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. 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 Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in other documents that we may file with the SEC. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of which the statement was 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 a GAAP financial reconciliation and earnings release, which is posted on the investor information section of our website at www.eplus.com. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mark Marin. Mark.

Thank you, Clay, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fiscal year 2025 first quarter results. I will recap our first quarter highlights and provide an update on our business. Then Elaine will discuss our financial results in more detail. I will conclude our prepared remarks with the discussion of our outlook. After that, we'll open the call to your questions. We continue to execute on our strategic initiatives around AI, cloud, security, and the related advisory and annuity services. Coming into the quarter, we had a tough compare to last year, which resulted in a net sales decline of 5.2% for the first quarter fiscal year 2025 compared to last year. Last year's quarter had 25% net sales growth, including a nearly 30% increase in product sales in our technology business. Our gross billings and gross margins held essentially flat when compared to the prior year's quarter. We believe our gross billings are stabilizing now that supply chains are normalizing. A portion of the net sales decline this quarter reflects an increase in the netting of sales from gross to net, partially offset by increases in professional and managed services revenues. We believe our product revenues are down due to some customers implementing technology orders that were previously supply chain constrained over the last year. Both quarters were affected by the supply chain, last year by an abrupt easing of the supply chain, and this quarter as customers digested their prior purchases. Despite these timing differences, we believe we are focused on the necessary IT areas which make us more resilient reflected in our annual guidance. Our service revenues sustained solid growth, with overall service revenues up 15.8%. Managed services continued to build and were up 28% year-over-year. We also continued to see strong growth in our managed services bookings, which were up approximately 70% year-over-year. This bodes well for ePLUS as these are recurring revenue streams that give us predictability and more consistent profitability in future years. Security was an area of strength for us, which continues to be over 20% of our gross billings in the trailing 12 months and was up over 9% quarter over quarter. Our finance segment performed well with revenue up 6.4% due to an increase in our portfolio earnings resulting in a 24.3% increase in adjusted EBITDA for this segment. We continue to see strong customer interest for our AI Ignite program and discovery assessments. We have also rolled out a new storage as a service offering and an Azure Recover program. We believe these will continue to support the rapidly evolving needs of our customer base both now and into the future. Many of our customers are in the formative phase of their AI journeys, contemplating how best to leverage AI. In many cases, customers do not have well-defined use cases, have too many data silos, a lack of data cleanliness, and immature or nonexistent AI policies. We believe we are well positioned to help our customers capitalize on this opportunity through our AI Ignite program. We are seeing interest across various verticals, which presents a significant opportunity for us within our customer base and for net new customers. As a certified NVIDIA DGX managed service partner, we have had some wins with our AI support services in managing AI optimized infrastructure stacks. In the quarter, we experienced higher SP&A expenses, primarily relating to headcount from both organic hires to support our new solution areas and the peak acquisition. We will continue to invest in customer-facing personnel and sales and engineering professionals with skills in the highest demand areas such as AI, security, and services. In the quarter, we had some lag between the higher cost of these onboarded personnel and revenue generation. Although first quarter of 2025 experienced some revenue headwinds on a sequential basis, we were disciplined with our SG&A costs. Sequentially, this discipline and gross margin expansion of 120 basis points contributed to our operating income, which increased more than 20%, and operating margin was up 130 basis points. Over time, we believe we will continue to benefit from operating leverage as we move forward with the investments we have made. Turning to our balance sheet, with supply chain easing, we've been able to deliver many delayed projects, which resulted in accelerating our cash conversion cycle and a cash balance of 350 million. With this capital, we have the funds to execute on strategic initiatives, judiciously invest in headcount, and support our share repurchase program. During the quarter, we repurchased 162,319 shares. This most recent share repurchase program further demonstrates our commitment to returning value to shareholders and our confidence in long-term growth potential. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to repurchase share based on investment opportunities to drive growth, our financial position, and market conditions. On the growth front, we continue to identify both near-term and long-term organic and inorganic opportunities, and we have a healthy pipeline. Our balance sheets provides financial flexibilities to support future growth initiatives. The underlying strategic focus of our business is solid, and we believe we are well positioned to drive top line sales and profitable growth. I will now turn the call over to Elaine to discuss our financial results in more detail. Elaine?