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Insight CEO talks of M&A options
As the firm shared full-year numbers, it also revealed its willingness to grow the business through acquisition
Channel player Insight Enterprises has indicated it has the funds and is prepared to enter the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market this year to support its growth ambitions.
The firm revealed it has access to a sizeable amount of finance to fund the right deals, and speaking to analysts to provide detail of its full-year results, Joyce Mullen, president, CEO and director of Insight, made it clear it was in a position to be acquisitive.
“M&A is an important part of our strategy,” she said. “As we enter 2023, we have nearly $1.5bn in financing capacity to fuel this strategy. We will be deliberate in our acquisitions to support our solutions business in key growth areas such as cloud, data, AI [artificial intelligence] and cyber.”
In terms of the full-year numbers for 2022, the firm finished the year strongly, with net sales, gross profit and margin all up. Mullen described the results as “stellar”, given the volatile macro-environment.
“We are especially encouraged by our results because we achieved that stellar performance in a decelerating macro-environment in the second half of 2022,” she said.
Net sales climbed by 11% to $10.4bn, although performance in EMEA was flat, coming in at $1.7bn. Gross profit was up by 13% to $1.6bn and gross margin improved by 15.7%. Earnings from operations of $413.7m increased by 25%, compared with $332.1m in 2021.
In the fourth quarter, net sales decreased by 2% to $2.5bn, with EMEA decreasing by 12%, year on year, to $375.2m.
“Our clients choose us because we help them improve and transform their businesses and achieve the outcomes they need. This is evident from our record-setting results this year. In fact, we outpaced the global IT market across all categories: software (including cloud), services and hardware,” said Mullen.
“We are still in the early stages of executing against our long-term strategy, but the progress we made in 2022 propels us forward, in pursuit of becoming the leading solutions integrator,” she added.
Mullen said that although the economic conditions for this year were going to be challenging, the fundamentals of the business meant it was in a solid position.
“As we head into 2023, we expect continued economic uncertainty. And now more than ever, it is critical that we support our clients as we navigate these uncertain times together. We are uniquely positioned – with our combination of deep expertise in hardware and software, and our portfolio of digital transformation services focused on cloud, data, AI and cyber – to deliver cost-effective technology solutions and business outcomes for our clients,” she said.
Mullen added that cloud, data, AI and security were all growth areas that would take a larger share of IT spending.
