Xerox Unveils Its Print Playbook for 2026

Organizational and go-to-market changes emerge as Lexmark becomes fully integrated

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The biggest event for Xerox in 2025 was the closing of its acquisition of Lexmark. Xerox has now introduced its strategy for operationalizing the combined entities and reclaiming market share in the office print space while also driving growth in IT solutions, digital services, and production print. The company’s mid-February announcement outlines a redesigned global go-to-market (GTM) structure intended to unify sales engagement and sharpen regional execution. The new model is slated to take effect in the second quarter of 2026, signaling that Xerox believes the integration has matured enough to start standardizing how coverage, partners, and segment strategy work across the combined Xerox-Lexmark footprint.

In the press release announcing the initiative, Xerox CRO Jacques-Edouard Gueden framed it bluntly, saying that unifying the Xerox-Lexmark sales model is designed to “eliminate redundancies” and “improve efficiency,” while reorienting the organization toward sustained revenue and profitability. Given that the company’s pro-forma revenue comparisons were negative in 2025, the need to reclaim share and improve efficiency is clear. Xerox reported revenue of just over $7 billion for its fiscal 2025 (ended December 31). While that is up 13% year-over-year, revenue was down 7.6% on a pro-forma basis (excluding Lexmark and other 2025 acquisitions).

Regional Coverage Design

Xerox’s updated framework is organized into three geographic operating models: North America, Western Europe, and “rest of world.” There will be global overlays that matter for print specifically, namely a dedicated Global Production Print Services division and two specialized teams centered on Distribution and Inside Sales channels.

In North America and Western Europe, Xerox is realigning account coverage around a unified segmentation model in which its direct sales channel concentrates on enterprise and corporate accounts, while partners assume expanded responsibility for hardware fulfillment and SMB coverage (supported by the inside sales organization as needed). This is an important directional choice—and one we’ve seen from Ricoh and others of late—that acknowledges that mid-market print refresh cycles are increasingly partner-driven. This approach can also reduce channel conflict by clarifying which parts of the market are “partner-first” vs. “direct-first.”

For the rest of the world, Xerox is splitting operations into an international unit covering remaining geographies except for Asia Pacific, which notably gets its own organization. APAC has been a weakness in Xerox’s global strategy, having never overcome its lack of presence there required by the defunct Fuji-Xerox joint venture agreement. Lexmark, by contrast, maintained a presence in the region, one of the drivers of the acquisition in the first place.

Lexmark: From Acquisition Headline to Synergy Engine

Xerox completed its acquisition of Lexmark in July 2025 for total consideration of approximately $768 million (including debt obligations). In its year-end release, Xerox described synergy realization as “ahead of plan” and reaffirmed that it expects cost rationalization of at least $300 million in 2026. Xerox also reported paying down $366 million of debt, net, since the close of the Lexmark acquisition, which is a notable signal of deleveraging intent after funding the deal.

It is also telling that Xerox continues to position the integration as financially accretive, stating it expects over $1/share of accretion from the Lexmark transaction despite a slightly higher cost of funding. And while tariffs remain a live risk factor for the industry broadly, Xerox noted it expects no material impact from proposed US tariffs on Lexmark’s results, citing Lexmark’s manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico, that can support expected US imports on a USMCA-compliant basis.

Keypoint Intelligence Opinion

In many print acquisitions, the rationale on paper (excuse the pun) is straightforward: more devices being pushed through more varied channels and in wider geographies. The harder part is operational: harmonizing routes to market, integrating service delivery, and unifying pricing and contract governance so that the combined installed base is defended rather than diluted. Xerox’s February 2026 go-to-market announcement is essentially the operational version of the Lexmark deal thesis, because it explicitly builds toward a single Xerox-Lexmark sales model with a regional segmentation approach and expanded partner fulfillment. The next step would be a rationalization of that reseller base, keeping only those that are able to deliver on the company’s services-led vision.

Indeed, Xerox is making a bet that the next phase of competition in print is not just about hardware portfolios, but about building a GTM engine that can defend annuities, scale through partners, and consistently attach higher-value services—at a cost structure that works. Of course, the key question is whether the new model reverses the underlying sales trajectory and allows Xerox to gain share or simply changes how Xerox manages through ongoing structural decline in office print.

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