Ingram Micro Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: In early July, Ingram Micro experienced a ransomware attack that forced key systems offline and triggered a law-enforcement–led investigation; although Q2 results were unaffected, the incident introduces uncertainty into Q3 guidance.
  • Positive Sentiment: In Q2, Ingram Micro delivered 10.9% net sales growth to $12.79 billion, exceeding top-line, gross profit, and EPS guidance with robust expansion in Client & Endpoint Solutions and solid gains in Advanced Solutions and Cloud.
  • Positive Sentiment: The xVantage platform and its AI-powered Digital Assistant (AIDA) drove a 200% jump in self-service orders, doubled quote creation year-over-year, and surfaced tens of thousands of partner opportunities valued at hundreds of millions.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Ingram Micro completed the divestiture of non-core Endpoint services assets and initiated the sale of Cloud Blue to sharpen focus on its unified xVantage ecosystem and core platform strategy.
  • Negative Sentiment: For Q3, the company guides to net sales of $11.88 billion to $12.38 billion (midpoint +3%), gross margin just below 7%, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.61–$0.73, including a $0.02–$0.04 per share conservatism for the ransomware impact.
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Earnings Conference Call
Ingram Micro Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 13 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Ingram Micro Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Willa McMannan, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Operator

Thank you. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. I'm here today with Paul Bay, Ingram Micro's CEO and Mike Zylis, our CFO. Before I turn the call over to Paul, let me remind you that today's discussion contains forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including predictions, estimates, projections or other statements about future events, statements about our strategy, demand plans and positioning, growth, cash flow, capital allocation and stockholder return as well as our future expectations for future fiscal periods. Actual results may differ materially from those mentioned in these forward looking statements because of risks and uncertainties discussed in today's earnings release and in our filings with the SEC. We do not intend to update any forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

During this call, we will reference certain non GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of non GAAP results to GAAP results are included in our earnings press release and the related Form eight ks available on the SEC website or on our Investor Relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Paul.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Willa. Good afternoon and thank you for joining today's call, which comes on the heels of the ransomware attack we experienced in early July. While no company wants to face the increasing reality of such an attack, our response reflects the way we do business as a platform company. Although some uncertainty remains regarding the potential impact on our business and future results, which Mike will address in more detail during the Q3 guidance discussion, I want to emphasize that the incident had no impact on our Q2 results. To recap, in early July, we identified ransomware on certain internal systems and we quickly took our systems offline, launched an investigation with top cybersecurity experts and notified law enforcement.

Speaker 2

With respect to the incident, certain data was exfiltrated from our systems and conduct in conjunction with this incident. We have engaged a third party data analysis firm to assist us in reviewing the relevant data. This process is ongoing and complex. Should we determine that personal information was affected, we will provide notification based on relevant regulations. In terms of our response, we approached the incident as a business challenge and the entire organization mobilized to address it.

Speaker 2

Due to our scalable and modular platform architecture and the tireless coordinated efforts of our team, we restored secure operations within days, minimizing disruption to our customers and our partners and the overall business. The investigation into the cyber incident remains ongoing and we continue to monitor our systems closely. While this attack was unanticipated, our rapid response reinforced the critical importance of our xVantage platform architecture and the strength of our overall teams and partnership. I'll talk more about xVantage in a minute. But first, let me discuss some key highlights of the second quarter.

Speaker 2

We were pleased that we exceeded the high end of our net sales guidance and landed towards the top end of our gross profit and earnings per share guidance ranges. We had growth across all lines of business, particularly in Client and Endpoint Solutions. We also saw incremental year over year improvement in Advanced Solutions and continued growth in Cloud. Geographically, year over year, the lower cost to serve and lower margin Asia Pacific region demonstrated the highest net sales growth in the quarter. We also saw double digit net sales growth in North America, single digit net sales growth in EMEA and return to growth in Latin America.

Speaker 2

India performed as we had expected, with some continued impact on gross margins from the heightened competitive market and business improving as we progressed through Q2. From a customer perspective, we saw growth across all categories with enterprise again outperforming. We were also encouraged by the return to modest growth in SMB. Since our last call, we began the divestiture of two non core pieces of the business. First is a divestiture of assets related to an EndReport forming operation in our North America region, which closed in late July.

Speaker 2

And the second is Cloud Blue, which is expected to close in Q3. Both of these divestitures were a result of our ongoing portfolio review as we focus on continually improving our operational effectiveness and amplifying our core strengths. As a reminder, I've talked about the more than $600,000,000 investment that Ingram Micro has made in cloud, which has been the strategic to our long term vision enabled us to be the first to launch a comprehensive cloud marketplace and learn early on from our cloud business. Cloud Blue is part of the initial foundation for the strategy and we have retained the relevant IT from it. Instead of building fragmented marketplaces, we have unified our cloud marketplaces within our XVantage platform ecosystem to provide a single pane of glass for hardware, software, cloud and service solutions.

Speaker 2

This strategy is designed to provide our customers with speed, scale and service and is core to our evolution into a platform company, which we are executing upon through our XVantage platform. We think about this evolution for Inger Micro and the subsequent transformation of our customers' journeys in three phases. The first phase, which we are already delivering upon, is to remove friction to streamline operations and drive OpEx efficiency. The second phase, which we are in the process of rolling out, leverages AI to automate and optimize demand signals, enabling more proactive go to market strategies and accelerating top line growth. The third phase will unlock greater value for our customers and our vendor partners by matching supply and demand more intelligently, using data to drive growth and further enhance margins and operating leverage.

Speaker 2

It is during this phase that we expect to fully realize a flywheel network effect. Though this takes time, we continue to grow and remain profitable as we move through these phases. In July, Sanjeev Sahoo, President of our Inger Micro Global Platforms Group showcased the progression and discussed the way in which XManage is reshaping the landscape. During the presentation, he walked through the platform's building blocks to underscore why its unique real time data mesh architecture and custom AI factory are foundational in building a truly single pane of glass platform. He explained how Inger Micro's more than forty five years of experience in IT distribution gives us not only deep expertise but significant business data to power our AI factory, which uses AI to redefine the customer journey through intelligent automation.

Speaker 2

This automation is the basis for our Intelligent Digital Assistant, or as we call it, AIDA, which helps our customers win more business and deploy their resources more effectively and efficiently. Sanjeev showed real time examples of how IDA uses advanced AI and machine learning models to analyze our data across more than 50 attributes and help our customers identify and prioritize the sales opportunities most aligned to them. This moves them from reactive inbound order taking to proactive outbound order making. As a proof point to this, in Q2, through IDA alone, we brought in tens of thousands of opportunities to our partners valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, up nearly 50% sequentially. Some other real world examples of how Xvantage is delivering to our customers and partners includes a leading solution provider in the public sector space who is focused on expanding into higher value solutions offerings while maximizing operational efficiency.

Speaker 2

Using Xvantage capabilities, the solution provider was able to execute a multimillion dollar solution with a fraction of the effort previously required and is now looking to create the same efficiencies with other vendor partners. Another illustration of the way customers are embracing xVantage is a large new customer in France, whose CEO engaged directly with xVantage and converted his company's entire go to market and customer relationship process onto the platform. The move to Xvantage enabled the company to generate and convert quotes into orders in under three minutes, a process that previously took up to a half a day, leading to significant revenue and market share gains. Of course, our customer success is the best reflection of our success. And last quarter, we discussed a few of the many other platform metrics we use to gauge the way in which Xvantage is adding value.

Speaker 2

These include self-service orders, which in the second quarter grew nearly 200% year over year. During Q2, we also saw a near doubling in quotes created on the platform versus the prior year, driven by ongoing enhancements of advanced search, quoting, product data and other capabilities. In the quarter, Xvantage also helped us reactivate nearly 2,000 dormant customers who generated approximately 40% higher sales compared to their prior engagement. The second quarter brought with it solid business performance and entering Q3 a unique set of challenges that demonstrated the strength of our platform. I'm incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support we received from our customers and our partners and proud of the resilience shown by our team.

Speaker 2

As we move into the back half of the year, I'm increasingly encouraged by the impact of our platform strategy and what it's having across our entire ecosystem. By delivering a holistic platform for B2B, we are not just modernizing distribution, we are reimagining how we can help our customers solve real business problems. Thank you for your continued support. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Mike. Mike?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon. Our second quarter results demonstrated solid performance with strong top line growth across our primary lines of business. We are encouraged by the continued momentum in our client and endpoint solutions, but also by mid single digit growth in both advanced solutions and cloud. As we look ahead to the third quarter, we expect continued year over year top line growth enabled by strong execution across our core businesses, which I'll cover more in our guidance discussion shortly. Now to discuss the quarter in more detail.

Speaker 3

Net sales of $12,790,000,000 were up 10.9% year over year in U. S. Dollars and 10.2% on an FX neutral basis. We saw sales of client and endpoint solutions grow most robustly at nearly 14% on an FX neutral basis, which continues to be driven primarily by strength in desktop notebook and smartphone categories. Our mid single digit growth in Advanced Solutions was driven by servers, storage and cybersecurity along with strength in sales of GPUs used in emerging AI solutions, particularly in Asia Pacific markets.

Speaker 3

Geographically, net sales grew across each of our regional segments. Our mix was similar to what we saw in the first quarter with continued strength in Asia Pacific followed closely by North America, both of which grew in the mid teens year over year. We also saw a return to growth in Latin America, which increased by more than 6% year over year on an FX neutral basis. From the perspective of our customer categories, large corporate and enterprise sales again outpaced higher margin SMB sales. While we are seeing some growth in SMB in some of our markets, overall this higher margin customer category remains more muted than large enterprise as near term macro uncertainty and inflationary trends continue to bear more on this type of customer.

Speaker 3

Overall, these mix factors coupled with an improving but still very competitive India market continue to put pressure on margins. All of these factors and including an eight basis point one time impact that I will elaborate on shortly contributed to our gross margin decline year over year. While we have a generally heightened competitive environment in many markets in which we operate, when we look at like for like sales across a product or a customer category, we are not seeing any notable deterioration in margin profile. Furthermore, these concentrations of mix also favor lower business, which coupled with efficiencies and automation from our XVantage platform and our cost reduction actions taken over the last year and a half yield solid leverage on operating expenses and flows through to our bottom line. Turning to our regional segments.

Speaker 3

North America net sales were 4,980,000,000 up 13.8% year over year on an FX neutral basis, driven by strong growth in servers, storage and cybersecurity, but also continued robust demand in the desktop notebook product categories with the pending Windows end of life continuing to spur the refresh cycle. As a result, client and endpoint solutions grew nearly 13% in the region. Sales were also more concentrated in large corporate and enterprise customers, but we also saw some positive momentum in SMB, which is quite encouraging going forward. EMEA net sales of $3,480,000,000 were up 4.8% year over year on a U. S.

Speaker 3

Dollar basis and were essentially flat on an FX neutral basis. We saw continued strong double digit growth in cloud, which was offset by flat client and endpoint solutions and a low single digit decline in advanced solutions. Asia Pacific once again had strong growth with net sales of $3,480,000,000 up 16.2% year over year in U. S. Dollars and up 17.3% on an FX neutral basis.

Speaker 3

Net sales were driven by very strong double digit growth in Client and Endpoint Solutions, primarily from lower margin mobility device sales, particularly in China. Advanced Solutions sales were down approximately 8% as strength in networking was more than offset by declines in server and storage. Latin America net sales of $853,000,000 returned to growth this quarter, increasing 0.8% in U. S. Dollars and up 6.4% in constant currency.

Speaker 3

The increase in net sales was primarily driven by growth in client and endpoint solutions, particularly in smartphones and tablets. This sales growth was partially offset by a decrease in advanced solutions, primarily in servers, specialty products and networking. Second quarter gross profit came in at $839,000,000 or 6.56% of net sales. Included in this result is a one time impact of $10,500,000 or eight basis points of net sales associated with the held for sale accounting for the planned sale of assets of the underperforming non core operation in North America that Paul touched on a few minutes ago. This divestiture closed in late July.

Speaker 3

The remaining year over year decline in gross margin was driven by a mix shift towards lower margin, but generally lower cost to serve businesses, as I've already discussed from a customer, product and geographic perspective. Q2 operating expenses were $696,000,000 or 5.44% of net sales compared to 5.61% in the same period last year. Q2 twenty twenty five operating expenses included a write down of $32,800,000 or 26 basis points of net sales related to the held for sale accounting on the two divestitures we've discussed, incurred to write down the carrying amount of the assets of the disposal group to their estimated fair value less the cost to sell. From a regional perspective, both the $10,500,000 gross profit charge and the $32,800,000 operating expense charge related to held for sale accounting appear in our North America region. The year over year improvement in OpEx leverage reflects the cost actions we have taken over the last one point five years, the impact of the XVantage platform in driving leverage and productivity gains and the mix factors associated with a higher concentration of lower cost to serve sales in client and endpoint solutions and in the APAC region as I have just covered.

Speaker 3

Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $294,000,000 up nearly 6% in U. S. Dollars and 5% in constant currency. And non GAAP net income in the quarter was $142,000,000 compared to $120,000,000 in 2024, an increase of over 18% in U. S.

Speaker 3

Dollars and more than 17% in constant currency. The non GAAP net income measure benefited from a decrease of $14,000,000 or 16% in net interest expense resulting from more than $600,000,000 in debt repayments we have made since the beginning of 2024. Our non GAAP diluted EPS was $0.61 up 12% from the prior year and at the higher end of our guidance for Q2. Our current year EPS also includes the impact of approximately $02 from a higher tax rate in the quarter resulting from heightened U. S.

Speaker 3

Withholding taxes on sales from our Latin America export business. Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with net working capital of $4,600,000,000 compared to $3,900,000,000 to close the same period last year. The higher investment in working capital this year is driven by the increase in net sales and investment needed to capture these opportunities. On a days basis, our net working capital in Q2 twenty twenty five was thirty days versus thirty one days in the same period of 2024.

Speaker 3

On a similar note, adjusted free cash flow was an outflow of $263,000,000 again reflective of investments to grow the business including some strategic buy ins of inventory again this quarter to get ahead of potential tariffs. We returned $23,500,000 to stockholders through dividends paid during Q2. And we announced a 2.6% increase to our quarterly dividend to be paid in Q3. We ended the quarter with $857,000,000 in cash and cash equivalents and debt of $3,700,000,000 Our gross leverage ratio was 2.8 times and our net leverage ratio was 2.2 times. Shifting now to our guidance for Q3, I want to start by framing our current view in light of the ransomware incident we experienced in early July.

Speaker 3

The timing of the incident over a long U. S. Holiday weekend and in the early days of a new month and quarter, coupled with the speed of our response to get the majority of our go to market systems back up and running in a matter of days may have limited the impact on our financial results. But even if minimized, there is still an impact from the days we were unable to transact, which we are still working to quantify. Thus, our guidance reflects some conservatism, which we think is prudent to account for any potential loss of business, which would include for instance potential bids or quotes we were unable to participate in when our systems were down.

Speaker 3

I can say quite positively that we've seen good indicators of business returning to more expected levels since bringing our systems back online. With this in mind, we are guiding net sales of $11,880,000,000 to $12,380,000,000 which represents year over year growth of more than 3% at the midpoint. We expect third quarter gross profit of $815,000,000 to $875,000,000 which would represent gross margins just below 7% at the midpoint. Due to the expectation of more temporary growth than we experienced in the first half of this year in client and endpoint solutions, paired with improving growth rates in more profitable advanced solutions and Cloud businesses as well as continued improvement in the SMB customer category. We expect non GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $0.61 to $0.73 per diluted share.

Speaker 3

This guidance assumes a potential $02 to $04 impact related to the ransomware incident. Our EPS guidance assumes approximately 235,500,000.0 weighted average shares outstanding and a non GAAP tax rate returning to a more expected rate of 30%. So in closing, we expect continued year over year top line growth enabled by strong execution across our core businesses and the progress we are making in our platform transformation. With that operator, we will now open up the call to take questions.

Operator

Thank you. And at this time, we will conduct our question and answer session. Session. And our first question comes from Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Please state your question.

Speaker 4

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the question. I just have two. First, just as you think about third quarter, I was wondering if you could provide some color on your expectations related to endpoint and advanced as you think about revenue growth for the third quarter? And then secondly, just on the strength in mobility in China, how much

Speaker 5

of that was primarily driven

Speaker 4

by the tumor subsidies given by the government? And is that a key driver of the kind of deceleration in top line growth as we head into next quarter? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. So this is Mike. Michael, thanks for the question. I'll answer the first one first. I think on the guide, where our midpoint is at about three percent growth, our top end is about 5% growth year over year.

Speaker 3

And I'll talk about more of the top end because that's really where if we didn't have a little bit of an impact to the cyber incident, which is probably about 1% to 2% maybe on the top line, that's where we probably would have landed, I guess, as more of a midpoint. So if you think about that, what we baked in there is certainly, as I said in my prepared remarks, a little bit more tempered growth in the client and endpoint. We grew double digits as we said, but we're assuming something more like mid single digits. And honestly, where the bigger drop is, we're still seeing strength and should see strength on refresh of desktops and notebooks as we look towards the end of life of Windows and so forth carrying out into even the early part of Q4. So we still see that as being fairly strong, but it's really more of the smartphone growth that we see less of as we look into Q3.

Speaker 3

So call it roughly mid single digits at the high end of our guide on client and endpoint, probably low to mid on advanced solutions, which continues to be probably stronger servers and storage. Networking is rebounding to growth, but a little bit more modest and it depends on the market you're in. And then higher single digits on cloud, which we're excited about that returning. We had a harder compare in Q2 of last year that and a little bit of that in Q1 of this year as well compared to last year. We're excited about that returning to a little bit more robust growth.

Speaker 3

So that's sort of a mixed story. And then on your second question on China, it's hard to gauge. I think there probably is a little bit that's pulled forward by some of those stimulus plans as well as some of the potential for tariffs and retaliatory tariffs playing across that market. I think our growth there certainly was more geared towards that smartphone category as well as a little bit in some of the high end GPUs which we had across other parts of APAC as well. So that's what I would say on that.

Speaker 3

It's hard to gauge exactly.

Speaker 2

The only other this is Paul. Michael, only other thing I would add to it as it relates to the mobility is we've had strong growth in mobility all of last year in Asia Pacific and into the first two quarters of this year. So nothing that was way over the top relative to what we've been seeing in terms of demand in that market around the smartphone business.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Paul. That's really helpful.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Chatterjee with JPMorgan Chase and Company. Please state your question.

Speaker 6

Hi, thanks for the question. This is actually Joe Cardoso on for Samik. I guess maybe my first one is more of a clarification point. Obviously, you guys talked about the mobility and maybe that not continuing through the second half. But maybe if we focus on North America, saw strong sequential growth this quarter there.

Speaker 6

Just curious, I don't think you guys necessarily talked about it at all, but are you seeing any demand pull forward across any of the hardware products that you guys are shipping? And specifically, can you bifurcate that between devices and infrastructure? And whether you've seen any of the pull forward on that in the first half and some goodness flowing through and some of the conservatism going into the back half is just related to not a continuation of that trend? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Speaker 2

So and we don't break out by The Americas. So from a North America standpoint, I'll speak more on behalf of that. But we didn't see meaningful pull forward in all the categories. If there was anything there was still maybe a little bit around the desktop notebook refresh but nothing that was material and anything that we built in A for Q2 and then really in our guide in Q3 also.

Speaker 6

Got it. Very clear. And then maybe second question sorry for the second question and maybe more of a big picture one, but obviously the big beautiful bill was passed like almost a month ago. And was just curious if that's coming up in any of the customer discussions you're having here in The States. And if so, if you could provide any insights on how customers are thinking about any of the implications there, is it positive or negative?

Speaker 6

Thanks for the question guys.

Speaker 2

Yes, absolutely. And so if you look at, I think most of the impact from the big beautiful bill is going to be more wrapped around kind of the Fed sled area. So public sector call it and public sector for us is not a material piece of our business. So I think you'll see depending stuff moving from maybe from federal that's going to local and or state stuff shifting back and forth. So for us I know there's conversations going on but again it's not a meaningful part of our business.

Speaker 2

And we do play in all those categories. So as maybe there's defunding in one area and there's areas that are shifted more to from Fed maybe to state, we'll be able to participate in that.

Speaker 3

Yes. The one thing I would just add, that favorability on the CapEx treatment is certainly going to benefit some companies, may benefit larger companies to larger magnitudes perhaps. So we're keeping an eye on it and to see and we're certainly poised to capture that if it does drive some demand pull forward for sure.

Operator

And your next question comes from Woodring with Morgan Stanley. Please state your question.

Speaker 7

Hey guys, thanks so much for taking my questions. I guess two as well. And maybe just to start, another kind of big picture question related to some of the end market comments that you guys made. And really, it's just when you speak to your customers or you look at the pipeline to the degree that you have visibility into it, You've been kind of been clear on smartphones and PCs, but big picture, kind of where do you see the market for some of these various major products? Where do you see us at in the cycle right now?

Speaker 7

If we think about storage and servers and NetComm and PCs and smartphones, do you think big picture where mid cycle? Are we late cycle? Like I'm sure there's differences between each of those products, but I'm just trying to get a better understanding of where things could ultimately go again if there wasn't disruption from the multitude of factors that are obviously impacting the macro? And then I just have a follow-up. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. This is Paul. I'll jump in. So from an end market standpoint, I'll talk about it's interesting when you look at kind of categories as you've been following us and been looking talking about the networking category for quite some time all of last year and how it was down. Well, we're in a similar situation really from an end market perspective or I'll use them generically our customers, our solution providers around the SMB markets.

Speaker 2

And so we hadn't seen growth and it's been down double digits since 2024. So Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and Q1 of this year and then seeing single digit growth in Q2, this most recent earnings. So we're excited about that and we're starting to see growth there. We've talked about how that market historically comes back a little bit more slowly relative to the investment and spend we've seen more around mid market and enterprise. As it relates to the product set, we did see some, and Mike touched on it briefly, around some of the GPU activity that's going on really around AI and there's a global comment too.

Speaker 2

So it's not just necessarily driven around one territory that we're seeing across both networking and server. So we saw good growth, double digit growth this quarter in storage, server and networking, some a little bit more growth in other, server being the biggest growth out of all those. So I would say we're kind of if I had to peg it, we're probably mid innings on this as we're seeing and then we'll see other services and capabilities kind of follow behind as those GPU products continue to get delivered in the full solution.

Speaker 7

Awesome. Super helpful. Thank you for that, Paul. And then Mike, maybe just turning to you. I know you referenced some cost actions and mix factors that impacted OpEx.

Speaker 7

It was still up sequentially fairly strongly. And I know obviously you had a larger revenue base. And so maybe my question is, the sequential growth that we saw this 2Q in OpEx, was stronger than the 2Q of last year, is that really just the higher revenue base or were you able to pull forward any investments to take advantage of that top line outperformance and maybe just push a little bit of that through from a timing perspective? And that's all I had. Thanks so much guys.

Speaker 7

Yes.

Speaker 3

Just to bear in mind, dollars 32,700,000.0 of that one time charge was flowing through our OpEx, which was up one time held for sale accounting. So I don't know if you're backing that out of the numbers you're looking at. Sequentially there is a bit of an increase and year over year we continue to manage more to sales volumes and how we manage leverage on a percentage of OpEx. Certainly with 10 growth year over year from a revenue perspective, you have that degree of variable OpEx. We have timing as far as how sort of annual merits kick in and so forth that start in Q2 as well.

Speaker 3

And then lastly, there is a little bit of a pull forward where we saw opportunities, especially around some of the things we're doing on our investments in Xvantage that Sanjeev talked about a couple of weeks ago in mid July, where we saw opportunities to expedite some of that work in Q2. There's a little bit of timing there as well.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks so much guys. Good luck.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Ruplu Bhattacharya with Bank of America. Please state your question.

Speaker 8

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two, one for Mike and one for Paul. Mike, when we look at the guide for fiscal 3Q, revenues are down 5% sequentially, but gross margin is up 40 bps quarter over quarter. You talked about a lower mix of client devices that is helping.

Speaker 8

But can you also comment on the impact of the pricing environment? I think in prior quarters you had talked about competitive pricing in some markets like India. How is that trending? And also how are you seeing the mix of regions contributing to this? If Asia remains strong, how much of a headwind is this to gross margin?

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks Ruplu. Good questions. I think the so I think the big overriding factor you called out, which is really just more of the mix normalizing a little bit between client and endpoint and advanced solutions. Then cloud being a little bit higher growth.

Speaker 3

You do have the eight basis point one time impact also in our margins in Q2 that wouldn't recur in Q3. So that's another sequential differential that you just need to take into account if you weren't already. And then I think we are still seeing and I said this in my prepared remarks, I think we're seeing a heightened competitive environment everywhere in this environment. When macro is a little bit more volatile or softer, you do see that heightened competitive factor, but it's rational. And even in India where we did call out in prior quarters a bit less rational behavior in some cases.

Speaker 3

That was most pronounced in Q1. Q2 really fell through exactly as we predicted in our last call, which was about half that level of impact in Q2. And as we sit here now in Q3, we see it returning to more normal levels. But India will always be a more competitive environment just given the growth prospects there and so forth. I think that's what I would say on the competitive factors.

Speaker 3

And I'll just reiterate what I also said in my prepared remarks, on a like for like basis when we look across a customer category or a product category, we really aren't seeing any significant or notable deterioration in pricings or margins. It really is more of that mix as we see as a whole. I think I hit on all your questions. No, you also asked about Asia Pac. So we certainly still see Asia Pac as a higher growth opportunity.

Speaker 3

That's going to probably continue for the foreseeable future, whereas EMEA might be the opposite end of the spectrum, especially in some of the Western markets where we still see a more challenging macro environment. But most we're encouraged about is we're just seeing a return to double digit growth in North America, which is a very good sign between that and APAC as two of our biggest geographic segments.

Speaker 8

Okay. Mike, I appreciate all the details there. As a follow-up, Paul, can I ask you, are you seeing any AI driven specifically AI driven hardware purchases from customers, either AI PCs or AI servers? And if so, what percent of your revenues this year would you say are AI driven? And kind of related to this, you talked in your prepared remarks and Sanjeev the other day also talked about Xvantage helping to drive sales.

Speaker 8

Is there a way to quantify how much revenue in a year you expect Xvantage to drive? Thanks. Thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 2

Yes. So I'll start with the Advantage. So and I talked about you heard thank you. It sounds like you attended Sanjeet's presentation. And so we continue to help do things like we talked about IDA and I talked about it in my prepared remarks of what we've done and kind of the three phases we're going through with Xvantage in some countries of the 20 plus countries that we have are a little bit further down the road than others.

Speaker 2

We don't necessarily disclose in totality how much Xvantage because if you think forward where we're going to be is every country is going to be on Xvantage and that's how we're going to run the company is through Xvantage as the platform of how the company is going to deliver. So what we do is we're going to continue to give metrics around what we think are important metrics on Xvantage. And the three I continue to go to is we look at it three different ways. One is user engagement, two is financial and operational and three is around the customer. So for user engagement on this quarter, I talked about quotes created nearly doubled year over year as we continue to provide further enhancements around search, around quoting, around product and other capabilities.

Speaker 2

Financial, we've talked about self-service. That means people are coming and using the platform and providing more orders. Self-service because of ease of use, that was up over 200%. And again, for three quarters in a row now, we've talked about how we brought forward almost 2,000 dormant customers that are in this quarter grew 40% higher than the sales that they are doing before. So it's showing that people are coming to Xvantage and effectively, I would say they're running their business in a way that will really help enable them.

Speaker 2

If you look at AI, so to answer your second question around AI, I'll touch AIPC. So a majority of the refresh on PC so far for us have not been AI driven. I think we're in the early days of that, still early innings. As we talk to customers and kind of end partners in terms of that evolution. Most of that has been around just age systems and the Windows refresh and the Windows end of life.

Speaker 2

We did and Mike touched on it briefly, we are seeing some opportunities and we've been very opportunistic. One in North America, we had some pretty big one time opportunities and also in Asia Pacific around GPUs and some of the GPU data that's enabling the AI capability. So we're starting to see more and more of that than I would have said a couple of quarters ago. So that's encouraging. I think, again, long term, it will be more around how do you service around those capabilities and services that are being delivered.

Speaker 8

Thanks for all the details. Appreciate it.

Operator

And your next question comes from Adam Tindle with Raymond James. Please state your question.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon. Mike, I just wanted to start on guidance for Q3 on revenue. And I understand there's a lot of moving parts here.

Speaker 5

But if I look at the model, you're typically up sequentially in Q3. I know it's like a strong public sector quarter, among other things. So if I look at the guidance that you provided here, it looks like it would be down a little over $05,000,000,000 in revenue dollars sequentially, so call it sub seasonal relative to what we would typically expect. You've got some divestitures in there. You've got obviously the cyber incident that I think you're still trying to quantify.

Speaker 5

I guess, kind of framework you can provide for us as we kind of think about Q3 revenue guidance and the different buckets that are causing the below typical seasonality? And any comments that you can give on public sector, in particular? I don't know if Paul wants to weigh in on that given Fed fiscal year end.

Speaker 3

Yes. I'll come back to that at the end of it. Paul, I know we'll add. But I think you hit on a couple of main points. Obviously, cyber incident being the biggest one.

Speaker 3

I think that does drive a little bit of variability from what would normally be seasonality. Think probably the single biggest thing would be again just the over indexed growth we've seen in client and endpoint. The strong double digit growth that we've seen in Q1 and Q2, usually we do start to see some of that peak more into Q3 and then certainly in Q4 on normal budgeting cycles. But the refresh cycle really kicking in full gear going back to Q4 of last year and through the first half of this year has created probably a different seasonal effect than what we would normally see. And as we pointed out, while we've guided our guidance assumes at the high end more in the mid single digit growth for CES, it would be a little higher than that on the desktop notebook category, a little lower than that on smartphones.

Speaker 3

As you've seen in the last two quarters, if we continue to see that robust demand continue, we're set up to capture it. It would mean some dilution of margin rate because of the mix of the business, but it would also create quite a bit more leverage on OpEx given the low cost to serve for those kinds of sales. So that's probably the biggest thing I would point out. You asked about public sector, I would just reiterate what we've said before. It's a pretty minor part of our business overall, single digit percentages on public sector.

Speaker 3

And certainly Fed is weaker right now in this environment. SLED is a little bit better overall, but that would create some comparative too, but it's not a massive impact for us. I don't know anything else you'd add On

Speaker 2

the education we expect. So we were down kind of mid single digits in each of the categories, the high single digits in Q2 and we expect to be better than that in Q3 that we built into our guide.

Speaker 5

Got it. Super helpful. Maybe just a follow-up, Mike, on cash flow. If we were to kind of think about the environment that you're describing year to date where client and endpoint is very strong, mobility has been very strong, we think about those businesses, we typically think of those as lower margin but much better working capital dynamics, faster asset terms, etcetera. Yet if we look at cash flow year to date, it's more than $05,000,000,000 of cash use.

Speaker 5

So if you could maybe just parse out, I know you mentioned buy ins in there, but talk about sort of that mixing towards these areas and faster growth in these areas yet, how sizable the cash use has been year to date? And then if you could also maybe touch on cash flow from here. Do we reverse this out over the next couple of quarters and get to positive cash flow for the year? What does the cadence look like? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Sure. Yes, I mean, typical seasonality Q3 is a cash outflow or what mainly because we're procuring inventory for a bit of that hockey stick in Q4. It has been a unique result for the same reasons you just pointed out, just higher double digit growth year to date is requiring investment into inventory to serve. Both in Q1 and Q2, we did have some pull forward opportunistic buys. And we're sitting on a little bit heightened level of inventory exiting Q2 because there are a handful of large deals that are closing in the early part of Q3 that we had to start stocking for that drove a little bit of an anomaly there, which will be that will drive a positive offset in Q3.

Speaker 3

But what I would expect or and guess the last thing I would point out is on a day's basis, in Q1, we were about four days better on total net working capital year over year. In Q1, we were about I'm sorry, in Q2, we were about a day better year over year in overall net working capital. So we're still managing it on days around that growth and that is really what is driving that outflow on a year to date basis. So Q3, would assume a bit could be a little bit neutral to some outflow as we continue to invest in the working capital perhaps offset by some of that inventory working through the cycle. And then Q4, as you saw last year is where we spun off some cash, where we saw that inventory convert into receivables, much of which was collected before the end of the year.

Speaker 3

And then we overlay that with how we manage payables with all of our vendors.

Speaker 5

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from David Page with RBC Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Speaker 9

Hi, Mike, Paul. Thank you for taking my question. I had two. Just following up on Xvantage. In terms of the small business growth you've been seeing in the quarter, I think, returned to low single digit growth, which is great.

Speaker 9

Do you think is that the X Vantage driving some of that growth in the SMB market? And then as a follow-up, just in terms of portfolio rationalizations or any other moves, like do you think the portfolio is right sized here or should we expect in either bolt on M and A or more divestitures going forward? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you, David for the question. This is Paul. So as I walk through and I talked about the three phases of where we're at. The U.

Speaker 2

S. And I would say North America to some extent too is most mature on where we are starting to get into that second phase which is where we really start leveraging AI and automation to optimize demand signals, which allows us to be more proactive. And I talked about our intelligent digital assistant, AIDA. That is absolutely an area that The U. S.

Speaker 2

Has taken advantage of, which is really shortening sales cycle and you can see it in their revenue growth that we said from a North America standpoint. And that's really the ability to go to that SMB market. This is about self-service. It's about helping them be more educated as they go to their end users and shortening those sales cycle using AI to say this end user historically purchases within the X amount of days. You should go out of conversation with them because we can see the data relative to all the end consumption.

Speaker 2

So it's a very good pickup on your point that yes it is being driven and we believe that's helping spur some of the growth in SMB specifically around North America. On portfolio rationalization and Mike can jump into in the divestitures, we continue to look at what's best for the company and the best return from a shareholder perspective. And although there were two here, we're going to continue to manage the business, but nothing specifically as we continue to manage the business that we're looking at as we continue to invest in our core capabilities and really around being a platform company. Mike, don't know if you have

Speaker 3

anything else. Yes. I mean we remain well capitalized to go after M and A if there's something opportunistic. But as you've seen in the recent past, our on the acquisition side of the equation, it's been smaller tuck ins over the last several years, which have been very strategic because of the capabilities they bring. That's going to continue to be the wheelhouse unless something big is very opportunistic for us.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Speaker 10

Hey, thanks guys. Appreciate the question. So two quick clarifications, if I could. Paul, just a couple of times, you made reference to AI in a couple of different product contexts, and I think GPUs going into APAC. So I think you in some context, you mentioned GPUs going into APAC.

Speaker 10

In another context, I believe you were talking about, some of your products, I think storage systems and server systems or maybe as part of solutions going into customers. Can you just clarify that for us, put the context around it, where your guys' exposure is? And what are the avenues that you're getting into marketplace for that? And then I have a quick follow-up. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 2

Yes, you're welcome. Ananda, good thanks for the question. So I was relating to we have the GPUs we've had and the ability to service, it was Asia Pacific and then we actually had some new authorizations and some new opportunities specifically in North America, which we capitalize on. We had a very large deal that we're able to close here in North America. So we're excited about that.

Speaker 2

As opposed to exposure, I look at it as more opportunity for us as we move forward. And then if you just look at the growth in networking server storage and a combination thereof, there is GPUs that are going into that. And we saw good growth, the highest one being in the server category, followed by storage and networking very closely there. All three of those categories had double digit growth for us. Again, there's GPUs that are aligned in all three of those categories.

Speaker 10

That's helpful. And can you just can you comment at all what the customer like what sort of like the customer segment set is? Is it NeoClouds? Is it enterprises? Is it big NeoCloud complex in Malaysia?

Speaker 10

Is it neo clouds? Is it enterprises? Is it any other flavor? And it sounds like you're getting going there in some context. So that's exciting.

Speaker 10

Thanks. And then I'll take that over there.

Speaker 2

Yes. So keep in mind that our customer and so I'm not going to speak on behalf of end markets or where our customers are taking it. These are our large mid market and enterprise customers that are servicing those end markets. So I'm not going to speak on behalf of where our customers are necessarily deploying those technologies. But the ones that are procuring it from us, are buying it from us from a solution standpoint are really wrapped around mid market and enterprise.

Speaker 10

I got one more for you. That's helpful. Are these VARs, are you talking about some of your larger VARs?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, they're VARs, they're national solution providers. I mean, so we kind of define it as the really big ones, the next ones and then kind of the mid market and kind of down below the SMB all the way down to the S and SMB.

Speaker 10

I got it. That's super helpful. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Amit Daryanani with Evercore ISI. Please state your question.

Speaker 11

I guess maybe to start with you've talked about growth in the SMB markets in your prepared commentary. Could you just talk about kind of how broad that growth was from a product basis? And historically, feel like SMB market has been a bit of a leading indicator for rest of the business. So should we see a better recovery on a much more broader level given what you see on the SMB side?

Speaker 3

Yes. So I think SMB, it's still more muted as we said, but we're excited that its growth even if it is a bit more modest. That is a good indicator for sure. But the mix has been not too dissimilar from what we've seen elsewhere, where it tends to be more into the server storage and certainly the desktop and notebook and even a little bit of the not as much of the smartphone phenomenon is there, but certainly the desktop and notebook piece is more centered where those product sales are, which even in the SMB while it typically drives higher margins for us when you have more of the technical solutions, multiple products, services that get embedded, etcetera. These are not as much that kind of value add sale that you would see that uptick.

Speaker 3

Yes, think they're this

Speaker 2

is Paul. Think they're finally participating in some of the refresh that's happening too. For sure. Because if you would have looked at kind of Q1 and prior as we talked about being down double digits for us, we actually saw growth in both Advanced Solutions and Client Endpoint Solutions within the SMB markets.

Speaker 11

And then, I guess, Paul or Mike, your inventory dollars are up like $810,000,000 since December to what you folks just reported in June. Of this uptick you're seeing in inventory very specifically, how much of this is strategic pre buying versus positioning for what you think demand will look like in the back half? And then how do you get confidence that you don't end up with obsolescence risk or write offs given the spike in inventory versus this will just flow through the revenue channel over time?

Speaker 3

Yes, really no concerns about any material write offs. As I said earlier in answer to a lot of questions, I think we did have a little we do have a little bit higher inventory than we normally would have coming out of Q2, which was more buying for specific large deals in a couple of cases that are going to close in Q3 with no expected risk on that front. Most of the buy in stuff that was just getting ahead of potential for tariffs and other factors, a lot of that is bought early in the quarter, sold through largely in the quarter. But again, on a days basis, I know I came back to that earlier too, but on a days basis, we're basically flat year over year from a DIO perspective. So we're absorbing that growth through the heightened sales, as you can see.

Speaker 11

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And our last question comes from Karl Ackerman with BNP Paribas Asset Management. Please state your question.

Speaker 9

Yes, thank you. I have two please.

Speaker 12

First, you mentioned growth on server and storage, your comments have been limited on networking cybersecurity. I guess, order trends declining there? I guess, what are you seeing there in the SMB space specifically given that tends to be a higher margin solution sale?

Speaker 2

Yes. So this is Paul. So cybersecurity actually had good growth for us. If you look out within our Advanced Solutions, the percentage of business that goes through the larger categories are more networking followed by server and storage shortly thereafter. Our server business so I apologize, our server business actually was very strong in the quarter.

Speaker 2

And so we're pleased with the server growth that we had. And then cybersecurity was strong also. Cyber just being a smaller portion of our overall Advanced Solutions business.

Speaker 12

Got it. And then just based on the COGS and OpEx disclosure, it seems that CloudBlue couldn't sustain as a standalone entity. I guess why do you believe that is? And how does the sale of CloudBlue impact xAdvantage system of records if at all and your ability to shift more of your sales toward services? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. So if I take a step back and remind, so CloudBlue was the foundation for our cloud platform that we had. And I mentioned in my prepared remarks in early days the $600,000,000 that we invested around cloud and we use that as the underpinning for our Xvantage team to build really a single pane of glass where you can now buy cloud solutions, hardware, software and services all in one platform as opposed to having multiple different systems. So as we looked at our long term strategy, the capabilities that were there and we retained the relevant IP that we've had within Cloud Blue and the important pieces of that $600,000,000 investment. And so we believed it was right from a strategic perspective to continue to invest in our platform strategy and the capabilities of CloudBlue moving forward was best to look at as a divestiture.

Speaker 3

And Karl just one quick last point on that. Cloud Blue that business was has always been housed in sort of cloud results that we've talked about, but it was a pretty honestly a pretty small part of that cloud results. So not as it's an immaterial ultimate go forward impact when you think about that divestiture from a financial perspective.

Speaker 12

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our question and answer session. I'll now turn the call over to Paul Bay for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Thank you all for

Speaker 2

your questions and continued interest in Inger Micro and as always to our 23,000 plus team members, our customers and vendor partners as we continue to deliver on our short term and execute against our long term vision of being a platform company and delivering a holistic platform for business to business. Thank you again for your interest and have a great night.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.

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