PC Connection, Inc. (CNXN) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2026 Connection Earnings Conference Call. My name is Marvin, and I'll be the coordinator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is the property of Connection and may not be recorded or rebroadcast without specific permission from the company. On the call today are Tim McGrath, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tom Baker, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to the company.

Thanks, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now read our cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements. Any statements or references made during the conference call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Various remarks that management may make about the company's future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as in other documents that the company files with the Commission from time to time. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent management's views as of today and should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date. While the company may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so other than as required by law, even if estimates change. And therefore, you should not rely on forward-looking statements as representing management's views as of any date subsequent to today. During this call, non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed. A reconciliation between any non-GAAP financial measure discussed and it's most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in today's earnings release and on the company's website at www.connection.com. Please note that unless otherwise stated, all references to third quarter 2026 comparisons are being made against the third quarter 2025. Today's call is being webcast and will be available on Connection's website. The earnings release will be available on the SEC website at www.sec.gov and in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.connection.com. I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Tim McGrath, CEO. Tim?

Thank you, Samantha. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Connection's Q3 2026 Conference Call. I'll begin this afternoon with an overview of our third quarter results and highlights of our performance. Tom will then walk us through a more detailed look at our financials. Our team delivered outstanding results in the third quarter, highlighted by record net sales, record gross billings and record gross profit. Our performance reflects strong execution within our 3 strategic pillars: digital workspace, modern infrastructure and multicloud and supply chain and life cycle. We believe our strategy will become even more relevant as AI continues to reshape enterprise technology investment. It's becoming central to business operations and customers are seeking greater control over their data, applications and technology infrastructure while preserving the flexibility to adapt as their needs evolve. This shift is driving demand for the solutions and the expertise Connection provides, helping customers innovate with confidence and optimize the value of their technology investments. In Q3, net sales were $874.3 million, representing a 23.3% increase year-over-year. The increase in net sales was driven across all product categories as notebooks, mobility and desktops grew 26.6%, software increased 23.2%, server storage was up 45.1% and networking improved by 43.3% in the quarter. Gross billings increased 19.4% to $1.3 billion compared to $1.1 billion in the prior year quarter. Gross profit grew 16.7% to a record $161.9 million and gross margin declined by 110 basis points to 18.5%. The margin change was driven by customer mix, including large project rollouts in the quarter and a lower contribution of netted down revenue. Pricing pressures and supply chain conditions continue to influence customer spending during the quarter. Some customers accelerated purchases ahead of further price increases, while others delayed investments or extended the life of existing assets. Our supply chain and life cycle capabilities enable customers to effectively manage their costs, protect their technology investments and maintain business continuity, reinforcing our role as a trusted partner in an increasingly complex market. With that, let's turn to our segment performance. Our Business Solutions segment delivered an outstanding quarter. Net sales increased 27.8% to $328.2 million, while gross profit rose 14.9% to $78.2 million. Gross billings grew 22.1% to a record $522.7 million, and gross margin was 23.8% compared with 26.5% in the prior year quarter, reflecting changes in customer mix and a lower contribution from software sales recognized on a net basis. Demand remained broad-based across the portfolio with double-digit growth across endpoint devices, servers, Net/Com and software. Within Public Sector Solutions, net sales increased 4.6% to $138.6 million. Gross billings increased 6.8% to $233.3 million. Gross margin declined 30 basis points to 16.9%, reflecting an increase in sales of lower-margin endpoint devices and changes in customer mix. Our Enterprise Solutions segment delivered strong growth, reflecting continued customer investments in technology modernization and a growing demand for enterprise AI-ready infrastructure. Net sales increased 27.4% to a record $407.5 million, driven by strong demand for endpoint devices, software, servers, Net/Com and services. Gross profit grew 26% to a record $60.2 million, while gross billings increased 23.1% to a record $521.2 million. Gross margin declined slightly by 10 basis points to 14.8%. Importantly, Enterprise Solutions ended the quarter with a record backlog. We believe this positions us well for continued momentum into the fourth quarter. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom to review our financial results in greater detail. Tom?

Thanks, Tim. In the third quarter, SG&A as a percentage of net sales was 13.8%, down 150 basis points year-over-year, reflecting our continued focus on efficiency and scale. SG&A increased 11.5% to $120.9 million year-over-year, driven by an increase in variable compensation due to higher levels of gross profit in the quarter, an increase in marketing costs due to the timing of events and investments we have made in platform modernization to increase sales of advanced technologies and services. Operating income increased by 35.4% to $41 million year-over-year, demonstrating strong operating leverage as we continue to balance expense discipline with targeted investment in areas of our business that will drive future growth. Operating income margin improved to 4.7% compared to 4.3% last year. Interest income declined to $2.5 million from $3.7 million last year, primarily due to lower cash balances. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 27.6%, up from 27.1% in the prior year. As a result, net income for the third quarter increased 27.2% to $31.5 million. Diluted earnings per share were $1.24, an increase of 27.8% or $0.27 compared to last year. On a trailing 12-month basis, adjusted EBITDA was a record $155.2 million compared to $122.7 million a year ago, an increase of 26%, resulting from the ongoing earnings growth. During the quarter, we continued to return capital to shareholders through dividends as we paid a quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share. We also announced today that our Board of Directors has declared a $0.20 per share dividend payable on November 27, 2026, to shareholders of record as of November 10, 2026. As of today, we have $81.2 million remaining for stock repurchases under our existing stock repurchase program. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. Cash used from operations for the first 9 months of 2026 was $39.8 million, reflecting targeted working capital investments to support growth. This included a $144.8 million increase in accounts receivable and an $83 million increase in inventory, partially offset by a $74.5 million increase in accounts payable. The increase in accounts receivable was primarily due to record net sales and the timing of customer deliveries. The days sales outstanding decreased by 2 days compared to the end of 2025. The increase in inventory is primarily due to several large-scale deployments we mentioned earlier on this call. Cash used in investing activities totaled $9.8 million, driven by $161 million of new investment purchases and $6 million of purchases of property, plant and equipment, partially offset by $157.4 million in investment maturities. Cash used in financing activities was $19 million, reflecting our ongoing share repurchase activity of $2.5 million and dividend payments of $15.1 million to shareholders. We ended the quarter with a strong liquidity position, $343.3 million of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, providing significant flexibility to execute on our strategic priorities and continue to return capital to shareholders. We believe our disciplined approach to capital allocation, continued focus on margin execution and targeted strategic investments position us very well for the remainder of 2026 and beyond. I will now turn the call back over to Tim to discuss current market trends.

Thanks, Tom. We had strong growth across each of our key vertical markets. In healthcare, net sales grew 34% and gross profit grew 33% year-over-year as we're seeing a shift to value-based care as providers need more analytics, care coordination platforms and health care tools that reduce costs and improve outcomes. In Financial Services, net sales increased 12%, while gross profit grew 11% year-over-year. Financial institutions are investing in technology to drive operational efficiencies, elevate the digital customer experience and strengthen cyber resilience. In manufacturing, net sales increased 26%, while gross profit increased 10% year-over-year. Productivity gains and cost reductions along with quality and yield improvements are driving demand in this space. The value we deliver to customers continues to be validated by our strategic partners and independent third parties. During the quarter, we were honored with awards that reflect the strength of our execution, our solutions capability and our commitment to customer success. Connection was named to Business Insider's 2027 list of the 500 most innovative businesses in the United States. The recognition highlights organizations that demonstrate exceptional innovation, performance, technological impact, industry reputation and investments in research and development. We were also named in Newsweek America's Greenest Companies in 2027. The ranking evaluates organizations using key environmental performance indicators, including greenhouse gas emissions, water use, waste generation, sustainability disclosure and environmental commitments and recognizes organizations that have made measurable progress in reducing their environmental impact and advancing sustainability initiatives. We achieved HPE Triple Platinum Plus status. The designation recognizes Connection's outstanding commercial performance and strategic commitment across the full portfolio and is reserved only for strategic partners that meet rigorous country-level sales thresholds and commit to sustained investments in technical certifications, competencies and joint business planning. We recently announced Matt Zafirovski has joined the Connection family as President and Chief Operating Officer. Matt is a proven leader with broad experience across technology operations, strategy and business transformation. Matt will report directly to me, and we believe his leadership capabilities and unique experience will help propel Connection into the future. Looking ahead, we see significant opportunity as a trusted adviser to our customers. AI is driving a new wave of enterprise investment that extends well beyond software. Customers need the infrastructure, security, devices and expertise to put AI to work at scale. Connection is uniquely positioned to bring these elements together, helping customers turn technology innovation into measurable business results. We continue to see strong customer engagement across our 3 strategic pillars: digital workspace, modern infrastructure and multi-cloud and supply chain and life cycle. Demand for data center modernization, AI-ready devices, cybersecurity and technical services is expanding our opportunity and reinforcing the value of our full stack solutions. Our backlog remains strong despite record net sales in the third quarter. While pricing, supply constraints and macroeconomic uncertainty may influence the timing of our customer purchases, underlying demand remains solid. We entered the fourth quarter with strong momentum, a proven strategy and growing opportunities across our business. We're positioning Connection for sustained long-term growth, and we expect to continue to outperform the U.S. IT market by 200 basis points this year. In a world where technology changes fast, expertise wins, and that's where Connection continues to differentiate. We'll now entertain your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Anthony Lebiedzinski of Sidoti.

Certainly, very solid results here for the third quarter. So on your last call back in July, you guys said that you expected Q3 to be sequentially lower than Q2. So maybe if you could just walk us through the cadence of business as to how you were able to outperform those expectations. And it sounds like you've seen continued solid momentum in Q4 given your backlog comments. But if you have any additional color on that, that would be very helpful.

Well, thanks, Anthony. This is Tim. We appreciate joining the call and your comments. So when we're talking about Q3 compared to Q2, as you know, Q2 is the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, the month of June, specifically. And we anticipated that, that would -- that our software sales would decline a little. And we're a little uncertain about the continued strength in device and I should say, AI-driven device. And for that combination, sales were very strong. Device remained very strong, server storage and networking all strong. And so we put all that together with another good quarter in Microsoft, and that really kind of tells the story.

Yes. The other thing I would tell you, Anthony, is July was okay month for us. August was okay. But September, particularly in enterprise was a little stronger than we expected. So I mean, that certainly helped us. When I think about Q4, sequentially, if you look at history, we're down 3% or 4% Q3 to Q4. We kind of expect that to probably -- that trend to reoccur this year. And we think our SG&A should track that as well.

Certainly, that's very helpful given that context. So I just wanted to circle back to the Public Sector segment. So it was sort of grew, but less than the other 2 segments. Maybe if you could just kind of talk about what you're seeing in the government space versus the SLED business, if there's any divergence there?

Sure, Anthony. So we really did see a pretty strong quarter in our SLED business, and we've been kind of rebuilding our federal business. So it was nice that we returned to growth. But clearly, the great performance by our state, local education team kind of outshined the performance for our federal team as we continue to rebuild our federal business. Again, we did return to growth, and we're pretty optimistic now that, that growth trajectory will continue for public sector.

That's good to hear. And then so as we look forward to 2027, how are you generally thinking about the sustainability of these recent trends? Obviously, you had a record performance here in Q3. It sounds like Q4 should be pretty good. But as far as just maybe if you could talk to us about the -- how you're thinking about next year as far as being able to sustain this level of growth?

Yes. It's a great question. Coming into 2026, in the end of '25, we were pretty confident about 2026. And it turns out 2026 was a good year for our entire industry for all the reasons you already know and everything AI. And certainly, the promise of AI does continue into 2027, but the majority of the endpoint device upgrade cycle is now behind us. As you know, some customers pulled purchases in while others delayed and kind of sweat those assets. So we do expect that AI will continue to drive endpoint demand, but we think that endpoint demand might be down slightly in '27 from '26. But we also think that the demand for on-prem, for Agentic server, for networking, security and software will continue to be pretty solid. So we're looking -- we're optimistic about 2027. We're looking to continue some of these trends, but since it might be a little down from 2026.

Our next question comes from the line of Logan Katzman of Raymond James.

Hi, Tim. Hi, Tom. This is Logan on for Adam. I just wanted to see if you could give us an update on the competitive environment broadly and maybe some pricing trends that you're seeing and how that's translating to gross margins and how you think about that for the rest of this year and maybe into 2027 as well?

Yes. So I'll talk just a minute about the gross margin and the pricing trends. So when you look at us quarter-over-quarter, the margins were down -- or year-over-year, the margins were down a little bit. About half of that margin decline was just due to the software accounting. We just had a lower mix of netted down software. And in fact, there's one partner we have, we're doing particularly well with most of its on gross basis. So 50% of the decline there. And then the other 50% of the decline is really customer mix or product mix, heavy endpoint devices to large customers tend to be a little bit lower in margin. When we think about the endpoint devices, our notebooks and laptops revenue was up over 30%, but our unit count was down about 5%. So that kind of -- you can kind of infer from that what's going on with the pricing environment.

And then you asked about our competitors. We are the first ones to announce with our head-to-head public competitors. But generally speaking, we believe it's a very strong IT environment driven by all things AI for our competitive landscape. And we think business is strong across the board. So from our suppliers to our head-to-head competitors, I clearly think Q3 will be a quarter of strong growth.

Got it. That's super helpful. In the last couple of years, we've seen some vendors make some pretty significant changes to their partner programs, Microsoft, VMware and Broadcom, some of them. Are you guys hearing anything of that level of significance this year? I was just curious what you're hearing in the channel.

So some of our suppliers, especially our subscription suppliers, they do change programs often, and they keep us on our toes for sure. But they are great partners, and we don't see any major changes. We're thrilled to continue on with Broadcom and VMware and our Microsoft business is very strong.

Understood. I appreciate that. Last one for me. It sounds like 4Q, you're expecting it to tick down a little bit. Just broadly speaking, how are you thinking or what are you hearing in terms of budget flush for 4Q this year? Just curious your thoughts around that.

So we have -- as I mentioned, we have a strong backlog going into the quarter. We've got a strong funnel for the quarter, but we're not hearing any specific budget flush. In fact, as you know, there's been some budget crowding as our customers try to determine where to place their IT dollars, but I have not heard anything yet or signaled anything that we're going to see a budget flush, which is a little uncharacteristic of Q4.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back to Tim McGrath for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, Marvin. I'd like to thank all of our customers, vendor partners and shareholders for their continued support. And once again, our coworkers for their efforts and extraordinary dedication. I'd also like to thank those of you who are listening to our call this afternoon. Your time and interest in Connection are appreciated. Have a great evening.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.