Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Dicker Data's First Half FY 2025 Results Webinar. My name is Sam Wells from NWR , and joining me from the company today is Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Vladimir Mitnovetski, as well as Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Mary Stojcevski. Following a summary of their results released to the ASX this morning, we will have some time for Q&A with the management team. There will be a choice of two options. First, research analysts will be able to raise your hand via Teams should you wish to ask a verbal question of the management team, or you can also type a written submitted question via the Q&A function at the bottom of the Teams screen. We'll endeavor to get to the majority of questions asked, in some cases combining questions on the same or similar topic.
With that, I'll pass it over to you, Mary.
Great. Thank you, Sam, and good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on this call. We're very pleased to be presenting our H1 FY 2025 Investor Update. Today's agenda basically will go through the FY 2025, the half-year 2025 results. That will be followed by a business update from Vlad in respect of what's transpired in the first half and what we can expect for the second half, plus we've got some information around strategy updates and guidance. As Sam has indicated, we'll be taking some questions. To get onto the results, we are very pleased to be reporting solid increases across all of our categories and segments, including all lines of our profitability and revenue numbers. For the half-year, our gross revenue was AUD 1.8 billion, representing a 15.7% increase. Equally, EBITDA increased by 9.4%, finalizing at AUD 75.4 million.
Very pleasingly, our recurring software revenue is close to the half-a-billion mark for the half-year, putting us well on track for over AUD 1 billion in recurring software revenue sales for the full year. For the half, that represented a 23% increase. When we go through the category presentations, Vlad will elaborate on what we're seeing within that software vendor space. Very pleasingly, our operating profit before tax finalized 13.3% higher at AUD 57.6 million, representing AUD 0.218 earnings per share for the half. Having a closer look at the trends and historical performance on a half-on-half basis, a very solid result for the half-year on both gross revenue and profitability. As we'd indicated in our AGM update in respect of where we were seeing the trends in margins, there was a softness in our gross profit margin, which we've already indicated around the pivot by the business to more enterprise-type sales.
However, they have helped deliver a very solid gross sales increase. Equally, with the softer margins, there's slightly lower PBT margins. Our forecasting and expectations and what we've seen year to date, we are expecting a slight improvement of those, as we've indicated in our guidance. The second half trends tend to be stronger results if you're looking half-on-half in comparative periods, and we are expecting the same for this financial year as well. If we delve a little bit closer around the results, total gross revenue, as I said, for the group was AUD 1.8 billion, which was driven by what we've seen in an acceleration of the PC refresh, albeit being driven from more enterprise mid-market customers. We did have some significant AI-driven deals reported in the period, which we also indicated at our AGM update.
As discussed just earlier, gross profit margins are a little bit softer, driven by the shift in business mix, where we are driving a lot more enterprise deals, which are a little bit more competitive on margins. Subject to SMB coming back possibly at some stage, it is likely to be the trend, at least for this next quarter. Q4 is, I suppose, the unknown. Vlad will elaborate on the market conditions in his operational update. Total expenses as a percentage of gross revenue declined, and we've seen costs being largely contained, some of it driven by interest rate improvements, but also a very targeted and deliberate strategy around cost management. There was strong profit before tax uplift of 13.3%, finalizing at AUD 57.6 million. That's the operating profit before one-off costs, finalizing at 3.1% net profit margin.
I'll go through now the segments in terms of the segments as we see them within the organization between Australia and New Zealand. Very pleasingly, in the Australian business, and this is where a lot of the enterprise-style deals were done, strong gross revenue growth of 18%. That included approximately AUD 30 million in revenue from some large-scale AI deployments recorded in the period. In terms of the gross profit margin, it was more significantly felt in the Australian business, being softer against the comparative period with this focus on enterprise business. Operating profit before tax in the Australian business was up 14.5%, benefiting from reduced interest costs as a result of the lower rates, but also a lot of concerted effort around maintaining average debt balances and really managing our working capital cycles to allow that to transpire. Within the Australian business, strong profit before tax margins of 3.4%.
In our New Zealand business, again, pleasingly, from a top-line perspective, solid growth of 5.2%, where we've also been able to largely maintain the gross profit margins. The mix of our New Zealand business does include a larger proportion of fulfillment retail, and there wasn't as much influence in terms of around enterprise deals, and there was more opportunity in New Zealand to expand our mid-market and SMB business. Margins were able to be well maintained. More pleasingly on the New Zealand business, where a lot of the work from the last 12 months, 12-18 months around costs, largely seeing a reduction of costs across various line items, including, say, employee costs, interest costs, and other costs, resulting in profit before tax increasing by 10.9% to AUD 5.1 million.
Representing still the PBT margins around the 1.7%, and that is still our focus area, to keep improving on that to bring it more in line with the Australian business, although that's going to be a lot more work involved, and it's harder to achieve with a large proportion of retail fulfilment piece in the gross revenue numbers. On the balance sheet side, since our last balance sheet update, the key movements around working capital, working capital slightly improved in terms of working capital dollars and net working capital days. Receivables balance increased significantly, driven by the large invoicing that happened in June. June was one of our largest invoicing months ever. This was offset with an increase in the accounts payable, whilst inventory remained just increased a little bit, but we're really maintaining within the range. Large invoicing month meant that inventory levels finalized within expectations.
Net debt decreased by AUD 6.3 million, down to AUD 299.5 million, although gross debt net, excluding the cash, slightly increased. We've still got sufficient capacity and more credit lines available to continue supporting the business growing. On the dividend side, for fully franked dividends paid in H1 FY 2025 were AUD 0.22 per share. Throughout FY 2025, the company intends to continue paying the interim dividends, and we did announce the next quarterly dividend in August, which will be paid on the 1st of September, and the company will be retaining the DRP for FY 2025. We will continue to review our capital management and our dividend policy as and when required over time. I will now hand it over to Vlad to give you an operational update in terms of what's transpired in the half-year and a further breakdown of the categorization of our revenue and also market updates.
Thank you, Mary. Thank you very much, everybody who joined the call. We're very, very pleased, like Mary said, with our results. A lot of exciting things happened in H1 2025. About an hour ago, I have done a company update, giving them the view of our H1. I said to the company, you know, it was a very challenging and tough year last year, even though we delivered a relatively strong result as well. Our strong positioning in the market and our resilience internally, driven and the results that we received in H1, is a consequence of this incredible operation that we had. A lot of things moving aside, a lot of things happening in our industry is absolutely the most exciting time to be alive, I think. You know, we're super excited about our H2 2025 and beyond. Now, what happened in H1 2025?
We've secured a first AI infrastructure deal, delivering a first Australia's sovereign AI factory. Dicker Data has been chosen a partner to deliver this project by Dell Technologies, one of our strongest vendor alliance partners. We've established a proof of concept for the AI workloads, which is co-located with another partner that we have at Equinix. I think we're about to see a very, very large AI explosion of opportunities. We're quoting a lot, we're working with a lot of partners, and we already have seen some significant numbers coming through in H1. We absolutely believe it's only a beginning. We as an organization are acquiring skill set, talent, expertise internally in order to glue a lot of things together with our partners and with our vendors to truly lead the way with that AI innovation in the marketplace. We have secured a new partnership with VAST Technology.
This is the software platform layer that actually supports AI workloads. We're building this vendor portfolio in our ecosystem, and we believe that while it was a growth engine in H1, like I've said, I don't think we've started yet. I think we're about to see things. We're also an organization to will make a couple of announcements around our AI practice, how we build our expertise internally in the upcoming weeks. A lot of exciting things happening internally. We have secured a new contract with CrowdStrike. We're starting to build those expertise. Cybersecurity is one of the biggest growth opportunities that the company has, and having CrowdStrike part of the portfolio is great. Another big point of growth came from our PC division. We've enjoyed 18.6% growth in H1, all driven by refresh opportunities, still very much focused in mid-market and enterprise.
I'll talk a little bit more about it in the upcoming slides. Nevertheless, those three very, very critical and important growth areas are coming. If we look at our category performance, many times on those calls, I did mention I just wanted to see all our segments of the business doing really, really well. H1 kind of delivered it for us, for our organization. We put a lot of work last year and the previous years to really solidify ourselves as a strong expert segment in those areas. We also put a lot of work to make sure that we nicely diversify our segments. Now the business is growing with 30% software, 30% Endpoint Solutions, and 30% Advanced Solutions. Nice, diverse, and balanced portfolio with three smaller but continuing growing segments of audiovisual, retail, and services. I'm going to go one by one just really, really quickly.
Software was our absolute star performer in H1. Cybersecurity solutions space was booming quite nicely. We are taking share from some of our competitors. We're doing extremely well with companies like Broadcom, Cybersecurity Checkpoint, and others, Commvault. Adobe is one of our newest vendors we recruited last year, is getting into the maturity stage. We're putting a lot of investments in our platform, and we're driving a lot of momentum. We win a lot of recurring software revenue by providing a particular edge and differentiator in the market. Very hard to win on commercials. We are not interested in winning on commercials. We're interested to win with value we're adding to both our partners and our vendors. I think we're delivering that not only through our exceptional skills and expertise and consultative way of approaching those, but also through a superior platform and our website. Endpoint Solutions grew 18.6%.
Really strong result. The only thing I would like to point here, most of the business and growth came from the mid-market and enterprise. We were hoping to get some small business driving stronger. We did not see it in Q2. Small business normally performs the strongest in Q2 and Q4 calendar. It did not happen in Q2. We are very, very optimistic that we will see a turn of the small business in Q4. Again, it's a great opportunity for us. Looking at the mid-market and enterprise, amazing, fantastic. We've strived those partnerships very heavily last year. If you remember, we've started to see the softness in the market in the small business. We went and really started partnering closer with some of our larger mid-market partners and enterprise partners.
When the PC refresh cycle kicked in, it kicked in with those segments, and we're starting to see some good growth there. Great, but I think we need small business to go there. That will lift our margins a little bit up. That's one of the reasons why our gross margin has softened a little bit because we've just processed and transacted a lot of larger deals. Advanced Solutions growing 17.2%. We've had our enterprise networking vendors back into the good growth: Cisco, Juniper, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We've had phenomenal growth in our AI portfolio. Again, delivering the first AI factory in H1, quoting for a lot more, and partnering with Dell Technologies here is really breaking through.
If I look at the, and I'll look through the slides later, if I look at the trends in the market, if I look at the spend happening in the AI area, you know, we positioned ourselves so good to take advantage of those opportunities. Access and surveillance business is growing nicely. We have restructured the business slightly last year. We've introduced some new exciting vendors in there. We've changed our approach slightly, and it's now paying dividends. Good, steady growth, very high margin, very good business. We're going to continue to see the double-digit growth in this segment. Audiovisual, if you remember last year, we were flat kind of with the PC market. PC growing, audiovisual supporting that growth. More and more people refreshing their meeting rooms, their collaboration rooms. We're seeing some really good uplift. H1 traditionally is a very soft half for our retail business.
Remember, we are not interested in fulfilling big retail deals into our large-scale retailers. We are a boutique exclusive distributor. We're doing it with a lot of value. We like to do, we like to partner exclusively with vendors, delivering the full service. We've worked really hard to get a couple of new contracts with the new vendors, which we're launching very, very soon. H2 is a much stronger half for the consumer and retail business. We're definitely going to see a good uplift in the growth rates with our retail business in H2. It's a really good opportunity. Services. Services department going through a lot of change and transformation. For many years, we've been a single Telstra sort of focused distributor, upselling and selling complex data into our Telco managed service providers. We have decided to change that strategy. It was a deliberate change. We've decided to go multi-vendor.
We have added Optus, Vocus, and a couple of more Telco vendors in our portfolio. We transformed the business. We're going wider. We feel it's the right strategy. We have a fantastic team and expertise. We're rebuilding it. It's probably going to be slightly softer this year, and we're going to see some really good growth opportunities in this segment next year. Just a couple of new vendors that we've put on board. That work is ongoing work. We continue reviewing our vendor relationships. Are we adding the value to those vendors? Are they adding value to us? We know where our expertise lies. Some really, really good signings. We got Optus, like I've mentioned to you, Vocus. It's a part of our Telco strategy. CrowdStrike, the world and global leading cybersecurity vendor.
We've been chasing that vendor for many years, and we've locked it in, and we're starting really to see upside. H1, CrowdStrike did very little. We're starting to see some really good opportunities coming along. It's going to be one of our growth areas in H2. Vast is a very critical vendor in our AI play, in our AI expertise and practice. We're building that ecosystem to drive AI enablement into our partner base. We can't do it with just one single vendor. It's to conglomerate an ecosystem of various vendors. I think I've touched, and you probably see where I'm going with that. Like what's driving the market? What's happening in Australia and New Zealand? Where is people spending and how is it growing? From various analysis from Gartner, from IDC, we're seeing somewhere around a prediction of 8.7% growth this year.
We're definitely growing beyond that because we're focusing on areas that are growing beyond 8.7%. It's really good to see. I would say that 8.7% growth of spend on IT in our region is predominantly driven by enterprise and mid-market. We have deliberately positioned ourselves well with this market last year, and now we're dripping the rewards from that. However, SMB and small business is very, very important to Dicker Data. It's part of our DNA. We've always been servicing small business. It's finding it really tough, and especially in New Zealand. New Zealand was hit much harder with economic conditions. We've had an interest rate cut last month. We're hoping for another one or two interest rate cuts.
We just need more stimulus for the small business to really get on that IT spend and trying to take advantage of all the incredible IT transformation and innovation happening in the market. We don't see it yet. This is clearly an opportunity. We're hoping that Q4 will break that cycle. If not, it's definitely going to be 2026 in opportunity. When you look at the spend, AI is going to be a big token of spend. Software with cybersecurity leading the way, the backup management, risk management, and resiliency. A lot of large organizations are really eyeing how are they going to get better automation, better resilience, better cybersecurity protection. We lead the way with a consulting approach, consultative selling, and it's really working really, really well for us. Again, I mean, AI for the...
Sorry, everyone.
No, no, no.
All good. All good. Just testing.
Sorry, guys.
All good. Okay, we'll give it one minute.
Sorry, Vlad. Just double-checking, are you on mute? Is the fire alarm finished? I think your line's on mute currently.
Are we on mute now?
Yeah, we can hear you now. Sorry. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Okay. Good, good, good.
Sorry.
Excellent. All good. All good. All right. Sorry, everyone, for the alarm testing. All good. We'll continue. It's all good. I'm talking about AI a lot. I think, again, look, just give me another five minutes. It's very, very important because we live through the era of internet, era of cloud, multi-cloud. You know, this has all changed our life. AI is changing our life. We are an IT organization. We work with a lot of companies who spend billions and billions of dollars believing in this and driving this. We are huge believers ourselves. We use AI inside the organization at Dicker Data. It helps us to be more efficient. It helps us to be more innovative. To be honest, it helps us to stay ahead of competition.
We know how important AI is, and we know that if we drive the right enablement to training, we tell people how to use it and how to go ahead with that, we will get a lot of business out of it. We look at other regions in the world. We look at the United States and Europe and some of the Asian markets. They're way ahead of adoption. They're way ahead of how they're actually using those AI, not only building the infrastructures on their soil lands, but also actually utilizing it. If I look at the Copilot adoption and other things, you know, when Microsoft came with the cloud in the world, Australia was one of the early adopters. With looking at the Copilot and others, we're actually one of the latest adopters.
That's going to change because it's all about powering GPUs and getting the capacity of the available GPUs powered with NVIDIA. That's basically where it comes from. A lot of areas are already filled. Australia is getting a lot of attention. A lot of vendors and a lot of partners are bringing and investing in Australia. I think the next couple of years are going to drive a huge, you know, difference in your everyday life, in our everyday life, how we operate. Most importantly, it brings one of the biggest growth opportunities that Dicker Data has ever had before. We absolutely believe in it. We're skilling ourselves. We're investing in expertise and skills. We're investing in the right partnerships, and we're building that momentum internally. That's what's happening from the market point of view. Now we look at a strategy and how are we actually driving it internally.
Again, three main points of focus of where Dicker Data is seeing the growth is coming from in Australia and New Zealand. I've talked a lot about AI, and again, how do we position ourselves? How do we place ourselves and the investments we're making to driving that momentum? Very, very important. Windows 10 refresh. While we're seeing 17%+ growth H1 in 2025, I do believe we can do better. I do believe we can do better in H2. Historically, our H2 has always been stronger than H1. October 14 kind of lies in between of the half. I think it's going to be great momentum.
Looking at July and August, looking at the back orders we currently have, looking at the number of quoting we're doing, it gives me a great deal of confidence to sell that the whole motion of the Windows 10 refresh is going to drive another wave of a very strong accelerated growth in H2. Cybersecurity is super critical. Like myself and Mary, our entire Board of Directors, there's not a meeting where we don't look at us as an organization. What are we doing internally at Dicker Data? How do we treat it in our resilience strategies, our cybersecurity protection strategies? With doing that, we know how, you know, we do feel the sense of responsibility for the entire ecosystem and the market to go out there and provide them with the best quality advice, with the best quality solutions, with the best quality cybersecurity vendors.
Hence, it's very important for us to bring this under the portfolio. We have an incredibly strong portfolio, and CrowdStrike is a very welcome addition to that portfolio. Again, three major strong lines of expertise and growth. We're investing with our people. We're investing in the infrastructure. We're investing with coding and developing. We're trying to get ourselves and position ourselves as a true value-adding distributor in those three items. Commercially, we're not interested to go and drive commercial conversation. What we want to drive is the truly consultative value-add conversation. We've always been winning with that. We're going to continue to win with that. Those three areas are important. It describes what we're doing. Yes, we talk a lot about it. We're seeing what's happening in the market. We know what's driving the growth. What are we actually doing as a company?
This is really describing our real tactical execution methods of how are we doing it, how are we driving it, how are we partnering with it. It brings a really, really good result. That work is ongoing and continuing. Again, it's just drilling on some of the segments of the business. We're adding more software businesses. We're winning a lot more larger enterprise and the mid-market business with software. We are going to hit AUD 1 billion in recurring revenue for the year. We're at AUD 0.5 billion now, and we're absolutely streamlining to AUD 1 billion. It's going to be a big milestone for our organization. We continue chasing those innovative vendors who can really add to our AI ecosystem. We now have a hunting unit who's bringing these things together to make a very compelling and very real offering into the market.
At the moment, a lot of what we do with AI is kind of focusing around mid-market and enterprise. I don't think it's quite a small business area. In the next couple of years, it's going to get a lot more simpler. We'll be able to drive a particular bundle, and we'll be able to scale it. At the moment, it's not quite a scaled game, but very, very exciting opportunities. Endpoint Solutions, we got every single vendor under this roof. We have our dominance in mid-market and SMB. SMB doesn't work at the moment. Mid-market is doing really, really well, and the large enterprise deals are coming, and we're quoting on them. In H2, we'll have education season coming as well. That's going to drive an additional growth opportunity with PCs.
We're still figuring it out in terms of how accelerated the growth in Endpoint Solutions is going to be in H2 because, like I've said, October 14 is coming. We're seeing a lot of activities there. We have a great coverage of the inventory in the warehouse. We just need the SMB to really drive that momentum for us. Advanced Solutions like AI are driving it. Enterprise networking, I haven't spoken a lot on that, but it's been a phenomenal half for our large enterprise networking vendors. Cisco performed extremely well. Juniper performed really good. We're driving some incredible opportunities. AI is driving the enterprise networking refresh. It's all connected together. We're putting a lot more effort into CX- Motion, customer success motion as well. A lot of complex solutions within the enterprise networking we're selling, and a lot of customers maybe not knowing how to utilize and use.
We have a dedicated unit who actually goes and talks to the end-user customers, really enables and trains them how to use the technology. If they like what they're using, obviously, it's the renewal opportunities. We're covering it from both ends, from the pre-sales motion to the after-sales motion. Access, surveillance, AV, retail, smaller divisions, all very important, all driving very good high-margin business, balancing our portfolio nicely. I think access and surveillance is going to go from growth to growth. We're putting a lot of very interesting internal compositions to drive and accelerate that growth. AV will continue to grow through the PC growth. I am expecting every segment of the business to continue with double-digit growth in the next half. Now, talking a little bit more about international expansion.
The last couple of years, as the market was a little bit tough and we experienced slower growth areas, slower growth rates in the business, we're all incredibly passionate people. We love our company. We love what we're doing in the market. We have the edge. A lot of vendors are telling us, "You guys have that edge. We would love to see you coming outside of Australia and New Zealand. We would love to bring this value that you have outside of Australia and New Zealand." We've started slowly to look at different potential markets. How do we open those opportunities? We've started to talk to the key vendors, and we've started slowly to really understand how the international markets are working. We have two entities at the moment, one in Singapore, one in the Philippines. Those are the people who we have there.
They're servicing Australia and the New Zealand market. We don't have any business outside of Australia and New Zealand at the moment. What we're doing, we're getting a little bit of a feel for the markets. We're talking to different vendors, and we're seeing if they are getting growth, could be explored. We're also open to see if there's any opportunity for maybe a smaller type of acquisitions. We're not, because there's so much opportunity in Australia and New Zealand at the moment, and we probably would see it for the next couple of years. We're just trying to understand the opportunity in other markets. We're taking a very cautious approach, and we're going to continue to explore what it means for us. It's all going to be based on those conversations we're having with larger vendors.
The way we're thinking about going into international markets is probably through our software division, our digital platform, and the value-added partnerships that we currently have, and we can take it globally. Actually, a lot of global partners who are dealing with us would love to see us provide their services in other markets as well. We're currently gathering a lot of information. We're learning. We're building expertise, and then we're slowly, slowly moving until one or two things we'll put in place, and we'll look into it in more specific, in more like a concrete way of expansion. At the moment, it's just experimenting and kind of viewing what's happening in the other markets. I think through that, my conversation, I've kind of given you enough to see where my enthusiasm is coming from, right, and where I see opportunities of growth coming.
Everything that's been driving the growth in H1 is going to drive the growth in H2 in accelerated mode. This is my conviction. This is what I see in the market. This is the first couple of months of the Q3 numbers giving me that enthusiasm. Obviously, we have provided the guidance from H4. H2, as a company, we haven't provided guidance for many, many halves. You know, having that guidance, you could probably notice our strong conviction and enthusiasm and looking at the market and seeing where the market is going. Certain areas, there is still a little bit of uncertainty, uncertainty predominantly in small business. I'd love to say that we'll see a better growth from small business in H2. I don't think anyone can guarantee that.
The certainty, though, coming from the mid-market and enterprise, the certainty coming from the partnership we're building, and the certainty coming from the vendors and new partner relationships that we're building, the certainty coming from the expected AI deals that are driving our enthusiasm for the H2, those sort of things is where we have a good degree of control. SMB, we continue stimulating. We continue driving and scaling in our programs, promotions, different. We're working very closely with all the vendors to drive that small business spend. It's not quite there yet. It's a great opportunity, and we're really, really hoping for it. We're guiding the market that we're going to finish somewhere between AUD 3.7 billion and AUD 3.8 billion, which is around 10%- 30% growth. If you look at the historical trends, for somewhere before COVID years, we've always been trying to get to around 10 to 11% growth.
It feels really, really strong for this year to deliver those results. Same way in operating profit before tax. We do believe we're going to end up somewhere between AUD 120 million and AUD 124 million. Again, slight pressure on gross margins, making it slightly challenging, but a really good way of controlling the costs, investing in our platform, utilizing AI internally at Dicker Data, giving us the confidence we'll be able to deliver it. That's the end of my presentation, and now we're opening up for questions.
Great. Thank you very much, Vlad and Mary. As a reminder, research analysts can ask questions via raising your hands through Teams and ensure your line is unmuted. We also welcome written submitted questions via the Q&A function. The first question comes from Apoorv at UBS. Apov, please unmute your line and go ahead.
Cool. Thanks, Sam. Morning, Vlad and Mary. You can hear me okay?
Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Brilliant. Awesome. Guys, first question. On the second half, implied sales guidance, it implies sales growth of about, call it, 7%, 8% year- on- year, which is obviously slower than the first half where you've done 16%. I'm just curious why the guidance has that level of a slowdown because I think, Vlad, and correct me if I'm wrong, earlier I thought you might have said that every segment probably shows double-digit growth in the second half. I think there was a comment made. Obviously, you've also talked qualitatively about further momentum to PC refresh cycle, you know, AI deals coming. In light of those comments, I just want to unpack the implied second half sales guidance.
Yes, Apoorv, thank you very much for the question. If you remember Q4 2024, this is where we started to land some really strong enterprise deals, especially in December. December was one of our biggest months ever. We need to go a little bit cautious because when you deal with the large enterprise deals, it can be quite lumpy, and one or two large enterprise deals can swing the percentage up and down. At the moment, it looks really good and strong. Are we going to get 20% growth in December 2025 on December 2024? I really doubt. We had a really, really good December last year. The way it goes, we had a really soft H1 2024 with delivering a really good year-on-year comparable. We still think H2 is going to be stronger. We still think it's going to grow well.
Comparables on a strong Q4 2024, that's where perhaps a little bit of a caution coming from.
Okay. It is the comps cycle, I guess. I just want to clarify one more.
Comsy H1.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. That makes sense. The lumpiness of the enterprise deals too. I just wanted to also clarify one other comment, Vlad. I think on slide 19, when you're talking about the outlook, on slide 19, you're saying I heard second half Endpoint Solutions growth should be higher than the first half, which is up 19%. Did I interpret that correctly, that with the refresh cycle, actually, the Endpoint Solutions are supposed to probably pick up? Okay.
Correct. Correct. Looking at July and August, looking at 14th of October actually landing in H2, looking at historicals, those three will tell me and give me good confidence that the Endpoint Solutions in H2 will be growing faster than in H1.
That's really on the back of still enterprise as opposed to small business. It's real big stuff still flowing through.
Unfortunately, yes. We're quoting big deals and back orders. If we look at the construct of the back orders, larger deals, mid-market deals. Yeah.
Gotcha. Okay. One final question from me then, please, just on AI. I think one of the slides showed that AI delivered more than AUD 30 million of revenue in the first half. Vlad, can you talk to me about what kind of dollar number you might expect in the second half? It sounds like with the pipeline of deals, it's probably going to be a bigger number. Could you also maybe share what kind of gross margins do these AI deals typically generate?
We probably should clarify that AU D30 million was a specific deal.
Sorry.
AI business would be higher than that generally.
Yeah.
We were calling out the one large.
Infrastructure.
Infrastructure deal that could be one of the lumpy deals that may not be in the comparatives in the subsequent periods. AI as a category is delivering more than AUD 30 million.
If we talk about AI, like a Copilot Sales, for example, or Copilot+ , the growth is fantastic. We're going to continue growing it. I'll probably expect a good double-digit growth on a Copilot+ . When we look at infrastructure deals, again, I have to be very careful here because they could be either incredibly substantial or none of that will happen. It's a fine line between landing a AUD 100 million deal or not landing anything at all. In the first half, we've quoted a couple of larger-scale deals, much larger than AUD 30 million. None of that landed. Opportunity is great. Excitement is strong. We are quoting. The great thing is we hire a distributor. A distributor is normally classified as a value-added channel member for the mid-market and SMB and a little bit of a transactional type of assistance to the Tier 1s.
We are now considered in the massive AI projects. The distribution provides the value that completely changes the whole perspective on traditional distribution values. That's what's really important. What I'm driving internally, I'm trying to build more and more of those expertise to show our OEM partners. You can't do it on your own. It's an ecosystem of people. I build this ecosystem, people. I build the expertise partnerships to drive. At the moment, the larger deals that we're quoting, they are on a relatively low margin. They are not large margin opportunities. As the deal is going to become a little bit smaller and we drive a lot more through our traditional infrastructure partners and we bring that true ecosystem in place, then it becomes better margin. I'll give you an example.
That particular deal we did was, you know, it was a Dell Technologies, NVIDIA, and a few other sort of software components into the deal. It was an ecosystem deal. Some of the components of the deal were on a lower margin. Some of the components of the deal were on a higher margin. It was a great way of starting the whole motion. Our partner is happy. Our vendors are very happy. We can now, based on this, continue to build those expertise.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Thanks, [audio distortion]. Next question comes from Ary at Barrenjoe y. Ary, please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Hope you're well. Just the first one on the revenue side. I'm just going into maybe 2026. This year, your revenue will be up about 12% year- on- year. You've added a lot of incremental sales dollars, and you've said you've pivoted into the larger customers, the mid-market and enterprise deals. Is there a component of that uplift in revenue that won't repeat in 2026? You've tried to win a lot of these enterprise contracts to plug the hole for SMB. Is that the new base, or will those deals drop off and then you have to rely on SMB recovering, please?
No, no. The partnerships are built. The relationships are strong. The trust is great. A lot of those Tier 1 and Tier 2 large partners have tried to work with Dicker Data maybe for the first time because remember, it's only the last couple of years when we said, "You know what? We can provide the value. We can do those deals. They're slightly at a lower margin, but we are very confident in our capabilities. They've tried us. They love us." Now that the market grows for them, they get a lot more opportunities. They're using us a lot more. I don't see that ever going to change. What I need to see is the balance of a construct of the business change a little bit. Continue to grow through enterprise. Look at H1. Very successful. Very strong.
Holding the costs right, providing the right level of expertise, and investing in the right areas of the growth really paid the dividends. It's working really well. Can I continue to grow 10% year- on- year with just the enterprise business? I can. I tell you what, even now, even at the moment, Dicker Data has a relatively low share in the enterprise business compared to some of our competitors. I can get more share of the business, and it's a good, profitable business. I also need to ensure that my expertise and my professional historical build that I've built with small business is not going to get wasted. That's why I need the small business to come back and work. It's our ability to adapt to where the market is. However, saying all that, small business is our priority. It always was, and it always will be.
Awesome. Historically, when you look at companies in the PC refresh cycle, they have a lot of growth during the cycle or the refresh cycle, and then the next year, the year after that, demand goes backwards or the revenue goes negative because you're cycling a big uplift and you go back to the trend line. Considering your PC revenues are up 18%+ this year, is it fair to say next year or the year after your PCs should fall 10%- 15% because you're above trend now and you go back to trend?
Thank you for the question. It's a good question. Look at the historical and look at the trends. You're absolutely right. However, the refresh cycle is, when I look at an enterprise business, I think it's around 60% mid-market, somewhere around 50% SMB, not even 20%. We don't know the timeline of the refresh cycle. It can go for another 12 months, another 18 months. They're moving a lot of production into the AI PCs. By the end of this year, probably every single PC will have an NPU chip, which is classified as an AI PC. That is in a higher dollar bracket. That's going to drive a little bit of growth. My feel is probably we will continue to see a good growth, very good growth in H2, a good growth in the first half of 2026.
If I would make a prediction, I'll probably predict H2 of 2026, the growth rate is going to slow down. I agree with you.
Slow down, but not go to negative. You don't think it would actually fall year- on- year at some point if you do this?
Very, very hard to say. We don't want to think it's going to go to negative, but the growth rate will definitely slow down.
Gotcha. Last one, in the lower and upper end of the guidance range, to what on the operating profit before tax, to what extent do you assume an SMB recovery? If you are assuming that at all, if the SMB was pretty flat or down in the first half, do you assume any change to that in the second half in the guidance?
At the moment, we assume no SMB recovery for this year.
That is great. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
Great. Thanks, Ary. Next question comes from Ross at Wilsons. Ross, please go ahead and unmute your line.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Great. Morning, Mary, Vlad. Thanks for taking the question. Mine's just around the AI opportunities. Vlad, can you just clarify something around, I guess, the deal sizes? When we've spoken in the past, you've mentioned that there's a big spread of deal sizes, obviously, and there are a bunch of opportunities coming up, as you've alluded to, and you've won some so far. Some got delayed, some went direct. The bit that I'm looking to explore a bit is just in terms of the customers that have bypassed Dicker Data and gone direct with their order. Are you still seeing that? Maybe just help us understand, are you still able to capture some of those larger transactions? Are they going direct, and are you able to just incrementally get bigger and bigger deals over time?
It seems like even if that's the case, there's still plenty of opportunities that are below those, if they're Tier 1 opportunities, if you want to phrase it that way. Thanks.
Thank you for the question. I think actually it's going to get reversed. At the moment, we have a few but large deals. We have a few deals that are going around. I know there were about four or five large deals. By large deals, let's just say between AUD 100 million and AUD 200 million. Those opportunities are there. A lot of them are large enterprise customer spend, government, federal government spend, and they're done, a lot of them done with the OEMs and NVIDIA direct. When the deal is done by a particular partner that is not a premium Tier 1 partner for a particular OEM, they involve distribution to assist the partner with the project management. Some of those deals are also quite large, and some are medium-sized. What we need to see, we need to see more deals of a smaller size.
We need to see, we need to quote for 25, 30 various opportunities of deal sizes of AUD 5 million- AUD 10 million. That's where we're heading. That's what's coming. We're now trying to make ourselves positioned to take those AUD 100 million and AUD 200 million businesses. It's very difficult. The margins are tight. The investments are strong. It's a very heavily involved conversation between the customer itself who is building the infrastructure with the OEM, with the NVIDIA, with the software guys. Because it's such a significant deal, you can imagine all the executives of those companies will be right on the deal, and it would be hard to really position ourselves to drive a significant value. With the smaller deals, we can. That's what I'm trying to achieve.
I'm trying to actually drive demand myself, not to rely on someone else to come and actually give me the opportunity and be part of that project, which I'm incredibly grateful, and we continue quoting for some really good opportunities. I want to go in the market and drive that enablement and training, trying to get the people to understand AI deals don't have to be a size of AUD 50 million. They can be AUD 2 million or AUD 3 million and make a significant difference to the end users. We can bring it all together and go with that. That's my aim.
That's really clear. Thanks. Maybe just to summarize, it sounds like the AUD 5 million- AUD30 million window is kind of the sweet spot for you.
Correct. Correct. Yeah, AUD 5 million- AUD 30 million. I mean, if we can land three or four of those deals every year, it'll be fantastic. What I really want, I want to land 25- 30 deals of about AUD 5 million- AUD 10 million.
Just very quickly, that comes through the Advanced Solutions segment. Is that correct?
Correct.
Softwind because some elements are softwind.
Great, thanks so much.
Great. Thanks very much, Ross. Next question comes from Olivia at AMP. Olivia, please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks. Just another AI one. I think that partner, I believe, that you did the little AI deal with is calling for maybe 10 more of those. I don't know over what time period, but your confidence that you'll continue to be kind of involved in that pipeline?
Yes. Yes. We've built a very strong relationship with this particular partner. We're going both ways, kind of partnership. They're going to do a lot of work for us as well. Yes, we're quite confident we're going to continue to drive those AI opportunities with this partner.
Yeah, I mean, on that front, they're obviously selling a bunch of AI solutions and starting revenue generation pretty much now. Are you sourcing customers for them?
We will be.
Okay. Just on the software business, obviously, incredible growth. I'm really interested in your point there that you're getting good growth in enterprise and medium business. What's the potential here? You're calling for AUD 1 billion this year. Presumably you'd expect to grow well above market for a lot longer if you've actually cracked the code for mid-market and enterprise.
I think we did. We cracked the code. I think the code is going into the partners and driving the solutions on a consultative way of selling. Before, we were very aligned to our vendors, we understood the strength of their solutions. We would drive a lot of seminars, a lot of interesting webinars and training enablement sessions. The partners just, you know, they would have, they can choose one vendor or the other vendor. Now we're going into a particular partner and we're saying, this is the solution with construction of two or three different vendors. This is how we're going to do it. We're going to do the migration services for you. We're going to do the billing bit for you. We're going to do CX, which is the customer success motion for your customers. We're going to give you a white glove service for everything.
We're going to do it as a post-sales. Customers love it. That consultative outcome-based pre-sales, after-sales approach started to resonate really well with our customers. Most importantly, it's taking the conversation away from commercial conversation. Because the commercial conversation of going and talking to someone and just saying, well, someone else is offering for 2%. If you can match it, we'll give you the deal. It's not interesting anymore. I mean, we do this, but we want to drive, we want to get control of our own destiny. We want to drive that innovative way, consultative way of selling those solutions to our partners and their customers. We're starting to engage more and more with their customers. Remember, a lot of mid-market partners don't have skills and expertise. We do that. We try, but sometimes they don't know about it.
When we go and we tell them, they're like, oh, we had no idea you guys can do this and this, and I'm saying, and we're going to do it all for your customer on your behalf.
Yeah, that sounds pretty exciting. Just on CrowdStrike, I mean, obviously a massive vendor for cyber. Does that really unlock, you know, a much larger market that you haven't been able to access having them as a cyber vendor?
Correct, correct. I mean, look, CrowdStrike is predominantly an enterprise-grade solution for the enterprise customers. Timing is good. We now have a lot of enterprise customers. They all want to deal with us. Fantastic. The opportunity with CrowdStrike, I mean, getting the enterprise customers trading with us and dealing with us, it's just a market share. It's the share shift. We're going to share shift, of course, and we're going to take a lot of business. The opportunity with CrowdStrike in that mid-market to kind of a low-end of mid-market, this is where they feel they have an opportunity. We have an expertise there. We have the market there. It's all about the process, trusting the process. We've been doing that for many, many years. We know how to take enterprise-grade solutions into the smaller and medium-sized customers. We're going through this motion, unlocking the opportunities.
That's where the opportunity with CrowdStrike for us, for Dicker Data, especially on the margin piece for the next couple of years.
Yeah. Just the last one maybe from me. I think when I look at December 2026, and I take the point that obviously the PC refresh cycle, you're going to get an acceleration in SMB over 2026, but a plateauing or maybe slight drag in mid-market and enterprises as they've largely will have already refreshed. I think the market is currently calling for like 6% or 7% revenue growth. I mean, based on what you're seeing at the moment, does that feel like that might be a bit conservative?
When we do the guidance, we're trying to be as close and as realistic to the market. We feel where the market is. Our December last year was super strong. I've never seen anything like this. I think top up with a double-digit growth in December would be a very heavy lift. Is it impossible? Nothing is impossible. We're trying to be more realistic. We know that the Q3 is going to be great. We think that October and November are going to be in line, but December could be slightly flattened. That's why a slight conservatism in getting the number. If we feel that's going to change, we're obviously going to update the guidance. At the moment, we're quite certain that that's where we see the market is going.
You're referring to FY 2026, are you?
No, the FY 2025.
It wasn't 2026, but obviously, yeah, the color on 2025s. I guess I was saying further, yeah, because obviously you've got PC refresh that might not give the same sort of growth in 2026 or 2025.
Yeah, that's correct. I mean, Vlad answered that question earlier. We are expecting that would come off more likely in that second half of 2026. We've got SMB driving most likely in the first half.
Yeah, obviously your view on software and Advanced Solutions is those growth rates potentially continue at kind of pretty elevated levels.
Correct.
Yes.
Correct. Correct. You're seeing how much effort we're putting into the AI motion. That definitely is going to be our biggest growth engine for 2026. Sorry, I misunderstood the question. Yes, yes.
No, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
Perfect. All right, thanks. Appreciate it.
Great, thanks, Olivia. Again, just a last question coming from Ed at Jarden. Ed, please go ahead. Ed, is your line unmuted?
Hopefully, it is now.
Yeah.
Yes, it is. I can hear you.
Thanks. Sorry, just a quick question. Following on from Barren's good question regarding the PC cycle, I just wanted to make sure that we understand your views on this and maybe, if you could, make a comparison to previous PC cycles. Is this one proving to be a little bit more elongated, I guess, and smoother, and therefore maybe any of the kind of drop-off, if there was any, would be a lot less radical? You're also benefiting from a mixed shift to AI PC. Is that part of the reason that you feel pretty comfortable that the growth rates won't become negative, just moderate?
Yeah, the AI PCs is definitely a good point. I think because we're getting into this enterprise motion and delivering this larger project and economies of scale working quite well for us. Remember, in previous years, we were very, very heavy SMB and mid-market. We could kind of, if SMB stopped spending, we could feel it shed away. I think now we have a little bit more balanced approach. If SMB is not spending, we go enterprise. If SMB is bad, then we can be a little bit more sort of, you know, selective with enterprise. It's putting us in a really comfortable position. After each PC refresh cycle, it's going to slow down. There's no question. How big is that slowing down going to be, when it's going to happen, we'll see. I agree with the whole concept of H2 2026. We probably start to see it's flattening.
The growth is flattening. Yeah. Even with the larger ASPs on AI PCs.
Sure. Not a massive, so not negatives, but also supplemented by the areas of the business. Just on New Zealand, I appreciate that market's been challenged. Can you just talk to, like what do you need to see for that revenue to reaccelerate? Is it the macro continuing to improve? Do you need to continue to have new vendors? How do you see that and where do you think it can get to?
Definitely. We are around AUD 600 million business in New Zealand. Looking at the commercial spectrum of the business, it's going to be about AUD 400 million, maybe just a little bit over AUD 400 million. It's the biggest commercial space that we occupy in New Zealand with the vendors we represent. We need more vendors in New Zealand. We need more scale in New Zealand. We need stronger SMB buy in New Zealand. The truth is, the construct of the business in New Zealand never was as heavy as in Australia. We were going through this motion. We were building our customer base. We were driving that mid-market and SMB presence. We started to get better and better. Of course, the last couple of years, it was very, very difficult. That beta slowed down. Our mid-market business is good. Our enterprise business there is very low.
We did not pivot our New Zealand business to the enterprise customers as much as we did in Australia because we were believers that that mid-market still has an ample of growth and opportunities. That's kind of what's happening. If we slice down New Zealand business slightly differently and we look at our consumer retail business and Apple distribution versus the commercial, commercial is actually growing well. You're right. We need more vendors. We need more presence in mid-market. We need to unlock a few more enterprise opportunities. We need small business to come back. It's a lot of opportunities in New Zealand business. We're putting a lot of focus there. I think there is definitely good growth. We have changed operationally our New Zealand business. You could see the profits are coming up quite significantly. We're going to continue that work. It's just a slow steps there.
Okay. The vendor side of things, I guess, is the upside and giving you a track record in Australia and the opportunity to work with a specific brand. The vendors should come on at the time.
Yeah, the problem with New Zealand is it's a small market. It's a very small market. Vendors in Australia, you can have two or three distributors, and each provides its own sets of values. In New Zealand, it's a small market. Vendors are not as keen to open up. It takes a long time to drive those contracts. It's probably a little bit of a slower motion, especially in a tough market. If the market was buoyant and growth, I'd probably say we would accelerate that growth with any more vendors and faster. At the moment, it's a bit tough.
Okay, great. Great result and appreciate the questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks very much, Ed. I think that's all the time we have for questions today. If there are any follow-up questions, please feel free to send them through via email, and we'll endeavor to come back to you. With that, Vlad and Mary, I'll just pass it back to you if there's any closing comments.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone who joined the call. Look, it's always nice to present on a very strong result, pleasing result. We're very proud of what we've achieved. We're very proud of what the organization has achieved and how we position ourselves for future growth. The amount of passion, enthusiasm, growth, and talent that we have in the organization is exceptional. We're looking forward to a very successful H2. Historically, our H2 has always been stronger than H1, and it absolutely will be the case in this H2. We're looking forward to seeing you all again in early 2026, hopefully delivering a very, very strong result.
Great. Thanks very much for joining today's Dicker Data First Half Call. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.
Thank you. Bye.