Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. We're going to be discussing the acquisition that we announced yesterday by Softcat of GDT, and also give you an update on our current trading as well. I'm Graham Charlton, Chief Executive Officer of Softcat, and I'll start by talking about the transaction, the strategic rationale around that. Then I'll hand to Katy Mecklenburgh, our CFO, who'll take you through some of the structure, funding, and financial aspects of the deal as well. We'll have plenty of time for Q&A after all of that, too.
I think most of you know the company very well and have had a chance to look at the presentation deck that we've put available online and chance to digest that afterwards. What I'm not going to do today is walk through all of the slides individually. We'll alight on a couple of key ones, which will allow me to explain the reason that we've taken this step, some of the key aspects behind it as well. If we could turn to the first slide, please.
We'll use this one to set the step that we've taken and the acquisition in the context of our strategy, because of course, the important thing to appreciate is that this is not a change in direction for Softcat. This is an acceleration of a path that we've been on for a long time now. This slide is the best way that we can capture our strategy on a single page. We very deliberately start with why.
As you all know, our people and our culture are the most important thing about Softcat, and they have been the driving force behind our success, and that's an important part of the step that we are taking today as well. But in recent times, in this slide we used, I think, last year in our full year results presentation to lay out as succinctly as we can the direction that we are now taking. So we're very clear within this about what we do, for whom, where, and how we do it. And within the where and within the ambition that we have to provide a leading global offering, we've been very explicit about the interest that we have in the U.S. market for some time now.
That interest is entirely customer led. As our business has grown, become broader, more complex, and capable for larger customers, the demands from those customers to do work for them in international markets has grown, and grown particularly in the U.S. And so for five or six years now, we've been building capability there and looking at the market in what I've previously called a no lose effort. Because by looking at the market, becoming familiar with providers there and how that market operates, the similarities and differences to the U.K., it's informed the organic build that we've been doing there anyway.
We've always been very clear that if and only if we found the right target, one that met a very high bar of criteria that we set, then we had the ability to act and accelerate as well. Some people have asked me during the course of the last few days, why now? It is not a question of timing. This is a question of having found the right group of people with the same operating ethos, a very similar strategy that wants to join forces with Softcat and be part of this vision and ambition that we have for the future. We have these four growth engines within our strategy.
The combination with GDT materially strengthens all of them. On the sales side, we get a scaled, capable, proven sales team on the ground in the U.S. able to serve our customers across the U.S. and the broader Americas. Within the broader offering, GDT has a strategically important deep capability in a very relevant part of modern infrastructure. Their depth of networking and data center capability complements Softcat's own.
They have a carrier grade integration center that they own and operate and bring a level of architecture and delivery capability that we do not have. On the operational excellence side, this is something actually that we were not looking for within our criteria, but the Bangalore operation that GDT has built and established over the last five years gives us an access to one of the most exciting technology talent markets in the world. Once we had spent time with the GDT team out in Bangalore, which is 250 people with about 180 of those working on the service delivery side, right from architecture through implementation and into the managed service side, and also 60 people on the business operations side.
Once we had seen the way that that team has been built, the integration it has with the U.S. offering, the affinity it has for the GDT brand and culture, it was something that we realized that even if this acquisition did not go ahead, it was something that we, Softcat, if we ever wanted to achieve our true potential, would need to try and replicate in some regards as well. That talent center in Bangalore, those 250 people, is something we can invest in and continue to build to serve not only the U.S. market, but our U.K. and Ireland customers in time as well.
Then special culture, I have already alluded to this, but again, we have been clear that we would only ever make an acquisition like we did with the business that we bought a few years ago in the U.K. around data services, Oakland. The affinity of operating ethos and culture has been a key factor in this deal, and that combination that we did with Oakland and the 70 people from that business, which has gone fantastically well over the last two years, there is a very similar feel about this deal.
The strategy that GDT has is exactly the strategy that Softcat has been pursuing over the last 20 or 30 years to broaden its offering, look after customers. It, like we do that through starting with a focus on our own people. When I first met the GDT leadership team in Texas, it reminded me very much of walking into the Softcat senior leadership team for the first time 11.5 Years ago. You could tell this was a group of people who enjoyed working together, were enjoying winning together. There was no politics at play.
There was a real feeling of team spirit. The more that we've spent time with them, I'll expand on this probably more as well in the Q&A, but we've known GDT for four years. I first met their CEO, Shawn, four years ago as he was taking up the role back in New York on some market research that we were doing. We could see the strategy that they were laying out, and we've followed their story since. When we proactively engaged with them back in January or February and we met the broader team, there was an immediate excitement on both sides about what we could build together.
We've worked very closely with Shawn, his leadership team, and layers of management over the last six or seven months, building the joint value creation plan that we think our businesses can now execute together. We have got to know their people in real depth over that time and the ethos that they have around people, care for people, care for customers, and doing both of those things to drive a successful business.
There's a strong resonance between us on the cultural side. We're really excited about all of the aspects of the deal for that reason. If we move on to the next slide, I'll summarize therefore what we think GDT brings to Softcat. They bring a highly capable leadership team with that cultural alignment that I've mentioned. The leadership team and the broader business have a proven track record in the U.S. market. They bring deep networking and data center skills that they've applied into an established customer base across the upper mid-market and enterprise corporate segments.
They have terrific partnerships with key vendors such as Cisco, NVIDIA, NetApp, and top-level accreditations across them and other vendors. I've mentioned the business or the operation in Bangalore, which provides us with access to a talent market and helps create across the three service centers that we'll now have in the U.K., the U.S., and in Bangalore, an ability to provide 24/7 service delivery and support to our customers.
To summarize what the combination brings to all parties, if we turn onto the next slide, we think that this is a combination that's so complementary that we end up with a stronger Softcat, a stronger GDT, and together we provide an offering to customers that neither business can replicate in isolation. Softcat is stronger because our U.K. and Irish customers get immediate access to the fulfillment capabilities and capacity in the U.S. and the broader Americas that GDT brings. They bring a deeper level of infrastructure and networking capability that fits right in the heart of areas where we already operate, but bringing incremental parts to that offering.
They have vendor relationships that are in common with ours, and immediately we're a stronger business for our partners that we're already working with. GDT gets immediate access to the Softcat vendor relationships. I mentioned that GDT are building their capability and broadening their offering. They've been doing that very successfully over the last four years under the ownership of H.I.G., and we are the perfect owner to help them with that effort, whether it's vendor relationships or on our broader IT solutions offering.
The path they are on is the one that Softcat has been treading for the last 20 or 30 years. Moving into new vendor relationships, creating new service offerings, creating new sales motions is something that we have been doing for a long time now, and we can help GDT build their offering in exactly the same way. Of course, the U.S. customers get the benefit of Softcat's fulfillment capability in the U.K. and Ireland, Europe, and Eastern, the Far East that we've been building that capability in as well. Together we can provide for large and complex customers with international needs.
We're one of only a handful of providers now that can do true global fulfillment around deep capabilities across the whole span of modern infrastructure. Of course, all of this is underpinned, as we've mentioned a few times now, by the alignment of culture, the people first ethos that we have, and the customer-centric nature of our operations. Very happy to take more questions on all of those aspects later in the Q&A, but for now, I will hand you to Katy, who will talk through some of the financial aspects of the deal.
Thank you, Graham, and good morning, everyone. Importantly, GDT brings increased scale and value to Softcat, enhancing our U.S. proposition and allowing us to improve our global relevance and delivery capability. On a U.S. GAAP basis in the current financial year to December 26, forecast gross profit is expected to be circa $240 million and adjusted EBITDA around $80 million. The group is strongly cash generative with a structurally similar cash conversion to Softcat. We also note that the accounting policy used by GDT and their U.S. peers differs from Softcat's, with the core difference relating to revenue recognition on multi-year contracts.
When this change is applied to GDT, it will have the effect of lowering GP and EBITDA growth in FY 2026 and increasing the growth rates over the next few years, with the impact washing through over a circa three-year period. Our policy more closely aligns profit with cash. As you'll see on the right, the acquisition of GDT will provide us with greater networking and security capability, while retaining strong incumbent positions in public cloud and data center and workplace.
While the U.K. will remain the core focus of the business, the acquisition provides greater diversification with a fifth of the combined business in the U.S. I'll now touch on the financing and structure of the deal. Softcat will pay a confirmed purchase price of GBP 1.05 billion or GBP 785 million in cash, on a cash and debt-free basis, with normalized levels of net working capital. The consideration will be financed through cash on the balance sheet of GBP 100 million, new debt facilities that include a GBP 100 million term loan and an expanded RCF of GBP 450 million.
In terms of the margin, it is circa 100 basis points over SONIA when leverage is below 1.5x . There has also been a successful equity placing for an accelerated book build for circa GBP 350 million, representing less than 10% of the issued share capital. The business will continue to deliver organic growth across both the U.K. and the U.S., with the GDT acquisition expected to deliver in the range of high single-digit to low double-digit underlying EPS accretion in the first full fiscal year of ownership, assuming a completion during FY 2027 and a medium-term tax benefit.
On closing, we anticipate net debt leverage of 1.3x with a clear pathway to below 1x by July 2028, in line with our new target leverage range of 0.5x- 1x . Our capital allocation policy is not changing. We will continue to prioritize organic growth and maintain our progressive ordinary dividend policy with any excess cash once we are at our net leverage range, then allocated to strategic investments or return to shareholders. We have also announced a trading update, which I will run through next. Softcat continued to trade well during the fourth quarter, delivering broad-based growth across technology areas and customer segments.
As a result, the Board now expects to deliver high- teens growth in full-year underlying operating profit, up from mid-teens previously, with gross profit growth moderately above this. The group also remains strongly cash generative, with FY 2026 cash conversion expected to be towards the top end of our guided range of 85%-95%. Softcat operates in a significant and growing market and continues to invest to drive future market share gains. Looking ahead and excluding the contribution from GDT, the Board expects to deliver high single-digit underlying operating profit growth in FY 2027. I will now hand back to Graham to summarize.
Thank you, Katy. So, hopefully very clear rationale for why we are taking this step, something that we have talked about for a number of years now. As I mentioned in the opening comments, it is not a question of timing. This is a question of having found the right group of people that we think can accelerate the path that Softcat was already on with the capabilities, but also the cultural outlook and ambition that matches our own. We are both experiencing strong growth, have good momentum in our business, so this combination is coming from a position of strength, and we are bringing together highly complementary businesses as well.
We are very excited about the future, both on the Softcat side and the GDT side of this combination, and looking forward to a long and successful future together in a market that we think is as exciting as any in the world to operate in right now. Looking forward to taking your questions as well. We will hand it over to the lines.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would ask an audio question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and just make sure your line is now muted until you see your question. Our very first question is coming from Joe George coming from JP Morgan. Go ahead, your line is open.
Yes. Hi, Graham. Hi, Katy. Thanks very much for taking the questions, and congratulations on the acquisition. A few questions from me, please. Firstly, just on GDT. On the 30% gross profit growth rate through 2026, you touched on the U.S. GAAP to IFRS conversion, but is there anything else for us to strip out or add back there? I am just trying to get a sense of a normalized gross profit growth for this business. It would be great to get your views on that, please. Secondly, just on GDT.
Graham, could you just maybe expand on exactly what attributes of GDT stood out and cleared that very high bar that you set for acquisitions? The last question is just on the organic side of the house. The FY 2027 guidance for a high single-digit EBIT growth, I guess is in line with the usual outlook. Also, I am aware that we are kind of growing off a larger base of FY 2026. Can you talk about some of your assumptions built into the guide, particularly relating to larger deals, component pricing, supply chain, that sort of thing? That would be great. Thank you.
Thanks, Joe. Let me just kick off on the first one, then I will hand over to Graham for the second and then maybe come back. The simple answer is there are no one-offs in the GDT FY 2026 numbers. We will have the complexity of moving it onto our own year-end and under our own accounting policies, but nothing else to call out.
Yeah, and thanks as well, Joe, for the questions. On the attribute side, in summary format, capability, cultural alignment, scale and established nature of their business, the Bangalore operation, as I mentioned as well, and also the ambition of the management team and the company. On the capability side, we knew that any target that we look at in the U.S. would have a narrower range of capability than Softcat, almost by definition. I have talked many times about how I think our capability is broad and deep as anyone in the global market, certainly for customers in the U.K. and Ireland.
And we have been establishing that business over 34 relentless years of organic growth and building that offering. We knew we would be starting in a narrower set of capabilities, but the capability that GDT has is profound, and it is in the right place, and we can build from there. It has got high relevance to modern IT infrastructure. They have already, over the past four years under the management team that is in place, been pursuing that strategy of broadening out.
They have added compute storage and security capabilities, and we can accelerate that as well. So strong capabilities in the right place, building out from there. The Bangalore operation, the access to talent is a huge plus point in the deal for us. Met the team, spent a couple of days with that team out there, love the culture of that team, the way it is integrated with the U.S. So that was a factor, once we had seen it, as I mentioned, we couldn't unsee it.
The potential that that gives to Softcat for us to realize our ambition over time is really very exciting. The most important point was that cultural alignment as well, though. Like I said, this is a team of people who enjoy working together, have got great momentum. Reminds me of Softcat in many ways, and we know those people now, having worked with them very closely over the six or seven months. So that was an absolute gating factor. We had to find a group of people who were excited to join us, shared that care for people in their culture, and had huge ambition.
And also the established scale. Again, I have talked previously, there are a couple of logics that you could apply to Softcat acquiring in the U.S. One says, start small, you have not done it before, and build around it. That creates an awful lot of single points of failure and effort, and also does not make you scaled and relevant in what is the biggest market in the world until a lot of time and effort has passed. What we have acquired with the scale and track record of GDT is not just a leadership team, but a broader management team with real depth, with established customer and vendor relationships, with an established brand built around capability and engineering.
We can put wind in the sails of that already very successful operation. I have mentioned a few times that the management team are very excited to join Softcat. We are very excited to join forces with them. I know the reaction in both businesses yesterday was terrific. The broader teams are really excited about what we can create together now on a global scale. The ambition and scale is also a big factor. Practical points as well, they operate coast to coast, which is a terrific first step to be able to take.
The fact they are based on the East Side, largely based on the East Side of the U.S., was something we needed so that there is overlap in the working day as well. While we do not intend to crash together and integrate the businesses, we do want to work very closely and build deeper collaboration over time to drive value out of the joint value creation plan that the two teams have built over the last six or seven months of working together.
Those are the key factors. They were laid out and we have been looking at them for five or six years. They have met the bar and added other things in there that we were not even really sure that we needed and wanted, but once we saw the GDT operation, we knew that it was exactly the right fit for us.
Shall I answer the third question? Joe, look, we will give more color when we do the results in October, so just under a month's time. Clearly, you are right, we have had brilliant growth for the last couple of years, both on the base business, but supplemented by a couple of those extraordinarily large deals. We do not have anything of that scale in the current FY 2027 pipeline.
But those deals that we have referred to recently above GBP 500,000 of gross profit, that we continue to get really strong growth in and a great trajectory there. We are sort of confident of the number. We have seen great base business performance, as well as those extraordinary deals in FY 2026. Yeah, confident of the number, but we will give you more color in October.
Perfect. Thanks very much, both.
Thank you for your question, sir. Next, we will be going to Charlie Brennan of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks very much. I am actually just going to ask a couple of clarifications if I can. You have referred to the difference in accounting a couple of times. I guess you will not have finalized the full accounting detail, but can you just give us a broad sense of the magnitude of the benefit from multi-year deals in the latest period? Following on from that, I have not heard you articulate what you think the forward-looking normalized growth rate is going to be for GDT. On a separate topic, I guess you said you are not going to integrate the businesses, so it does not really matter.
But I am under the impression that U.S. sales commissions are typically much more generous than they are in the U.K. Do you think that is a problem for the culture integration, and do you have any plans to harmonize those commission structures going forward? Just very lastly, apologies, you referred to the management of GDT a couple of times. Can you just talk to the incentives that you are putting in place? I guess share-based payments are perhaps more common in the U.S. Should we assume that there is a share-based comp implication of incentivizing the management to stay going forward? Thank you.
Absolutely. Kick off. You are right, Charlie, we have not yet managed to work through all the accounting policy. We are going to need to go contract by contract. What we have done is sort of estimate the worst-case position that we think, and we imagine this is prudent, but the number that we have used, and we have used it in those EPS numbers that we have given as well, is a GBP 10 million reduction in FY 2026. That is GDT's FY 2026. That will sort of smooth over the next three years. You see a decline in the 2026 growth rate and then an increase in the outer couple of years. As I have said, it kind of washes out in that time period. Clearly over the next-
Does that drop all the way through? It is GBP 10 million less on gross profit and GBP 10 million less on EBITDA, is it?
Yes. That is in EBITDA. Gross profit number is slightly different, just your net of commissions.
Okay.
You can take GBP 10 million on both.
Okay.
It won't be far wrong.
Okay
At this point in time, it's an approximation. We will obviously give more information when we've had the chance to work through all of the details. In terms of how we're thinking about that medium to long-term growth rate, you'll be very familiar with the Softcat growth formula of low double-digit gross profit growth, high single-digit operating profit growth. Made complete sense. We're less than a 5% market share in a growing market, and therefore, being able to have that headroom to invest to build future market share has been one of the things that has absolutely underpinned our long-term success.
If you think now about the bigger business, it's as relevant as ever before. We have now a larger addressable market, a smaller market share, and therefore, that formula we will now apply to the larger business as well. So a bigger base. That's how we're thinking about it and really excited about being able to deliver on that.
In terms of the short-term, the next couple of years, we're going to plan prudently around mid-single digit operating profit growth, gross profit just slightly ahead of that, to make sure that we have got the absolute focus to make sure we set everything up for the future. Those numbers are the GDT numbers for the next couple of years, and that's the way that we're thinking about it. A good, prudent assumption.
I'll pick up on the other two, Charlie. Can you just clarify the third one? Was it solely around sales commissions, or was there a broader aspect to it as well?
Well, no. Just sales commissions. I am guessing there is a higher payout ratio in the U.S. How are your U.K. salespeople going to feel about that? Do you think over the medium term, you need to harmonize those onto the same commission stream?
No. We have mentioned that the management team, we intend to retain all of the people and the operating structures that exist in both businesses. We are not going to change the way either business operates. The beauty of this is that both have a structure that works in that local market. What we are going to do as we build the businesses together is retain the operations that work in those local markets. The earnings potential that our people have in GDT in the U.S. and in Softcat in the U.K. is profound. They have got a great chance to earn good money for good performance on both sides of the fence.
We do not see the need to change the way that they operate. There will be new mechanisms that we put in place because the way this creates value is by centralizing and creating shared services where, and only where it creates value. There will be evolution to those schemes, as there always is within our business. Our business never stands still in the way that we do commission schemes or anything else for that matter.
There will be evolution and a chance for us to innovate that operating model as we go forward. We are not intending to harmonize the two businesses onto one common set of operating rules. You asked about management incentives. We thought very carefully about retention and incentivization because, as I have mentioned a few times now, we want to retain all of the people in GDT. That is the leadership team, the management team, and everybody else.
The structure that we have for our leaders and managers and people in Softcat will enable us to put in place a very attractive earnings opportunity for people in GDT as well. For our leadership team, there is a strong stock-based element to that, and we have got some good mechanisms within that that we can use for GDT too. That will be over the short, medium, and long-term horizons as well, with different aspects of those schemes applying, as you might expect.
Just for our modeling purposes, should we assume that you will take the cost of those share schemes through the P&L as you currently do, or should we assume that they are big enough that you will call them out as perhaps separate line items?
Charlie, within the base, the historic financials, there was the GDT scheme, and then we will replace that with the Softcat scheme. I think the quantums will be roughly the same magnitude.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Next question will be coming from Tintin Stormont of Deutsche Numis. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on GDT. Historically, they delivered - 7% GP growth in 2024, then flat in 2025, and obviously on the same basis, they are now on track to deliver 30% GP growth in calendar 2026. Can you just talk about what has changed the trajectory and, I guess, a different way of asking some of the similar questions that was asked already, what is the assumed GP growth rate in FY 2027 and FY 2028 that you are making implied by the high single digit, low double digit EPS accretion in FY 2028?
Then just secondly, I will just ask it now. Prior to the more recent contribution of large solution deals in Softcat, there was strong diversification at Softcat with no one customer accounting for more than 2% of GP. What is the current customer concentration like at GDT on that $240 million of GP in 2026? Finally, an integration question, not on comp, but obviously you are making significant investments in your CRM and HR systems as well as AI tools. Could you comment perhaps on the level of sophistication of the systems within GDT and if there is anything that you are doing on that side of things? Thanks.
Okay. Thanks, Tintin. I will have a go at a lot of those elements, but I am sure Katy will top up on a few, particularly on the go-forward guidance. H.I.G.'s owned GDT for the past four years. H.I.G. acquired a mature, very capable, and scaled business around networking capability into telco carriers. The strategy over the last four years has diversified what was a large and cyclical business into something with more sustainable growth pathways. That is what appeals to us.
As we know very well, when you bring in cohorts of new account managers and broaden offerings, you need time to develop customer intimacy and trust in those new offerings, and you build strong growth but off a very low base. In the work that we have done to look through the top-line P&L numbers, we can see evidence of customer growth, GP per customer growth, broadening revenue streams underneath what was some big comps in the legacy business in the 2023, 2024 years.
So you get a profile that looks like, well, as you have described, which is flat to then increasing and strong growth in more recent times. Our diligence work, both around looking at the metrics under those numbers, but also the commercial due diligence with customers and their partners, shows how strong the sustainable growth pathways coming through have been. We see that in our business, say it is a pattern we recognize. We are very confident in the growth that they are delivering and how we can build upon that. I will maybe just pause slightly as Katy talks about how we think about that going forward. Then I will come back on some of your other points.
Sure. Thanks, Graham. Tintin, as I said, for GDT, for the next couple of years, we are taking a prudent approach, and we are going to plan at mid-single digit operating profit growth with gross profit, just slightly above that. Hopefully that makes sense.
On customer concentration, GDT is a narrower and smaller business than ours, as we have said, and so there is a degree more customer concentration, again, because of the history that that business has had too. It is not wildly different to Softcat's customer concentration. I think GDT's top 10 customers account for something like 30%-35% of gross profit. The equivalent number for Softcat is about 15%. They have 700 customers. We have 10,000. So customer concentration, we are entirely comfortable with, and we are very excited about the growth potential in that existing customer base as we broaden the offering.
There is a whole ton of new customers that we can help them work into as well. On the system side, they are in very good shape, so the due diligence work we have done there has shown they have got modern systems in place. We do not need to carry out any remedial work or heavy lifting integration. They have got a good modern contemporary base of systems to work from.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you very much. Next question will be coming from Bharath Nagaraj of Cantor Fitzgerald . Please go answer.
Thank you. Hope you can hear me. Thanks for taking my questions. Broadly speaking, could you talk about why you think this is the right timing? I appreciate that you said it is not exactly about the timing, but in the context of the ongoing debate around ROI on the AI data center CapEx, given that people have already seen a few years of large CapEx deployments.
Thirdly, recent worries regarding how resource-intensive the data centers are. Why do you think this is the right kind of timing for it? Especially given the growth rates have been a bit lumpy, as the previous person mentioned. Secondly, could you provide some color on the medium-term tax benefits that you mentioned and also any color on the broad split of software services and hardware for GDT? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. On the timing, why is now right? I think you are talking particularly about the market forces as well. There is a lot of debate around what is happening with the AI build-out. That means an awful lot of different things to a lot of different people, so just break the market down slightly. Clearly, a lot of what has been badged as AI investment. By the way, where AI starts and stops and where infrastructure and classic infrastructure starts and stops is a very gray area. What we do is provide infrastructure.
That infrastructure now has to be capable of running AI tools as well, which means there is more complexity and more capacity needed in it, but it is still the same product. The AI build-out is another way of saying there is huge demand for infrastructure, which is what we do. That demand that is newest is being built by the hyperscalers and is a very particular kind of data center, and that is where the volatility is and might be in the future. Neither Softcat nor GDT are exposed to the hyperscaler market. Beyond that, you have the neoclouds, which is a new and interesting area of demand, and both Softcat and GDT target and have success in that space.
But the area that we are both, Softcat and GDT, most interested and capable for is enterprise infrastructure. That is the most nascent and building and sustainable area of demand, and that is really just another way of saying our customers need better and bigger infrastructure into the future, and we will be the ones to build it for them. That sustainable growth in enterprise infrastructure, which we see in structural growth for the long term, is where both Softcat and GDT play.
The timing of this combination from that perspective couldn't be better, because this is happening at a time when modern infrastructure has to be diversified. It has to be hosted in different locations, the public cloud on premises. Those on-premises locations have to be in the best location internationally, which brings all sorts of considerations as well. So creating a combination like we have, with deep capability to implement, design, and manage infrastructure from end to end, from the device to the cloud, whether it is in a publicly owned shed or on premises, how to connect, secure it, and network it, that is what we do, and we can now do it anywhere globally.
The timing of the combination from that point of view, we think is really excellent. You also asked, I think within that, about software, hardware, services split. I will let Katy come to the tax benefits in a minute, but I think you also said about software, hardware, services. Just take the opportunity to touch on that. GDT's business looks very like Softcat's business in that regard. The splits are somewhat different, but that is just because their offering is narrower than ours, and we have got a diversification and dilution to some elements as well.
On the services side, GDT's GP is about 25% services, ours is 15%. Theirs is concentrated in professional services, architecture, and managed and maintenance services. We have a slightly smaller business in the professional service space because of the nature of the difference between the two operations. Their hardware is 45%, ours is more like 35%. Their software is 25%, ours is more like 50%. But we think about our offering in the same way. Customers don't ask us for software or hardware, they ask us for infrastructure, they ask us for networking, for data center, for security.
Both GDT and Softcat think about that offering in exactly the same way, which is a customer needs solutions, and that is a combination of software, hardware, advice, and support, and that is what we provide. So the mix that we deliver to customer is an output of meeting the requirements that they have, and that is how we build our offering. Not by targeting software or hardware. We target delivering solutions that work around the right advice. I will let Katy maybe talk about the tax benefits.
Yeah, so the acquisition will bring a tax asset. We still have, as you would expect, quite a lot of work to do on that at this point in time. But that tax asset is a key part of the EPS range that we have given. So when we have had the chance to work through it all in more detail, we will give a little bit more guidance on it.
Sure. Thank you. May I just ask a follow-up? In terms of NVIDIA, what kind of products are you reselling exactly, just so that I understand better? Thank you.
Sorry, I could not hear. In terms of which area?
In terms of NVIDIA.
What are the products that GDT are reselling? Thank you.
Okay, well. GDT, like Softcat, work with NVIDIA directly, but also through other OEMs. So their InfiniBand product and so on is something that they will work directly with NVIDIA around like we do. But equally, the NVIDIA chips and products are in the other OEM providers too. Our partnership with NVIDIA is around technical resource services and capability to represent their technology and its broader ecosystem within a range of the solutions that we provide. Yeah, similar relationship with NVIDIA, both within Softcat and GDT.
Thank you.
Thank you much, sir. Our next question will be coming from Andrew Ripper, calling from Panmure Liberum. Please go ahead, Andrew. Your line is open.
Yeah, morning. Thanks for letting me in. A question for Graham. Can you just spend a bit more time trying to bring to life for us the value creation plan and give us a sense of the priorities and order of magnitude of the potential benefit from both, customer synergies, either U.K. into the U.S. through the stronger offering, or U.S. into U.K./non-U.S., and vendor synergies and leveraging India? Which is most important of those four in terms of realizing the potential of the deal?
Hi, Andrew. Yeah, thanks for the question. It is a really good one, and you have touched on some of the more immediate priorities that we have within that value creation plan. Certainly, and I mentioned when I was talking about the combination, saying we immediately have access to the fulfillment, and that is an obvious place to start. So this combination is first and foremost driven by our desire to be more capable for our customers in the U.S. So it is a priority for us to make sure that the way we can collaborate around sales efforts for those international customers is one of the first priorities that we will tackle.
Today, we get about 2% of our gross profit from operating in the U.S. That part of our business can grow at a materially quicker rate than our broader business for many years as we deploy that new capability and find the ways to build capacity into that as well. We are doing work to quantify the reverse opportunity, but GDT operating in that upper mid-market and enterprise space in the U.S. means that they do have a lot of customers with operations across the U.K. and into Europe, too.
So we think that multinational sales opportunity is a material benefit and could be low single-digit percentage point share of our businesses into the future, which is quite material on the base that we start with. Customer synergies, there is almost no customer overlap between the two businesses right now, so we do not have the headache of any integration problems there. But we do have the benefit of finding the opportunities that we have just talked about.
Vendor synergies are profound because, as you know, the vendors operate common schemes worldwide. They do so through individual jurisdictions in different countries, but the schemes they operate in are similar. Increasingly, because of the trends that we have alluded to, vendors have global schemes that are particular for partners with international capabilities, and there are not many of those. Because we are the biggest or one of the biggest providers to our vendors, which covers the whole span of vendors, because we are the biggest provider in the U.K. for them, we get global attention.
We are on their Global Advisory Boards, and we now have significant scale and capability in the biggest market that they have in the world. Our leverage with vendors, our ability to collaborate with them, share data with them, work on customer opportunities with real scale and capability, that will be transformed by this deal over time. I think you mentioned the India operation, too. This will be an immediate priority for investment also.
GDT are already continuing to build and develop that operation. The know-how that we have across a broader services range can be applied to that investment. They already have very well-established mechanisms to create pods that are dedicated to customers within their service operations. It won't be very difficult for us to extend that mechanism to working for customers in the U.K. like they do in the U.S. But equally, what we want to do here is make sure that there's stability and continuity.
With all of these things, we'll look at the right phasing and pathway to turn on some of these streams. But we are spoiled for choice in how to create value. As the businesses come together, that value creation plan will have a dedicated team built around it, and we'll start to knit together the businesses where we can create value most quickly. But you've hit on some of the key priorities for us there, and there's real value to be found in the short term.
Thanks, Graham. Just to elaborate on the vendor point, but if you took something like Cisco, which I think is GDT's biggest spender and one of your top three, or certainly used to be, how, in terms of the economics, is it a sort of softer benefit, or is there a hard economic benefit from being more important to Cisco?
It's a mixture, but it's more the former. A lot of the benefits we have from the strong relationships with the vendors is how we work together on the customer's behalf. So how we prioritize the allocation of resources to opportunities given the relationship that we have and the opportunity that we have together.
The rebate schemes, and the other co-funding schemes that they operate are standard. But particularly on the co-funding side, though, the stronger our opportunity together, the more investment we can place to create new skills and build capacity in teams. That soft power, as you call it, has real material benefits. But it is more that than it is access to new rebate schemes. We're very well qualified on that quantitative front already.
Andrew, does that answer your question, sir?
Yeah. Just got a quick follow-up for Katy, just a quick one. Just going back to slide 26 and the historical financials with GDT. Just the conversion rate really sort of stacks up in 2026. Could you just elaborate on sort of the last three years? Was there quite a lot of investment going on in 2024 and 2025 that depressed the conversion rate?
Hi, Andrew. I guess core reason is just that operating leverage with the growth in gross profit, just like Softcat and it's a trend that we're really familiar with ourselves. It just drops down. Yes, they've been investing since H.I.G. took over, but the biggest driver of that leverage increase is just more GP off an elevated cost base, but obviously one that doesn't grow nearly as fast as gross profit.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Next question will be coming from Balajee Tirupati of Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Hi, Graham and Katy. Congratulations from my side as well. Thanks for taking my questions too, if I may. Firstly, if I can ask one question on the strategic consideration behind the deal. How much of it is reflection of you on seeing next phase of growth coming from larger enterprise investment and AI, including in finance security, versus you need to expand outside of the U.K.?
The second question is on trading. Looking at your 2026 trading as well as 2027 outlook, you had earlier flagged some demand pull in on account of memory shortage anticipation. How much of that has continued in the fourth quarter? As you look for 2027 outlook, what impact you have factored for the possible pull in in 2026 and likely shortages? Thank you.
Thanks, Balajee. How much growth do we see coming from larger enterprises and AI? As I mentioned in an earlier question, we do think that's a really exciting and very sustainable growth trend that will be in our market. It's really important for us to emphasize that what we're not doing with this acquisition or any part of our strategy is stepping away from the mid-market as well. I think AI build out in the mid-market is equally exciting. There isn't I know we like to try and put labels on things, but I keep dissolving them back into the reality, which is infrastructure is evolving at pace.
It's getting bigger. It's getting more complex. That's being driven by the demands of hungry AI applications, but many other things as well, such as data security, sovereignty and lots of other things. Whatever label you want to put on it, in whichever segment of our customer base, we're excited about where IT infrastructure is going. There isn't honestly an industry in the world that I'd rather be working in terms of the growth opportunity and the interest levels and the importance to societies and organizations in the future.
It's a great place to be, whether it's AI build outs in enterprise or it's security considerations in the public sector or whatever it might be. There's a whole bunch of conversations and problems that our customers need our help with. GDT sees it in exactly the same way. As mentioned, we're building the capability to support customers across all segments with all sorts of demands across that. But yeah, the AI build out in enterprise grade organizations, I think is going to be a very strong growth factor over the coming five and 10 years. And you asked about the memory shortage within that.
We certainly saw that create stimulus and demand in the early part of this year. It's ongoing. The supply and pricing situation has settled down. That's much more stable now. So I think the net impact of that during our second half is fairly neutral, and we'd expect those conditions to persist through next year. But of course, it's one that we have to keep an eye on because it's a dynamic situation, but new supply beginning to come on stream from some of the big suppliers has been probably surprised a little bit on the positive on the upside as this year's gone on.
So we're in a more stable situation there right now. But yeah, I'm sure there'll be news flow on it and we'll be. The good news for us is with the breadth that we have, we're very well placed to help customers when those puts and takes appear in the market. And so we can give them good advice and support them moving around with their needs if that supply and demand situation starts to spike again.
Thanks, Graham. If I may ask also in a follow-up and on GDT side, you have shared summary financial profile of GDT. Would it be fair to think that most of their growth comes from existing customers, and do you expect a new go to market initiative in the U.S. to build a customer acquisition motion?
So-
So they. Again, just let me start with numbers. So they've grown their customer base by sort of 5% CAGR over the last four years, fairly consistently. So I think it's fair to say the growth is coming both from new customers, but also building out that share of wallet with existing as well.
Yeah. I mean, Softcat get the vast majority of our growth in any one year from our existing customers. The new customers that we are winning then grow with us over a long period of time. So the new customers we win in any one year is underpinning future growth pathways, and that is exactly the same for GDT. Their balance is slightly different, because they are a less scaled business than us, both in terms of offering and customer base. But that is why it is so exciting as well, because we know where they are.
We know what they are doing. We have been on that path. It is the same business model. It is a different market, so we have got a team who knows and is credible in that market to execute a strategy that we both recognized and that we have been down. Customer growth and growth in GP per customer are both metrics that we will be able to drive hard in GDT over the coming decades, let alone years.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have time for only one more question, and that question will be coming from Oliver Tipping calling from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead, Oliver. Your line is open.
Thanks, guys. I'll just keep it to one thing as we're sort of cutting it fine. Just looking at the U.S. market, it's very fragmented and very competitive. So when GDT meet a customer, what are their key differentiators? Is it the quality of their execution? Is it the capacity of their integration centers, or is it their global operations that makes them be able to compete on sort of an attractive price point?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Oliver. It's exactly the same as for Softcat in the U.K. It's a fragmented market. There's loads of good competition, and the right to win is based around the same two things that we base that for Softcat upon, which is capability and customer service. What that means is we listen to the customer, we care about getting them a great result. We develop intimacy. We understand their problems. That's exactly what GDT do. Then we bring the right capability to bear for what they need.
GDT's capability is well established. It's highly referenceable. It's deep design, architectural capability around networking in the data center, and then more recently, compute and storage and some security elements as well. So understanding the customer's needs, providing great service, make them feel that they can trust you, and then deliver with great capability, relevant solutions. They do that very well, which is why they've developed scale business and are driving the growth, that they are now. That's exactly those two things have been the foundation of Softcat's growth as well. Customer service capability.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Oliver. We'll turn the call back over to the management team for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you. Just to thank everybody again for their time and interest today. Hopefully, you can hear how carefully we've thought about this step over many years and how the combination of Softcat and GDT, we think makes Softcat and GDT both stronger, how excited the management teams are about bringing those businesses together, how that's resonated over the past day with shareholders and with our employee base.
We are building something now that we think is truly special in a global market that is one of the most exciting industries to be in this modern world. Thanks for your time and attention today. We look forward to keeping you abreast of the progress we make over the coming months and years. Thanks a lot.