TD SYNNEX Corporation

Good morning. My name is Kate and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the TD Cinex first quarter fiscal 2025 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded and all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. At this time for opening remarks, I would like to pass the call over to David Jordan, America's CFO and Head of Investor Relations at TD Synapse. David, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. With me today is Patrick Zamet, CEO, and Marshall Witt, CFO. Before we continue, let me remind you that today's discussions contain forward-looking statements within the meanings of the federal securities laws, including predictions, estimates, projections, or other statements about future events, including statements about our strategy, demand, plans and positioning, growth, cash flow, capital allocation, and stockholder return, as well as our financial expectations for future fiscal periods. Actual results may differ materially from those mentioned in these forward-looking statements as a result of risk and uncertainties discussed in today's earnings release. In the Form 8K we filed today, in the risk factors section of our Form 10-K and our other reports and filings with the SEC. We do not intend to update any forward-looking statements. Also, during this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP results are included in our earnings press release and the related Form 8-K available on our investor relations website, ir.tdsinex.com. This conference call is the property of TD Cinex and may not be recorded or rebroadcast without our permission. I will now turn the call over to Patrick. Patrick? Thank you, David.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to report a strong start to fiscal year 2025. Let me begin by highlighting two key themes from this quarter. First, our Q1 results demonstrate strong momentum across the business, with all regions and major technologies contributing. Gross billings grew by 7.5% year-over-year in Q1 and 9.5% in constant currency. Advanced solutions grew by 7% year-over-year, reflecting continued demand for integrated IT solutions. Endpoint solutions grew by 8% year-over-year, with growth across PCs and mobile. In an evolving macroeconomic environment, we are executing with discipline and focus. Within distribution, we saw solid growth in gross profit and operating income, reflecting our focus on profitable growth and operating efficiencies. As Marshall will discuss further, in Q1, Hive was below our expectations due to a component shipment delayed from Q1 to Q2 and demand shortfalls which may last a few quarters. While the business is temporarily soft, we are confident the situation will normalize as the market conditions continue to be favorable. Finally, the strength of our business model allowed us to grow ahead of the market in Q1. Our end-to-end strategy, global reach, and specialist go-to-market approach continues to allow us to capture a wide range of IT spend. For example, within strategic technologies, all portfolios, including cloud, cybersecurity, data and analytics, and Hive, once again grew by double digits in Q1 and across all our geographic segments. In Q1, we expanded our reach to 30,000 active partners and 500,000 end users transacting through our cloud marketplace. Our ability to deliver local expertise with a global reach makes us a go-to partner for vendors looking to expand in higher growth markets. Latin America and APJ once again grew by double digits in Q1 in constant currency. In these regions, we continue to build margin-accretive partnerships with leading innovative vendors helping grow their business by vastly simplifying market complexity at the country level for both vendors and customers. The expansion of our line cart also drives expansion of our partner base as we continue to enrich our value proposition and product offering in those markets. These results demonstrate our position as the vital link in the global IT ecosystem. As IT solutions become more complex, driven by trends such as the convergence of hardware and software, and the proliferation of technologies such as cloud, cybersecurity, and AI, our collection of specialists go to market, combined with our market-leading depth of capabilities, position us to be the partner of choice for our customers and vendors. Because of our specialized units and local knowledge, we solved some of their most challenging business problems, accelerate growth, and reduce cost. For example, building on our past success with a major cybersecurity vendor, we recently won their US business with a large customer. Leveraging our best-in-class cybersecurity practice, we are helping this vendor deliver platform-wide solutions that integrate hardware, software, and AI. We are also providing enablement and support services offerings that expand our value proposition to our partners. Our broad range of specialist approach also positions us to be a natural extension of our vendors go-to-market across multiple specialties in IT, creating opportunities for us to add value with services and solutions. For example, this quarter we significantly expanded our business with a leading infrastructure software provider across multiple countries around the world. By partnering with TD Cinex, they rationalized their distribution footprint and leveraged us for a variety of pre- and post-sale services. Our broad geographic reach and in-country experts and knowledge were differentiators and gave them confidence to lean in with TD Cinex. As this win demonstrates, new and existing partners are looking to us for assistance in delivering the next generation of technology solutions, all while helping them broaden their partner and end-user reach in a cost-efficient way. Meanwhile, as more B2B buyers become digital first, our purpose-built digital capabilities are making it easier than ever to transact with us. For example, this quarter we launched our Digital Bridge Microsoft Teams app, the first of many connectors in development within the platform. Both connectors will enable our partners' coworkers to connect to our platforms directly from the applications they are using in their daily work. Our vision with Digital Bridge is to provide our partner community with a marketplace of pre-built integrations, which provide real-time information and enable faster automated workflows for quoting, backlog management, and more that reduce costs and increase efficiency. Another example is our PACE platform, which is a fully digital customer lifecycle tool that leverages our unique data lake and powers our digital go-to-market channel. Already gaining significant traction in Europe with over 50,000 partners, PACE delivers personalized customer insights that enables us to expand our reach and drive demand across the long tail of SMB. With growth and profitability significantly above the overall company average, we are now expanding the platform into the Americas. We continue to receive industry recognitions for these capabilities and expertise. This quarter, We were honored to be named Distribution Partner of the Year for multiple industry leaders like AWS, Palo Alto Networks, Insight Enterprises, and NVIDIA. In North America, we were awarded Best Distributor of the Year by ChannelPro, a recognition of our contributions to the MSP community. These are just a few examples, but all move TD Cinex in one direction. from traditional IT distribution to accelerating adoption of the next generation of technology solutions, capitalizing on conversion trends in IT, and driving our long-term sustainable leadership. We remain resilient in the face of uncertainty, and we lean on our broad technology and product portfolio and ecosystem to adapt to the continuously changing economic environment. Throughout all of this, our North Star continues to be profitable growth and free cash flow. We will thoughtfully and carefully allocate excess cash to the highest return opportunities to ensure sustainable value creation for our customers and shareholders. We look forward to sharing more about our long-term vision and how we'll get there at our investor day on April 10th in New York City. Now, I will pass it to Marshall for financial performance and outlook. Marshall? Thanks, Patrick, and good morning, everyone.

We had a solid performance in the first quarter with total gross billings of $20.7 billion, up 7.5% year-over-year, 9.5% in constant currency, and at the high point of our guidance range. We were pleased to see year-over-year growth across all major geographies and most product categories. In quarter one, there was an approximately 30% reduction from gross billings to net revenue, which was higher than expected and up from Q4, driven primarily by a higher mix of infrastructure software business, which is part of our advanced solutions portfolio. Net revenue was $14.5 billion, up 4% year over year and within our guidance range. Our endpoint solutions portfolio grew 8% year over year, driven by PCs and mobile. Our advanced solutions portfolio grew 7% year-over-year, driven by software, servers and storage, and Hive. Gross profit was $1 billion, or 4.82% of gross billings, representing a 9 basis point sequential decline and a 40 basis point decline year-over-year. Most of the decline in profit margin year-over-year was driven by the expected tough compare in Hive. There was an additional 10 basis point impact within Hive, attributed to investments in design and assembly, as well as the impact of a temporary change in project composition. Non-GAAP SG&A expense was $599 million, or 2.89% of gross billings, representing a 13 basis point improvement year over year. The cost to gross profit percentage, which we define as the ratio of non-GAAP SG&A expense to gross profit, was 60% in quarter one. and slightly below expectations due to hives. From a distribution perspective, we dropped through 50% of gross profit growth, demonstrating our commitment to profitable growth. Non-GAAP operating income was $399 million, or 1.92% of gross billings, representing a seven basis point sequential decline and a 28 basis point decline year over year, primarily driven by hives. Interest expense and finance charges were $88 million, higher than expected due to increased working capital to support highest largest customers. The non-GAAP effective tax rate was approximately 23%, which was in line with expectations. Total non-GAAP net income was $237 million, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $2.80, both within our guidance range. Turning to the balance sheet for quarter one, net working capital was $4.3 billion, up approximately $1 billion, primarily due to the increase in Hive inventory, which was previously discussed, the timing of payables, and the overall growth of the business. Pre-cash flow usage for the quarter was approximately $800 million, primarily due to Hive working capital. We returned $138 million to stockholders in quarter one, with $101 million of share repurchases and $37 million of dividend payments. For the current quarter, our board of directors has approved a cash dividend of 44 cents per common share that will be payable on April 25th, 2025 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 11th, 2025. We ended the quarter with $542 million of cash and cash equivalents and debt of $4.3 billion. Our gross leverage ratio was 2.5 times and our net leverage ratio was 2.2 times. Moving on to our outlook. These numbers are all non-GAAP. For the second quarter, we expect gross billings in the range of 19.7 to 20.7 billion, representing growth of approximately 5% at the midpoint. We do not anticipate a material currency impact year over year. Our outlook is based on a euro to dollar exchange rate of 1.08. Net revenue in the range of 13.9 to 14.7 billion, which translates to an anticipated growth to net adjustment of approximately 29%. Non-GAAP net income in the range of $205 to $247 million. Diluted earnings per share in the range of $2.45 to $2.95 per diluted share based on weighted average shares outstanding of approximately $83 million. We expect a tax rate of approximately 23% and interest expense of $86 million. We continue to assess the macroeconomic environment, including tariffs. And as of today, we are well positioned to outperform the IT distribution market. In fiscal 25, we continue to be committed to mid-single-digit growth, buildings growth, and generating $1.1 billion of free cash flow. Our outlook is adjusted to reflect temporary shortfalls and highs. However, we remain highly confident in the long-term outlook. We plan to host an investor day on April 10th, where we will provide more detail on our strategy, medium-term targets, and capital allocation framework. With that, we'll open it up for your questions. Operator?

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We request that you limit yourself to one question to allow time for the other participants to ask their questions. If there is remaining time, you are welcome to re-queue with additional questions. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of David Vogt with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks, Marshall. So obviously, I think the elephant in the room is can we maybe dig in a little bit more on Hive? A couple of reasons. One, what were the component shortages in the quarter? And then you mentioned, Marshall and Patrick, sort of a softer than expected demand backdrop. Can you kind of help us understand kind of what's attributing, what's kind of driving that sort of outlook? Is it a product transition? Is it lack of components? Is it just sort of a pause because I'm trying to think it through with regards to the gross billing commentary for the full year still being relatively solid in that sort of mid-single-digit range? So is it a timing issue? Just how do we think about it and put some more color and some more guardrails around what's going on at HIVE? Thanks.

Yes. Good morning. Thanks a lot for the question, David. Just would like to set the scene. So we had overall a very strong sales growth this quarter. driven by distribution and hive. Hive, again, grew double digit year on year, but unfortunately, slightly lower than expectation. And that's what we will provide a little bit more color on it in a second. Just very rapidly on distribution, I just want to make some statements. We enjoyed very nice growth. We think we grew faster than the market at, I mean, with a mid single digit growth. Operating margins are stable and we were very pleased with the fact that we could bring to the bottom line more than 50% of the GP growth. So that's on distribution, solid performance. When you look at Hive, What happened is, again, double-digit growth, but some demand not materializing. So indeed, we have on stock. In fact, those components were on stock. As you know, for our customers, we also do strategic buys, which we keep on stock. We get remunerated for it. And when they need the components, then we ship them. I mean, we had in particular one very large business we thought we would ship in Q1. That didn't materialize. We believe it's going to happen in Q2. So it's just temporary. It's just a delay in the shipment. But unfortunately, it impacted our gross profit, our operating margin percent, and obviously our cash flow generation.

Yeah, thank you, Patrick. Just, David, to your question on softer demand, and I'll reference what we spoke to in terms of guidance for quarter two. We have one customer that has some temporary demand pause in their outlook, and so that's one of the reasons why we're seeing a little bit softer backdrop in quarter two related to hives. But thinking broader just in terms of the position we play, the markets we serve, the projects we're participating in, and also the upcoming customers that we're about to onboard, we feel really good about the demand environment and our ability to participate and grow.

Your next question comes from the line of Raph Lobe-Tucario with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you for asking my questions. This quarter, did you see any pull-in or pre-buying by customers to avoid any increase in tariffs? And Marshall, you had last quarter guided that billings would grow mid-single digits every quarter. Is that still your understanding for 3Q and 4Q? And how should we think about this, the reduction from billings to revenue for the full year, since I think you said software is a bigger part of the mix? So if you can give any color on pre-buys, on what you're thinking about, you know, quarterly billings growth and the billings to revenue reduction. Thank you.

So good morning, Rupu. Thanks a lot for the question. I will take the first one about the pre-buys. So in particular, when you think about PC where pre-buys could be an option, I mean, we had a very strong, high single-digit growth in PCs this quarter. We believe that the impact of tariff has been relatively limited. So we believe that for the moment, the growth is driven really by the refresh of the base, of the PC base, both during the pandemic and the Windows 11 refresh. So again, limited impact for the moment.

And then, Rupali, just on the theme of tariff for Hive, just to cover that off, we effectively passed through tariff-related costs. We recouped those. So no impact to the Hive business. And our position with Hive, relative to the last time tariffs were introduced back in 2016-2017, we're in a much better position today with our onshore capabilities that we continue to provide Hive with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. If I respond to your question about the mid single digit growth for the for the full year, we still believe that we will be able to achieve mid single digit growth in quarter two. We think that distribution will be at mid single digits or a little bit higher and that hive will have a slightly down year over year revenue performance. But we do expect that that mid single digit will play through for the second half of the year. And then your last comment or question in regards to gross versus net. We came in just around 30%. I did mention that that was up about 300 bits from what we had expected. That continues to reflect a mixed shift in the AS versus ES portfolio. We do think it's somewhat flattened out. If we think about our ES-AS balance for the rest of this year, we think they're going to be fairly equal in terms of their growth rate. So right now my expectation is it probably stays in that 20, 28 to 30% growth versus net for the next three quarters.

Your next question comes from the line of Keith Usam with North Coast Research. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Appreciate the opportunity. Guys, in terms of the price increases that you're seeing from your vendors, perhaps you can provide a little bit of guidance about what you're seeing as perhaps the average price increases. And if we're seeing them come into play yet as being effective, And then is this enough to offset some perhaps demand challenges that may happen throughout the rest of the year as a result of price increases? How do you all think about how they work together?

So good morning, Keith. So we see some price increases. Some vendors are starting to increase prices. But again, it's not across the board. It's relatively limited for the moment. It's very specific. Clearly, if indeed we see an acceleration of the price increases, as you know, we are going to pass it through then to the channel. I mean, it will create a tailwind in the short term. And of course, then the question will be what could be the impact on the volume. But again, for the moment, based on what we see, it's relatively limited. And where we have visibility, we took it into account in our guidance.

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Tindall with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to return to Hive for a second, Marshall. You talked about, I think, 10 basis points in Q1 impact. The heart of the question would be if you could maybe help quantify this issue and the timing to return, what happens in Q2 and on a go-forward basis. And I'm wondering if that is also impacting cash flow, which was very weak in the quarter. If you could maybe speak to what happens to cash flow for the rest of the year and your expectations on that, and maybe rope in some capital allocation on that, given the stock's starting to approach book value here in the pre-market. Thanks. Sure.

I'll start, and Patrick, please chime in. In regards to the 10 basis points, Adam, it's around in quarter one, we referenced The portfolio, temporary portfolio mix, that's really just the mix of the current projects underway, and that has a slight negative impact to gross profit or gross margins. The other piece is that as we're seeing this temporary pause in demand, we're committed to keep our specialized skilled resources on board, knowing that demand will return and expecting it to return. So that's the headwind we spoke to. As we think about that now for quarter two, those two same commitments are in place as well. Temporary project portfolio mix, bringing down the margins slightly, and then the overall commitment for labor. The broader comment that is playing out for fiscal 25, Adam, that we spoke to last call was the significant investments that we're making at Hive around specialized skill sets. We recognize that in our design capabilities, we need to continue to enhance that and win new business. So we're onboarding a significant amount of technical engineers to enable that to happen. As you know, in many situations, the onboarding and the success of that can take 18 to 24 months to manifest itself. So we feel good about the investments, but we know that the revenue may come in future quarters. In regards to the cash flow usage in the quarter, typically within our business, we'll see some cash consumption. within the distribution behavior between quarter four and quarter one. A lot of that has to do with the large quarter four. Some of that carries into quarter one and we usually see a cash usage. The incremental amount is driven by high, primarily due to two things. One, elevated inventory and two, quite a bit of payables that came out the door. So that did hurt us. As I think about how we recover that, we expect to see a recovery of about two to three days per quarter. That gets us back to around a 20-day cash conversion as we exit 25. The last thing I'll remind you and the rest is that we were in a similar situation coming out of fiscal 21 into 22, where we saw strong demand, but we saw inventory build within our high portfolio. And it built for the first two to three quarters in 22. We saw margin depression associated with carrying that. But then we started to see it sell through. We saw a strong recovery of our cost of capital and good margin profile for the inventory that we purchased on behalf of our customers. We expect that to be a similar pattern that will take place with Hive this year and going into 26. And then finally, absolutely, our position has been that we will be and remain opportunistic on our share buyback strategy. We repurchased $100 million in quarter one. We commented about $100 million in quarter two. As you know, in fiscal 24, we repurchased and also through dividends 72% of our free cash flow went to share buybacks and dividends, and we expect that to be what we would do in 2025, given that that still remains a very good IRR and a very heavy and positive ROI.

I just want to add a few comments. The first one is, thanks to Hive, we can play in this huge hyperscaler market. I mean, $250 billion at least of investments And so we believe that that demand continues to be healthy. The fact is that the demand in that space is really project-driven. And yes, we have a few projects where, for the moment, the demand is lower than expected. But again, we believe it's temporary. It's going to come back. And it will help us consume some of the elevated inventory. The inventory is really, for the moment, from a cash flow standpoint, the issue. But again, we are covered, and it's a temporary situation. So we are very confident that we are going to address and fix it over the next two quarters, as Marshall mentioned. From a cash flow standpoint, I just want to add that on the distribution side, the cash days, in fact, are even lower than expected in Q1. So that's good. So we have a very healthy cash day situation on distribution. which should help us also for the coming quarters.

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Cardoso with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the questions. Maybe just quick kind of clarification question, so I'll ask them kind of up front here. First one's just in terms of the F2Q lower seasonality, maybe relative to expectations heading into the fiscal year. Sounds like that's a bit of a hive dynamic, but just want to be clear, like anything else you're seeing contributing to the lower sequential decline or the sequential decline in the quarter beyond hive in the traditional distribution portfolio? And then the second clarification question here is just in terms of the full year outlook, any change in terms of how you're thinking about the contribution of ES and AS to the full year guide and including Hive and then just piggybacking off of that, just if Hive is kind of tracking a little bit lower than you expected from a full year contribution standpoint, I guess, what are you seeing in the AS portfolio if offsetting that, if you're still expecting that to track kind of in that mid single digit range? Thanks for the questions.

Good morning, Joe. Thanks a lot for the question. I will take the first question. So for distribution, again, very solid Q1, mid-single digit growth. Our guidance for Q2 assumes that we will see the same pattern. We are cautiously optimistic about the market. We have a few technologies driving the demand at the moment. The PC refresh is one. Cloud continues to be very solid. Security continues to be very solid. AI-related products are ramping up. In enterprise, it's not ramping up as fast as expected, but I mean, quarter after quarter, we see the weight of AI products increasing. And we are also expecting the networking technology segment to recover. And software, it continues to be very strong. So lots of technology segments in distribution justifying us to be cautiously optimistic. On the margin side, again, as I mentioned at the very beginning, we see the margin stabilizing, which is a positive. And because of our cost management, we are going to drop through a significant amount of the additional GP. On the distribution side, again, positive, cautiously optimistic, but overall positive.

And just to add to that, Joe, on your question about the growth expectations for the portfolio and how that plays out, ES and AS, and how we sustain that confidence in AS growth, just what Patrick said, security cloud, data analytics, we put that in that Strat technology portfolio. That was growing. for the corridor at over 20%. So it's a healthy growth rate that will kind of buoy some of the softness that we anticipate seeing in Hive for the rest of this year.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Nung with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. I just have two clarification questions in Hive. I guess first on the On the customer that had a temporary demand pause, was that related to your historically main large customer, or is it the newer customer that ramped last year? And then second, I just wanted to ask if I could get some clarification on if there was a specific business within Hive that... was the key driver of some of these issues. Was it primarily the strategic buy piece? And the reason why I ask is I think the strategic buy piece, that'll have some revenue recognitions once you ship those components, but any thoughts there would be great. Thank you.

Sure. Yeah, I'll start. So the temporary pause was with the customer that we ramped last year. And A lot of what we believe is taking place is that the demand precision and forecasting is what has caused that temporary pause. We felt it in quarter one, and we anticipate it to take place in quarter two. Our expectation is that it kind of returns back to its momentum as we go into quarter three. And then just back to the question around what business segments, if you will, within HIVE, We're key drivers. You're right. Mike's Strat procurement is one of the four kind of major elements of what we do within Hive. We made that component purchase in 24. We thought it would get shipped in Q1, and it didn't. So it moved into quarter two. So you could say that part of our business showed some softness within Hive.

Your next question comes from the line of Fernanda Burwell with Loop Capital. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Yeah, actually, just kind of staying on Hive there. Was any part of this, and I'm just picking up on the language that you guys used sort of in the prepared remarks, was any part of this due to Hopper inventory buys, the market has seen a dynamic where folks, you know, sort of basically customers, whether it's larger CSPs and even the tier two guys, buying less Hopper servers, you know, than they originally anticipated kind of through the fall into this year. And so some folks have had more Hopper inventory than they anticipated they might. Just that's been a general industry dynamic. Is any part of what you guys are experiencing getting caught up in that dynamic is really the question.

Hey, Nanda, thanks for the question. Let me just step up a little bit higher with that and not get specific on SKUs per se, but the majority, if not all of the inventory that we purchase on the behalf of our customers is to fulfill their demand forecast. And where we find there is either an oversupply of certain components or SKUs, that is where we have full protection to recover the carrying costs associated with that and no obsolescence risk around that. So there could be some buildup of how they want their supply chains to be covered and the way that gets satisfied in terms of how we build out their racks. But nothing specific around what elements of the SKUs are in more or less demand.

Your next question comes from the line of George Wang with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Patrick, can you kind of talk about the broader geographic exposure for TDCNICS relative to some of the smaller players in the space? you know, how does that sort of translate into potential share gains, especially in this environment? And then maybe to Marshall, can you kind of talk about the dynamic in Europe? You know, I noticed on a regular basis, Europe was a bit softer, you know, based on growth buildings in terms of the yearly growth rate. So can you kind of, you know, talk about, you know, puts and takes? And if I can squeeze in one more kind of follow-up, but just in terms of the operating expense efficiency, Marshall, can you talk about the expectation for the SG&A kind of operating expense versus the gross biddings, kind of how to think about in the second half? Thank you.

Just on the SG&A question, Patrick's got quite a bit of good knowledge on Europe, so I'll let him talk about that in terms of just the softness that we experienced there. on margin. And then I think what you wanted was a better understanding of how our overall breadth and depth of capabilities is positioning us relative to our peers or our competitors. So with SP&A, in the prepared remarks, we said that the cost to serve was around 60%. It came in a little bit heavier than what we had expected, primarily due to the to hive, and the hive element was two things. It was a little bit more SG&A, but a lot less GP, and so that combination is what caused that cost to serve to come in at 60%. We expect that that will improve over time. If you look at the distribution side of the house, extremely efficient in the prepared remarks thing. 50% of the GP fall through the bottom line is fantastic. It's a great representation and reflection of the hard work that the teams are doing to continue to build ways of supporting the growth of our business and a very profitable fall through. I'll say a couple words on Europe and pitch it over to Patrick. But within our regional portfolio, we had mentioned in last quarter's call that we knew there was going to be headwinds in Europe due to vendor mix. And we saw that play out. But Patrick, if you want to provide a little bit more color on Europe and then the geo-competitive pressures.

Yeah, so in Europe, by the way, I just want to mention the figures you see include high. So again, I'm speaking only about distribution now. So in Europe, market is growing. We grew faster than the market. And from a margin standpoint, as we as Marshall mentioned, it's a mix. It's a vendor mix. It's driven by the vendor mix, which had an impact more specifically on the back-end margin. But again, the team does very well from a cost management standpoint. And so from an operating margin standpoint, they managed to keep it flat here and here. And so nice growth, operating margin flat, nice drop through. to the bottom line, so Europe contributed nicely to the good performance of distribution. Now, looking from a global standpoint, as you know, in North America and in Europe, we have a strong market position. APJ and Latin America are really faster-growing countries, and our market share is much more modest. So for us, it's a very nice opportunity for profitable growth. I want to insist on the fact that in both regions, we focus on the SMB market, which drives higher margin. So not only we should continue to enjoy, I would say, a faster growth than in Europe and North America, but on top of it, it should have a very positive impact on our operating margins. The last point is, obviously, I mean, we have both strong relationships with the vendors, thanks to our position in North America and in Europe, and we are clearly benefiting from it as we continue to expand in Latin America in APJ. So that explains the very good results in those two regions and the nice double-digit growth in those regions.

Your next question comes from the line of David Page with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just, I guess, a more broader question and initiatives at TD Cinex. What is the, I guess, the benefits of the long-term with initiatives like Digital Bridge and Stream 1, and how is that helping you navigate through

guess just like a very uncertain macro environment thank you yeah so um when you think about our value proposition to the customer to our customers and again customers for us as partners and vendors i mean one we are here to accelerate their growth help them grow in the market But the other dimension is obviously optimizing the operating models and basically reducing the cost of transacting in the market. And that's where our platform and digital bridge play a big role. So we have an excellent platform, an excellent digital platform, which basically provides our customers the opportunity to transact with us 24 by 7, automate transactions with us. And if you look at Digital Bridge, it's the same concept, but we think it's even more powerful because when you think about it, when our customers interact through the platform, they have to move out from their, I would say, applications to go into our platform. With Digital Bridge, what we are doing is integrating our platform into their tools. And that's the reason it's so powerful and resonates very well. It's a tool we developed, by the way, with our community solve, so our customers. I mean, basically, they came to us with a specification, and together, we've engineered that solution, which is going to, I think, differentiate us very nicely in the markets.

Your next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Yes, it looks like despite the strength in PCs, peripherals weren't overly strong. What are your thoughts going forward for peripherals?

Yes, so peripherals includes printing, so the market for printing continues to be challenged with low single digit decline. But then the main reason for the decline is in North America, we had one large business which was not profitable. I mean, we had to bid. As you know, we are absolutely focused on strict financial discipline. We could not get the right return, and so we've lost that business. So that's the reason for the decline. The two reasons for the decline on peripherals. We are now, just want to insist on it, so what happens in both cases is obviously, I mean, we are looking for new business more in the SMB segment where the margins are higher and more sustainable for the long run. So that's what we are working on.

I will turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

So thank you everyone for joining us. I want to take a moment to thank our customers, partners and investors for their support. This quarter we were named as one of the world's most admired companies by Fortune for the fourth consecutive year. This achievement reflects the culture fostered by our 23,000 co-workers worldwide who are committed to delivering exceptional value to our customers. We look forward to reconnecting next quarter. I hope you have a good day.

That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.