as-a-Service model built on secure infrastructure, data foundations, and forward-deployed engineering, Rackspace delivers business results for regulated and mission-critical industries where governance, sovereignty, and uptime are non-negotiable.

We operate our business and report our results through two reportable segments: Public Cloud and Private Cloud. Our Public Cloud segment is a services-centric, capital-light model providing value-added cloud solutions through managed services, Elastic Engineering and professional services offerings for customer environments hosted on the AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud public cloud platforms. Our Private Cloud segment is a technology-forward, capital-intensive model providing managed service offerings for customer environments hosted in one of our data centers as well as in those owned by customers or by third parties such as colocation providers. See Item 1 of Part I, Financial Statements - Note 13, "Segment Reporting," for additional information about our segments.

Subsequent Events

For a description of subsequent events, see "Subsequent Events" in Item 1 of Part I, Financial Statements - Note 1, "Company Overview, Basis of Presentation, and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies."

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Key Factors Affecting Our Performance

We believe our combination of proprietary technology, automation capabilities and technical expertise creates a value proposition for our customers that is hard to replicate for both competitors and in-house IT departments. We and our customers face a variety of challenges, including evolving technologies (including AI and GenAI) and an uncertain regulatory landscape, including international trade policies and tariffs, as well as other macroeconomic and geopolitical factors. These factors have and will continue to affect demand for our products and services. We believe enterprise demand for AI is shifting from experimentation toward production deployment, with growing emphasis on inference workloads and on governance, security and data control requirements, particularly among customers in regulated industries and the public sector. Our continued success depends to a significant extent on our ability to respond to these and other challenges presented by our highly competitive and dynamic market, including the following key factors:

Differentiating Our Service Offerings in a Competitive Market Environment

Our success depends to a significant extent on our ability to continue to differentiate, expand and upgrade our service offerings in line with developing customer needs. We believe our curated, best-of-breed partners across every layer of the AI stack, combined with data center capacity and over 25 years of technical expertise, represents a unique positional advantage for us. We are the operator of the full enterprise AI stack and have strategic partnership agreements with AMD, VMware by Broadcom, Palantir, Uniphore, Rubrik, and Dell Technologies, with Rackspace remaining fully accountable from silicon through business outcomes. We are also a certified premier consulting and managed services partner to some of the largest cloud computing platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle, SAP and VMware by Broadcom. We believe we are unique in our ability to serve customers across major technology stacks and deployment options, while helping customers move AI from experimentation to real-world production. Our existing and prospective customers are also under increasing pressure to move from on-premise or self-managed IT to the cloud to compete effectively in a digital economy and maximize the value of their cloud investments, which we believe presents an opportunity for professional services projects as well as new recurring business.

Customer Relationships and Retention

Our success greatly depends on our ability to retain and develop opportunities with our existing customers and to attract new customers. We operate in a growing but competitive and evolving market environment, requiring innovation to differentiate us from our competitors. Enterprise AI offerings in the market today typically put the full operational burden on the customer, which is especially difficult in regulated industries where governance, data sovereignty and operational continuity are critical. We believe Rackspace is uniquely positioned to deliver the full governed enterprise AI stack from silicon through business outcomes under a single accountable operator, serving a demand now visible across the market. Enterprises, particularly in regulated industries, are seeking control over their compute, their models, and their data, and assurance that the proprietary knowledge embedded in that data is not transferred outside their environments. We are model-agnostic by design and operate the governed layer that allows enterprises to use the best available models, whether open, closed, or their own, on private cloud where control matters and public cloud where elasticity matters, while policy, identity, and data boundaries remain under the enterprise’s control.

Business Mix Shift

Private Cloud offerings are generally hosted on our own infrastructure and deliver higher segment operating margins, but also require a higher level of capital expenditures. Historical Private Cloud offerings have also included colocation and basic hosting contracts, which typically generate lower margins relative to other Private Cloud offerings, including managed services and Enterprise AI. Public Cloud segment operating margins have historically been lower than Private Cloud segment operating margins, driven by high volumes of infrastructure resale revenue which come at significantly lower margins. However, Public Cloud requires significantly less capital expenditures.

As we continue to execute our Enterprise AI strategy, we may de-emphasize and/or exit certain colocation and basic hosting arrangements within our established Private Cloud base in order to reserve and optimize capacity for Enterprise AI, our new revenue growth vector within Private Cloud. We also expect to continue to de-emphasize and/or exit lower-margin infrastructure resale in Public Cloud over time, as hyperscalers continue to move customers to direct contracts and we prioritize resources for higher-margin opportunities. Following these transitions, we believe our business mix will shift from legacy lower-growth, lower-margin revenue opportunities toward higher-growth, higher margin revenue opportunities as our strategy matures.

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Our Enterprise AI strategy will require significant upfront capital investment (including GPU-related costs). We expect near-term margin pressure as we fund this next phase of growth, as certain investments are anticipated to be incurred ahead of Enterprise AI revenue ramping.

Key Components of Statement of Operations

Revenue

A substantial amount of our revenue, particularly within our Private Cloud segment, is generated pursuant to contracts that typically have a fixed term (typically from 12 to 36 months). Our customers generally have the right to cancel their contracts by providing us with written notice prior to the end of the fixed term, though most of our contracts provide for termination fees in the event of cancellation prior to the end of their term, typically amounting to the outstanding value of the contract. These contracts include a monthly recurring fee, which is determined based on the computing resources utilized and provided to the customer, the complexity of the underlying infrastructure and the level of support we provide. Most of our services within our Public Cloud segment generate usage-based revenue invoiced on a monthly basis and can be canceled at any time without penalty. We also generate revenue from usage-based fees and fees from professional services earned from customers using our hosting and other services. We typically recognize revenue on a daily basis, as services are provided, in an amount that reflects the consideration to which we expect to be entitled in exchange for our services. Our usage-based arrangements generally include a variable consideration component, consisting of monthly utility fees, with a defined price and undefined quantity. Our customer contracts also typically contain service level guarantees, including with respect to network uptime requirements, that provide discounts when we fail to meet specific obligations and, with respect to certain products, we may offer volume discounts based on usage. As these variable consideration components consist of a single distinct daily service provided on a single performance obligation, we account for all of them as services are provided and earned.

Cost of revenue

Cost of revenue consists primarily of usage charges for third-party infrastructure and personnel costs (including salaries, bonuses, benefits and share-based compensation) for engineers, developers and other employees involved in the delivery of services to our customers. Cost of revenue also includes depreciation of servers, software and other systems infrastructure, data center rent and other infrastructure maintenance and support costs, including software license costs and utilities. Cost of revenue is driven mainly by demand for our services, our service mix and the cost of labor in a given geography.

Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A)

Selling, general and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel costs (including salaries, bonuses, commissions, benefits and share-based compensation) for our sales force, executive team and corporate administrative and support employees, including our human resources, finance, accounting and legal functions. SG&A also includes research and development costs, repair and maintenance of corporate infrastructure, facilities rent, third-party advisory fees (including audit, legal and management consulting costs), marketing and advertising costs and insurance, as well as the amortization of related intangible assets and certain depreciation of fixed assets.

SG&A also includes transaction costs related to acquisitions and financings along with costs related to integration and business transformation initiatives which may impact the comparability of SG&A between periods.

Income taxes

Our income tax benefit (provision) and deferred tax assets and liabilities reflect management's best assessment of estimated current and future taxes to be paid. To date, we recorded consolidated tax expense, despite our net losses, due to the recording of valuation allowances against our deferred tax assets. Certain of our non-U.S. subsidiaries continue to incur corporate tax expense or ben

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ITEM 7 - MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION

AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following MD&A is intended to help readers understand our results of operations, financial condition and cash flows and should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report. References to “Rackspace Technology,” “we,” “our company,” “the company,” “us,” or “our” refer to Rackspace Technology and its consolidated subsidiaries.

The following discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risk, assumptions and uncertainties, such as statements of our plans, objectives, expectations, intentions and forecasts. Our actual results and the timing of selected events could differ materially from those discussed in these forward-looking statements as a result of several factors, including those set forth under the section of this Annual Report titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report. You should carefully read the “Risk Factors” to gain an understanding of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Please also see “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” contained elsewhere in this Annual Report.

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Overview

We are a leading end-to-end hybrid cloud and AI solutions company. We serve as a trusted operator of the full technology stack, from governed private cloud infrastructure to AI deployed in production environments. From edge to core to cloud, we design, integrate and operate the infrastructure, data foundations and software platforms required to deliver business outcomes with predictable cost, resilience, security and compliance. Our solutions are purpose-built for regulated and mission-critical environments where uptime, data sovereignty and operational accountability are essential. We serve our customers with a unique combination of proprietary technology resulting from over $1 billion of investment and services expertise from a team of highly skilled consultants and engineers. We also provide our customers with unbiased expertise and technology solutions, delivered over the world’s leading cloud services, all wrapped in Fanatical Experience.

We aim to be our customers’ most trusted advisor and services partner in their path to cloud transformation and to accelerate the value of their cloud investments. We give customers the ability to make fluid decisions when choosing the right technologies, and we recommend solutions based on customers’ unique objectives. In this way, we empower our customers to harness the full benefits of cloud adoption.

Our team of 5,000 highly skilled Rackers, including consultants and engineers, partners with companies at every stage of their cloud transformation journey.

We deliver our services to a global customer base through an integrated service delivery model. We have a presence in more than 60 cities around the world. This footprint allows us to better serve customers based in various countries, especially multinational companies requiring cross-border solutions. We have a strong presence with customers of all sizes, including enterprise businesses (revenue in excess of $3 billion), mid-market businesses (revenue of $300 million to $3 billion) and commercial customers (revenue less than $300 million).

We operate our business and report our results through two reportable segments: Public Cloud and Private Cloud. Our Public Cloud segment is a services-centric, capital-light model providing value-added cloud solutions through managed services, Elastic Engineering and professional services offerings for customer environments hosted on the AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud public cloud platforms. Our Private Cloud segment is a technology-forward, capital-intensive model providing managed service offerings for customer environments hosted in one of our data centers as well as in those owned by customers or by third parties such as colocation providers. Private Cloud also includes our legacy OpenStack Public Cloud business that we ceased to actively market to customers in 2017. See Item 8 of Part II, Financial Statements and Supplementary Data - Note 16, "Segment Reporting" for additional information about our segments.

We generate revenue primarily through the sale of consumption-based contracts for our services offerings, which are recurring in nature. We also generate revenue from the sale of professional services related to designing and building customer solutions, which are non-recurring in nature. Arrangements within our Private Cloud segment generally have a fixed term, typically from 12 to 36 months, with a monthly recurring fee based on the computing resources provided to and utilized by the customer, the complexity of the underlying infrastructure and the level of support we provide. Our other primary source of revenue is for services within our Public Cloud segment. Contracts for these arrangements typically operate on a consumption model and can be canceled at any time without penalty.

We sell our services through direct sales teams, third-party channel partners and via online orders. Our sales model is based on both distributed and centralized sales teams with leads generated from technology partners, customer referrals, channel partners and corporate marketing efforts. We offer customers the flexibility to select the best combination of resources in order to meet the requirements of their unique applications and provide the technology to seamlessly operate and manage multiple cloud computing environments.

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Key Factors Affecting Our Performance

We believe our combination of proprietary technology, automation capabilities and technical expertise creates a value proposition for our customers that is hard to replicate for both competitors and in-house IT departments. We and our customers face a variety of challenges, including evolving technologies (including AI and GenAI) and an uncertain regulatory landscape, including international trade policies and tariffs, as well as other macroeconomic and geopolitical factors. These factors have and will continue to affect demand for our products and services. Our continued success depends to a significant extent on our ability to respond to these and other challenges presented by our highly competitive and dynamic market, including the following key factors:

Differentiating Our Service Offerings in a Competitive Market Environment

Our success depends to a significant extent on our ability to continue to differentiate, expand and upgrade our service offerings in line with developing customer needs, while deepening our relationships with leading public cloud service providers and establishing new relationships, including with sales partners. We are a certified premier consulting and managed services partner to some of the largest cloud computing platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle, SAP and VMware by Broadcom. We believe we are unique in our ability to serve customers across major technology stacks and deployment options, all while delivering Fanatical Experience. Our existing and prospective customers are also under increasing pressure to move from on-premise or self-managed IT to the cloud to compete effectively in a digital economy and maximize the value of their cloud investments, which we believe presents an opportunity for professional services projects as well as new recurring business.

Customer Relationships and Retention

Our success greatly depends on our ability to retain and develop opportunities with our existing customers and to attract new customers. We operate in a growing but competitive and evolving market environment, requiring innovation to differentiate us from our competitors. We believe that our integrated cloud service portfolio and our differentiated customer experience and technology are keys to retaining and growing revenue from existing customers as well as acquiring new customers. For example, we believe that Rackspace Fabric provides customers a unified experience across their entire cloud and security footprint, and that our Rackspace Elastic Engineering model helps customers embrace a cloud native approach with on-demand access to a dedicated team of highly skilled cloud architects and engineers. These offerings differentiate us from legacy IT service providers that operate under long-term fixed and project-based fee structures often tethered to their existing technologies with less automation.

Business Mix Shift

The mix of revenue has shifted in recent years, from our Private Cloud offerings to infrastructure resale and services within Public Cloud. Private Cloud offerings are generally hosted on our own infrastructure and deliver higher segment operating margins, but also require a higher level of capital expenditures. Conversely, Public Cloud segment operating margins are lower, driven by high volumes of infrastructure resale revenue which come at significantly lower margins. However, Public Cloud requires significantly less capital expenditures. Going forward, we will continue to take a workload-centric approach and both Public and Private Cloud will be the net recipients of the workloads. The focus in Private Cloud will be to defend and expand our revenue with new solutions. The focus in Public Cloud is on expanding segment operating margins by driving cost efficiencies and growing higher-margin services revenue.

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Key Components of Statement of Operations

Revenue

A substantial amount of our revenue, particularly within our Private Cloud segment, is generated pursuant to contracts that typically have a fixed term (typically from 12 to 36 months). Our customers generally have the right to cancel their contracts by providing us with written notice prior to the end of the fixed term, though most of our contracts provide for termination fees in the event of cancellation prior to the end of their term, typically amounting to the outstanding value of the contract. These contracts include a monthly recurring fee, which is determined based on the computing resources utilized and provided to the customer, the complexity of the underlying infrastructure and the level of support we provide. Most of our services within our Public Cloud segment and legacy OpenStack business generate usage-based revenue invoiced on a monthly basis and can be canceled at any time without penalty. We also generate revenue from usage-based fees and fees from professional services earned from customers using our hosting and other services. We typically recognize revenue on a daily basis, as services are provided, in an amount that reflects the consideration to which we expect to be entitled in exchange for our services. Our usage-based arrangements generally include a variable consideration component, consisting of monthly utility fees, with a defined price and undefined quantity. Our customer contracts also typically contain service level guarantees, including with respect to network uptime requirements, that provide discounts when we fail to meet specific obligations and, with respect to certain products, we may offer volume discounts based on usage. As these variable consideration components consist of a single distinct daily service provided on a single performance obligation, we account for all of them as services are provided and earned.

Cost of revenue

Cost of revenue consists primarily of usage charges for third-party infrastructure and personnel costs (including salaries, bonuses, benefits and share-based compensation) for engineers, developers and other employees involved in the delivery of services to our customers. Cost of revenue also includes depreciation of servers, software and other systems infrastructure, data center rent and other infrastructure maintenance a

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