Insight Enterprises Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 6, 2025
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Operator

Hello everyone and welcome to today's Insight Enterprises Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Operating Results Call. My name is Seb and I'll be the operator for your call today. I will now hand the floor to Ryan Miyasato to begin. Please go ahead.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Investor Relation at Insight Enterprises

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining the Insight Enterprises Earnings Conference Call. Today, we will be discussing the company's operating results for the quarter and full year ended 12/31/2024. I'm Ryan Miyasato, Investor Relations Director of Insight and joining me is Joyce Mullen, President and Chief Executive Officer and James Morgado, Chief Financial Officer. If you do not have a copy of the earnings release or the accompanying slide presentation that was posted this morning and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Form eight K, you will find it on our website at insight.com under the Investor Relations section. Today's call, including the question and answer period, is being webcast live and can also be accessed via the Investor Relations page of our website at insight.com.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Investor Relation at Insight Enterprises

An archived copy of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after completion of the call and will remain on our website for a limited time. This conference call and the associated webcast contain time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, 02/06/2025. This call is the property of Insight Enterprises. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Insight Enterprises is strictly prohibited. In today's conference call, we will be referring to non GAAP financial measures as we discuss the fourth quarter and full year '20 '20 '4 financial results.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Investor Relation at Insight Enterprises

When discussing non GAAP measures, we will refer to them as adjusted. You will find a reconciliation of these adjusted measures to our actual GAAP results included in both the press release and the accompanying slide presentation issued earlier today. Please note that all growth comparisons we make on the call today relate to the corresponding period of last year unless otherwise noted. Also, unless highlighted as constant currency, all amounts and growth rates discussed are in U. S.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Investor Relation at Insight Enterprises

Dollar terms. As a reminder, all forward looking statements that are made during this conference call are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These risks are discussed in today's press release and in greater detail in our most recently filed periodic reports and subsequent filings with the SEC. All forward looking statements are made as of the date of this call and, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statement made on this call whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joyce.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Investor Relation at Insight Enterprises

And if you are following along with the slide presentation, we will begin on Slide four. Joyce?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Thank Thank you very much, Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As we closed out 2024, we delivered results consistent with our expectations. Here are the Q4 highlights. Gross profit was up 1%, driven by a 12% increase in Insight core services and modest growth in hardware and cloud, partially offset by a decline in the impact of the partner program changes we've previously discussed.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

For the first time in eight quarters, hardware gross profit grew as we drove improvement in devices. We expect client buying patterns will build during 2025. Gross margin expanded 170 basis points to 21.2% and adjusted diluted earnings per share were $2.66 resulting in full year earnings per share near the high end of the range we provided in October. Cash flow from operations was two fifteen million dollars and we have completed the SG and A actions discussed last quarter. We expect approximately $25,000,000 in annualized reductions.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

In 2024, clients continue to exercise caution due to the macroeconomic environment, which influenced their investment priorities and prolong decision making. Revenue from hardware, particularly in North America, declined as corporate and large enterprise clients delayed their device refresh cycle now expected in 2025 and 2026. Commercial client demand, on the other hand, grew over the last three quarters. Partner program changes created headwinds, requiring us to pivot our cloud business. Despite the program changes, we had steady cash flow from cloud consumption.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

We took critical steps forward with our offerings across key growth areas. Cloud gross profit grew double digits reflecting increased demand for SaaS and Infrastructure as a Service as well as the contributions from our acquisitions. Insight Corp Services gross profit grew double digits driven by our acquisitions. We continued building expertise and scale in areas important to our clients particularly in GCP, ServiceNow and AWS, augmenting our existing strength in Azure. And we're seeing traction with our AI infrastructure offers, which deliver flexible support for clients' unique AI, hybrid cloud and multi cloud needs.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Furthermore, we initiated structural improvements to enhance the effectiveness of the strategic areas of our business. We build programs to drive cross sell and revenue synergies across our acquisitions. We also accelerated the back office integration for some of our acquisitions to drive cost synergies. We launched a program focused on expanding our go to market capabilities, driving deeper collaboration with our partner ecosystem in order to gain share. We pivoted our GCP practice to align with Google's priorities, focused on services growth and profitability, which will ultimately lead to a stronger partnership and better growth opportunities for us.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Finally, we are encouraged by the bookings momentum we are seeing in the business. We are unwavering in our commitment to become the leading solutions integrator. Clients across all industries rely on our expertise to deliver solutions that will help their businesses excel. And in so many cases, we are helping our clients prepare for the adoption of GenAI, already a game changer. The true most critical areas are first, ensuring the environment is secure and second, preparing the data states to make the data accessible and actionable.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

I will share examples of both. A recent example of our security capability is the environment we delivered for a $15,000,000,000 consumer health client with over 20,000 employees. The company was recently divested and needed to establish an entire cybersecurity program from scratch. This meant strengthening their security posture across multiple enterprise domains almost overnight. We architected and built their cybersecurity program from the ground up.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

We implemented a comprehensive security as a service solution that included deploying numerous products and provided 20 fourseven global support. Additionally, we consolidated security tools, conducted cloud application testing and implemented device and endpoint security measures. Our solution manages thousands of tickets while cutting threat detection response times in half. This comprehensive approach is an example of how we deliver immediate client value while setting the foundation for ongoing security and monitoring and resilience and preparing for an even more data and automation intensive environment. In a very different industry, Cricket Australia oversees more than 7,000 weekly matches in major international events.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

They partnered with Insight and Microsoft to enhance fan engagement through AI driven solutions. Insight played a critical role in developing and integrating the AI insights feature in the Cricket Australia live app. This feature enables real time personalized match analysis and debuted at the women's ASHA's test in January of twenty twenty four with strong fan engagement both remotely and in stadium. Our solution modernized their digital infrastructure. We automated tasks previously required manual updates, delivering instant AI powered insights to millions of users.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Key results include processing four times the previous workload at half the cost, supporting millions of concurrent users and achieving full cloud adoption. Insight is now Cricket Australia's strategic technology partner and continues to support its digital transformation. From architecting and establishing a security practice for a consumer health company to modernizing digital infrastructure for Cricket Australia fans, We demonstrate expertise in delivering impactful solutions to complex business challenges across different industries, while helping clients prepare for future technology. In 2024, we received numerous awards and recognitions from our partners. There are too many to list here, but some notable Partner of the Year awards include those from Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, Lenovo, Broadcom, NVIDIA, NetApp, Pure Storage and others.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

You can find more details in the earnings presentation. Additionally, in alignment with our multi cloud strategy, Insight entered into new strategic collaboration agreements with Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services to more effectively help clients manage their cloud roadmap, including data and AI strategies. These agreements strengthen our position as a leading provider of cloud, data, AI, cyber and intelligent edge solutions. Moreover, Incyte has been recognized for its workplace culture from various organizations including Forbes Best Employers, Newsweek, America's Greatest Workplaces and Great Places to Work in numerous countries. In 2024, we navigated a difficult environment and invested in our ambition to become the leading solutions integrator.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Our partnerships with the world's best technology companies, including hyperscalers, have never been stronger. Our solutions portfolio has never been more relevant to clients. The pricing and profitability initiatives that have delivered structural results and expanded adjusted EBITDA margins. And we've made significant investments in our solution selling capabilities. This is a solid foundation to build upon.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

And as we look to 2025, we expect the device refresh cycle to gain momentum throughout the year and anticipate that clients will prioritize investments in their infrastructure, particularly as servers and networking equipment age and need to be refreshed in anticipation of new workload demand. We re architected our business to adapt to the partner program changes from the cloud providers by focusing on services and our corporate and mid market clients. We expect increased traction from our clients' AI investments driving further growth opportunities in solutions, services and infrastructure. And as we grow products and services this year, we expect to deliver profitable growth and shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call over to James to share key details of our financial and operating performance in Q4 and the full year 2024, as well as our outlook for 2025.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

James?

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Thank you, Joyce, and good morning, everyone. Our Q4 results were in line with our expectations for the quarter. Net revenue was $2,100,000,000 a decrease of 7%. The decrease was driven by 10% decline in product, primarily from continued weakness in large enterprise and corporate clients in North America. Hardware revenue declined 2% and on prem software was down 23%.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

The decline in on prem software is primarily related to a partner consolidation that shifted gross product revenue to net agency services. Gross profit increased 1% reflecting the double digit Insight core services growth and moderate cloud and hardware growth, partially offset by declines in legacy enterprise agreements and on prem software. Diving a little deeper in hardware, devices gross profit was up mid single digits, while infrastructure was down mid single digits. Insight core services gross profit was $78,000,000 an increase of 12% driven by the benefit of our acquisitions. Cloud gross profit was $125,000,000 an increase of 3% reflecting the anniversary of the SATA acquisition and our pivot to the mid market as well as a decline in legacy Microsoft enterprise agreements.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Gross margin was 21.2% an increase of 170 basis points and reflects a higher mix of Incyte core services and cloud. Adjusted SG and A grew 8% due to one time items as well as the impact of acquisitions. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA of $141,000,000 a decrease of 11% while margin contracted 30 basis points to 6.8%. And adjusted diluted earnings per share were $2.66 down 11%. The decline was due to higher SG and A expenses and an increase in interest expense from higher debt, primarily related to our recent acquisitions and share buybacks, partially offset by favorable tax impact.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Overall, 2024 was a challenging year that fell short of our expectations entering the year. Hardware growth did not materialize as expected and we absorbed changes in our cloud practice to align with key partners' priorities. However, there were many bright spots throughout the year that are consistent with many of our long term goals. Gross margin expanded two ten basis points to 20.3%. We continue to invest in our sales and technical talent, expanding our go to market capabilities.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Incyte core services gross profit grew 15% with our expanded expertise in the fastest growing areas of the market. We completed our SG and A actions and cash flow from operations was over $600,000,000 for the second year in a row. Moving on to full year 2024 results. Net revenue was $8,700,000,000 a decrease of 5%. Despite this decline, we increased gross profit by 6% and expanded gross margin by two ten basis points to 20.3.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Our gross profit and gross margin results were driven by cloud and services as well as our pricing and profitability initiatives. Our cloud gross profit was $484,000,000 an increase of 21% reflecting higher growth in SaaS and Infrastructure as a Service. Adjusted SG and A expenses grew 7% due to recent acquisitions. On an organic basis, SG and A declined in the year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 50 basis points to 6.2% and adjusted diluted earnings per share were $9.68 flat over last year.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

For the year, we generated $633,000,000 of cash flow from operations compared to $620,000,000 in 2023. As hardware growth returns in 2025, we anticipate cash flow from operations in the range of $300,000,000 to $400,000,000 In 2024, we spent $200,000,000 to repurchase shares. As of the end of Q4, we have $300,000,000 remaining for our share repurchase program. We intend to opportunistically repurchase shares, while balancing organic and inorganic investments. Our adjusted return on invested capital for the trailing twelve months at the end of the year was 15.3% compared to 17.3% a year ago, reflecting the recent acquisitions.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

We exited Q4 with total debt of $864,000,000 compared to $941,000,000 a year ago. Over the last year, we spent $470,000,000 on acquisitions and share repurchases funded by cash flow from operations. As of the end of Q4, we had access to the full $1,800,000,000 capacity under our ABL facility, of which the entire amount was available. We have ample liquidity to meet our needs. We have $333,000,000 of convertible notes outstanding that mature in February 2025, which we intend to settle by utilizing our ABL facility.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

In addition, we have associated warrants, a portion of which we will settle in Q1 and the remainder by the end of the year. Considering dilution over a multi year period, we expect settling the convertible notes and associated warrants will substantially lower our go forward total cost of financing and improve shareholder value. Our presentation shows our performance through Q4 twenty twenty four relative to the metrics that we described at our Investor Day in October 2022. For 2024, here is the status: Cloud gross profit growth of 21% Core services gross profit growth of 15% Adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.2% Adjusted diluted EPS was flat adjusted ROIC of 15.3% and adjusted free cash flow as a percentage of adjusted net income of 173%. As we look toward 2025, we have considered the following factors in our guidance and expect our growth and profitability will be more heavily weighted toward the second half of the year.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

As a reminder, in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, we delivered exceptionally strong results making comparisons in 2025 challenging. We expect hardware gross profit to grow in the mid single digits. We expect demand with our large enterprise and corporate clients to remain subdued, particularly in the first half. Insight core services gross profit is expected to grow within our long term guidance range of 16% to 20%. We anticipate cloud to be flat to slightly down due to the decline of enterprise agreements and our pivot to the corporate and mid market space.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

This includes an approximate $70,000,000 impact from Google enterprise resale and Microsoft Enterprise agreements. Excluding this impact, we would expect cloud to grow in the mid teens. As we exit the year, we believe the impact will be largely behind us. We continue to manage operating expenses and expect expense growth slower than gross profit. Considering these factors for the full year, our guidance is as follows: We expect to deliver gross profit growth in the low single digits and that our gross margin will be approximately 20%.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

And we anticipate adjusted diluted earnings per share will be between $9.7 to $10.1 which includes an approximate $0.4 impact related to interest from settling the convertible notes. This guidance includes interest expense between $70,000,000 to $75,000,000 primarily due to higher borrowing costs associated with settling the convertible notes and associated warrants an effective tax rate of 25% to 26% for the full year capital expenditures of $35,000,000 to $40,000,000 and an average share count for the full year of 33,000,000 shares, including the net impact of settling convertible notes and associated warrants. This outlook excludes acquisition related intangible amortization expense of approximately $74,000,000 assumes no acquisition related severance and restructuring or transformation expenses does not contemplate any impact from tariffs and assumes no meaningful change in the macroeconomic outlook or our debt instruments with the exception of the settlement of our convertible notes. I will now turn the call back to Joyce.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Thanks, James. To recap, for the year, we delivered positive results in strategic areas of the business despite a challenging environment. Cloud and InsightCore services gross profit grew double digits. Gross margin expanded reflecting favorable mix of cloud and InsightCore services and benefits from our acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 50 basis points and cash flow from operations was strong at over $630,000,000 As we transition into 2025, our goal remains clear to become the leading solutions integrator by consistently delivering exceptional value to our clients.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

The demand for transformation across cloud, data, AI and cyber solutions is accelerating and we are uniquely positioned to capture market share as growth returns. We have made structural improvements to our business in these challenging times. We've built discipline around our pricing and profitability initiatives, invested in our go to market teams to deliver on commitments to our partners and clients, developed nearshore and offshore capabilities to better serve our clients while effectively managing costs, upgraded our e commerce and cloud commerce platforms and acquired market leading services businesses to improve our portfolio and increase cross sell opportunities. I would like to thank our teammates for their unwavering commitment to our clients, partners and each other. Our clients for trusting Insight to help them with their transformational journeys and our partners for their continued collaboration and support in delivering innovative solutions to our clients.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

This concludes my comments and we will now open the line for your questions.

Operator

Thank you. The first question is from Joseph Cardoso at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Maybe for the first one here, just wanted to see if we can dig a little bit deeper into the cloud program changes, particularly as it relates to your Microsoft and Google businesses. Just trying to better understand, like, where do you guys expect the larger impact between those two businesses as it relates to the cloud headwinds that you called out for 2025?

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

And then maybe you can just touch on the actions that you guys are taking or are going to take to kind of offset those headwinds? And then how do you expect those to kind of ramp or unfold as we kind of progress through the quarters or years? And then I have a follow-up. Thank you.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Good morning, Joe. Thank you. Yes, so the $70,000,000 impact that James has talked about is really more heavily weighted towards enterprise agreements. So, that has been the biggest change. But obviously, we put them together because, the Google program changes were also significant and we talked about those a fair amount last year.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

The mitigation actions are primarily around ensuring we transition enterprise agreements, in the small and medium business and corporate space, into CSP agreements. And that activity has been underway for quite some time and our plan is to accelerate that activity. We've, we've seen a lot of great support from Microsoft recently around, making CSP the hero motion for that segment of business. They are very much digging into that and doubling down with us. So we're encouraged by that and, we expect to see that transition, happen throughout the actually most of the year and probably a bit into 2026 as enterprise agreements roll off.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

The other thing that we've done specifically one more thing, Joe. So since this is the medium and corporate space as we call it, we have invested over the past, I don't know, decade or so in our cloud commerce platform. And obviously, that digital engagement is very, very important to economically supporting those clients. And we are really, really excited about the improvements that we've made there and we see really terrific customer satisfaction and renewal rates there. So that's also helpful.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Got it. Thank you, Joyce. And then maybe just as my follow-up, and this is more on the outlook. If I'm doing the back of the envelope math correctly, it looks like the implied operating margins for next year tracking a bit softer relative to 2024? And maybe the better way of asking this is it looks like OpEx is expected to outpace gross profit growth.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

I guess, first, am I doing the math correctly there? And then if so, can you maybe just touch on the drivers of the OpEx expansion? I think over the past like year or so, you kind of had this target of growing OpEx lower than gross profit growth. So just curious, what's driving kind of this outsized expansion over the gross profit outlook that you expect for next year? And then maybe can you just share that in the context of some of the cost actions and efficiency initiatives that you've discussed in the prior quarter and obviously on this call itself?

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

And like where are we at with those? And are those fully embedded into kind of the outlook that you provided? Thank you.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Yes. Thanks, Joe. I'll start and Joyce if there's anything you'd like to add. But actually, Joe, what we're looking at is OpEx would grow slightly slower than gross profit. And our operating leverage as the year progresses, we would expect that to improve.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

One of the big factors is the program changes that we described in terms of earlier in the year having an impact on the operating leverage. But as the year progresses, we should see that improve. But for the full year, we would expect OpEx to grow slightly slower than gross profit. A couple of things give us confidence in that. First is the $25,000,000 of actions that we've taken.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

We expect to realize that on an annualized basis in 2025. Also if you look at our headcount, our headcount starting point is lower than it was as we enter 2024. The headcount reductions there just to be very specific have been around support functions. We've tried to preserve capacity for both our sales and technical talents. Also as you look at our OpEx, our acquisitions have all either hit their anniversary date or will be hitting it shortly.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

So you'll see a more normalized OpEx as the year progresses.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Makes sense. Thanks, James. Appreciate the color.

Operator

Our next question comes from Adam Tindle at Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Hi, good morning. Thanks. Joyce, I just wanted to start when you were talking about a little bit of hardware growth in Q4, which is great to see and some green shoots there. And then as you described the device cycle, I think you mentioned thinking that would be 2025 and 2026, which that second part was a little bit newer to me. I guess maybe the question would be, based on what you know now and what you're seeing here at the turn of the year, if you could revisit the timing and magnitude of the device cycle?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Yes. So we have expected as you know, we have expected that device refresh cycle to start earlier. We have seen growth now three quarters in a row in the commercial business, particularly around devices and that generally as a precursor to other segments. We saw some nice improvement in public sector as well this quarter on the top line in particular. And so we think though and we're we are feeling better about pipeline coverage when it comes to devices, etcetera.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

So we are feeling better about it. I think we had anticipated that the vast majority of the refresh would be complete by the time that the Windows 11, support requirements kicked in that we're just kind of running out of time. So that's why we're saying it's likely to bleed over to 2026. But we are optimistic that we will see this improvement and we are seeing it, as I said, in our pipeline coverage and we're seeing it in bookings and we're also, as I said, seeing it in our commercial business and we expect that to bleed through eventually to our corporate and enterprise space. And we're feeling optimistic, but we're probably a bit cautious on the speed of that just because we've been talking about it

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

for quite some time.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Understandable. James, maybe just as a follow-up. I think you've given some helpful color in terms of quantifying the various moving parts, but maybe we could just ask to sum up as we think about 2025, your EPS guidance is for modest growth, which in light of all the moving parts and headwinds that you're incurring is pretty commendable. But if you could just kind of summarize and unpack the major buckets of headwinds, the $70,000,000 etcetera, and tailwinds financing costs, incremental benefit from restructuring, just so we can kind of bridge the earnings for 2025 and understand what's going on in the underlying business.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

And with that, if you could also maybe just touch on cash flow given it's been so strong, I'm wondering what we should be thinking about for 2025? Thanks.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Yes. Thanks, Adam. So in terms of headwinds, I think we called it out in the prepared remarks. First and foremost is around this pivot. We have clearly encouraging signs, but we have work to do on that side.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

And so that's probably one of the largest headwinds that we're faced with this year. If you go below our EFO, interest expense is one of the items that is a headwind as well. And that that is really simply a factor of us settling the convertible notes through cash and using our ABL which the convert today sits at a nominal rate and when you look at shifting this to the ABL that's so for plus a bit and so that creates a bit of a headwind. We have share count that largely offsets that though in terms of and the reason for that Adam is we have warrants that are associated with this convert. And as we settle those warrants with cash, we're going to settle a portion of them with cash that has the effect of reducing our share count.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

So those sort of offset below the line. Tax rate, it has we had some favorable items in Q4. So we go back to our historical rate of somewhere between 2526%. If we pop back up above the line, there are some areas that are also encouraging. It is still early, but they are encouraging.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

I think we've called them out in terms of the commercial business, several quarters of growth now. That should move up segment into corporate and then ultimately enter enterprise, which we think there will be some tailwinds from that. And then our services business, I would say that we're entering the year, Joyce commented on this in the prepared remarks. I think we're entering the year with the best portfolio I think that we've ever had in the history of the company. And that has been bolstered by the acquisitions.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Even SADA's pivot that they've been going through, their focus on the services business has been quite encouraging. And so we have a set of tailwinds that I think will help us to offset some of the headwinds that are primarily around the partner program changes. Joyce, I don't know if there's anything we can add.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Couple other things I would add. So we actually saw also we didn't talk about it earlier, Adam, but we saw some infrastructure growth actually in the quarter, which, we're also encouraged by. So we feel like that is right for refresh. There's a bunch of aging networking and servers out there. Servers actually grew double digits for us, which was really terrific to see in addition to the overall in a little bit of networking growth, which is great.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

I think that cross selling initiatives that we've built around our new services capabilities have really kicked in and so we expect those to grow over time. And then and SaaS and IS are going to continue to remain strong in terms of growth as part of the cloud picture. The final thing that I'd just like to say is we built a program a couple of years ago that was all about improving profitability and in our services business in particular, but also our hardware and software business, that worked really, really well. We've applied that same approach to growth now. And specifically, we have reduced the scope of our specialty sale sales team made so that they are very, very focused on going very deep with technologies and expertise in areas of our business like specifically infrastructure or like ServiceNow or like Google or like Microsoft.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

And that has helped drive a bunch of a much better alignment with our partners. So we're feeling like that is is really promising as well. So I think all those things taken together, allow give us the confidence to deliver this out outlook that James has provided.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Thank you. That's helpful. And cash flow real quick, James?

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Yes. So cash flow, if you look at our guidance, we are returning back to the historical guide if you look at that as a percentage of net income. The last couple of years, we've clearly had very, very strong cash flow. It's well outside our typical long term guidance and that has been primarily driven by obviously improvements, some improvements in the cash conversion cycle, but hardware has been a key driver of that cash flow in terms of hardware being down. And so it's been a bit of a boost to cash flow.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

As we enter 2025 and we see a return of growth in the hardware business that's going to have that's going to bring our cash flow back into our kind of normal historical range.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Got it. Thank you.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Thanks, Adam.

Operator

Our next question is from Anthony Lebiedzinski from Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Good morning and thank you for taking the questions. I apologize, I joined the call a little bit late. But just overall, how should we think about the potential and existing tariffs on your business and whether how much of that uncertainty is reflected in your guidance?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Thank you, Anthony. We have modeled the tariff impact six ways to Sunday and we are pretty clear on the impacts that would at various rates that have been sort of all over the news and trying to figure that out. We've been working very, very closely with our OEM partners to understand the exposure of their products, which is really how the tariffs would reach our clients. In essence, the way we worked through this when we did this a few years ago was we pass on the incremental cost into our clients. So we see generally a resulting ASP increase in whatever category is impacted.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

And right now with the current tariffs as I stand, we don't expect much elasticity impact. So in other words, we don't expect the 10% tariff that we know about to have a big impact on demand. If those change, those numbers change, we have a pretty good sense of what would impact that. And so our guidance, I think, contemplates minimal impact from tariffs and but contemplating the current tariffs that exist.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Understood. I know it remains a dynamic situation there. Now as far as the structural improvements in the business that you guys talked about, do you think there are some other opportunities or you think you're mostly tapped out of those opportunities to improve the structure of your business?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

We are so not topped out. Anthony, if you look I mean, we benchmark the best of best that we can find out there in terms of profitability on hardware and software and we best smart best of the best we can find out there in terms of profitability around services and those are our targets. So we have room to improve those for sure. And as James talked about, we also think a little bit of growth that we have in this plan is also allows us to leverage our OpEx and that should continue with more growth. So we have a lot of opportunity for improvement still.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Hey, Anthony, I know you didn't ask this question, but I thought I would put it out there anyway in terms of the profile of the year. I commented on it in the prepared remarks, but and saying that the year would pan out in such a way that the second half would be stronger than the first half. In particular, I want to comment on Q1. Our Q1, we are facing really strong compares from the previous year. We had really strong results in Q1 of twenty twenty four.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

And so as we think of the profile of the year and I don't use the word seasonality because I'm not quite sure we know what a normal seasonality looks like anymore, but we can comment on the profile of the year. And that would be Q1 is facing tough compares and we would expect that this builds as the year goes with a much stronger second half than first half.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Tough compares and then outsized the impact of the program changes.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Yes, understood with that. Okay. All right. Well, but also you did say at the beginning, I think Joyce, that you are seeing some solid bookings momentum in the business. So as far as the timing of that, when that translates to revenue, is that also you think more back half driven or is that kind of a

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

We would expect demand to improve

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

throughout the year. So yes, James said yes.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Okay. Well, thank you very much and best of luck.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Thank you.

James Morgado
James Morgado
Senior Vice President of Finance at Insight Enterprises

Thank you,

Operator

We have no further questions on the call. So I will hand back to Joyce for any concluding remarks.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President & Chief Executive Officer at Insight Enterprises

Thank you very much to all of you for your questions and your interest. Our clients require a trusted advisor to help them navigate this increasingly fragmented and complicated landscape. And we are excited about the opportunities ahead of us and I look forward to sharing our continued progress on our journey to become the leading solutions integrator. Thank you very much. Operator, you can close the call.

Operator

Thank you all very much for joining today's Insight Enterprises fourth quarter call. You may now disconnect.

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Executives
    • Ryan Miyasato
      Ryan Miyasato
      Investor Relation
    • Joyce Mullen
      Joyce Mullen
      President & Chief Executive Officer
    • James Morgado
      James Morgado
      Senior Vice President of Finance
Analysts
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Earnings Conference Call
Insight Enterprises Q4 2024
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