Dicker Data Limited (DDR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Dicker Data Limited Full Year Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. David Dicker, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us on this webcast. I'm David Dicker, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Dicker Data. Last year was a difficult year under the circumstances. The economic conditions are not quite as good as we'd like them to be. But even so, I think we've got a pretty outstanding result. Profit's up 12.5%, sales up 5-odd percent. And we're still moving forward well relative to our competitors and our performance compared to sort of the general market and general market participants is pretty outstanding. So all in all, a good year. And I think the economic conditions will be better this year and we should look to steadily improve as this year goes on. I'm going to now hand over to our CFO, Mary, to give you the full details on all the numbers. Thanks, Mary.

Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We are really pleased and happy to be releasing our results today. As David has said, it was a challenging year with rising interest rates, inflationary pressures. And more importantly, impacting us was things that are -- around the technology spend and decline in PC sales and device sales. And in the backdrop of that kind of environment to be able to still deliver top line growth on a very large number of over 5.6%, delivering gross revenue of $3.3 billion, we were really happy with that result, considering the impact of a segment of our business had significant decline. More importantly, though, we were able to deliver very significant profit growth in the profit after tax number increasing up by 12.5%. This was driven by stronger margins for the period and a very strong EBITDA growth number of 16.1%. Obviously, within this environment, the impact of interest impacted the overall growth number. But this gives us confidence around the things we're doing right operationally within the business. A lot of that revenue and growth in top line was able to be delivered with increase in the amount of active partners. We've been able to transact with across ANZ. Some of those increases in active partners are part of the acquired partners we got with all the recent acquisitions now that we've been able to get some synergistic benefits from that outcome. And important to our shareholders, earnings paid per share increased -- or earnings per share increased to $0.4559 increase of 9.1%. As an overall highlight, we've continued to deliver and perform within our industry and continue to be recognized within our industry bodies around what we are delivering, and I'm sure Vlad will have a more detailed explanation of some of those achievements in his business update. If we go to the next slide, in terms of the financial trends, you can see that we're now representing our numbers in terms of gross sales. This comes off the back of reconsidering how we recognize our revenue, which I'll explain shortly. But on a like-for-like basis in terms of how we have previously presented our numbers, gross sales, you can see our 5-year CAGR of 16.7%, always trending in the same direction, able to continually deliver top line growth. More pleasingly, this was supported with increases in gross margin delivered against this gross sales number and being able to improve on our PBT margin from what we delivered in FY '22. If we go to the next slide, I just want to explain the change in revenue presentation. We brought this up in the half year results when we released our interim number. We've gone back and reconsidered some of the agreements that we're dealing with in terms of new software agreements and some of the existing agreements in terms of how they've evolved over time. And in respect of AASB the revenue standard, how we are recognizing that revenue. And as part of that assessment, it was determined that in respect of sales that relate to software, warranty and maintenance products, the statutory revenue that we should be recognizing is the net outcome of that transaction. So we have restated our statutory revenue to present the revenue in respect of those sales on a net basis. So in that respect, the revenue that was achieved for the FY '23 year was about $2.3 billion. The growth is slightly different than on the gross basis because of the weighting between our hardware and software businesses. But in terms of how we view our share with our vendors and how we measure ourselves internally, we still look at the gross revenue number and we are presenting the numbers in this presentation on both the statutory net revenue basis so that the margins can be explained on that basis as well as on the gross basis, as we've previously become accustomed to explain our results. So hopefully, the 2 being included allows those explanations to be better articulated. So if we go on to the next slide in terms of where did we finish on a group results basis. The net outcome was that whilst revenue on a statutory basis was $2.3 billion. The gross profits are exactly the same. It's just where they sit in the cost of goods line and revenue line in respect of presentations. So we delivered gross profit for the year of $315.5 million. That was an increase of 11.2%. If we look at margins, as they are measured against this net revenue. Overall margins improved to 13.9%, up from 12.8%. Operating costs excluding the one-off costs, which mainly relate to restructure type costs around activities with the integration of the businesses we acquired increased -- whilst increasing to 11.8% against that net revenue. The growth in the margin and the revenue growth still allowed us to deliver operating profit before tax of $117.3 million, representing a 9.7% increase. If we go to the next slide, and we look at the numbers in respect of how we have previously presented them, and we are reflecting growth revenue. As I said, we've grown the top line on a gross basis in excess of 5.6%. Included in this number is recurring software gross revenue, which has now grown into $823 million, and total software as a portfolio around $900 million, which now represents over 27.5% of our overall gross sales. As I said earlier, gross margin improvement was significant going from 9.1% to 9.6% driven by the different mix of business that we have been able to introduce with respect to access and surveillance type business where we can earn higher gross margins. In addition, whilst PC business declined, we did see an increase in our networking and our server and storage business and generally, these businesses, we've been able to derive a bit more margin. So the combination of all of that is leading to higher growth margin outcome. And we've also done a lot of work to improve our New Zealand gross margin as well, which we've got on a later slide. The combination of all of that has resulted in EBITDA of $150.7 million, representing a 16.1% increase. Obviously, we fund the business via debt, and with the increasing interest rate environment, it impacts the overall profitability. That cost of interest is somewhere $20 million in -- reflected in those numbers resulting in profit before tax growth of 9.7%. If we now have a closer look at sort of the delivery from the results in Australia and New Zealand. These results are represented on a gross revenue basis. And so that margin outcome reflected on the same basis as we've been previously reporting. Revenue growth in Australia was 6.7%, delivering $2.7 billion in top line sales. Gross profit margins, we did hit the 10% mark, which was -- and that's a sensational outcome considering the work we've put in around diversifying, introducing higher-margin business and focusing on areas to improve margins, knowing that we were in an environment where we had some costs that were out about ability to control around interest rate. Other costs still increased in terms of operating costs increased by 11.8%, predominantly around headcount and introduction of -- we've got a full 12-month cost of the Hills business, which included 110 new people joining the organization plus introduction of costs that we didn't previously have like branch expenses. So annualized on 12 months relative to, I think, 7 months the year before. There's an increase in overall cost. And of course, interest increased by 107% as a result of the growing rate of -- interest rates over the course of that year. Despite all that, it was still a very strong PBT margin delivery of 4%, 4% being the same as the prior year. So despite those impacts of costs that we had to absorb, being able to deliver the same PBT margin we feel was a great outcome. If we look at our New Zealand business, you can see that revenues are relatively flat. Obviously, with the decline in PC sales and the introduction of the consumer business in our New Zealand business. The decline was felt more in terms of overall PC decline impact. This was offset by increases in software revenue. But more pleasingly, and more importantly, where we spent more work around improving the margin of this business. Part of the increase is attributed to the fact that we had a decline in our Apple business. That was as a result of decline in PC demand. But also, we've seen improved profitability across all the other segments and being able to deliver margin growth from 6.5% to 7.6%. Operating costs also increased in New Zealand, while we continue to restructure and thus we did another acquisition in February and added some additional costs around new headcount and branch expenses equivalent to sort of the same operation that we had in Australia with the Hills business. We acquired a business called Connect Security Products, which gave us access to the DAS-type vendors, with the access control and surveillance industry adding to some of that costs that were experienced in New Zealand. But obviously, the big driver and where we've been concentrating on was to improve profitability margins in New Zealand, including the net profit margin. Operating profit before tax increased to $5.5 million at a PBT margin of 1%. Now obviously, that's not in line with the Australian business, but all the work around trying to get that number closer to where we would like it to operate at have all been put in place. All the foundations have been laid. New vendors have been acquired in New Zealand. We've diversified the business segments in New Zealand, and we feel that we should see that definitely improve in 2024. And ultimate goal is obviously to run the New Zealand business on the same margin metrics that we do in Australia. If we go have a look on the balance sheet side, the company has increased the working capital investment by $25.4 million. That -- whilst both the receivables and inventory balances reduced, our trade payables reduced by greater value hence the increase in working capital dollars. Payables balances reduced because we started taking advantage of more settlement discounts. And if you recall in prior years where there was some more favorable extended supplier terms with our vendors, a lot of that has returned to standard terms with the supply chain now improving and it's just normal trade. So whilst working capital dollars have gone up, I think the efficiency of our working capital has improved. Our debtor days have improved, as have our inventory days, and that's what we were aiming to, coming off the back of sort of carrying excess levels of inventory over the last few years with a lot of supply chain constraints and supply restrictions. So this is -- abnormal, back to normal operating environment. Increased debt levels, of course, resulted in increased interest rates as well, debt increased by $9.2 million, but it was only marginally compared to the or a fraction of the total investment in working capital, which was funded from operations. Going to seeing how we derived and spent our cash, obviously, coming from operations and the EBITDA contribution of $150 million. We do pay out 100% of our dividend, and that's reflected in the dividend payment and interest and tax [indiscernible] other parts of the utilization of the cash quite with cash closing at $11.6 million. In terms of the dividend, we finalized the dividend for the total -- for the year at $0.45 per share. That's across the 3 interim dividends and the final dividend that we declared in February to be paid this week, represents an increase from last year up by 8.4%. Dividends paid within the year, which included the final dividend from last year were at a -- were lower than what we paid the previous year, but it was in respect of having paid higher interim dividends throughout FY '22 rather than a decline in dividend paid. We do intend to maintain our 100% dividend policy for the FY '24 year and continue to pay interim quarterly dividends as we've previously done. In terms of capital expenditure on the next slide, we've got an update on our Kurnell warehouse extension. The facility is completed now. A little bit over time than what we're expecting. We're expecting it to be completed late last year. However, it's all finalized. We've got extra -- nearly 17,000 square meters of extra warehouse space that's being wrapped up, creating thousands of new pallet spaces. The opportunities that this now gives us in terms of expanding several parts of our business not only the efficiency within our normal receiving and dispatching processes to be able to have even further segregate sections to be able to run the logistics part more efficiently gives us opportunity around new vendor opportunities as well as growing our 3PL business. The cost of construction came in within budget. So we're pleased that, that was being able to be finalized within what we expected in terms of our capital investment. And we should start seeing full utilization of that within the next -- within this quarter. We definitely got a lot of new opportunities around how we're going to fill that space. And pleasingly, there was another -- over 900 new solar panels added to the roof, which really enables us to run our operations much more efficiently and sustainably, not having to be able to be off-grid for a large part is our operational requirements, which aligns with the company's view on being able to be self-sufficient and run efficiently. That's the update in terms of the financial outcome and capital expenditure and in terms of the results. I'll hand it over now to Vlad to give you a much more detailed explanation on the current year plus the opportunities beyond that.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I will run you through the business update on 2023, but also give you a little bit of outlook for '24 as well. So next slide shows IT market and our strategy side Dicker Data retain. It's a very, very strong and leading position as Australia and New Zealand, a largest corporate commercial enterprise distributor. Not only have we retain it, but we continue taking share from some of our competitors. I feel the much challenging the market is the better we can demonstrate our value in the market. And I think a lot of vendors and a lot of partners have seen it, how strong and resilient we are. And it's just an instrument of being able to position ourselves to take up on those challenges. If our PC business represented over 50% of our business -- over 60% of our business, we would have probably been more troubled, but the strategy of diversification and having no strong reliability on a single vendor or single technology is really proven to be incredibly resilient. And even in the most challenging environment, we end up holding a very, very strong position. So 35% market share in the corporate and commercial space. We have a consumer business in Australia, but it's a very, very small business compared to some of our competitors. So that's why it would be only fair to compare corporate, commercial and enterprise businesses. In New Zealand, our consumer business is a lot larger. So that's why we do include it. Looking at last year, we have obviously acquisition of Exeed Group, Hills Security and IT divisions and the Connect system brought us to a lot of new partners. So we announced servicing over 12,000 partners, over 10,000 partners in Australia and over 2,000 partners in New Zealand. A Solid strong market share leadership continues to happening. If we go into the next slide, we continue to receive various industry recognitions for our work. I guess one of the big ones is we received a Hardware Distributor of the Year in Australia as an 11th consecutive year. So 11 years in a row, we have been -- we've been best distributor in this space. We're receiving awards for our work in sustainability, which Mary mentioned. A lot of different accolades as well. Diversity and inclusion, probably one of the most closest to our heart, to our nature and the culture, but also the marketing TechX event that we were in, got recognized as a New South Wales and National Exhibition of the Year in previous years. If we go to a new slide, the work of onboarding new vendors and also offboarding the existing vendors is continue happening. This is just our everyday job now. So we're trying to acquire and bring onboard vendors where we see we can add value and they can grow and they would add value and they will contribute to our growth as well. From the most significant ones that we've onboarded last year, I'll probably mention NetApp. NetApp is enterprise storage vendor, gives a great deal of opportunity for this year for the growth. Riverbed and WatchGuard as well, 2 big vendors to look out. Eaton is our second UPS vendor that we onboarded. So we have now a really good stack of UPS vendors. And probably, I'll mention Cloudflare is one of the fastest-growing data analytics and cybersecurity vendors in the world. So we're going to continue to drive new vendor expansion. We've put a lot of work of signing up new vendors last year. And there will be a couple of exciting announcements happening in the next few months. And that will [indiscernible] and help us in delivering the growth in 2024. Going into the next slide is the long-term vendor diversification strategy. There's not a surprise slide. We always use this slide, and we're incredibly proud to continue on that strategy. And 2023 wasn't an exception. Our top 5 vendors overall, the contribution has now reduced from 90% back in financial year 2012 to 44%. So our top 5 vendors now represent 44%, and we're going to continue to drive that. Saying that, we are continually proven to be the best execution focused specialized distributor for our top 20 vendors. Our top 5, it goes without saying we have incredibly strong practices. So our top 5 vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, Dell Technology, Lenovo, HP, all these have a very, very strong practices [indiscernible] data. We are, by far, leading market shareholder for the vendors, and we continue to propel and deliver a really good service for those. While doing that and while continuing to be strongest market share leader and hold up for those 5 top global Tier 1 vendors, we continue to expand our relationship with a lot of other Tier 1s and Tier 2 vendors as well. So just to continue to lower our expectancy on delivering the strong results on the top 5 vendors. I think it's a very, very important strategy, which we continue to drive. If we go to the next slide, it's our construct of our revenue in '23. Okay. So this is a good one, and I'll probably stop a little bit more on this. Just trying to detail this slide. So if we look at overall hardware and software, very easy to see. Our software grew by 10.6%. We are now $900 million software distributor. We are, by far, the largest software distributor in this region. Our hardware grew by 3.5% despite close to 15% decline in our PC business. Again, it's just coming back to the conversation of resilience and diversification strategy. So just with the software first. Good growth, fantastic new additions in the software business. What's incredibly important as well that our recurring and subscription revenue have grew 10% and it's now $900 million, just shy of $1 billion. Recurring and subscription, of course, doesn't only have software, but majority of that is software. So not only are we growing software, we're growing a good quality software business. It's all [indiscernible] subscription. And if currently, my -- our software business represents just under 28% of overall revenue, a little bit far away from aspirational 40% in 2025, but we do have 2 more years and you could see my goal. The goal is to get my software business to 40% of overall business. And the focus of growing software business will not slow down. We're anticipating another very, very strong growth in our software business this year. Hardware business. So if we slice up our hardware business, again, it's a very clear dynamic what's been happening last year. So if you remember the year before, we had a lot of supply challenges. We couldn't ship a lot of things. We've carried a good backlog of enterprise type of back-to-back businesses. So server storage, enterprise networking. Those 2 categories were suffering in the last -- in I think '21 and '22. In '23, last year, the supply improved. So we started to invoice and ship, which resulted in a very strong growth in our server and storage and enterprise networking business. Should we not have all the vendors in our lineup, we wouldn't deliver this result, but we've positioned ourselves incredibly strong. With the server and storage business, we have all the leading vendors under 1 roof. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Dell Technology, Lenovo Data Center, we have all the very, very strong comprises of that data center infrastructure business. Enterprise Networking, exactly the same. Cisco, Juniper Networks, Extreme Networks, Aruba, Meraki, all the whole lineup of leading networking brands under 1 roof give us that opportunity to drive the growth. On the other hand, as supply have improved and PC demand started to slow down, obviously, the whole idea was try to stimulate the market, move our stocks down, making sure there's no age stock issues and problems. I mean demand has started to drop and started to drop really quickly. I feel the team has done an incredible job. If you look at our end of inventory position in our PC, it was one of the lowest in the last 3 years. So we've moved the stock nicely, we've cleared all the stocks and our purchasing decisions are very, very smart. So we didn't end up with a huge over load of stock. So we went into the 2024 in a nice, clean, very well-balanced position. But 14% decline in our PC business had a significant impact. And PC businesses is around 27%, 28% of the business as well. So we couldn't feel it. If I look at peripheral business, decline of 10%. Again, it's not a small business. It's a $260 million business and declining 10%. It's directly correlated to our PC business declines. We had our consumer business started to do better and better. We're actually kind of doubling our business in there, but it's still a very small part of the business, but doing a bit better. So just very quickly, I'll give you my little outlook on '24, how I foresee this slide is going to continue to happen. So every single slice of that pie will go into the growth. Hardware overall, in the middle pie, software going to grow, hardware is going to grow. Software is going to -- the recurring revenue is going to continue to grow. We have everything in place. We have some new vendors coming, but that's going to sort of secure our continued growth in our software business. Hardware business is going to continue to grow, but it's going to be a different construct. Enterprise Networking business and the server and storage business is not going to show double-digit growth. It's probably going to show low single digits, maybe mid-single digit growth. We have enough in pipe. We have enough in areas to invoice in growth. The first side of January and February, giving me that sort of view that enterprise networking, server and storage is going to continue to do well, which is really, really good. We don't have a backlog getting into the '24 as we've had in '23. So overall backlog, if you remember, we went in '23 with almost $300 million in backlog. We went in 2024 with about $180 million of backlog. So it's reduced, obviously, supply chain improved, it's reduced. We're now in a normal operating level of our backlog, which is nice and healthy. PC business is going to -- we will go into the growth this year. And I'll explain to you why, in the next couple of slides. But that -- and look, that PC business declined last year for us just under $100 million. $100 million, it's not a small token of the decline. I'll just throw it out to you and just say, if we wouldn't have declined in our PC business, if we would have been flat, just flat, no growth, that would have given us close to double-digit growth last year. So you could see where the business is positioned. Sorry, I'll be able to answer more questions later on if you have, but this is my kind of view on next year. And as PC going to continue go into the growth in '24, peripheral is going to go into the growth. Access Control and surveillance we grew -- we basically doubled our business, except, how I expect it. So we're going to continue to drive very aggressive growth there. So some really, really good dynamic and thing to happen. So instead of being a big decline and big growth, we're going to go all pies, all going to grow, but maybe not as aggressive as some of the growth in certain areas we've seen last year. So that's sort of my view on this year. If you go to the next slide, okay, that's the outlook '24. Okay. Let's go straight into the Slide 20, opportunities. So AI, right? And everybody talks about AI. Everywhere I go, it's AI. Every vendor talks AI, every partner talks AI. What does it really mean? When I delivered update last year or even mid last year, what was saying. I'm just not -- I know it's a big buzzword. I know a lot of people talk about it. What does this really mean for Dicker Data? Well, now I have a much better view on what it means for us because the acceleration of AI as the technology revolution been absolutely phenomenal. I've never seen anything going as fast as the acceleration of AI in our world. Even when we went into the Internet or cloud, none of that were as fastly changing as AI. Like every 2, 3 weeks, something new is happening, something exciting, it's happening. So gives me a better view and better understanding what it means for Dicker Data. So we've sliced it up in 3 different areas. One is user focused. So it's basically a personal way of enhancing your everyday life. A lot of you using ChatGPT or some of you start using Copilot. It's basically ask the question, give the task and it's done for you. It gives you a huge amount of efficiency and effectiveness of living your life and driving your professional life on your personal level. So what Dicker Data -- how can we monetize it? It's Copilots. Copilot is real. Copilot happening. We've been selling Copilot last 4 weeks. We have a leading Copilot distributor in Australia and New Zealand. We're investing in driving the Copilot attached. We currently with Microsoft, where we have 120 -- over 120,000 active seats that were currently in our subscription books. We're trying to drive Copilot attached to all those seats, a huge opportunity for us. And in the last 4 weeks, it's been tremendous. So I will be able to answer more questions if you need. But this is how I see the opportunity of Dicker Data and how we can monetize in this, from a generative AI position. Then we move into what AI does for the organization, so embedded AI. This is where you utilize the solutions and AI technology to drive efficiency -- organizational efficiency. So better cybersecurity, management, better data collections, better decision-making, better -- basically, how can you internally -- within the organization, do more with less? How can you use this technology in order to become 50x more efficient in what you do? Incredible solution. So that's why you can see all the Dell technology and Lenovo and HP and Ciscos and Junipers of the world, they all trying to really embed their AI into their solutions to offer their solutions to various organizations in order to find a really good efficiencies within running their own organizations. So how does it affect Dicker Data? We have all these vendors onboard. All our partners, learning more, they're certifying, they're understanding what AI bringing and we're driving this. This is a very, very, very good motion towards company if they wanted to buy those solutions. And then the foundational full stack AI. So what it means? It means when organization itself want to run and create its own artificial intelligence pack or it's your own legal creatives where it's only specific to a particular organization so that you hook into what we call Azure AI platform. You build your own AI for your organization, and then you can upsell those into the different companies or you use it internally. And here, of course, we have a very, very, very important and very strategic relationship with NVIDIA. We've signed NVIDIA about 4 years ago. We've built our competencies around NVIDIA but we never even could imagine what this relationship could result for Dicker Data in '24 and '25. It's yet to be known, but the interest to the NVIDIA AI solutions packaged with Microsoft Azure, packaged with generative AI and embedded AI is absolutely phenomenal. The demand is going through the roof. And we're getting a lot, a lot, a lot of interest from our partners and for our customers. So that's how we'll be able to monetize by offering the NVIDIA high intellectual AI solutions to our partners. So this is, I call 2024 is the year of AI, and this is one of the biggest opportunities. So going into the next slide, I mentioned that I believe that PC is going to go back into growth, and these are the reasons. Refresh cycle starting this year. Most of those PCs were bought in the beginning of the COVID. It's been 3 years. So it will drive a very good refresh cycle this year. It has to happen. I mean, I've been doing this for 25 years. It's -- we know it is going to happen. In -- Microsoft has said that they're going to end their Windows 10 support in October '25. Basically, 8 million devices in the corporate and commercial world in Australia and New Zealand who continue right now running Windows 10 will be out of support. No -- I mean, individual users maybe be okay with that, like some of them will be okay. No corporation or government agency or any organization will be able to do it. It's a part of the governance. So we will see a huge uptake of Windows 11 and high -- and updated Windows 11 PCs. So that's going to drive a big refresh as well. And then AI PCs as well. So IDC is a big research organization in our industry. they're saying that 22% of all the PCs sold this year is going to be AI PCs. I've already seen AI PC from Microsoft Surface. I've already seen HP AI PC with a Copilot button in the keyboard of the PC. It's a revolutionary new, new, high compute, high-power graphic and what it's called MCU chip PCs. Everyone who will be able to code and build AI, everyone who wants to take a full advantage of the full Copilot would have to move into the AI PC. So all these giving me an incredible strengths and positivity about PCs coming back into growth this year. So we've talked about AI and impact. We've talked about PCs and impact. Cybersecurity is a big area of growth and opportunity. We continue -- we had a really good growth from all our cybersecurity vendors. I still feel we have a gap in obviously, cybersecurity vendors with Dicker Data Australia and New Zealand, so I'm going to continue to bring more and more cybersecurity vendors onboard. Collaboration, smart offices, smart -- and everything to do with audio and video technology is going to continue to drive growth. And diversification continue to diversify our partner portfolio and our vendor portfolio as well. If we go to the next slide, so where is our focus is going to be? So we're talking about technology. We've looked at what from the technology of -- of technological advances, what's going to drive the growth. But now let's look at where our as a Dicker Data focus is. What is going to give us the best results in '24? New Zealand. Absolutely, the growth areas continue like Mary said, we've added 1 basis point in our gross margin. Our aim is to continue to improve on that. So we're sitting at 7.6%. It's far from 10% that we're currently holding in Australia. So you could see there is another 2.5 points of improvement there. It's not going to happen this year, but we are focusing on improving that and getting closer and closer to this 10%. Continue to improve operational excellence in New Zealand, continue to drive new vendor acquisitions in New Zealand, continue to bring New Zealand and Australia closer together to drive this work. We've done so much great work for Australia and New Zealand cooperation and -- this year, and I loved it. It's just improved efficiencies and businesses, improved our margins tremendously. So we're going to continue this work. Dicker Data Access and Surveillance business is super excited for us. About $75 million, $80 million when we bought it. It's about $130 million now. We're driving to about $200 million business this year. It's a very strong double-digit margin. So you can see our gross margin is going to continue to improve. Our efficiency and operating that business is going to continue to improve. We're going -- we're definitely not taking our foot from our accelerator. We're going to drive that business to the next and next and next growth area as well. We can easily see that business going to $500 million in the next couple of years. And again, continue to drive that diversification and convergence. The thing with Dicker Data is we've been growing a lot. We've been adding new vendors. We've been adding new partners. But I don't think we've done everything we possibly can to ensure that every single customer that comes onboard to have a full visibility of all stack of solutions that we represent. All stack of skill sets that we've got to offer. Obviously, we're getting larger and larger, bigger and bigger so it's the strategy of -- instead of going for the new customers, why don't we focus on existing clear of customers and existing sort of key vendors and ensure we get this upsell and cross-sell more effectively. I think it's a tremendous opportunity. So while we're doing better and better and while we will have a bit of a tailwinds this year. While we're getting -- we're hoping that the whole market and economy is going to improve, we're hoping that the interest rate is going to come down a little bit by the end of the year. But I think all that is going to assist us to become better and better to what we have to do either way. So all in all, I'm incredibly optimistic about '24, lots of great things happening. IT is never a boring place. Something is always happening. But what I'm incredibly proud and that organization and the team is that how resilient the company is. It's just incredible. Challenging year, big organization, we continue growing, continue hitting records. I'm super excited about 2024. Okay. Now I'll open up for questions?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Bob Chen from JPMorgan.

Just in terms of the end-user computing and PC, I think it sounds like you're very confident that this will return to growth. Are you seeing early signs in terms of orders coming through for the PC refresh cycle? And maybe given your sort of history and having been through a couple of these cycles, like how do they typically work? Do you feel a lot the ordering in the first couple of years? Or is it over a 4-, 5-year period that you see the refresh cycle carry through?

Normally, refresh cycle carries through over a couple of years. So this is going to be, I think, the beginning of the refresh cycle, and we're going to continue into even stronger growth into next year. So what I've done last night in preparation for this call, I've also looked through 4 leading research companies in the world and also I see what's happening in European market and how distributors are affecting and what are they predicting in European markets. So what they're saying -- and that's kind of what are we seeing here, early signs. I think the Q1 and Q2 is going to be flattish, and I think it's going to go into very strong growth in Q3, Q4. So I've looked at Cornelius Research, IDC papers and Context, it's another research company, they're all predicting over 10% growth in PCs for the Q3 and Q4 calendar. When I talk to my vendors, Dell, HP, Lenovo all the leading PC vendors, they're all forecasting very, very similar numbers. So it gives me based on our past history, it gives me a good degree of confidence to forecast above the same numbers. So I'll probably see a bit of a flattish result that I'm only talking about PCs, right, in Q1 and Q2, and we're probably going to go in a very rapid and good growth in Q3, Q4.

And then just on the networking, enterprise networking, I think you made an earlier comment that you might see some low single digit growth in that or mid-single-digit growth in that. We saw some updates from Cisco, [indiscernible] as well just noting that there's a bit of inventory digestion happening. Is that what's impacting that sort of enterprise networking business?

Correct. Correct. Inventory digestion, but also demand came down a little bit. I think -- yes, we're definitely clearly seeing some softness in tariff. However, the great thing with Dicker Data is that we've added a couple of really good, exciting new couple of enterprise networking vendors, which are doing incredibly well. So we're having that market share shift happening right now. So that's why, obviously, we're in going to see 25% and 28% growth. But so far, so what we've seen through January and February, we're still running at really, really nice single digit growing. But I don't think that's going to change. I mean if we're going to go into a little bit more stronger growth. Talking to Cisco locally, they see a very, very strong -- some very strong opportunity coming in Q2, Q3. Yet to be determined, yet to be seen. The pipeline is quite okay. It's quite good. I don't see any negative -- unfortunately, not a huge like growth. But it's good. It's stable. That's exactly where it need it to be. So I have my data center infrastructure and enterprise networking so far, so very good.

All right. Perfect. And just a final one. Just on the Copilot side of things. In terms of getting that attached the sort of rebate you get for on-selling or cross-selling sort of Copilot, is it the same sort of rebate structure to your existing software licenses?

No, no. No. It's by far the greatest. I mean, our relationship with Microsoft has gone into a completely new level. And I'm so proud of it. It's probably one of the most exciting local stories and a local distributor like us for such an incredibly strong strategic partnership with a giant company like Microsoft. I mean we're now moving to what NVIDIA and building that type of relationship with NVIDIA as well, which is also incredibly exciting. But Copilot -- to answer your question, Copilot incentives are by far greater than anything else. It is not a simple sell because it's not -- you can't buy and run effectively Copilot on a normal of 365 CSP version. You need to upgrade the version. You need to be -- you need to understand how the Copilot works. And also you need to understand what efficiency and what it brings to your organization. So at the moment, we're running through a huge deal of channel enablement, training and really just messaging that Copilot advantages is uptake been phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. I've been at Microsoft AI conference. It was 5,000 people in there. It was complete sellout, and only 5% of all people who wanted to attend, attend it. So 5,000 people attended. But only 5% allowed to get ticket. So yes, I mean it's a huge revolution. I mean, it's -- I just can't wait to see what it's going to bring to the whole. Not only just technological world, but the entire world.

The next question is from Apoorv Sehgal from UBS.

Congrats on the full year results. Just a shorter-term question, if I may. Just on the Q4 sales, looks like it was down 1% year-on-year. Q3 was up 5%. Any particular product category that slowed down a bit more in that Q4 period, please?

PCs, definitely. It was slow. We -- I think enterprise networking, invoicing started to slow down a little bit as well. So you're right, December was slightly under the budget. So that's why you've probably seen that, but it's kind of that motion is going to continue happening into the Q1. Software enterprise networking, software data set infrastructure, and we're probably going to see more of a flattish kind of result in the PC area, driven by the good growth in our software business.

And so that comment on maybe December being a bit under budget. What about January, February so far? How are you seeing that?

Still going. Still going. Right on the budget.

Okay. And also just looking at the different product segment slide, it looks like the software segment did slow a fair bit in the second half. I think first half, you're up like 21% in software. Second half it's back-sell, was probably up low single digit. Was there any particular reason for that?

Yes, yes. There was a reason, correct. So we have a vendor called Autodesk. And within this vendor, we had a couple of big customers. And those customers went and start procuring AutoCAD directly. It was not insignificant impact, especially in December because December is the month where some of the spend is doing up to 30% -- 25%, 30% of the entire annual revenue. So going -- the couple of customers going direct, it's kind of stopped that up a little bit. We have a very strong contingent plans on that, not to say but a lot of other existing software vendors is doing incredibly well. So yes, but this is the reason.

Okay. But into 2024, you're still confident that software should be up. Can we [ get ] it again?

I mean we're getting into the $1 billion software business side. Look, we'll see if we're going to get into double digits or high single digits, but my expectation is a very strong growth. Yes. I mean if we -- on the $900 million, if we add another $100 million, we'll hit $1 billion and that would be a double-digit growth, right. So if we get a single digit growth, we're going to get very close to $1 billion in revenue. So that's where -- that's what the mindset is.

The next question is from Aryan Norozi from Barrenjoey.

Just on the PBT margins and gross margins. I mean, in the fourth quarter, you had about 3.8% PBT margins and close to 9.7% gross margin. How do we think about that? I know it's dangerous extrapolating 1 single quarter because there is volatility. But can you just give us an idea around how calendar '24, '25 shapes up on those lines and what you're sort of aiming for, please?

Very similar. We don't -- look, we're always trying to get 3.5% to 4%. That's where our aim is. I think continue driving the gross margins up in New Zealand and continue to drive gross margins up in Australia through obviously growth in our DAS business is going to help us to achieve this. Continuing to focusing our cost, continue to making sure that we're managing our costs really well is going to continue to deliver those results. So no changes in strategy. We're very mindful of preserving our value in delivering those sort of numbers. So if you're asking whether we're going to go and buy the business and go into a low margin or negative margin business just to drive our top line, that will never happen. It's not our style, it's not our business, we're not going to do it.

So when you're saying that's going to continue, just in terms of the PBT margin, like is the calendar year '23 of 3.6% a better way of thinking that or the fourth quarter run rate of 3.8%. I mean it makes it a bit of a difference. Like is the annual sort of 3.6%, a pretty sustainable number versus the 3.8%, which is highest in the year?

The way we're thinking about it somewhere between 3.5% and 4%. So 3.5% would be strong and acceptable being 4%, it's very, very strong.

Perfect. And gross margins, I think last time in August, you were sort of talking 9% to 9.5% for the group, it was the target. You're obviously well ahead of that. Has that target now shifted upwards? Is there anything that impacted this quarter in terms of gross margin that will unwind? Or is that sort of 9.7% the new base moving forward and the aim of 9% to 9.5% is doubled now.

I think, look, I think continuation of the growth of the DAS business going to strengthen that position. But also we continue for putting a lot of focus on our New Zealand business and improving our gross margin in New Zealand business, and it's not insignificant, it's over NZD 600 million. So I think definitely aim to drive somewhere around 9.5%, 9.7%. Anything above 9% is good, is strong. It's way above competition. But now having a number of businesses delivering sort of 15% and 20% margin -- even our consumer business is delivering over 10% margin, I think it gives us a good confidence level to drive it somewhere around 9.5%. So I think 9.5% would be a really good benchmark.

Okay. And then just in terms of the DAS business in terms of the profitability there, I think it was just a breakeven-ish early in calendar '23, then you went to sort of 3% profit -- PBT margin in the third quarter. How does that tracking now? And where do you want to get that to please, into '24?

We've had a good improvement last year, we went into the profitability absolutely. Mary, maybe will have more details around actual profitability around that business. I don't have it in front of me. But one thing I can tell you that last year that went into the good growth opportunity. Are we where we need to be with them? Absolutely not. We're going for the growth. You can see it. We're growing. Gross margins are strong. We're looking at our costs, and we're redirecting our costs, and we've definitely done a good improvement, but we're not there yet.

Yes, Ari. So in terms of the quarter profitability was in line with the company profitability, net profit margin, whilst we were still working through the cost structure, and we're looking for that to now start delivering above the company PBT on an allocated cost basis, but it's not there yet.

Okay. So fourth quarter was in line with the sort of 3 point -- sort of 6% -- it's 8% and then fourth calendar '24 building on that?

That's correct.

The next question is from James Lennon from Petra Capital.

Mary and Vlad, well done. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly, are you able to maybe share what the difference is between in revenue growth between Australia and New Zealand, you're pretty much flat at the gross revenue line. Just keen to know whether that's economic reasons or did you underperform there in market share? Or what composition changes? What's sort of driving that difference there between the 2?

Of course.

Yes. New Zealand had a larger proportion of consumer business being the Apple business with the decline in PC demand, it had that larger impact in New Zealand results in terms of revenue. But the quality of the sales improved. So as you can see with the margin improvements there, we see growth on other segments, particularly around our software business in the New Zealand space. Vlad, you probably have a bit more color on the discrete segments?

Yes. No, no, you're spot so. You're spot on. It's the balance of the PC business versus other business. And also it's the Apple -- a particular segment of the Apple business that was low -- running at a very low margin, where we've put a lot of constraints and a lot of limitation on that business. So it's the improving of the quality or constraint of the revenue and focusing really strongly on efficiency of running that business. What resulted in the outcome that we've had. So yes, hopefully, it will answer the question.

That's great. And that sort of leads into the next question, just in terms of your target margin there for New Zealand, you're saying you can get that to a similar level to what Australia does at the GP line. Does that need compositional changes? Does it need -- just what sort of needs to happen there to get to [indiscernible].

Yes. Yes, look, you're right. Our composition needs to change. With $150 million Apple business running at a low single digit margin, it will never get there. It just -- I mean, even if we grow by another $100 million or $200 million, it's only really hard to get to about 9.5%. So what needs to happen is the composition of the entire business needs to change. More focus on high-margin vendors, more focus on DAS business, more focus on -- even the consumer business, but that generates a very strong margin for full service business and continued expansion and acquisition into corporate and commercial and SMB. So in New Zealand, still a far too much reliance on some of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 large partners, we need to drive a lot more SMB presence in there. So I don't think we'll be able to get sort of to 9.5%, 10% gross margin in New Zealand quickly. But even with what we have right now and with the right reconstruct and maybe put a little bit more sort of pressure on sort of Apple business and contain it where it is and grow other businesses, I think there is definitely an opportunity to continue to improve gross margin. Even if I improve it for another 0.5 basis point this year, that's going to be a big difference.

Right. And just one last one, I guess, on that as well. Are you seeing the businesses or sales are harder to get in New Zealand or unlike, is the economy struggling more over there than it is here? Or is it not really sort of a difference for you?

Maybe, yes. That's what Mark [ Kanaly ] is saying, and that's what a lot of people think that in Zealand is suffering a lot more in Australia. However, we are underrepresented in New Zealand. I have a lot of great opportunities to bring new vendors and share shift. So while it's not helping me, I still don't see the reason why we should continue improving. So however, again, saying all that to me is there is the core and basis and platform of the business, which is very, very important. So get the right cost, get the right efficiency and get the right margin contributions. So -- I mean, I still -- ultimately, we were running $600 million business. I still can run $600 million business at 2%, 2.5% NPBT margin, but we not there yet. So a lot more work is going to get there.

The next question is from Jack Dunn from Citi.

Just first on the AI, when I asked, when you said for copilot by far credit incentive. Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of the difference? Is it twice as large as some of your other software vendors?

So the question was -- before previously, the question was whether Microsoft is incentivizing distributors to drive Copilot adoption? And bigger -- are they paying us bigger rebates and bigger incentives to drive it versus a normal CSP motion? And I answered yes, they are. It's the new tech. It's something that Microsoft is very focused on MA offering us not only back-end rebates but also upfront marketing dollars. They're investing in our people. The -- so the overall composition of investment is by far greater by Microsoft into distributors and into the partners to drive Copilot adoption. It's very hard for me to give you an exact number. I mean -- but if I say -- they're paying a double on driving Copilot adoption versus, for example, normalcy Office 365 CSP, I would not be far away from that.

Okay. Very helpful. And then in dollars terms, how big do you see the potential market for Copilot across your partner base in '24 and '25?

It depends on adoption rates. Copilot is about for 1 seat, I think it's about $500 a year. You have to pay -- you have to prepay for 12 months. And not only it's the $500 per seat per year, it also -- you need to upgrade your CSP level from E3 to E5. So it will be an additional opportunity there to upsell. Like I said, we have 120,000 active users in our subscription model. We're increasing that subscription base because, our CSP motion is very, very strong, and we're growing very strongly as well. It's all about mathematics. It's all about the rate of adoption and how quickly it's going to happen. So it's a very early stages yet, but if you would ask me this question 3 months ago, I'll probably tell you, I don't think we'll sell a Copilot in the next 6 months. While -- everything is just happening so fast. And it's really good because we love complexity and we love pace because we adapt very quickly, we're very agile on making decisions really quickly. So it puts us -- it gives us that sort of competitive edge. Hence, obviously, it's a -- like I said, early stages, 4 weeks only, but we've done a really, really good job in demonstrating and selling Copilot versus all our competitors. So I'm really pleased with this result.

Okay. That's very helpful. And just one more on the AI front. The AI PCs, what are your expectations from what you've seen that's come to market so far on the pricing uplift for the ASPs?

Yes, yes. It's -- I think it's about 30% premium on ASP versus our normal average PC, which is a very good question. I actually forgot to mention it. And yes, IDC predicting 22% of all PCs sold this year is going to be AI-enabled PCs, so there you go you can do a bit of a math there as well. So we're super excited about it as well. Our keynote, we have not started selling them yet. I think it's more of a Q3, Q4 opportunity.

So did you just mention, don't know if I heard it correct, did you say you're expecting 22% of PCs sold in '24 to be AI PCs?

Correct. That's what IDC -- I'm not sure, but IDC is one of the research companies. That's what they said, yes.

Okay. Perfect. And just last one. On the vendor concentration, it looked like there was a good jump from 52% to 56% outside of your top 5 vendors. Maybe talk to sort of what drove this? Were there any vendors which you had a recently, or the last couple of years that had a more material impact to your sales? Or is it more from the Hills and DAS business?

No, no, no, definitely. Like, for example, we brought on NetApp onboard, Extreme Networks. We have the Juniper Networks had a phenomenal grower. Samsung is one 1 the fastest-growing vendors we have. So we have those sort of Tier 2, Tier 3 vendors with a very, very strong growth. And while some of the top 5, well, HP declined, Dell declined, Lenovo declined. The only 2 out of top 5 grew, which is Cisco and Microsoft. So it's a nice to have the diversification strategy. So even in top 3 of the top 5 declining, the Tier 2 vendors are doing really, really well. So yes.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Ed Woodgate from Jarden.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Congrats on the result. It's quite a good result considering the top line and generate a lot of margin expansion there. So yes, congratulations. But just quickly, I might just follow up on a few of the questions, and sorry if one of them has been asked, since I was switching between lines. But following up on the copilot discussion, is it fair to say that you haven't really benefited much from that yet because of the minimum seat requirements was 300. And I think they lower that to basically no minimums earlier this year.

There is no minimum now. We can sell only 1.

So that mean that -- does that mean that you can -- should that be more of an immediate impact to your P&L in this first half of this calendar year then?

It's very early stage yet. I mean I want to think that way. It's yet to see so far, the time has been fantastic. But yes, it's yet to see. I mean we've positioned ourselves very strongly. We built our platform. We've done a lot of background work in order to become the fastest growing and fastest selling copilot distributor in this country. So it's very early stage, yes. We'll probably be able to give you a little bit more update on how that motion is going and what impact, is it significant or not as significant, probably in the next few months.

And then just a follow up on the gross margin discussion. So the strength that you're seeing there was any of that due to mix? Or were you perhaps getting supported by suppliers to help move stock in the channel?

Our supplier is always supporting us. And that's why you've seen we went through no supply into oversupply, we finished the year with a good, even nicely balanced supply and still maintain our gross margins. So that just answers your question.

Okay. Fair enough. And then just finally, you guys have done a great job of expanding TAM through regions and also through, I guess, product verticals into say, like the DAS business. Is there anything else that interest to you in the short term or that you could provide some color on that?

I think the short term this year is -- I mean, look, if the opportunity comes along, we will assess it on its merits. We're incredibly open-minded and as you can see, very growth-minded as well. But we do believe that all the acquisitions we've made, all the new partners that came on board, driving that new culture within organization, we already have so much it feels we're not taking full advantage of what we already have. So our existing partners buying new technologies, our new vendors having access to the new partners and continue to drive collaboration between Australia and New Zealand. That's going to be the core focus and core priorities for the business. I think -- we believe that the tailwind of the improving market conditions is going to help us. We just wanted to make sure that we're in a good position to take advantage of that because the vendor base, the customer base, the leadership position, the market share, the investments we're getting from vendors is absolutely outstanding. One of the probably most enthusiastic that I've ever seen. Just wanted to make sure that we take advantage when the demands have really going -- started to get through. So I'm thinking by the Q3, Q4, we need to be ready to -- really for the accelerated growth.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back for closing remarks.

I just would like to thank everyone for joining our call. Like David said, and Mary said, we're incredibly pleased with the results. One thing that we did not mention, and I know it's a massive thing on David's priority list, is how incredible and resilient the culture is with Dicker Data, our people, just incredible. And I think a lot of that coming from a wonderful culture that we're driving within the organization. And we are maintaining and preserving it and accelerating it. So yes, just incredibly proud of everyone in the organization, and I'm looking forward for a very, very successful and very, very good 2024.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.