Earnings call transcript: ePlus Q4 2025 sees EPS miss, stock dips 3.3%

ePlus Inc. reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, revealing a mixed performance. The company posted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.11, missing analysts’ expectations of $1.23. Revenue for the quarter came in at $498.1 million, below the forecast of $523.83 million. Following the earnings release, ePlus shares fell 3.3% in after-hours trading, closing at $63.52. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains a "GREAT" financial health score of 3.04 out of 4, suggesting strong underlying fundamentals despite the earnings miss.

Key Takeaways

• ePlus missed EPS expectations by $0.12.
• Quarterly revenue declined 10.2% year-over-year.
• Stock price dropped 3.3% in after-hours trading.
• Company focuses on AI, cloud, security, and networking for growth.
• Fiscal 2026 guidance suggests low single-digit sales growth.

Company Performance

ePlus reported a decline in net sales for Q4 2025, with a 10.2% year-over-year decrease to $498.1 million. The full-year consolidated net sales also fell to $2.07 billion from $2.23 billion in the previous year. Despite the revenue drop, the company improved its gross profit margin to 29.3%, up from 23.5% the prior year, indicating stronger profitability on its sales.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $498.1 million, down 10.2% year-over-year.
• EPS: $1.11, missing the forecast of $1.23.
• Net earnings: $25.2 million, up 14.6% year-over-year.
• Gross profit: $145.8 million, an increase of 11.8%.
• Consolidated adjusted EBITDA: $43.8 million, up 19.1%.

Earnings vs. Forecast

ePlus reported an EPS of $1.11, falling short of the anticipated $1.23. The revenue of $498.1 million also missed the forecast of $523.83 million. This marks a significant miss in expectations, which could be attributed to the challenges in the networking segment and a broader market shift towards subscription-based models.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, ePlus shares declined by 3.3% in after-hours trading, settling at $63.52. This movement reflects investor disappointment over the earnings miss and revenue shortfall. The stock’s performance remains within its 52-week range, with a low of $53.83 and a high of $106.98. Year-to-date, the stock has declined 11.49%, though InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is currently undervalued based on its Fair Value model. Analysts maintain a consensus buy rating with a price target indicating potential upside.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, ePlus provided guidance for fiscal 2026, forecasting low single-digit growth in net sales and mid-single-digit growth in gross profit and adjusted EBITDA. The company remains cautiously optimistic, focusing on strategic investments in AI, cloud, security, and networking to drive future growth. InvestingPro notes that two analysts have recently revised their earnings expectations downward for the upcoming period, suggesting potential headwinds. For deeper insights into ePlus’s growth prospects and comprehensive analysis, investors can access the detailed Pro Research Report, available exclusively to subscribers.

Executive Commentary

CEO Mark Marron emphasized the company’s strategic pivot towards high-growth technology areas. "Our strategic pivot towards services, subscriptions and high growth technology areas is gaining traction," Marron stated. He also highlighted the company’s commitment to expanding its capabilities through strategic investments.

Risks and Challenges

• Continued softness in the networking segment could impact revenue growth.
• Shifts towards subscription-based models may require adjustments in business strategy.
• Macroeconomic pressures could affect customer spending in key markets.
• Competition in AI and cloud services remains intense, posing a challenge to market share.
• Potential supply chain disruptions could impact operational efficiency.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the demand environment, particularly in data center, cloud, and security spaces, where ePlus noted a pickup. Questions also focused on AI adoption, with the company expecting enterprise adoption to accelerate in late 2025 or early 2026.

Full transcript - ePlus inc (PLUS) Q4 2025:

Conference Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the ePlus Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty five Earnings Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. And I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Mr. Clay Parkhurst, Senior Vice President. Sir, you may begin.

Clay Parkhurst, Senior Vice President, ePlus: Thank you for joining us today. On the call is Mark Marron, CEO and President Elaine Marion, CFO and Erica Stoker, General Counsel. I want to take a moment to remind you that the statements we make this afternoon that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward looking statements and are based on management’s current plans, estimates and projections. Actual and anticipated future results may vary materially due to certain risks and uncertainties detailed in our earnings release we issued this afternoon and our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 10 ks, quarterly reports on Form 10 Q and in other documents we may file with the SEC. Any forward looking statement speaks only as of the date of which the statement is made, and the company undertakes no responsibility to update any of these forward looking statements in light of new information, future events or otherwise.

In addition, we will be using certain non GAAP measures during the call and we’ve included a GAAP financial reconciliation or earnings release, which is posted on the Investor Information section of our website at www.eplus.com. I’d now like to turn the call over to Mark. Mark?

Mark Marron, CEO and President, ePlus: Thank you, Clay. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and fiscal year twenty twenty five earnings call. Our financial results continue to reflect the ongoing industry wide shift towards ratable and subscription based revenue models, which impacts how we recognize product revenue. In fiscal year twenty twenty five, we delivered higher gross profitability and margin expansion on lower net sales and gross billings. In our fourth quarter, operating metrics were strong with double digit increases in gross profit, operating income, adjusted EBITDA and diluted earnings per share.

We also saw continued improvement in our gross margin, which increased two seventy basis points since fiscal year twenty twenty four. During the quarter, we believe sales were slightly impacted by business uncertainty surrounding the tariffs and government spending. With our strong focus on services led solutions, continuing to build out our security and AI capabilities that are in high demand by our customers and holding the line on expenses, we believe we are well positioned for future growth. Q4 net sales declined 10.2% year over year, driven primarily by a reduction in product sales due in part to economic uncertainty as well as a tough compare to the prior year when Q4 last year benefited from supply chain easing of networking product orders. Despite an increased gross to net adjustment caused by the industry wide shift towards ratable and subscription based revenue models, we saw strength in several areas.

Gross profit rose by nearly 12% and gross margin expanded five eighty basis points year over year to 29.3% in the fourth quarter due to a more profitable business mix between product and services and a higher proportion of netted down revenue. Gross profit increased and margin expanded in the full year for the same reasons. Our services revenue continued its rapid growth, increasing 33% in the quarter and 37% for the year. This is a key component of our trusted advisor status to our customers, which deepens the relationship and results in long term customer loyalty. Our managed services continue to grow nicely, up 16.6% for the quarter and 24.6% in the year, which provides predictable long term revenue and profitability.

Let me take a moment to discuss our long term strategy, which is centered on delivering solutions across four key growth focus areas: AI, cloud, security and networking, of which we expect to drive related consultative, professional and managed services growth. We are making strategic investments in the most promising opportunities, both organic and inorganic, to expand our capabilities and meet evolving customer needs. AI adoption continues to be a significant potential business driver, and we are particularly well positioned to capitalize on its transformative growth across our expanding suite of products. Throughout the past year, we have discussed the positive reception from our customers of our AI Ignite workshops and Envisioning sessions. These are designed to share the latest AI trends and insights and demonstrate how this revolutionary technology can empower our customers’ businesses.

We combine these AI Ignite offerings with our AI Experience Center and our generative AI Accelerator solution that helps customers navigate and rapidly test use cases in a secure private instance. We also believe ePlus is the only NVIDIA partner in North America that has achieved both the NVIDIA DGX Ready SuperPOD specialization and DGX Ready managed service providers specializations. This achievement demonstrates our engineering expertise for enterprise grade AI infrastructure deployments and capabilities to provide end to end life cycle services from initial design through implementation and management of AI workloads. And finally, as the capabilities and benefits of AI become more clear, we have stepped up our AI investments to meet our internal business needs as well. We have seen how AI can support our customers better, automate some internal processes and provide real time information for our sales teams to leverage and provide value to their customers.

Security remains a standout for ePlus. On a trailing twelve month basis, it now represents 22% of gross billings, underscoring our success in aligning with enterprise priorities around digital risk mitigation and will only be more relevant as AI becomes more prevalent in the market. In conclusion, we have a very strong balance sheet, which gives us the opportunity to make strategic investments both organically and through acquisitions. We exited the year with a record cash position of approximately $389,000,000 This financial flexibility provides a solid foundation as we navigate macroeconomic uncertainty and supports our growth initiatives. As always, we remain committed to disciplined capital allocation and driving long term shareholder value.

I will now turn the call over to Elaine to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Elaine Marion, CFO, ePlus: Thank you, Mark, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I will provide additional details about our financial performance in the fourth quarter of fiscal twenty twenty five and review our full fiscal year results, which ended 03/31/2025. Consolidated net sales in the fiscal twenty twenty five fourth quarter were $498,100,000 down from $554,500,000 in the fourth quarter of fiscal twenty twenty four. And our consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $43,800,000 up from $36,800,000 in the prior year, which exceeded our expectations as we captured increased gross profit from the sales of product. Technology business net sales declined 10.4% year over year to $487,200,000 reflecting lower product sales which continue to be impacted by the industry wide shift towards ratable and subscription based services resulting in more netted down revenues.

Product sales also faced a tough year over year comparison as the fourth quarter of fiscal twenty twenty four benefited from elevated deliveries of networking products. Partially offsetting the decline in product sales was strong demand for our services offerings, which we have strategically emphasized and grown. EPlus’ services led approach is evident in our results as our service revenues increased 33% year over year. Professional services revenues were up 48% as the segment continues to benefit from the Bailiwick acquisition, while revenues for our managed services rose 17% led by sustained growth in enhanced maintenance support or EMS and cloud managed services. Managed services bookings remain strong underscoring our confidence in the segment.

Technology business gross billings declined 5.4% in the quarter due to softer demand from enterprise customers as well as a challenging comparable in the prior period. Telecom, Media and Entertainment and SLED were our two largest customer end markets accounting for 2317% of technology business net sales on a trailing twelve month basis. Technology, Healthcare and Financial Services accounted for 15%, fourteen % and nine % respectively with the remaining 22% from other end markets. In our financing segment, net sales rose 4.9% to $10,900,000 primarily due to higher transaction gains and portfolio earnings. Fourth quarter twenty twenty five consolidated gross profit increased 11.8% to $145,800,000 representing a gross margin of 29.3 comparing favorably to gross profit of $130,300,000 and gross margin of 23.5% in the prior year fourth quarter.

The increase in gross margin was led by our technology business, which saw product margin expand from 19.3 to 26.6%, reflecting more profitable mix and a larger proportion of sales of product that were recognized on a net basis as well as additional gross profit from our services business. In our services business, professional services gross margin was 35.9 versus 50% in the comparable prior year period. Bailiwick, which we acquired in August of twenty twenty four, has lower professional services gross margin due to a higher concentration of third party cost in the business model contributing to the year over year decline. Managed services gross margin of 29.1% declined modestly from the 30.5% reported in the prior year due to an expanded mix of services provided. Fourth quarter twenty twenty five operating expenses of $111,000,000 increased 9.6% from the prior year quarter as we recognize costs related to increased headcount from the Bailiwick acquisition.

Our headcount at the end of the quarter increased to 2,199 from 1,900 a year ago, reflecting an increase of two ninety nine employees, of which two seventy two were customer facing. Sequentially, our headcount decreased from 2,291 at 12/31/2024. Benefiting from our strong margin performance, consolidated operating income and earnings before taxes rose 19.614.9% respectively. Other income totaled 1,100,000 driven by interest income of $2,000,000 partially offset by foreign exchange losses. Our effective tax rate in the fourth quarter was 29.7%, slightly higher than the 29.5% reported in the prior year quarter.

Consolidated net earnings were up 14.6% to $25,200,000 or $0.95 per diluted share versus net income of $22,000,000 or $0.82 per diluted share a year ago. Non GAAP diluted earnings per share was 1.11 representing an increase of 19.4% year over year and weighted average diluted share count decreased slightly from the prior year’s fourth quarter. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 19.1% to $43,800,000 with 97% of the increase from our technology business. Moving on to our results for the full year of fiscal twenty twenty five. Consolidated net sales for the fiscal year were $2,070,000,000 down from $2,230,000,000 in fiscal twenty twenty four.

The decline was driven by a 13.7% decline in product sales, partially offset by 37.1% growth in services and strong performance in the financing segment. Technology business gross billings of $3,300,000,000 were down slightly year over year. Fiscal twenty twenty five consolidated gross profit rose 3.3% to $569,100,000 led by growth in both the technology business and financing segment. Gross margin expanded two seventy basis points to 27.5% reflecting favorable product mix, a larger proportion of netted down revenues and additional services revenue in the technology business. Operating income was $141,400,000 versus $158,300,000 a year ago.

The decline was primarily a function of lower product sales and increased operating expenses, which rose 9% year over year due to the Bailiwick and Peak acquisitions as well as continued investments in technology and customer facing headcount. Our effective tax rate for the full year was 27.5% below the 28.1% reported in the prior year due to lower state taxes. Consolidated net earnings were $108,000,000 or $4.05 per diluted share in fiscal twenty twenty five. This compares to $115,800,000 or $4.33 per diluted share in the year ago period. Non GAAP diluted EPS amounted to $4.67 per share, down from $4.92 Fiscal 20 20 5 adjusted EBITDA decreased 6.4% to $178,200,000 Our balance sheet remains solid with assets over $1,800,000,000 highlighted by our cash position of $389,400,000 at the end of fiscal twenty twenty five, well above $253,000,000 at the end of fiscal twenty twenty four, reflecting strong operating cash flows of 302,100,000 compared to $248,400,000 in fiscal twenty twenty four.

As of 03/31/2025, our inventories were $120,400,000 While inventories were higher sequentially, they were below $139,700,000 reported at the end of fiscal twenty twenty four. Stockholders’ equity was $977,600,000 compared to $901,800,000 at the end of fiscal twenty twenty four. During fiscal twenty twenty five, we repurchased more than 557,000 shares under our repurchase program, leaving 26,500,000.0 shares outstanding at 03/31/2025. Our cash conversion cycle was twenty nine days compared to forty six days a year ago as inventory days outstanding declined from twenty three days in fiscal twenty twenty four to fourteen days at the March 2025, highlighting a more normalized supply chain. Our strategy of focusing on high growth areas and anticipating our customers’ needs continues to position us well for the future.

We remain focused on strategic capital allocation with an eye toward organic and inorganic investments in an effort to add geographies and increase our service offerings. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark. Mark?

Mark Marron, CEO and President, ePlus: Thank you, Elaine. Our core business is solid and our team is executing well. This is reflected in our financial results with solid gross profit growth and margin expansion. We continue to review our portfolio of products and services identifying new sources of growth in our core markets. Our strong balance sheet provides us the opportunity to invest organically and make acquisitions when the right opportunity comes along.

As always, we will continue to take a balanced and disciplined approach to building our company and evolving our business model for the future. Moving next to a comment about guidance. We are cautiously optimistic as we head into fiscal year twenty twenty six, but want to be prudent when considering the entire year and the trends we are experiencing with regard to ratable and netted down revenue. Today, we are initiating fiscal year twenty twenty six guidance for net sales growth of low single digits, while we expect gross profit and adjusted EBITDA to grow at mid single digits over the prior fiscal year. This guidance assumes some level of impact from economic uncertainty, but does not factor in recessionary conditions or other unexpected developments.

To sum up, our strategic pivot towards services, subscriptions and high growth technology areas is gaining traction. We believe these foundations combined with our financial strength and customer first approach position us well to support our customers’ evolving and growing business needs. We believe we are well positioned for the opportunities ahead and remain committed to delivering value for all of our shareholders. Operator, please open the call for questions. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one a second time. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question.

Again, it is star one if you would like to join the queue. And our first question comes from the line of Greg Burns with Sidoti and Company. Your line is open.

Greg Burns, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: Good morning or afternoon. Where do you where is the demand environment currently? Like did you see any improvement throughout the quarter? Are you still seeing soft demand on the product side of the business? Could you just maybe give us an update on what you saw during the quarter, how it evolved and kind of where we are currently?

Thank you.

Mark Marron, CEO and President, ePlus: Yes. Hey, Greg. Good morning and good afternoon, okay? Couple of different things we’re seeing in the market. We are seeing pickup in the data center cloud and security space.

That’s not surprising when you think about some of the AI initiatives that are going on. Some of the things that folks have to think through is security in terms of governance and risk, data readiness and things along those lines. They also make a lot of times the simple choices to move to the cloud. So we saw some nice pickup there. We did not see a pickup in networking year over year.

So networking was down pretty big still, for us. And then if I look at net sales just overall generically, what we kind of saw was as we looked over the last couple of years a few things. For this quarter, it was a big gross to net that affected our net sales. We had a tough compare. No excuses.

We were up 12% last year. So that was another. And we had a few customers that are digesting some of the supply chain, specifically in the networking space. We think they’ll start to come back into play in the coming quarters. So overall, data center cloud, security nice pickup, networking still, needs to improve.

Greg Burns, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: Okay. And then when you look at the AI opportunity, a lot most of the investment’s been going into, like, the hyperscaler data center environment. Where do where does, like, enterprise AI adoption, enterprise investment stand? And do you think that I guess maybe in your guidance for next year, does that contemplate any kind of, acceleration in maybe AI demand?

Mark Marron, CEO and President, ePlus: Yes. Not yet, Greg. Maybe towards the end of the year, beginning of next year. So you’re right. Most of the spend with NVIDIA and the bigger players is going towards the hyperscalers.

What we’re seeing is customers are taking advantage of some of our workshops, envisioning sessions. We’ve got a hosted proof of concept, basically a private GenAI chatbot that we that gives customers the ability to kind of test and play around with their data to come up with use cases. So we think a lot of that will be, you know, on the services side, that’ll drive for us, which is a good thing. It’s it’s our most profitable business. And then we think the infrastructure stuff will start to pick up.

We’ve made investments with the training of our sales teams. We also just got the NVIDIA SuperPOD specialization, which is their high end computing. So over time, we think that infrastructure spend will pick up, but it will take a little bit of time. Okay. Thank you.

No problem. See you soon. And

Conference Operator: there are no further questions. So I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Mark Marron for closing remarks.

Mark Marron, CEO and President, ePlus: Okay. Thanks, Abby. Thank you, everyone, for attending our Q4 and full year earnings call. I hope everybody gets to enjoy the long Memorial Day holiday, and we look forward to speaking with you again on our next earnings call. Take care and be safe.

Conference Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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