Okay, so we're going to go ahead and get started. For right now, you're going to have to just imagine some beautiful slides up here on the screen. They should be here shortly as tech works on it in the background. But in the interest of time, I'm Adam Tindle. This is part of my supply chain coverage here at Raymond James. Very happy to have the team from Insight Enterprises. Many of you are probably familiar with the company, a broad-based technology provider across multiple continents, and a good read on IT spending, and have done a great job running the business, getting a lot of questions here on the stock as well after some pullback here recently, so good timing. We've got James Morgado, who is now taking on the formal CFO role, and we're going to run through some slides. I see they're coming up right now.
Perfect. For about 15 minutes, and then I'll have 15 minutes of fireside chat questions. If you do have questions along the way, please feel free to raise your hand. We'd love to keep it as interactive as possible. And with that, did I buy you enough time?
You did. That was well done, Adam. I thought for sure I was going to have to describe slides, and you guys are going to have to visualize it. As a finance guy, that wouldn't be my strong suit, so I'm glad we got the presentation going. As Adam said, James Morgado, I currently am the CFO of North America, SVP of Finance. I'll take the reins from Glynis starting January 1st. I have Ryan Miyasato here, who's our Director of Investor Relations. Any of those tough questions that Adam said you guys might ask, we're going to direct to Ryan, and Ryan's going to do his best to answer them. I thought we would originally do maybe 15 minutes or so as a company overview, and then spend some time Adam asking questions.
But as Adam said, if you guys have questions along the way, I'm more than happy to field them. This is the disclosures. I'm absolutely not going to read them, but they are available for your reference if you want to see them. I thought a good starting point would be to talk a little bit about who Insight is. So in 2022, at our Investor Day, we introduced the term a solutions integrator. And I'll talk a little more on the next slide of what a solutions integrator is. But it is effectively around combining our expertise in hardware, software, wrapped around with our deep technical services capabilities to deliver solutions for customers that are aimed at specific outcomes that they need.
The key here is that the solutions integrator really is that wrapping of the technical services and the technical capabilities that we have, and we'll talk a little more about that on the next slide. We believe we can drive and have driven above-market profitable growth. Two things, if I split that apart, one growth, we're focused on the fastest growing areas of the market. So if you think of data, AI, cybersecurity, edge, that is our strength. And so those are the fastest growing areas of the market. That's where we're focused on. In terms of the profitable side, if you look over the last couple of years, we've expanded both EBITDA margins, and that was through a combination of gross margin expansion along with OPEX leverage as a percentage of gross profit.
Specifically on the gross margin side, there's a couple of things that are in our favor in that spot. Well, number one is mix, so as we grow in those fastest growing areas of the market that I mentioned, data, cloud, AI, et cetera, those have higher margins than the rest of our business, so we have an inherent tailwind associated with mix, and then the second side of this is structural improvements that we focused on in gross margin. If I bifurcate this from the product business and the services business, on the product side of the business, we've really focused on leveraging discipline around our pricing, leveraging our immense amount of data associated with pricing of products, and if you look like for like over the last several years within the hardware space, for example, devices are up like for like from a couple of years ago.
Infrastructure is up, like, from a couple of years ago. The second piece of this, of the structural changes, are around the services business, so within our core services business, we have driven better leverage of our centers of excellence. We've expanded those centers of excellence out. Discipline around the services business in terms of how we utilize our resources has also improved. And then the third piece of that is around how we leverage technology within our own business. We have over 100 patents pending that we utilize in the delivery of our services portfolio. And then the last key piece that I'd like to leave you with at a high level is cash flow generation, so the business is a strong cash flow generator.
If you look over the last handful of quarters, going back probably a year and a half now, our free cash flow as a percentage of net income has been over 100%, and so we're a strong cash flow generating business, which is really important to our strategy. If you look at our strategy, a key component of that is M&A, and so our cash generation helps to fuel our M&A strategy, so I promised you that I would talk a little more about what a solutions integrator is. Before I do that, let's talk about the key pillars to our strategy. The first is really a client-centric strategy. If you look at our customer base, we have a tremendous asset with our customers. So in North America, we have 30,000+ customers.
And so for us, an expansion of share of wallet is the strategy around customers and not necessarily a customer acquisition strategy. Our strategy around customers is really focused around driving outcomes, so bringing to bear both our expertise in hardware and software along with our services portfolio to drive that. And that customer base, if you look at that customer base, if you think of the Fortune 5000 and above, we deal with almost every one of those customers in the Fortune 5000 and above. So we have a tremendous asset with our customers. The second side of this, the second pillar to this, is delivering differentiation. And we do this through our technical capabilities. Today, we have over 6,500 technical resources. That represents nearly half of our total employee population.
So we've really focused heavily over the last decade or so in terms of building out our technical capabilities. It's a little strange to have culture as a third pillar, but not if you know Insight. Culture is the secret sauce. It's actually one of the reasons I joined the company besides the opportunity moving forward. But our culture gives us an outsized advantage in terms of both being able to retain talent, especially on the technical side, as well as recruit technical talent. And this ultimately leads into driving that profitable growth, which is the fourth pillar of our strategy. We think we can continue to improve our economic model moving forward. So what is a solutions integrator? Sometimes the best way to explain something is to talk about what it is not. And so I'll talk about a solutions integrator in terms of what's a systems integrator.
So a systems integrator, think of Accenture, Capgemini, et cetera, those type of companies. In some respects, we share similarities with a systems integrator. We have the technical capabilities that a systems integrator does, but in many ways, we differ from them. So a systems integrator is focused, number one, on that Fortune 300 and above, very large projects that typically span multiple years. Insight's really focused on driving outcomes for our customers. We're willing to do projects at smaller scale and earn the right to do more. Systems integrators also focus on ERP implementations. We do not focus on ERP implementations. We are also a little bit different than a reseller. We certainly share many characteristics as a reseller, and our heritage is being a reseller. But we have some differences from a reseller, namely the amount that we've invested and grown our technical capabilities.
I think we far exceed what you would see in many resellers. And then lastly, we are not a distributor. Sometimes folks new to our story might confuse us with a distributor. We are far from a distributor. Distributors are important partners for us. They help us both from an inventory standpoint as well as a product availability standpoint. But distributors don't have the end customer relationships that Insight does. I go to the next slide just simply to show our global reach. This is actually how we're different than other resellers as well. We have global reach. We do business in over 27 countries. We are split from a geographic standpoint. Our segmentation is North America, which is our largest segment. 70% plus revenue is in North America. EMEA is our second largest, really focused in Europe primarily. So U.K., Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, et cetera.
So mostly Europe. And then Asia-Pacific is our third geography, primarily focused in Australia and New Zealand. I've mentioned a little bit about the financial performance. And I mentioned how driving profitable growth was critical to us. If you look at the chart in the upper left-hand corner, you'll see gross margin, particularly in the line. This is data on a trailing 12-month basis. So if you look at 2022, our gross margin was around 14%. In the most recent quarter, we were just shy of 20% on a TTM basis. So major margin expansion over this period of time. And it's related to those areas that I mentioned before, a tailwind from a mix standpoint, and the structural changes we've made both in our product as well as our services business. This is translated, if you look to the lower left-hand chart, to the EBITDA margin expansion.
In 2022, at the end of 2022, we were at 4.7%. In the most recent quarter, we were 6.3% in EBITDA margin, pretty significant expansion over that period of time. That is both related to the gross margin expansion and OPEX leverage from the organic business in terms as a percentage of gross profit. Upper right-hand corner is one of the key strategic areas that we outlined in 2022 in terms of growth. This is our cloud gross profit growth. Very solid performance in terms of cloud gross profit. We gave a long-term CAGR, which I'll review in a minute. We gave a long-term CAGR through 2027 of a 16%-20% growth in gross profit for cloud this year, boosted by the SADA acquisition, but we've been in the upper 20s, low 30s in terms of cloud gross profit growth.
And then lastly, I mentioned this earlier in terms of cash flow generation as a free cash flow as a percentage of net income has been well above 100% over this period of time, which helps fuel our M&A, which leads to the next slide. This is our M&A over time. It's been a key component to our strategy to build this business. I particularly point you to 2015. That's when we really started focusing on building our technical capabilities. We acquired a company called BlueMetal, which started our digital enablement technology practices. Since then, we've added multiple companies that help build out that portfolio that leads to the 6,500 technical resources. So we've grown that both from an organic as well as an M&A standpoint. Most recently, over the last 18 months or so, we have done three pretty important acquisitions for us.
The first was Amdaris in EMEA, which helped build out our Microsoft capabilities. They're a pure play services company focused in the Microsoft space that built out our Microsoft capabilities in EMEA, and then late in 2023, we acquired a company called SADA, which built our GCP capabilities, so we had a GCP practice prior to that. It was actually out of the three hyperscalers. It was the third out of those three. SADA was the largest GCP partner, and so we acquired them, and now Google is our second largest in the cloud space, our second largest practice. They have both the resale capabilities as well as very important and strategic services capabilities that they added, and then most recently this year, earlier this year, we acquired a company called Infocenter, and candidly, it's one of the best services companies I've ever come across in my career.
Very solid margins, very solid growth. They're a pure play service company focused in the ServiceNow, in the ServiceNow platform. So we continue to do M&A. It's an important part of our strategy. Next slide is our full year outlook. I just put this as reference so that you get some idea of our 2024. Gross profit in the mid-single digits, gross margin in that 19%-20% range, and diluted EPS in $9.40-$9.70. Sorry, I'm going a little quickly. I want to make sure I save some time for Adam. Yep, and then really important KPIs. We laid these out for 2027, and this was honestly an inflection point for us. If you looked historically at our EBITDA margins, we were sort of range bound in that 3%-4% range. And so when we put 6.5%-7%, we definitely got some eyebrows raised.
I don't know if Adam raised his eyebrows when we put it out there. But we've done well and progressed well against this. So EBITDA margin was one of the key important metrics there, 6.5%-7%. We also said we would grow two key strategic areas of our business. That's the cloud part of our business and the services GP. Both we said we would grow in the 16%-20% range. You can see how we're performing in both of those on a TTM basis. We put an ROIC metric out there, which.
That's where I raised my eyebrows.
Yeah. That one, that one I was.
And Glynis was crafty on this one. Hopefully, we edit that part out of this transcript. But Glynis was crafty on this one. She clarified that this ROIC was from an organic perspective only.
And so at any given period of time when we're doing heavy M&A, we would be below the 25%. And then adjusted free cash flow as a percentage of net income, we said we'd be above 90%. Capital allocation, my last slide. I get this question a lot in terms of what are your capital allocation priorities. First and foremost, I think it's to continue to fund the organic business. That's sort of table stakes. I don't think any company would say anything different there. M&A is the second priority in our capital allocation. And then the third is to drive shareholder, is to return cash to shareholders. We use share buybacks as the primary mechanism there. Over the last two years, I think our buybacks have been over $400 million over the last couple of years. Okay. So that's the Insight overview.
And now I'm going to let Adam pepper me with some questions.
Oh, you did it very efficiently. So well done. Thank you. I'm going to kick it off. So I think that was a great strategic overview. We'll maybe just go into a little bit more near-term trends. And I'll buy Kavitha time to ask a question because I know you got one. So on near-term trends, we're through a U.S. presidential election. I know there's been stops and starts on IT spending throughout this year. Just curious what you're hearing as we sit here in mid-December. This is typically a big corporate quarter for budget flush and stuff like that. You guys have a lot of exposure to enterprise and corporate. What are you hearing on budget flush expectations? And maybe you can characterize the state of demand here into year-end and how you're thinking about 2025.
Yeah.
It's a great question, and I think the certainty now with the presidential election has helped a little bit just in driving certainty overall. In terms of our guidance, we clarified that we didn't expect a budget flush. I don't think I would say anything different than what we said at the beginning of the quarter. I think if we look overall at our business, and we commented on this in our last earnings, we are seeing some very early signs of improvement, specifically in our commercial segment, so if you think of our customer segmentation, commercial is more of midsize businesses, and then you have the corporate space, and then you have the enterprise space, and typically, when we see a refresh cycle, we see it usually start in that commercial space and move up customer segments.
And so we're seeing some early signs that I think gives us some indication that next year may be a modest hardware growth. But I don't think I would say anything different than what we said at our last earnings call.
Okay. And on that point of hardware growth, I think a lot of investors are very focused on a potential PC cycle. We've been talking about this for many quarters now, and it just never seems to come. But Microsoft is expiring support for Win 10 in fall of next year. That typically will kickstart a refresh cycle. So Joyce, your CEO, has a lot of background in PCs coming from Dell. I guess how are you guys thinking internally about this PC cycle, the shape of it, how you might capitalize on it, and what it might look like relative to prior cycles?
Yeah.
So first of all, I don't think we're expecting a massive inflection point next year. I think if you were to ask me what are the two big demand drivers for next year around a PC refresh, I think one is the age of the installed base. And both Joyce and I would say that through the course of our career, we've never seen this long of a period of time without a refresh. So I think the age of the installed base is one. And then certainly what you just described in terms of end of support on, well, additional possible cost on supporting Windows 10. But as Windows 10 comes end of life and Windows 11 comes in, I think that will be an impetus for this.
We're a bit cautious in terms of how we're talking about it because, like you said, I don't think Insight's been alone. Many of us have said this, thinking that the refresh cycle is imminent and it keeps getting pushed out a little further and further. So we're being prudent as we think about this for next year. But I think specifically on PC refreshes, I think the demand drivers are there for some sort of refresh next year.
And I think that point is so interesting because we're not expecting a big refresh. It's certainly not baked into numbers the way that I'm projecting them, yet the stocks have really pulled back in a bigger way. So particularly interesting setup for investors out there. Let me pause, see if we have a question. I have two questions.
Yeah.
What is causing the dramatic fall in free cash flow conversion in the secondary? The second one is if your organic return on capital is 25% and acquisitions are what is dragging it down, how long does it take for your M&A to get to that 25% acquisition?
Yeah. So your first question again, just to make sure I'll repeat it on the mic.
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Free cash flow conversion. So I think I don't know exactly what metric you're looking at, but
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Yeah. I think when you look at that 160%, I don't think that's a sustainable long-term. As I pointed out, our long-term metric is to be greater than 90%. Free cash flow is a percentage of net income.
So there's nothing on that chart that dropped down, is kind of dropping back down into still normalized ranges versus the outsized piece we have there. If you look back prior to that chart, and I wasn't being tricky with that chart and only showing the positive period, we just took everything from 2022. There was a period of time there when devices grew very rapidly, and devices use cash in our business. So there was a period of time where that free cash flow was in the low single digits range. And so as devices dropped, you see kind of that boost there. But overall, that gives you an indication of what our cloud and services business cash flow could look like. And so that's one piece. Your second question was around
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Acquisition
25% out of what?
Yeah.
We're probably going to be in a consistent period of doing M&A. You're probably just, this is James's view. There's probably no point at which we're going to have a long period of time in which you're going to see a 25% ROIC because M&A will be critical to our strategy. I think one of the things that you can think about from our M&A, one of the metrics we have told investors is that we expect that in the first full year following an acquisition, we would expect it to be EPS accretive to us. Although not an ROIC, I recognize that's not an ROIC comment, but that is something that I can point investors to in terms of how we think about M&A accreting to profitability.
Other questions?
One of the things that has kind of come up in terms of a topic on not just Insight, but kind of stocks in the supply chain space broadly coming back in is some of the narratives from some of the larger vendors, and I'll name them. You don't have to, but Microsoft in particular, and Cisco to some extent, so these large vendors like that that are implementing some changes to the way that they incent and rebate the channel that
Yep
might have ultimate impact on margins for all of these businesses. I wonder if you, since there's just so much confusion out there, if you could maybe make any comments or kind of clear the air on your expectations for that and what you're hearing.
Yeah. First, I think I would be remiss not to say that partners change programs all the time.
And so part of what we do as a business, and I think over time we've been really strong at doing this, is to pivot as our partners change and where they need us to strategically focus. Specifically around Microsoft, and this has not necessarily been something brand new in terms of a signal, but Microsoft increasingly wants us to focus kind of in that corporate and mid-market segment. And where that impacts into next year is, I'm going to use some terms, hopefully this isn't over the top, but EAs, which is enterprise agreements, is one of the motions that Microsoft has. They also have a motion CSP. CSP is Cloud Solution Provider Motion, which is the one where they're trying to drive more and more of their customer base to.
And so they've stepped back, effectively taken their incentives to the channel on EAs down to zero, and they've increased the incentives associated with CSP.
Does that start on January 1st? It goes to zero?
Starts at next year. And what we will see is this is not all, we'll see the most acute impact to us kind of in the first half of next year, but we will see it next year. I think long-term, this is after we get through kind of this initial transition period, CSP motion is a very good motion for us. That CAGR that I shared of 16%-20%, CSP has performed at or above that CAGR over time for us. So it's a very solid motion. But as the incentives with EAs drop, we do have an impact to us next year. And we clarified this a week ago.
You'll see it in our cloud number. So instead of the 30% growth that we're seeing this year, next year, we're probably going to be in the low single digits, is what we said in the cloud. And then we've also combined that so that investors get an idea of what this means. We still believe we can grow EPS in the mid-single digits next year. So despite cloud growth moderating, and we think that that's a single-year impact, we think getting out of next year, we return to that 16%-20% CAGR. So this is kind of a one-year. More acute in the first half. So if you look, and especially because we had a really strong Q1 in 2024, and so we have really strong comparables in next year as we get into it. But we still think we can grow EPS in the mid-single digits.
What does that imply on a, do you know, a profit dollar growth? Is the EPS growth largely from below the line items where profit dollars would be, EFO as you talk about would be kind of flat or?
Yeah. I think you will see growth, and I think it's both above EFO as well as below. I think we expect some modest improvement in hardware. I think the services that are attached to hardware will improve next year as hardware improves. And then I think our digital capabilities around the services portfolio should be strong as well.
Okay. Well, I think we're going to wrap there, but I'm going to give you the floor just for any kind of closing comments as you take on the CFO role officially in January, kind of key priorities and messages you want to leave with investors.
Yeah.
The first one, and Glynis told me this, she said, "Don't screw anything up." So that's my first priority, I guess, is don't screw anything up. But in all seriousness, I think the strategy that Glynis has laid out is one that I wouldn't pivot from. I've been over the last three years intimately involved in driving some of the results in terms of gross margins and some of the initiatives that we have. Those will continue. So the focus on continuing to drive gross margins will be there. I think Glynis was an amazing steward of the balance sheet. I intend to also be an amazing steward of our capital allocation. So that will be a key priority for us. And then ultimately driving profitable growth. Perfect.
We'll leave it there, James. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Adam. Thanks, everyone.