Insight Enterprises Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 31, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: In Q2, Insight delivered 2% hardware revenue growth and achieved record gross margin of 21.1% and adjusted operating margin of 6.2%.
  • Negative Sentiment: Cloud gross profit declined 5% in Q2 due to a $70 million partner program headwind this year, with impacts weighted toward the first half.
  • Positive Sentiment: Insight is transitioning to an AI-first solutions integrator, deploying hundreds of AI agents and completing over 200 client AI assessments to drive productivity.
  • Negative Sentiment: Core services revenue fell 2% as large enterprise clients delayed new projects, though modest growth is expected in the second half.
  • Neutral Sentiment: For 2025, Insight maintains guidance of flat gross profit and adjusted EPS of $9.70–$10.10, expecting mid single-digit hardware profit growth despite macro uncertainty.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Insight Enterprises Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the Insight Enterprises second quarter twenty twenty five operating results call. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. I'll now hand over to your host, Ryan Miasato, Director of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead, Ryan.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Director & Head - IR at Insight Enterprises

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining the Insight Enterprises earnings conference call. Today, we will be discussing the company's operating results for the quarter ended 06/30/2025. I'm Ryan Miasato, Investor Relations Director of Insight, and joining me is Joyce Mullen, President and Chief Executive Officer and James Murgado, Chief Financial Officer. If you do not have a copy of the earnings release or the accompanying slide presentation that was posted this morning and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Form eight ks, you will find it on our website at insight.com under the Investor Relations section. Today's call, including the question and answer period, is being webcast live and can also be accessed via the Investor Relations page of our website at insight.com.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Director & Head - IR at Insight Enterprises

An archived copy of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after completion of the call and will remain on our website for a limited time. This conference call and the associated webcast contain time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, 07/31/2025. This call is the property of Insight Enterprises. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Insight Enterprises is strictly prohibited. In today's conference call, we will be referring to non GAAP financial measures as we discuss the second quarter twenty twenty five results.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Director & Head - IR at Insight Enterprises

When discussing non GAAP measures, we will refer to them as adjusted. You will find a reconciliation of these adjusted measures to our actual GAAP results included in both the press release and the accompanying slide presentation issued earlier today. Please note that all growth comparisons we make on the call today relate to the corresponding period of last year unless otherwise noted. Also, unless highlighted as constant currency, all amounts and growth rates discussed are in U. S.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Director & Head - IR at Insight Enterprises

Dollar terms. As a reminder, all forward looking statements that are made during this conference call are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These risks are discussed in today's press release and in greater detail in our most recently filed periodic reports and subsequent filings with the SEC. All forward looking statements are made as of the date of this call and, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statement made on this call, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joyce.

Ryan Miyasato
Ryan Miyasato
Director & Head - IR at Insight Enterprises

And if you are following along with the slide presentation, we will begin on Slide four. Joyce?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Thank you very much, Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. In Q2, we executed well and met our expectations as we navigated a challenging environment, primarily driven by partner program changes. Our hardware business delivered growth for the second consecutive quarter and we achieved strong profitability milestones. Total gross margin of 21.1% and adjusted earnings from operations margin of 6.2%, both Q2 records.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

In the quarter, hardware revenue grew 2% with growth in both devices and infrastructure. Hardware revenue in North America grew 4%. Revenue from our commercial clients grew 8%, which is the fifth consecutive quarter of growth. The underlying SaaS and infrastructure as a service business grew double digits and in line with expectations, offset by the partner program changes we've discussed previously. We made internal adjustments to address the program changes, and we will continue to focus on capturing growth in the cloud business.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Overall, cloud gross profit declined 5%. Insight core services revenue was down 2% as we continue to see delays in initiating new service projects, particularly in our large enterprise clients. We also prudently managed adjusted SG and A expenses, which were down 3%. As a result, adjusted diluted earnings per share were in line with our expectations. While macroeconomic factors, including tariffs, legislative policies affecting supply chains and interest rates continue to impact our clients' investment decisions, we are well positioned in terms of expertise, particularly AI, to grow as the environment improves.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

As the technologies we offer to our clients continue to develop, we are adapting our ambition to becoming not only the leading solutions integrator, but the leading AI first solutions integrator. Here's what we mean by that. We are aggressively adopting AI internally across all disciplines and all regions. We've enhanced our services portfolio by integrating an AI first approach. We are adapting our offers to support our clients' focus on delivering measurable and meaningful business value through pragmatic deployment of AI solutions, delivering results fast and earning the right to do more.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

We offer our clients full life cycle AI services, including consulting, implementation, training, governance, and managed services support. And while it's still early in terms of project deployments and the initial deployments are small, we've made good progress on multiple fronts. For example, we have deployed hundreds of agents internally and for client projects. We've completed over 200 AI assessments with our clients, more than quadrupling the number compared to the last quarter. In software development, we've delivered significant improvements in productivity.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Infrastructure hardware bookings are increasing as clients prepare their on prem and cloud environments for AI workloads. In addition, we continue to drive adoption of AI internally to improve our s g and a leverage. We are excited by the momentum in this space. And as an interesting aside, this wave of technology adoption is primarily being driven by business units and business leaders with support from IT. This is different from cloud, which was driven by IT with support from the business.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

As an example of our efforts with AI, I'm very pleased to share that Gartner has named Insight an emerging visionary in its inaugural innovation guide for generative AI consulting and implementation services. This recognition underscores our innovation first mindset and our emerging strength as an AI first integrator. At Insight, we deliver measurable outcomes and help clients navigate the complex challenges of GenAI adoption from data readiness and governance to security, scalability, and achieving ROI. Clients across all industries are beginning to leverage AI in virtually every aspect of their businesses, including new product development, go to market models, and back office functions. I'd like to share a few examples.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

We worked with a major retail client, the largest authorized retailer for a leading telecommunications provider operating nearly 1,700 locations across all 50 states. They needed to address inefficiencies in their legal document review process, so they partnered with Insight to develop an AI powered platform. Insight developed a custom AI solution using Microsoft Azure OpenAI service to automate legal document review. The platform analyzes millions of documents, identifies key data points, and provides contextual summaries for legal cases. Our AI solution automated the process of reading, understanding, and analyzing vast legal datasets while ensuring data privacy and confidentiality through secure Azure cloud integration.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

This project eliminated over a hundred thousand hours annually from manual document review, improved accuracy, and reduced human error, leading to projected annual savings of 7 and a half million dollars. Understanding the essential foundational elements necessary for effectively implementing AI is crucial. This includes assessing the quality and accessibility of data as well as implementing robust security protocols. And as AI adoption grows, so too does the threat surface. Mining operations are capital and technology intensive, and security is critical.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

We partnered with one of the top gold producers in the world. They needed to consolidate disparate security tools across multiple acquisitions to improve effectiveness and reduce overlap. We established ourselves as their trusted adviser and implemented a Palo Alto network solution delivering single source security services across multiple countries. Our solution addressed security posture concerns through technology consolidation and consistent security policies. We provided professional services to retire duplicate technologies and optimize their security infrastructure.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

This led to a multiyear managed service agreement with Insight and meaningful cost savings for our clients. Our partner ecosystem is critical to our success. Given our leading partner relationships with companies like NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft and others who are changing the world right now, we are in a strong position to help clients simplify this complex space and optimize their business outcomes. You can see recent awards in the accompanying slide presentation. As I mentioned previously, we have been included in Gartner's innovation guide for generative AI consulting and implementation services.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Furthermore, we have been named the finalist for CRM's twenty twenty five best AI solution provider. Our teammates are integral to delivering the value we create for our clients. We foster a collaborative environment, and Insight continues to be recognized as a great place to work by various organizations, most recently by Newsweek and Forbes. Now I'd like to share my thoughts on the remainder of 2025. Exiting the first half of the year, adjusted earnings were in line with our expectations.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

As I mentioned, we are committed to our ambition to become the leading solutions integrator. However, in response to significant technology trends and the overwhelming impact of AI, we are adapting this ambition to become the leading AI first solutions integrator. Our strategy remains focused on simplifying the complex for clients and delivering outcomes with our full portfolio of hardware, software, and services. And as AI adoption grows, we believe we are well positioned. We have long standing relationships with a broad base of clients across the globe.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

We have strong partnerships with the companies and platforms that are changing the world. We have a deep understanding of the cloud platforms and the hardware required to run the environments that will be critical to our client success. And we have a dedicated team of experts who are eagerly embracing new tools and processes to deliver results fast. As we have discussed for the past few quarters, we are weathering partner program challenges. In the near term, we are cautiously optimistic for the second half of the year as we navigate the macro factors that weigh on our client spending decisions.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

In the midterm, we are very well positioned to lead our clients through this rapidly changing technology environment. Our commercial client revenue has grown for five consecutive quarters, and we expect our corporate and large enterprise clients' purchasing to increase in the second half. Demand drivers for device refresh remain, namely the age of the installed base in Windows 10 end of life, and infrastructure spending is improving after a prolonged period of digestion. As a result, we believe hardware demand will continue to build throughout the year. We are pleased with the services performance of the companies we recently acquired.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Our investments in our advisory capabilities have also been successful, us to pull through other elements of the portfolio. This was our thesis that we could leverage those capabilities to sell more to our existing client base. The services growth, however, is offset by pauses in deploying infrastructure projects and some continued hesitancy regarding discretionary spending, especially in our largest enterprise clients. Although we expect services to improve modestly in the second half, demand will remain muted. M and A remains key to our ambition to become the leading AI first solutions integrator, and we are focused on the fastest growing areas of the market, cloud, data, AI, edge, and security.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Our executing well as we have pivoted from legacy partner programs to focus on the services and solutions most critical to partners and clients alike. As we execute for, we expect partner program changes to be largely normalized. And we will continue to prudently manage SG and A while balancing investments in our solution and AI capabilities. With that, I'll turn the call over to James to share key details of our financial and operating performance in Q2 as well as our outlook for 2025. James?

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Thank you, Joyce, and good morning, everyone. Our Q2 adjusted earnings from operations and diluted earnings per share were in line with our expectations, with gross profit slightly below offset by strong operating expense management. Net revenue was $2,100,000,000 a decrease of 3% in U. S. Dollars and 4% in constant currency.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

The decrease was driven by a 4% decline in product, primarily due to on prem software, which declined 14% and was a result of partner consolidation last year that shifted gross product revenue to net agency services. Hardware revenue increased 2%, the second consecutive quarter of growth. Gross profit decreased 2% primarily due to partner program changes. Hardware gross profit was up 2%, reflecting growth in both infrastructure and devices. Insight core services gross profit was $78,000,000 a decrease of 3%, primarily due to a decline of our product attached services as large enterprise clients delayed projects.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Cloud gross profit was $123,000,000 a decrease of 5% due to the partner program changes we've previously discussed. This was in line with our expectations. And as noted last quarter, we anticipated the headwinds to be weighted more in the first half of the year. We continue to anticipate some headwinds in Q3. However, by the time we exit Q4, we expect the impact to be largely normalized.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Gross margin was 21.1%, an increase of 10 basis points. Adjusted SG and A declined 3%, driven by prudent expense management. This resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $138,000,000 a decrease of 2%, while margin expanded 10 basis points to 6.6%. And adjusted diluted earnings per share were $2.45 flat year over year in U. S.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Dollar terms and down 1% in constant currency. For the quarter, we utilized $177,000,000 in cash flow from operations, primarily related to inter quarter working capital requirements, which have reversed in July. For the year, we continue to anticipate cash flow from operations in the range of 300,000,000 to $400,000,000 In Q2, we repurchased approximately $76,000,000 of shares. And as of the end of the quarter, we have $224,000,000 remaining for our share repurchase program. We intend to opportunistically repurchase shares while balancing organic and inorganic investments.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

While we settled $333,000,000 of convertible notes in Q1, we still have approximately $1,200,000 associated warrants outstanding, which will be settled before the end of the year. As a reminder, during the first half of the year, we settled 3,600,000.0 warrants for $222,000,000 and settled another 300,000 warrants and shares. The benefit of settling the warrants in the first half have been reflected in our outstanding diluted share count. We exited Q2 with total debt of approximately $1,300,000,000 compared to $1,000,000,000 a year ago. Over the last year, we spent $463,000,000 on share repurchases and the settlement of warrants, while debt only increased three thirty million dollars As of the end of Q2, we had access to the full $1,800,000,000 capacity under our ABL facility, of which approximately $1,000,000,000 was available.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

We have ample liquidity to meet our needs. Our adjusted return on invested capital for the trailing twelve months at the end of Q2 was 14.4% compared to 17% a year ago, reflecting an increase in invested capital and lower adjusted net income. As I think about the first half, it has played out largely as we anticipated. Hardware is on track, driven by multiple quarters of commercial growth with signs of recovery moving to larger clients. While partner program changes have impacted our cloud results in the first half, we're on track with our progress on pivoting to the corporate and mid market space.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

However, core services has been challenged, primarily due to a lack of large enterprise client spending in the infrastructure space. As we think about the remainder of 2025, we expect macro uncertainty to remain and have considered the following factors in our guidance. We continue to believe that our growth and profitability will be more heavily weighted toward the second half of the year. We believe hardware demand will exhibit a steady increase throughout the year and expect hardware gross profit to grow in the mid single digits. We expect demand with our large enterprise clients to modestly improve over a subdued first half.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

We expect core services to grow in the low single digits. We anticipate cloud performance to improve as we continue to pivot to the mid market space as well as having easier comps in the second half. For the year, cloud is expected to be flat to slightly down. We controlled expenses in the first half, which we will continue to prudently manage and expect SG and A to grow slower than gross profit. We have identified incremental opportunities to drive operating expense leverage over the next twelve months.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Considering these factors, for the full year, our guidance is as follows: We expect gross profit to be approximately flat from 2024 and that our gross margin will be approximately 20%. And our adjusted diluted earnings per share remains unchanged and will be between $9.7 to $10.1 This guidance includes interest expense between $75,000,000 to $80,000,000 an effective tax rate of 25% to 26% for the full year, capital expenditures of 30,000,000 to $35,000,000 and an average share count for the full year of 32,400,000.0 shares, reflecting the settlement of the remaining warrants associated with our convertible note. This outlook excludes acquisition related intangible amortization expense of approximately $74,000,000 assumes no acquisition related costs, severance and restructuring or transformation expenses and assumes no change in our debt instruments and no meaningful change in the macroeconomic outlook, either as a result of tariffs or otherwise. I will now turn the call back to Joyce. Joyce?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Thank you, James. Overall, we navigated the first half of the year well. We are excited about the new technologies and the results our clients can achieve with AI. We also remain committed the core elements of our business, which serve as a critical foundation in order for our clients to unlock the full potential of GenAI. I wanna thank our teammates for their unwavering commitment to our clients, partners, and each other, our clients for trusting Insight to help them with their transformational journeys, and our partners for their continued collaboration and support in delivering innovative solutions to our clients.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

This concludes my comments, and we will now open the line for your questions.

Operator

Thank you, Joyce. Our first question comes from Joseph Cardoso from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Hey. Hey, Joe. Are you there?

Operator

Joseph, your line is open. I will come back to Yes.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Thanks, Sami.

Operator

Our next question comes from Adam Tindle from Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead. So, Adam, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Sammy, it sounds like maybe there's something wrong with the line maybe.

Operator

Yeah. Let me bear with me one second. Adam, your line is open. Please go ahead. Adam, can you hear us?

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

I can hear you.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Sammy, I'm getting oh, there we go.

Operator

Here we go. Adam, sorry. Your line is open. Please go ahead. We can hear you.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Okay. You can hear me now? Okay.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Yeah.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Yeah. Alright.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Let's try this again. Hey. Hey, Adam. I thought that was Hey, guys.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Question you. Hey, Adam. Can you hear us? Adam, can you hear us?

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Yes. I can hear you.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Okay. Adam, I thought that was gonna be the easiest question you've ever asked us because it was completely silent.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

We could just, yeah. You you you you choose the question. How about that? Could you can you imagine I'm gonna ask you about the guide, here, James? So let me let me start with that.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Appreciate it, guys. Good morning. So James, the guidance obviously approximately flat on gross profit dollars. As we finished up, the first half, it was down about mid single digits. So you're implying that it's got, gross profit dollars have to be up around mid single digits in the back half.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

And I wonder if you might just detail some of the key drivers as you thought about that improvement. It sounds like some of it's predicated on hardware improvement, but some of your competitors have suggested that there's been pull in hardware in particular, and we're a little bit more cautious on the back half. So you could maybe comment on that dynamic as well as your key drivers to hit that mid single digit for implied in the gross profit dollar growth. Thanks.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Yes. Thanks, Adam. And Joyce, you can round out my comments. But hey, Adam, I think when you think about the full year guide and the second half, you kind of have to start back how the first half landed. I'll take the major areas of the business.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

First, from a cloud standpoint, cloud landed in the first half at our expectations. I called out a couple of quarters ago that we were going to be faced this year with a $70,000,000 gross headwind, which was in cloud, which was more weighted towards the first half. We and landing at our expectations gives us a good setup, I think, for the second half. Additionally, when we look at our cloud business, we look at infrastructure as a service and software as a service, has growing nicely. Q2 was at a similar rate to the Q1 rate, which I think also gives us a good setup for the second half.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

And so that's why from a cloud perspective, we're able to hold our view cloud would be flat to slightly down. The second key piece of this as you mentioned was around hardware. Hardware in first quarter grew 1% from a GP standpoint. Q2 accelerated a little bit to 2%. We didn't see pull ins as others have mentioned.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Saw some, but it wasn't material to the number. And so that dynamic hasn't really played out for us in the first half like you may hear from others. Additionally, as we looked at bookings in Q2 and as Q3 has started, I think it supports the premise that hardware will continue to accelerate as we get into the second half. When you look at our commercial business, for example, it's five quarters of consecutive growth. Corporate and enterprise from a booking standpoint as the first half has progressed has improved.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

And Q3 as well as we started would support the fact that Corporate and Enterprise will continue to pick up in the second half. The third piece to this, which is the reason that you'll see that we've moderated our GP outlook is around our core services business. It started below our expectations that we had at the beginning of the year. We've moderated that down to the low single digits, which implies some modest pickup into the second half. And the reason that we're able when you take all those factors together, the reason we're able to hold our earnings per share was around the performance of OpEx.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

In the first half OpEx was down 4% year over year, which was ahead of our expectations. We would as we plan out for the second half and for the full year, OpEx would grow slower than gross profit. And those are the reasons that we're effectively holding our EPS.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Maybe just a follow-up, for Joyce. As James was talking about managing OpEx down, and and I think, you know, obviously, in this quarter, you guys did a nice job of cost controls.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

But this is a trend that we're kinda seeing broadly across the industry. I think your competitor your main competitor just announced maybe it's on their fourth round of layoffs or so. And I'm just you know, this this cost cutting, behavior across the industry is happening while devices are strong, and we're in an upcycle in PCs. So I'm just a little surprised if you were to give me that environment. I wouldn't expect, you know, a lot of the the resellers and systems integrators to be cutting headcount.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

I wonder if you might just opine a little bit on on that trend, why that's happening across the industry during a PC up cycle. And is this something that you expect to continue in the future? Is this, you know, kind of reflective of a structural change in the industry where a lot of these models need to, readjust cost structure for one reason or another? Thanks.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Yeah. I mean, I think we are we are really excited about, the opportunities to implement basically AI technologies in almost every process. We are going after this pretty hard, and we're getting rid of a whole lot of soul sucking work. And we're also, we're also looking just to speed up all of our internal processes, which will eventually result in better service to our clients. So this is the productivity improvement is real.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

It's we see it very markedly in our software development efforts. We see it, more gradually taking hold in sort of all the back end business processes. And what that allows us to do is basically hold headcount flat while we increase, like, well well, some elements of our business are growing. So we we think this is a good thing, and we also are helping our clients do the same. So I you know, the PC demand is gonna be driven primarily by the age of the fleet and also Windows 11, and we're not expecting that PC demand to mirror kind of the peaks that we saw three years ago at all.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

But we are we are seeing real there is a real necessity to upgrade these these systems. So I think these two things I think the the normal curves, Adam, are starting to diverge a little bit because we do expect to see productivity improvements. And by the way, that's a huge opportunity that for us to help clients do the same.

Adam Tindle
Adam Tindle
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Got it. Thank you.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Should we go back to Joe?

Operator

Our next question our next question comes from Joseph Cardoso from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Good morning, everyone. Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for the question. Maybe just for my first one, you obviously mentioned delays in services projects with large enterprises again. I was just hoping you could provide an updated thoughts around the drivers behind this behavior.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Do you have any other transparency around what's what's really being the motivation here around delays outside of maybe the broader macro and if there's anything else structurally, like, around AI investments, etcetera, that could be driving it? And then the second part of that is just how are you assessing the potential timing for your customers to kinda reengage on these large projects? Do you have any visibility in terms of when you could potentially see them come back? And then I have a follow-up. Thank you.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Yeah. Sure, Joe. So, so yes. Yeah. The the macro is certainly an element.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

So there's kind of a a level of uncertainty still around many of the things that we talked about earlier in the script. But but but I I think outside of that, the biggest driver is this notion of how to like, thinking about thinking through no regrets moves around investments given the focus on leveraging AI technology. So in other words, we we know that many of our clients are trying to keep a little bit of their powder dry so that they can invest in making sure their infrastructures are effectively set up for AI, making sure their their data is appropriately managed, etcetera, etcetera. But not everyone knows exactly what to do yet, so there's still some question about how to get started. And, again, this is a huge opportunity for us.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

So, however, those projects those AI MVP type projects, the assessment type work is that it's underway that I mentioned earlier, that we're seeing one pretty significant up ramp up in terms of the number of those are not big projects yet. So we expect to be delivering very pragmatic solutions to customers, leveraging these technologies that drive real business outcomes in the short term, and then do another one and another one and another one. So and I think enterprises are keeping, as I said, some of the they're they're holding off on spending in more traditional areas to make sure they preserve capability to spend on AI as they figure out their strategies there.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Nope. Got it. Makes sense. Right? I think, for my second question, I think last quarter you talked about cloud growth excluding the impact of program changes tracked, if I remember incorrectly, somewhere in the high teens.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

The guide that you guys put out today with the reiterated guide on cloud gross profit, if we exclude the impact, I think it's closer to mid teens. So I'm just trying to triangulate, you know, if you could, one, can you provide an update in terms of what cloud growth would look like this quarter excluding the program changes? And then how are you thinking about that momentum trending going into the back half and whether you think that is sustainable just given kind of the strong performance at least that we know that you guys did in 1Q? And then maybe just as a second part of the question, can you just update us on the initiatives around SADA and how that's been tracking?

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Okay, Joe. I'll take the first part and then I think Joyce can comment on the second part in terms of the pivot. In Q1, we called out that the underlying cloud growth was approximately 17% year over year, very similar in Q2, a slight acceleration over that number, but in that same range. As we look for the rest of the year, we would anticipate that that would be similar for the rest of the year in the underlying growth. And then from a program change perspective, I've commented that the $70,000,000 gross headwind was a little more heavily weighted towards the first half.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

There is still an impact into Q3 for those. And by the time we exit Q4, we expect it largely normalized. And the full when we think about the whole second half from a cloud perspective, we we would expect it to be up year year over year.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

And from a SADA point of view, Adam, we are really, really pleased with the work the team has done to move towards more of a surface focus and driving consumption and adoption for for Google in in that case. And, that team has done a great job expanding the services business. They performed a little bit better than we expected in q two. So that's a that's a trend now that we've got several quarters in a row, and we're we couldn't be happier. In fact, all of the companies that we fought over the last eighteen months or so are performing extraordinarily well.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

And, and we and as I said earlier, that thesis is working. We're we're we're really pleased with the cross sell opportunities that we're seeing, and our clients are responding really, really well to that because, you know, almost everybody is multi cloud and almost everybody has needs across some of the platforms that we've invested in, Microsoft, Google, ServiceNow, and AWS.

Joseph Cardoso
Joseph Cardoso
Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan

Appreciate the color, Joyce and James. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Our next question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski from Sidoti and Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Analyst - Specialty Retail/Consumer at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Thank you and good morning everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. So I know you touched on a little bit as far as your commercial business in the second quarter. Just wondering if you could give us some comments about the other two main segments, how they did and what is your expectation? And particularly interested actually in your comments about the public sector with all the noise about the Doge and some of the higher ed institutions being impacted by the current administration, whether you expect to see any impact on your business?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Thanks, Anthony. Yeah. So, as we mentioned, the commercial business growing five quarters in a row. We've always been saying that we're we expect that to start to show up in corporate and enterprise. We're seeing some good improvements in corporate.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Again, the momentum is is right, so we're feeling better about that and enterprise lags in terms of growth. In terms of public sector, you know, we had, our our overall revenue was down. That's primarily a result of netting. And so our our public sector business is doing very well from a services point of view. It's doing we're seeing some some momentum in the hardware space as well.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

So as a reminder, most of our public sector business is sled, so state and local government and higher ed. And those have not been as impacted directly, but there is certainly some impact because all of that funding closed down. So we've been really cautious about that, but, I'm proud of the the work the team's doing to really sort of focus on the areas where there's opportunity. And there is some opportunity because some of those big contracts that are being pulled back, etcetera, in the federal government means there's still work to do, but they're gonna do it differently. And we think we're well positioned to go after some of that.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Analyst - Specialty Retail/Consumer at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Sounds good. And then, I may have missed this, but in terms of the partner program changes, I know you talked about $70,000,000 impact for the full year, mostly in the first half. Did you guys give a specific number for the second quarter, what that impact was?

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

We didn't give a specific number, but what what I said earlier, Anthony, was that from a cloud perspective, the underlying infrastructure as a service, software as a service grew at about the same rate it did in q one. And in q one, we called out a 17% year over year grow growth.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

And we said that the the partner

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Analyst - Specialty Retail/Consumer at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Gotcha. Yeah.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

70,000,000 is more is more heavily weighted towards the first half.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Yeah.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Yeah.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Analyst - Specialty Retail/Consumer at Sidoti & Company, LLC

Alright. And then, you know, lastly for me, far as, you know, just just thinking about the impact of these partner program changes, as you look forward to 2026, any sort of early read as to what the gross margins could look like as you get past the impact of these changes?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

So by the way, partners change programs all the time. This just happens to be a very, significant change this year, which is why we're talking about it. I hope we never have to talk about them again. And right now, we don't foresee any major program changes that would would dramatically change kind of our our outlook or our margins. And we it's our job, of course, to adapt to those. And and I think we've been doing that well, especially with Microsoft and Google changes as we talked about earlier. So we're not gonna give guidance on gross margins probably until February for 2026. Yeah.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

But I would I would comment though, Anthony, just to just to add to what Joyce said. And Joyce mentioned this in her prepared remarks, but Q2 was a record from a Q2 standpoint from gross margin and EBITDA margin. I think that demonstrates our ability to manage margins. And that $70,000,000 gross headwind that I called out is a direct impact to gross margins. So the fact that we're navigating that this year and in Q2, we're able to hold a record, think is, from a Q2 standpoint, hold a record is a testament to our ability to manage margins, as well as EBITDA margins.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

The other piece on the $70,000,000 this year, what I've commented is that as we exit Q4, we expect that piece of it to be largely normalized into 2026. And so it becomes a far less of a headwind in 2026 than it has been in 2025.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Senior Equity Analyst - Specialty Retail/Consumer at Sidoti & Company, LLC

That's very helpful. Well, thank you very much and best of luck.

Operator

next question comes from Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Vincent Colicchio
Managing Director at Barrington Research Associates

Joyce, what is your labor strategy to meet the burgeoning AI opportunity? I know that acquisitions, I assume, are part of that. As you'd mentioned, AI is an important target. On the AI side, I'm wondering if the acquisitions are currently the valuations are currently prohibitive. Anyway, that's that's that's what I have.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Yes. Thanks, Vince. So, you know, we are very active on the m and a front. Absolutely. We're looking for more skills, but I would say it's a two pronged approach in terms of building the capabilities and skills.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

One is go go out and hire slash acquire capabilities in the areas that are really relevant to to AI, data security, cloud, advisory capabilities like we talked about earlier. But also, we have a very intense internal development program that is underway to upscale our existing teammates across the world. And we think we are in a great position because we've got a lot of great talent that that are excited and eager to embrace these tools and use them. And so that that program is well underway, with various certifications internally and development programs, etcetera, etcetera. So, we're excited about that.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

And more importantly, our teammates are excited about that. So it's it's two pronged approach, m and a, aqua hires slash aqua slash aqua hires and also development.

Vincent Colicchio
Managing Director at Barrington Research Associates

And are your profitability and pricing initiatives still ongoing? Where does that stand?

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Yeah. Our profitability and pricing initiatives that James initiated about two years ago are, well underway. There's, we obviously went after the low hanging fruit first and saw some really terrific results, but those continue and we're expanding those data to other regions.

Vincent Colicchio
Managing Director at Barrington Research Associates

Okay. Thank you.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Thank you, Vince.

James Morgado
James Morgado
CFO at Insight Enterprises

Thanks, Vince.

Operator

We currently have no further questions. So at this time, I'd like to hand back to Joyce for some closing remarks.

Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen
President, CEO & Director at Insight Enterprises

Thank you very much to all of you for your questions and your interest. Our clients right now need a trusted adviser to navigate this evolving and complex landscape, particularly given current macroeconomic uncertainties and the anticipated long term changes that result from the adoption of GenAI in their operations. We are very optimistic about the opportunities ahead of us and I look forward to sharing our continued journey progress on our journey to becoming an AI first leading solutions integrator. You very much. You can close the call now.

Operator

This concludes today's call. We thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

Executives
    • Ryan Miyasato
      Ryan Miyasato
      Director & Head - IR
    • Joyce Mullen
      Joyce Mullen
      President, CEO & Director
    • James Morgado
      James Morgado
      CFO
Analysts
    • Adam Tindle
      Managing Director at Raymond James Financial
    • Joseph Cardoso
      Vice President, Equity Research at JP Morgan
    • Anthony Lebiedzinski
      Senior Equity Analyst - Specialty Retail/Consumer at Sidoti & Company, LLC
    • Vincent Colicchio
      Managing Director at Barrington Research Associates
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