CDW Corporation
Q2 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 3 Aug 2015

[Operator:]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CDW Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. I will now turn the call over to your host, Tom Richards, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Please, go ahead.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you. Joining me in the room today are Ann Ziegler, our Chief Financial Officer; Chris Leahy, our General Counsel; and Sari Macrie, our VP, Investor Relations. We have a lot to cover this morning, I'll begin with the high level overview of our second quarter performance and outlook as well as the announcement we made today that we acquired the remaining 65% of UK-based IT solutions provider, Kelway, which we initiated last November. Then Ann will take you through a more detailed results review and share more on our capital strategy priorities and medium-term targets. We'll move quickly through our prepared remarks to ensure we have plenty of time for Q&A. But, before we begin, Sari will present the company's Safe Harbor disclosure statement.

[Sari L. Macrie:]

Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. Our second quarter 2015 earnings release was distributed this morning and is available on our website along with supplemental slides that you can use to follow along with us during the call. I'd like to remind you that certain comments made in this presentation are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additional information concerning these risks and uncertainties is contained in the Form 8-K we furnished to the SEC today and in the company's other filings with the SEC. CDW assumes no obligation to update the information presented during this webcast. Our presentation today also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, including non-GAAP earnings per share. All non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with SEC rules. You'll find reconciliation charts in the slides for today's webcast as well as in our press release and the Form 8-K we furnished to the SEC. Please note that all references to growth rates or dollar amount increases in our remarks today are versus the comparable period in 2014. The number of selling days for the second quarter are the same in both 2015 and 2014, so there is no difference in growth rates for average daily sales and reported sales. A replay of this webcast will be posted to our Investor Relations website, investor.cdw.com, by this time tomorrow. I also want to remind you this conference call is the property of CDW and may not be recorded or rebroadcast without specific written permission from the company. So with that, let me turn the call back to Tom.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Thanks, Sari. Second quarter results were strong and I'm pleased to report that we once again reached all-time records for three key financial metrics. Net sales rose 6.7% to $3.3 billion and 7.2% adjusted for currency. Adjusted EBITDA increased 8.4% to $268 million and non-GAAP earnings per share increased 20.1% to $0.81. This quarter's results reflect combined power of our balanced portfolio of channels, our breadth of product offerings, particularly our ability to bring innovative, emerging technologies to our customers and the success of our three-part strategy. Let me walk through how each contributed to performance. First, our balanced portfolio of customer channels. On a segment basis, corporate grew 6.3% with medium/large business up 6.9% and small business up 3.3%. We saw balanced growth in MedLar, with solutions and transactional sales increasing at similar rates. Small business delivered excellent growth in solutions, including continuing growth in net service contract revenue from software-as-a-Service and warranties. While this did mute top line growth, gross profits grew faster within sales. Public increased 8.1%, driven by government up 22.9% with both federal and state and local delivering excellent results. Federal continues to benefit from strategic changes made to better align with new purchasing programs implemented by the government last year. We continue to have success in helping the government implement private cloud solutions, including the Navy's floating pilot (04

[Ann E. Ziegler:]

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone. As Tom indicated, our second quarter financial results reflect the combined power of our balanced portfolio of channels and our breadth of product offerings, particularly our ability to bring innovative, emerging technologies to our customers and the ongoing success of our three-part strategy. They also reflect the progress we are making against our financial strategy to deliver double digit earnings growth, drive strong cash flow and return cash to shareholders. Let me begin with our P&L. If you have access to the slide posted online, it will be helpful to follow along. I am on slide 11. Top line growth was strong this quarter with net sales of $3.31 billion, 6.7% higher than last year on both the reported and average daily sales basis. Average daily sales were $51.8 million. On an average daily sales basis, sequential sales were up 18.4% versus Q1 2015, which is well above normal seasonality. While sales in Canadian dollars are a relatively small portion of our total revenue, less than 5%, the strengthening U.S. dollar reduced consolidated net sales in the quarter by approximately 50 basis points. Gross profit for the quarter increased 7.6% to $534.5 million. Given product growth acceleration from Q1, as expected, gross margin declined on a sequential basis. On a year-over-year basis, gross margin was up 10 basis points. The impact of a higher mix of revenues reported at 100% gross margin, such as our net service contract revenue and higher partner funding was partially offset by lower product margin due to a higher percentage of sales coming from larger order tiers. Reported SG&A, including advertising expense, was $328.6 million, up 6.5% over last year. This increase was primarily driven by increased sales compensation from higher growth in solutions related compensation paid to specialists and technical experts and overall growth in sales and gross profit. We ended the quarter with 7,278 coworkers, up 67 coworkers since the end of 2014 and up 127 coworkers since the end of last year's second quarter. Annualized sales per coworker were $1.82 million, up 4.2% over Q2 2014. Our adjusted SG&A including advertising was $267.6 million, up 6.7% over last year. Advertising expense increased 9.4%, as we continue to invest in the business. As you can see on the next slide, slide 12, adjusted SG&A for the quarter excludes $7.5 million of non-cash equity compensation, $1.4 million of acquisition and integration costs and $0.6 million of historical retention costs and other expenses to make it easier to calculate our adjusted EBITDA which is essentially our gross profit plus adjusted SG&A expenses, we also adjust for depreciation and amortization. Our non-cash equity compensation expenses increased $3.2 million year-over-year primarily due to annual awards granted in Q1 for our long-term incentive plan. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $268 million, up 8.4% year-over-year, which translates to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8.1%, up 10 basis points from last year's strong result. Let's look at the rest of the P&L on slide 13. Interest expense was 22% lower than last year at $37.8 million reflecting reductions driven by repayments and refinancing activities completed in 2014 and Q1 of this year. Our effective tax rate was 37.1% versus 36.9% in Q2 2014. On a GAAP basis, we earned $108.2 million of net income. Our non-GAAP net income which better reflects our operating performance was $139 million in the quarter, up 20% over last year. As you can see on slide 14, non-GAAP net income reflected after-tax add backs in four general buckets; the ongoing amortization of acquisition related intangibles, ongoing non-cash equity compensation, acquisition and integration costs and other non-recurring income or expenses. These adjustments were tax affected at a statutory rate of 39%. With Q2 non-GAAP weighted average diluted shares outstanding of 172.5 million, we delivered $0.81 of non-GAAP net income per share, up 20.1% over the prior year. During the second quarter, we repurchased 2.5 million shares for $91.7 million under our previously announced $500 million repurchase program. 2 million shares were repurchased from our sponsors concurrent with their May offering and 0.5 million shares were repurchased on the open market. Turning to first half results on slide 15; revenue was $6.1 billion, an increase of 5.4% on both the reported and average daily sales basis as average daily sales grew to $47.8 million. On a constant currency basis, net sales were up 6%. Gross profit during the first half of 2015 was $991 million, up 7.5%. Gross profit margin was 16.3%, up 30 basis points from 2014. SG&A including advertising expense increased by $35.4 million or 5.9%. Adjusted EBITDA was $470.8 million (sic) [$478.8 million] (24

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our first question comes from Rich Kugele with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

[Rich J. Kugele:]

Thank you. Good morning and congratulations.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Hey, Rich. Thank you.

[Rich J. Kugele:]

So, you had been talking about a situation with some partners where you were able to collaborate together and get business that you weren't – any of you dealing with before, can you just elaborate on that situation and then I've a follow-up.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. It's an initiative or a program, if you will, to go after what we would call white space, and you – we've – we found a – like I said, I think it was nine partners that said, we think this is a great idea. So you build a program that involves sharing data about the target market opportunity, it involves putting combinations of products together, to solve particular customers' needs, and the objective is to get new incremental CDW and partner customers and I think, we consider it a pretty strong success, we brought on about 3,000 new customers.

[Rich J. Kugele:]

Interesting. Okay. And then obviously, we get a lot of inbound questions on the eRate program, and it seems to be making some progress again. Can you just talk about what you see in the market there and your expectations for your public opportunities over the balance of the year?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. It really, Rich, is directly impactful to K-12, and the data we have suggests that only about 20% of the funding letters have been released at this point, and school districts have remained fairly patient to wait until they get their funding letter to begin the network upgrade progress. I think as you remember from last quarter's call, were named on a significant number of the funding requests, and so it's one of the reasons we remain pretty optimistic about the impact it's going to have. Having said that, it looks like now, if you think about it, school districts really only can implement during what I'll call vacation time or holiday time. So if – a lot of – 80% of them haven't yet received their funding letters. That's why we're believing at this point it's going to be later in the year, maybe some of the implementations will take place over the Thanksgiving holiday or the end of the year holiday. And so, we feel it's going to be a little more backend loaded and then obviously carry into next year.

[Rich J. Kugele:]

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you very much.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Sherri Scribner with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

[Sherri A. Scribner:]

Hi. Thanks. I was hoping you could elaborate a little more on the opportunities you see with Kelway internationally. I know they're U.K.-based, but they do have some business in Asia. And what are the synergies there between being able to sell your solutions internationally? Are there any possibilities, I think you mentioned a couple where you're able to cross-sell across geographies?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. The driver – I think the best way is to go back to the initial kind of thesis. And that was – the primary focus initially was to help us better serve those U.S.-based multinational companies that had international needs. And that prior to the partnership with Kelway, we would have to excuse ourselves sometimes from what I'll call combined international opportunities. Obviously, the reverse is also true. Kelway has customers that have needs obviously internationally but back in the United States. So really the combination is about better serving those existing customers and then looking for opportunities for growth. One of the things that is appealing to us about Kelway, if you've heard, 90% of their business comes from the U.K. and that also is a significant area for a lot of our U.S.-based customers, so there is a strong synergy there, but they've done a nice job of building a platform that enables them to follow their customers and that's how they've opened those facilities I alluded to in other parts of the world. So, what we've experienced through the referral relationship is the growth in each of our businesses and we would expect that to continue. As you heard me allude to we're going to start out operating Kelway as a standalone business unit and continuing to perform on the referral model until we're comfortable that we've built kind of a single platform front for our customers.

[Sherri A. Scribner:]

Okay. That's helpful. And then, I guess with the acquisition and integrating this 100% now, what capability do you have to do new acquisitions? Are you taking a pause now or do you see opportunities? So is there still bandwidth? Thanks.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Well, look, if you think about CDW, we tend to do things in a deliberate way and we don't take lightly the integration and what it takes to do this well, which is why we've been pretty thorough in the acquisition process and some would say very deliberate and we're going to take the same approach on integration. So that I would say right now we've got our hands full and want to stay focused on both the integration of Kelway and our customers because that's important to us.

[Sherri A. Scribner:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Tien-tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

[Tien-tsin Huang:]

Great. Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to ask on Kelway also, just could we see, Thomas, in the short-term impact on revenue and expenses. I'm just curious if it could energize sales or possibly could we see some risk of attrition?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Well, are you talking about attrition attention from customers or coworkers?

[Tien-tsin Huang:]

Yes. I'm thinking about both actually; both on the revenue side as well as on the employee or coworker front given sort of change in control and the event itself?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes, well, let me take the first one about growth, you've heard us allude to the fact that we think the Kelway acquisition is going to add between 500 basis points and 600 basis points to CDW's top line growth between now and the end of the year, and one other things I'm really thrilled with is we built a I think a strong retention program for the people at Kelway and happy to report that they are signed up and ready to go and excited about the prospects for this joint company. So we feel really good about both rolling the business, retaining and growing customers and retaining the coworkers on both sides.

[Tien-tsin Huang:]

All right, terrific. And then will you we rebrand, sorry if I missed that Kelway itself and then separate from that, I wanted to ask on the healthcare in Canada up and watching what's going on there in terms of just underlying trends, any call outs in what you see in healthcare in Canada? Thanks.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Well, right now let me answer the first one. It will be Kelway as CDW company.

[Tien-tsin Huang:]

Okay.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

We feel that that takes advantage of Kelway's brand recognition and acknowledges the new partnership. As we move through the integration process, we will think about if there is enhanced advantage for changing that, but right now that's kind of the go-to-market plan and we're both really excited about that. And the second part of that question was any other call outs about healthcare and in Canada.

[Tien-tsin Huang:]

Canada?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

So Canada was if you heard they did a nice job in constant currency, are up high mid-single digits, continue to take share in the market, its currency issue and that kind of about calls it out, you guys know as well as I do the challenges in the Canadian economy, and they've continued to kind of upgrade successfully within that environment, and healthcare continues to be, by paperwork, lumpy from the perspective of, we've got a lot going on in healthcare with mergers and the impact on a merger can go one way of two ways when you're involved in one of those. And so, I think the fact that we got some growth that it helps through this quarter is a nice sign, and we'll take it.

[Tien-tsin Huang:]

All right. That's great. Congrats on the deal.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Oh, thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Amit Daryanani with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Amit Daryanani:]

Good. Thanks. Good morning, guys. I guess I'll start my first question with Kelway as well. Could you just talk about what even the current EBITDA margin structure for Kelway is? And to get them to be in line is the target of CDW. What sort of initiatives would you have to take from integration perspective and what sort of charges I mean entail eventually when you decide to do it?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Well, let me take the first part; one of the things that I alluded to is their profit picture is roughly similar to CDW today, and a lot of that is to their credit that since we started the process, they have been aggressively looking at how do they improve their profitability of the business, they have been exchanging ideas with CDW, and so we're thrilled with performance they've made up to this point from a profitability perspective and expect it to continue.

[Amit Daryanani:]

Okay. Got you.

[Ann E. Ziegler:]

I think you also asked about integration charges. Keep in mind that this is not a transaction that's about taking cost out of the combined businesses. So, there will not be a significant, won't be any severance charges things along those lines. There is obviously no facilities to shut down. So you shouldn't be looking for charges along those lines. As we develop an integration program, there will likely be some expenses related to systems integration and we'll talk about those as we have better clarity around those.

[Amit Daryanani:]

Got it. And I guess really just to follow-up, Ann, how do you think about hedging as you go forward, especially with Kelway getting integrated into business and you're having more international exposure? And on the buyback front, is the talk process to continue to participate along with the sponsors as they do secondaries on a go-forward basis? Thank you.

[Ann E. Ziegler:]

Sure. On the hedging, I'm not a big fan of hedging merely translation risk, which is the majority of the exposure that we have today, both from Kelway today and – I'm sorry Kelway today and Canada. Now, to some extent, as you've heard, Kelway has about 90% of their revenues based in the U.K. There is that 10% that is non-U.K. and they've done a very good job where appropriate where they actually have a translation risk hedging that risk. So we anticipate that we would continue to do that going forward, but that we would not be hedging merely translation risk. In terms of the buyback; yes, I mean we obviously have a $500 million program out there. We have a fair amount of way to go on that program. And we certainly continue to expect to participate with our sponsors in secondaries. And as I indicated, the stock that was issued in the Kelway transaction will be bought back.

[Amit Daryanani:]

Perfect. Thank you, and congrats on the quarter.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Oh, thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Brian Alexander with Raymond James. Your line is open.

[Adam Tindle:]

All right. Thanks, guys. This is Adam in for Brian. I just wanted to ask a little bit more about the competitive environment, given we've seen some major competitors growing double digits, but seeing triple digit decreases in gross margin. Talk a little bit more about the competitive environment and would you consider looking at gross profit dollar growth going forward as a possible metric, given the focus on profitable growth?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Okay. A couple of different things; one, Adam, as we've said that is why we focus on EBITDA is because, it gives us the ability to focus on that which we can't control and it gives us the flexibility to kind of what I'll call manage the profitability of the business. From a gross profit perspective, it's been fairly constant here for a couple of quarters. We've been in the 16% range, which is where we'd like to be. But to be honest with you, we're not going to focus on GP growth per se. We're going to continue to focus on probably growing the top line and that profitability is defined by the mid-7% EBITDA margin that we've set as the target for the business. I can't really comment – I don't notice the competitive market being any more intense or any less intense than it was three months ago. And I think one of the things that I'm proud of is CDW has continued to grow the business profitably on top of some pretty incredible costs as you guys have pointed out to us. And so I think that's a great testament to the disciplined approach with which we go about serving customers.

[Adam Tindle:]

Okay, thanks. And a question specific to the hiring; I know you mentioned that IT markets kind of at the low end of that 3% to 4% range. We've seen all three primary distributors in North America failing to grow and missing their own forecast. Consolidating, I think 1,000 Kelway employees that you mentioned, but going to reignite the hiring and adding 100 head count to 150 head count in 2015. Can you help us reconcile those kind of two differences?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes, I don't know that there is a reconciliation. To think about it, Adam, you just kind of think about them discretely. If you think about past earnings calls, one of the things that I was paying attention to was kind of the capacity we had already added into the CDW model with the kind of aggressive hiring we had done last year and the year before and felt like we have the capacity to handle the growth for a number of quarters. If you think about it, the IT growth rate of 3% to 4% has been pretty constant from our perspective. We said it was at the low range, but we're talking about 3% to 4%. And so, we feel like now we're at a point from a capacity standpoint that adding those incremental customer-facing coworkers in the U.S. is the right time for us to make that investment now, so that we can take advantage of market growth opportunities, when they're productive and ready to grow – go, excuse me, and grow, now that I say it that way. So I don't know that there is any disconnection there. I think it's really us monitoring as we always do the productive capacity of the CDW engine.

[Adam Tindle:]

All right. Appreciate the color, and congrats on the quarter.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Matt Sheerin with Stifel. Your line is open.

[Matt J. Sheerin:]

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Just a question on your hardware sales growth; Tom, you've talked about 8% growth in hardware, double digit server. Did you see some continued positive impact from the Microsoft Server upgrade cycle, and do you see that trailing off at the end of the year? And also relative to Windows 10, do you see any catalyst in terms of refresh in the corporate environment at the end of this year or into next year?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Okay, Matt. So first, I think the word that I've been using to describe the impact of Win Server 2003 is kind of a mild breeze at our back so to speak. I would say that a lot of the customers, and I think I alluded to this last quarter, had really started preparing for the Win Server 2003 expiration late last year, it has carried into this year, but I also think there's what I would call a natural refresh going on, you have great new technologies like converged infrastructure, which is driving some of the behavior in the marketplace. So, I would say that I don't know we're in any particular inning. And since it hasn't been such a big driver, I don't know that we are thinking about some drop-off as far as its impact on the marketplace. And as far as Win 10, I think, as you know, a lot of the early benefits I think are going to be to the retailer/consumer market, which is not part of where we're focused. I think customers, typically in the enterprise space, take a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude like play with it, wait till the first patch comes out, let's see how it works. I think there is a fair amount of excitement about the product. I think there has been lots of stuff written about the fact that it may not drive hardware sales, but what I would say for us, if you look at our PC sales all the way back to 2013, there has been this constant drumbeat of growth. Even before the Windows XP accelerant, if you will, and I think that's because the businesses stay on a normal cycle of investing in PCs for the purpose of productivity. Then you get the incremental benefit of new form factors like I alluded to, so we're anticipating that it will continue to be steady growth with or without Windows 10.

[Matt J. Sheerin:]

Got it. That's helpful. And on the government business, you've had a several quarters of pretty strong growth here both on the federal and the state and local. You talked about projects on both sides that sound encouraging. As you look out at the next few quarters, obviously, comps are going to get tougher, but do you continue to see positive catalyst there?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. We continue to expect it to be a growth part of the business going forward. As you point out, they are going to be facing some tougher comps, but as I just said to the last question that's kind of more or the same for us it seems like, but we are looking at them to continue to grow maybe not at the exponential rate but at a good growth rate for the remainder of the year and into 2016.

[Matt J. Sheerin:]

Okay. Thanks a lot.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Osten Bernardez with Cross Research. Your line is open.

[Osten H. Bernardez:]

Hey. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Tom, I just had a quick question with respect to your outlook for the overall market being at the lower end of your original rate – original outlook of 3% to 4%. Could you sort of highlight for us what you are seeing that leads you to believe that you'll be at that low end rate, is it primarily sort of the PC declines that we've seen or are you seeing evidence of elongated decision-making by some of your customers or is it a macro call in terms of what you are seeing from an overall demand perspective?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. I think it feels more of a macro call. If you think about one of the earlier questions that cited some of the forecasts made by some of the distribution companies, I think you've seen other technology companies talk about a more muted growth picture maybe in the back half of the year. I don't know that I'm smart enough to tell you what's driving the macroeconomic perspective. I do hear people talk about well, we'll see what happens with interest rates and we'll see what happens with currency, and so I think all of those kind of filter into this macro perspective, but we aren't seeing it from a particular product perspective, more so a macro.

[Osten H. Bernardez:]

Got it. And then secondly, could you highlight, I don't know if I missed this earlier, but how did Kelway grow, what was Kelway's growth in the first half of the year, year-on-year?

[Ann E. Ziegler:]

We didn't provide that detail.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes, we didn't share that.

[Osten H. Bernardez:]

And you won't I guess?

[Ann E. Ziegler:]

No.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

No.

[Osten H. Bernardez:]

All right. Thanks.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Katy Huberty with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Good morning, Katy.

[Kathryn L. Huberty:]

Yes, thanks. Good morning. You mentioned several times the ability for sales people to bring newer innovative technologies to market and I imagine that's helping you offset some of the macro pressures you just talked about. You said security a number of times, but I imagine it's broader than that, can you just talk about where, what buckets or it seems you've been able to sign on new partners and where your sales people are having the most traction in new technologies?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes, well, you're right; security remains one of the big drivers of new partners. Converged infrastructure is another area that has been a source of new partners. Our whole cloud strategy is another area that brings in new partners. And then even inside of the storage business, there are new storage partners. So I would say it happens in a broad perspective, Katy, but those are the ones where we've had I think the most significant additions in the last year or so.

[Kathryn L. Huberty:]

And then the small business segment growth decelerated to 3%, but you talked about strong solutions growth there?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes.

[Kathryn L. Huberty:]

What was it that decelerated in small business and what do you think is driving that?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. It's generally, well, desktops as I alluded to declined across the whole business, but declined in a meaningful way in small business. So, I think a lot of that was driven by just the expiration of the Windows XP expiration, if you will, and they've continued to be a cloud growth engine for us, which is why the gross profits have been growing at an even faster rate than top line.

[Kathryn L. Huberty:]

Great. Thank you. Congrats on the quarter.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Thanks, Katy. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Bill Shope with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[Matthew N. Cabral:]

Thank you. This is Matt Cabral for Bill. So, can you help us understand the biggest drivers of the step-down in gross margin that you saw from the first quarter to the second quarter? And then, just related to that; so you mentioned that a portion of your business is coming in at that 100% gross margin level. How big is that within the mix and then how should we expect that to grow going forward?

[Ann E. Ziegler:]

Yes. As you recall from the first quarter call, we had a very strong gross margin in the first quarter, and as we explained on that call, a big piece of it was driven by mix we saw with product growth muted in the first quarter; our 100% gross margin items, particularly our net service contract revenues, continued their double digit growth, and therefore, it was really a mix impact on the gross margin that you saw in Q1 and we indicated that we thought as product growth reaccelerate as we move through the year, that mix impact would fade and that is indeed what we've seen. We also had in the first quarter we mentioned we had a benefit from a – from not repeating an inventory write-off that occurred in the first quarter of the prior year. So you have that pickup as well.

[Matthew N. Cabral:]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Jayson Noland with Robert Baird. Your line is open.

[Jayson A. Noland:]

Okay, great. Thank you and congrats on the quarter. I wanted to follow up first, Tom, on the cross-border synergy comment. Is that common and is it significant to CDW. I could imagine a lot of companies have offices all over the world and there could be a situation where you couldn't win or couldn't bid on deals. Is that something you see a lot?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Yes. That was actually the driver, Jayson, that got us started down the path with Kelway in the first place, was it – and then we went out and studied it externally. So it was a combination of feedback from our sellers and the selling experience. And then some external analysis we did that said the number of situations was increasing and therefore, if you didn't have the ability to help a customer with delivering IT internationally, so to speak, you were going to reduce the likelihood of your ability to protect and grow your core business. So that was kind of the genesis of the thesis. And we have just seen that increase as time goes on.

[Jayson A. Noland:]

Okay. And then a follow-up; I wanted to ask about Public Cloud as a competitor. It comes up somewhat with investors asking about your small business segment specifically, but maybe some updated thoughts there on what you see?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

No. It's been – as I said, Jayson, our cloud business across CDW has been growing and we're thrilled with the different ways that we've been able to help customers, as they think through which workload, how to build out a hybrid architecture so to speak. And as I've said, I think earlier, the small business organization has been one of the leading organizations in selling cloud-based solutions, be it SaaS-based, be it infrastructure-as-a-Service-based or agency-based. So I think the breadth of our cloud portfolio truthfully is one of the key reasons we've continued to see the levels of growth because just like the value proposition of CDW, it enables us to bring multiple choices to a group of customers that typically wouldn't be able to avail themselves of that kind of choice and that tends to be rewarded to CDW.

[Jayson A. Noland:]

Thanks, Tom.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Okay.

[Operator:]

Our final question comes from Anil Doradla with William Blair. You line is open.

[Anil K. Doradla:]

Hey, guys, good results, congrats and thanks for squeezing me in. Tom, kind of big picture questions; so when I look at the security business, obviously you're very positive on that. When I extrapolate this business call it two years, three years, four years from now, is this going to be increasingly more services-oriented or is it going to be primarily a product-oriented business?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Well, I have enough time – tough time figuring out next quarter, let alone two years out to three years out. This is a gut response. I think what we're seeing as I mentioned when we talked about security Threat Check Version 2, which includes some consultation aspect on process analysis. I would expect there will be an increasing service aspect to this as we go forward because as I think you guys that live in this world know it's just not about the technology, it's about the, what I'll call, security policies inside of a business, the security practices. And they all tend to contribute. So, if you force me to answer, I would say yes, I think there'll probably be a bigger services practice as part of security going forward.

[Anil K. Doradla:]

Great. And as a follow-up, Tom, I mean taking that as a basis and looking at all the other trends, clearly, I mean there is greater need for customization, greater need for software development. So again, longer-term, could you guys be more involved in the IT services, I mean you are involved, but what I'm talking about is get into the businesses of the TCS', the Infosys and get into some of these more IT services, product development or IT services businesses?

[Thomas E. Richards:]

We have been as you pointed out investing and growing our services practice for about three years or four years now in a meaningful way, and the growth isn't just in coworkers, it has been in capabilities. I don't know that I could sit here and forecast now kind of which of those will be most important to our customers, that will always be the driver at CDW for the market we serve, but I think it's fair to say, we are getting asked to consider services that are more expansive and different than we do today, but again we got to make sure we can deliver on the customers' expectations. So that's probably a long-winded way of saying I'm not really sure, but we're going to continue to expand our services portfolio.

[Anil K. Doradla:]

Great and congrats once again.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

All right. Thank you.

[Operator:]

And that does conclude the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Richards for closing remarks.

[Thomas E. Richards:]

Okay. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate your interest this morning, and as always, if your company needs some help with IT, we would hope you would come to CDW, and now we can say CDW plus our international partner, Kelway, would be more than happy to help you, and enjoy the rest of your summer. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude today's conference. You may all disconnect and, everyone, have a great day.