ePlus inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the E-plus Earnings Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Clay Parkhurst, General Counsel. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you for joining us today. On the call is Mark Maron, CEO and President, Darren Raguel, COO and President of E-plus Technology, Elaine Marion, CFO, and Erica Stoker, General Counsel, I want to take a moment to remind you that the statements we make this afternoon that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements and are based on management's current plans, estimates, and projections. Actual and anticipated future results may vary materially due to certain risks and uncertainties detailed in the earnings release we issued this afternoon and our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents that we may file with the SEC. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of which the statement is made, and the company undertakes no responsibility to update any of these forward-looking statements in light of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, we will be using certain non-GAAP measures during the call. This includes the GAAP financial reconciliation and earnings release, which is posted on the investor information section of our website at www.eplus.com. And now I'd like to turn over the call to Mark Marin. Mark?

Thank you, Clay, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. In the fourth quarter, our top line and gross billings increased by double digits with net sales up 12.7% and gross billings up 13.8%. While our gross margin and operating income were below our expectations, We had a strong year overall and are pleased with how the business has performed at a challenging demand environment. We ended the year with over 250 million in cash on hand, which provides us with the resources to continue to make strategic acquisitions, invest in customer facing personnel and expand our solutions and services, especially in the fast growing areas such as AI cloud networking and security. During the fourth quarter, Product sales in our technology business increased 12.2%. We had a particularly strong quarter in networking product sales, partially driven by deliveries of equipment and inventory. Additionally, we continue to see positive results from our land and expand strategy, winning significant business from new and existing enterprise customers in the quarter. While it's impacted our margins in the quarter, we are capturing market share and growing our customer base, which positions us well for long-term growth. In our services business, revenue increased 14.8% in the quarter and 10.4% for the full year, led by managed services, which increased 22% for both the quarter and year. In addition, margins improved across both professional and managed services. Our focus on services as part of our long-term strategy to meet customers' needs in a fast-changing and increasingly complex IT marketplace is enhancing our relationships with both customers and our partners. Managed services plays an increasingly important role, both for our customers operationally, as well as for E+, building a solid recurring revenue base, which creates consistent profitability and predictability. With that in mind, we expanded our storage as a service and enhanced maintenance service offerings, which have been important new business drivers for us. We are pleased that our annuity service backlog is up approximately 50% and giving us line of sight to future annuity service revenue streams. Our financing segment performed well in the quarter. Our finance offerings enable our customers to have flexible payment options and provide a value-added service to our vendor partners as well. During the fourth quarter, financing segment revenue increased 15.5% driven by transactional gains and portfolio earnings. partially offset by a decline in month-to-month rents. For the year, despite revenues declining 5.8% against a tough compare in the prior year, adjusted EBITDA remained flat. Consolidated net income declined in the quarter, primarily due to lower product margins from a higher percentage of sales to enterprise customers and product mix. In addition, we experienced higher operating expenses, primarily as a result of higher headcount. as we continue to invest in customer-facing sales and engineering personnel to meet demand for fast-growing areas such as AI and increased acquisition-related amortization expenses. Our headcount was up 146 employees, with most customer-facing as we continue to invest for growth. It is important to note that our customer base grew by over 300 customers this year. Our incremental investments position us well across sell and upsell into our accounts as we roll out new solutions such as our AI Ignite program, which is focused on helping customers in their AI journey. We believe investments are necessary to continue our positive revenue momentum, capture additional market share, and expand our solution set to meet customer demand. While it remains a challenging economic environment with margins lower than expected for the quarter and operating expenses up, We will continue to manage our core structure and attain operating leverage over time. Looking forward, we expect gross margins to return to more normalized levels in fiscal year 25. As it relates to AI, we are seeing strong interest in our AI Ignite program, which helps customers in the formative stages of their AI engagements. With envisioning sessions and workshops, we offer a consultative approach to identify use cases around business outcomes, end-user productivity, or IT efficiency that customers can measure. AI Ignite helps the customer understand its data ecosystem with an open dialogue around AI governance and cross-functional involvement with business and IT leaders. We believe that AI has lengthened some decisions as customers evaluate the benefit of AI versus cost. It is early innings for many in their AI journey, but it will be a growth driver for E+, as it fits in our wheelhouse of infrastructure, security, network modernization, and the services required to implement these solutions. We have maintained a balanced approach to capital allocation, which includes investing for growth and acquisitions, and a focus on improving shareholder returns. Our balance sheet and cash generation remain strong. In fact, at year end, our cash is over a quarter billion dollars, which gives us flexibility with our M&A plans along with our growth initiatives. E-plus board also approved a new share buyback plan of up to 1.25 million shares. Although Q4 was not what we expected, we believe we are well positioned with our strategy and had a solid year overall as evidenced by our net sales being up 7.6%, and gross profit being up 6.4% for the year. I do want to take this time to thank our teammates for their efforts this year, and I'm proud of the work they have done in a tough environment. I will now turn the call over to Elaine to discuss our financial results in more detail. Elaine?