1/8/2026

speaker
Nate
Investor Relations

from those mentioned in these forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties discussed in today's earnings release. In the Form 8K we filed today, in the risk factors section of our Form 10K, 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 8K available on our investor relations website, ir.tdsynx.com. This conference call is the property of TDSYNX and may not be recorded or rebroadcast without our permission. I will now turn the call over to Patrick. Patrick?

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Thank you, Nate. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report another set of record results that complete an outstanding year for our organization. Over the full year, our business excluding Hive increased its gross billings in the high single digits year over year, while improving both its gross margin and operating margin profile. Additionally, Hive grew its gross billings double digits and well above our expectations. and has made further progress expanding its set of offerings and diversifying its customer base. Turning to the fourth quarter, our non-GAAP gross billings of $24.3 billion represented an increase of 15% year-over-year, or 13% in constant currency. And non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $3.83 represented an increase of 24% year-over-year. Both of these established new records for our company, demonstrating the value of our diversified business model and the successful execution of our long-term strategy. Within TD Cinex, excluding Hive, our momentum continued with gross billings increasing 10% year-over-year and gross profit and operating income each also increasing by double digits. Hive experienced another strong quarter with gross billings increasing by more than 50% year-over-year and ODM-CM gross billings increasing 39% year-over-year, driven by sustained broad-based demand in cloud data center infrastructure from our hyperscaler customers. Hive's operating income also grew meaningfully year-over-year and continues to become a larger portion of our overall mix. Our results reflected strength across all regions and key technologies. North America continued to grow steadily, supported by demand across each of our key customer segments, prioritization of increased security requirements, and ongoing shifts towards complex multi-cloud architectures. Europe grew faster than we anticipated as customers prioritized infrastructure software, PC device upgrades, and modernization of aging infrastructure, despite the slow macroeconomic backdrop. As we've seen over the last few quarters, Asia Pacific and Japan remain a key growth engine, driven by rapid cloud expansion, PC device upgrades, accelerating AI development, and strong demand from fast digitizing economies across the region. Lastly, our growth story in Latin America remains encouraging, delivering double-digit top-line momentum with strong engagement across our portfolio and customer base. Our performance is a direct outcome of executing on the strategy we outlined at Invest Today. As we enter 2026, we are sharpening execution around four focus areas that will define what we want to be known for. We will start with omnichannel engagement. Through disciplined investments in our partner-first digital portal, we've built a frictionless interface that meets customers wherever they transact and simplifies the experience end-to-end. By pairing seamless digital engagement with our personalized, relationship-driven support, our highly skilled teams help customers navigate complexity and move beyond transactions, earning the role of trusted advisor and forging long-term partnerships. In Q4, we enhanced our partner-first digital bridge functionality with a new AI assistant that enables customers to transact in a self-service mode, 24 by 7, in their working environment. This enhancement transforms how our customer sales teams access and act on information to support their end customers in real time. Our customers have already attested but the new capability has saved employees in sales and product procurement operations multiple hours per day. The industry is also recognizing our strength in this area. During the quarter, we were awarded UK iCloud Marketplace of the Year by CRN. We receive this honor due to the differentiated quality of our platform, along with our leadership in customer enablement and technical training. helping our customers navigate what has been a transformative year in this space, and ultimately accelerating growth throughout our cloud portfolio. The next strategic pillar is specialized go-to-market. Our collection of specialists approach combines deep technical expertise with a deep understanding of our customers' go-to-market strategy and needs. This dual competency accelerates technology adoption and positions us as a growth catalyst for vendors and customers. It's a differentiated capability that strengthens stickiness and expands our wallet share in high growth segments. Our Q4 accomplishments within this pillar include winning a global security RFP that will enable us to expand our portfolio in existing geographies with large enterprise customers. which is a segment that has not historically purchased through TDCnext. We were chosen due to our global presence and deep security specialization, as well as for our ability to unlock substantial cost savings for the vendor while simultaneously improving customer experience. We expect these customers will increasingly leverage our broader product and service portfolio over time, enabling them to consolidate spend and capture additional growth in the market. Our emphasis on specialization has been recognized by our vendors as well. In Q4, Cisco named TD Sinex as Distributor of the Year globally, as well as regionally in the Americas and EMEA. These awards reflect how our specialization, deep alignment with Cisco, and innovation across markets consistently deliver real business outcomes for our customers. Our next pillar is focused on delivering best-in-class enablement. We accelerate time to market by equipping our customers with advanced training, certification programs, enablement tools, and precise resources and expertise tailored by technology and customer segments. This approach reduces ramp-up time, strengthens customer capabilities, and drives faster adoption of high-value solutions. which ultimately improves productivity and expands our share of wallet. During Q4, we announced AI Game Plan, a new customer-led workshop experience designed to help their sales teams translate AI opportunities into real-world business outcomes for their end customers. We are just at the beginning, and we'll continue turning our vast data lake and algorithms into industry-leading scalable digital services that enhance experiences, lower costs, and unlock new revenue and efficiency opportunities for our existing customers. These strategies work in concert to support and substantiate our final strategic pillar, expanding our brand visibility. Our brand promise, making IT personal, describes our role as an indispensable partner in the technology channel. We aim to be visible, personal, and influential at every stage of the customer journey, reinforcing trust and driving loyalty. This sustained presence amplifies our market relevance and underpins long-term growth. By bringing our strategy to life every day across these four pillars, we are continuing to strengthen our competitive position as the strategic business partner that our partners can rely on to create more opportunities that deliver sustainable long-term growth. Moving to Hive, we continue to experience sizable growth benefiting from broad-based demand for cloud data center infrastructure across our hyperscaler customers. And we believe that we are very well positioned to continue to get more opportunities that showcase our ability to support a wide breadth of programs for our customers. Our customers are turning to us for, among other things, our production flexibility, favorable US footprint, ability to co-develop complex solutions, and secure supply chain. These differentiators position us to continue to be a trusted partner in the assembly and deployment of complete rack-level systems across all market environments through time. Looking ahead, I am bullish on the long-term value proposition of Hive and IT distribution. We believe the untapped market opportunities in front of us in both businesses remain substantial as we aim to service a greater portion of the overall IT market through time. Now I will pass it to David to go over the financial performance and outlook in more detail. David?

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report a strong close to our fiscal year with fourth quarter results that exceeded the midpoint of our guidance across all key metrics. Gross billings increased 15% year over year, reflecting broad-based strength across both distribution and high. our gross operating margins expanded year over year, driven by a combination of operational efficiencies, favorable mix, and disciplined margin management. Non-GAAP earnings per share increased 24% year over year, delivering meaningful value for shareholders and underscoring the strength and value of our business model. Moving into the details, our endpoint solutions portfolio increased gross billings 12% year over year due to continued demand for PCs, driven by the ongoing Windows 11 refresh and sustained demand for premium devices, which has continued to be a tailwind. Globally, PCs have now increased double digits for four consecutive quarters, and we expect continued momentum heading into the initial months of 2026. Our advanced solutions portfolio increased gross billings by 17% year-over-year and 8% year-over-year when excluding the impact of hives. driven by meaningful growth in cloud, security, software, and other strategic technologies. HIVE, which is reported within the advanced solutions portfolio, increased more than 50% year over year, primarily due to strength in programs associated with server and networking rack builds. In the quarter, there was approximately 29% reduction from gross billings to net revenue, which was in line with expectations. Our net treatment as a percentage of buildings continues to remain elevated versus the prior year primarily driven by a higher mix of software within distribution and increases in certain hives programs. As a result, net revenue was 17.4 billion up 10% year over year and above the high end of our guidance range gross profit increase 15% year over year to 1.2 billion. Gross margin as a percentage of gross billings was 5%, which was flat year over year. Non-GAAP SG&A expense was $698 million, or 3% of gross billings. Our cost to gross profit percentage, which we define as the ratio of non-GAAP SG&A expense to gross profit, was 58% in Q4, an improvement of approximately 100 basis points year over year, demonstrating our progress toward managing costs as a percentage of gross profit down over time. Non-GAAP operating income increased 18% year over year to $497 million. Non-GAAP operating margin as a percentage of gross billings was 2.04%, representing a five basis point improvement year over year. Interest expense and finance charges was 88 million, an increase of 1 million year over year. Our non-GAAP effective tax rate was approximately 24% compared to 21% in the prior year. Total non-GAAP net income was $313 million, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $3.83, an increase of 24% year-over-year and another all-time high for TD Cinex. Free cash flow was $1.4 billion, driven by strong earnings growth and meaningful improvements in our cash conversion cycle quarter-over-quarter. This also brings our annual free cash flow to $1.4 billion, which was well ahead of our expectations. FY25 marks the third consecutive year that we have generated annual free cash flow of over a billion dollars, demonstrating our commitment to sustainable cash generation. Within the quarter, we returned $209 million to shareholders with $173 million in share repurchases and $36 million in dividend payments. In total, we returned $742 million to shareholders this fiscal year, bringing our cumulative return to shareholders over the last three years to over $2.2 billion. This is approximately 61% of our free cash flow during that same time period within the medium-term range of 50% to 75% outlined at our investor day, underscoring our belief in the strength of our business and the commitment to creating long-term shareholder value. As of November 30th, we have $1.2 billion remaining on our share repurchase authorization. Networking capital was $2.9 billion, down approximately $300 million from the prior year. Our gross cash days were 12 days, a two-day improvement from the prior year, which I'll talk more about shortly. We ended the quarter with $2.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents and debt of $4.6 billion. Our gross leverage ratio was 2.4 times, and our net leverage ratio was 1.1 times. You'll note that our cash position was elevated at year end. This is the result of two primary factors. First, we successfully completed a new debt issuance during the quarter, which will be used to pay off $700 million of debt that matures in August of 2026. Additionally, as you'll see in our working capital, our teams across both distribution and Hive did an outstanding job driving cash flow and made meaningful improvements toward optimizing the return on capital for both businesses. At the same time, it's important to remember that the balance sheet is a snapshot at a single point in time. At year end, we had a few large receipts come in just before period end that would have normally fallen into the next quarter. We estimate Q4 benefited a few hundred million dollars, which will normalize in FY26. Going forward, we continue to be laser focused on generating sustainable free cash flow and improving our return on invested capital. For the current quarter, our Board of Directors has approved a cash dividend of $0.48 per common share that will be payable on January 30, 2026 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on January 16, 2026. Moving on to our outlook. For the first quarter of fiscal 26, we expect non-GAAP gross billings in the range of $22.7 to $23.7 billion, representing an increase of approximately 12% at the midpoint. our outlook is based on a euro to dollar exchange rate of 1.16. Net revenue in the range of 15.1 to 15.9 billion, which translates to an anticipated gross to net adjustment of 33%. Non-GAAP net income in the range of 243 to $283 million. non-GAAP diluted earnings per share in the range of $3 to $3.50 per diluted share based on a weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 80.1 million. We are anticipating a cash outflow in Q1 in part due to typical seasonality of the business and due to the timing impacts that benefited Q4, which we described earlier. We expect that our cumulative free cash flow over fiscal 25 and fiscal 26 will be in line with our medium-term framework of 95% non-GAAP net income to free cash flow conversion. While we are not providing full-year guidance today, our long-term outlook remains consistent with the multi-year compounded annual growth rates that we outlined at our investor day earlier this year. We'll remain focused on delivering against that financial framework we've shared with you, which includes stable growth margin expansion over time, consistent cash generation, and deploying capital where it maximizes long-term value creation within our capital allocation framework. To close, we're proud of what we've achieved this year, strong financial performance, disciplined execution, and continued progress against our strategy. We're entering fiscal 26 with solid momentum, a healthy balance sheet, and a clear set of priorities that support durable growth. will remain focused on operational excellence and delivering long-term value to shareholders. With that, we'll open up the call for questions. Operator?

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We request that you limit yourself to one question to allow time for other participants to ask their questions. If there is remaining time, you are welcome to re-queue with additional questions. Your first question comes from the line of Keith Housam with North Coast Research. Please go ahead.

speaker
Keith Housam
Analyst, North Coast Research

Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for the opportunity here. Obviously, outstanding growth in Europe and Asia Pacific, especially Asia Pacific and Japan there. As we think about that growth here that's happening, can you talk about perhaps how much of it is market growth versus your ability to take market share? And then second, how sustainable are some of these growth rates that we're seeing going forward?

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Okay, thanks, and good morning. So, in FPGA, we, for sure, we've experienced very nice high double-digit growth. As you know, our share in the region is relatively low, so we are investing significantly in the region to gain share and grow our market. So when you look at the results, for sure we gain significant share. We also position in countries, especially India, where, as you know, the growth of the market is significantly above the average of the region. And the team is focused on product segments, vendors, and customer segments, which should make the growth sustainable for the long run. So very, very pleased, very proud of the team, and very confident for the future. The only thing I would add is that it's not only the growth in sales. We're also experiencing an overproportional growth in operating income in the region as the team is investing, but also keeping a good cost discipline.

speaker
spk07

Great. And how about for Europe? Because Europe, obviously, was better than we would expect to consider the macro conditions you have there.

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

So we got the market data. The European market grew, let's say, mid-single digit, so slightly better even than North America. But for sure, we had outstanding performance. We continue to gain significant share in the region. We have a strategy which is very well executed. Again, we are going after technologies, vendors, and customer segments where we can enjoy higher growth in the market. And that's what you are seeing in the results.

speaker
spk07

Great. Thank you. I'll get back to you. Good luck.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thanks. Your next question comes from the line of Rupu Bhattacharya with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

speaker
Rupu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Patrick, you reported strong 15% growth in billings for 4Q and are guiding 12% billings growth for 1Q. How are you handicapping any end market destruction, demand destruction from higher component costs like DRAM and NAND? And one for David, can you just update us on the CapEx spend for this year as well as any investments planned for Hive for 2026? Thank you.

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Yes. So good morning. Thanks a lot for the question. So again, the guidance for Q1 reflects what we see from the regions, from the BUs. So I can confirm that the memory price has increased dramatically, and what we're seeing already is an increase in ASP on a series of product families, especially PCs, servers, storage. So the ASP increase is, on one hand, a tailwind in the short term, What will be interesting to see is what will be the impact on the volume going forward. But again, specifically for Q1, the guidance reflects the result of the bottom-up exercise with the regions, and the forecast is done by technology, by country.

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

And Ripu, the only thing I would add is when you think about total capex for TD Cinex, We're probably planning for a similar level of CapEx in 26 relative to 25, and that would include the investments needed to support Hive's continued growth.

speaker
Rupu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America

Can I just clarify, have you actually seen any demand destruction from higher component costs, and is that factored into your guidance?

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

So, specifically, I haven't seen it, and again, What is reflected in the guidance is the outcome of our bottom-up exercise.

speaker
Rupu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. Thank you for the details.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Woodring with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

speaker
Eric Woodring
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my question. And, Patrick, I'm going to stay on the same line of questioning. There's root blue, which is just, can you maybe ask it a different way? Can you maybe help us understand what you're seeing in terms of any potential pull forward in either the November quarter or the January quarter, just with customers wanting to get ahead of future pricing increases for any of those kind of memory exposed products you just mentioned, PC servers, storage smartphones, and just how you might think more broadly, I know you're not guiding to fiscal 26, but just how you think that this dynamic could have an impact on, you know, either revenue or profitability seasonality for the year. Thanks so much.

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Okay, so let me start with the broad forwards. So it's difficult to assess, but I'm pretty confident that we haven't had any, I would say, material broad forwards in the last quarter. Now, again, the Q1 guidance reflects the... what the countries are seeing in their region, and again, for PC servers and storage. If I look at the overall year, The tailwind for us is clearly the ASP increase, as you know. I mean, when the vendors increase their prices, we usually pass it through to the market. So no concerns on the margin quality. On the demand, tailwind related to the ASP increase. And then what's going to be interesting to watch is what will be the impact on the volumes. And as you know, the elasticity will be different by product category. And probably the category which is going to be the most sensitive is PCs. But we have a very, very low position on consumer PCs. We primarily focus on commercial PC. So I'm relatively confident that here the elasticity should be relatively low. So I continue to be relatively optimistic about the prospects of the PC market. Let's not forget that the refresh is not over. I mean, it started a little bit later than expected, so we should continue to benefit from it in the next quarter. And then when you look at storage and server, I think here again the elasticity related to the price increase should be relatively low. Again, on the demand, I think the demand is going to be driven by other considerations, the need for customers to embrace AI, upgrade their servers. I mean, there's a server refresh happening as we speak, and it's not over. So again, I think on the demand, relatively, I should say cautiously optimistic, and then the ASP increase should help.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Vogt with UBS. Please go ahead.

speaker
David Vogt
Analyst, UBS

Great. Thanks, guys. Maybe one and a half for David. So, David, you mentioned in your prepared remarks free cash flow cumulatively for 25 and 26 is going to be consistent with the long-term framework of 95% of net income. You know, given kind of the mix of business going into fiscal 26, it sounds like netted down is going to be a bigger portion of that based on the guide, at least for Q1. Can you talk through kind of the mix of the revenue that drives that netted down effect? And then what sounds like a decline in free cash flow, even adjusting for that $200 million of payments in Q4 that was pulled forward in 26 versus 25?

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So good morning, David. In our prepared remarks, we said we expect cumulative free cash flow across 25 and 26 to be within the 95% conversion rate. Here's the way to think about it. historically our business consumes cash in the first half and generates cash in the second half. What you saw in Q4 is we had a really, really strong cash flow quarter. And so some of that will normalize as we go into Q1. And so we still feel really good about generating cash for the full year, but we do expect an outflow in Q1 that will ultimately be recouped as we work through the balance of the year. And it's not as much mix driven per se as it's just the additional cash that we generated in Q1 that will be normalized, or sorry, that we generate in Q4 that will be normalized in Q1.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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

speaker
Adam Tindall
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay, thanks. Good morning. I want to just acknowledge, Patrick, the strong return on capital, primarily great work in capital management. But if I look at the margin side of things, it does look like some of that is being a little bit suppressed. And you talk about investments in Hive. I wanted to ask about that. This has been an ongoing theme. I wonder if you could maybe just recap some of the prior investment decisions that you made in Hive and the outcomes that lead you to invest further in Hive, including any potential further new customers, for example. And for David, as we kind of, you know, look at this in the model, if you could maybe help us quantify or break out the investments in HIVE, is it, you know, going to increase throughout the year? Are we sort of at the right run rate? You know, what does this look like, you know, throughout fiscal 26? Thanks.

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

So maybe I can start and Patrick chime in. So in the prepared remarks, we talked about HIVE grew meaningfully both billings and profits. And so I wouldn't impute that there's a margin issue. In terms of investments in Hive, we continue to invest in Hive. And so Patrick talked about we've invested in leadership, we've invested in the engineering team, we've invested in some additional capabilities within the site. We have enough capacity to support our current demand, and we'll continue to make investments to ensure Hive can truly be an end-to-end go-to-market player. for Tier 1 hyperscalers and others. And so we feel very good about how the business is performing, the investments we've made, and the prospects going forward.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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

speaker
David Page
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Hi. Good morning, Patrick, David. Congrats on some really nice results here. Just a quick follow-up on Hive, the 50% growth. Is that evenly split between ODM and CM, or both the customers, or maybe just a little bit more details around the growth there? Thank you.

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Yes. So good morning. So as you know, we have our ODM-CM business. That one grew very nicely. in line, if not slightly better than the pace of the market. And then we had a very strong also quarter with, let's call it supply chain start-by division. As you know, this is a more lumpy, opportunistic business. It's a service we render, so it's highly dependent on what the customers are asking for. And in Q4, we had a very strong quarter and better than expected. So that's how I would summarize the the sales growth for the quarter for Hive.

speaker
Rupu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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

speaker
Joseph Cardozo
Analyst, JP Morgan

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. Maybe another follow-up on the Hive business. I just wanted to touch on the progress that you're making with Hive relative to capturing additional share with your existing large customers there. and perhaps what you're seeing from a portfolio perspective or kind of the products that you're shipping there towards moving more towards AI servers, networking racks, storage racks, and the opportunity to onboard potentially a new large customer beyond the two that you have today. Thank you.

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Yes, good morning. So, again, we mentioned it in the prior calls. We continue to invest to expand the capabilities and capacity of Hive. And so we are very active in bidding on new programs with our existing customers and potential new customers. I would say that thanks to the investments we've made, especially in engineering and some of the differentiators of Hive in the market, I mean, we are making very good progress on winning some new programs and potentially new customers. Now, I would say that those programs take some time to ramp. So, again, when you look back at our Q1 guidance, it reflects what we have as forecast for the next quarter. But going forward, yes, I would say we continue to make good progress and are confident about the prospects.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Your next question is coming to mind.

speaker
Austin Baker
Analyst, Lube Capital

of austin baker with lube capital please go ahead hey guys thanks for taking the question uh just really quick i guess um would love to understand how margins you view margins for hive kind of going forward are they improving normalizing as volume scales and then lastly how do you feel about the visibility for high programs today versus maybe this time last year

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

I can take that one. We feel pretty good about the overall margin profile of TD Cinex. When you think about what we laid out at Investor Day was a couple of things. We want to grow operating profit faster than billings, and so we're constantly looking for ways, both within Hive and within our distribution business, to focus where we can make additional margin. And so, again, we feel very good about that business. Patrick?

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Yeah, I would just add that... When I look at the pipeline and I compare it to where we were last year, I think we are in a very healthy position. And again, that's what is reflected in our Q1 guidance.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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

speaker
Vincent Colicchio
Analyst, Barrington Research

Yeah, Patrick, another good quarter on PCs. Could you give us an update on your thinking in terms of what inning we're in here?

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Yeah, so good morning. Thanks a lot. Yes, so I started the game 2-4 for PCs, broad-based, primarily driven from commercial. So going forward, as I mentioned, I think that the refresh is not over. So that tailwind should continue again in 2026. We have also the weight of AI PCs who have a slightly higher ASP. That should continue to be. So there's still a lot of potential for upgrading the PCs and make them AI compatible in the market. So that should be a tailwind. We talked about the memory price increase impacting the ASP of the PCs. That should be, again, a tailwind. And then you have the uncertainty related to the price on the demand. But again, the fact that we are primarily focused on the commercial PCs, I mean, I think we are in a slightly better position than if we would have a high weight of consumer PCs. So I would say for next year, I continue to be confident about the prospects of the PC market. And again, back to the guidance for Q1, I mean, the various assumptions have been taken into account and are reflected in the guidance.

speaker
Vincent Colicchio
Analyst, Barrington Research

And did AIPC perform incrementally better this quarter?

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Yeah, it continues to. The weight of AIPC continues to nicely increase, so that's a positive.

speaker
Vincent Colicchio
Analyst, Barrington Research

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Vogt with UBS. Please go ahead.

speaker
David Vogt
Analyst, UBS

Hey, guys. I just wanted to ask a follow-up, David. On the netted down impact, it looks like there's a big pickup in Q1. That's what I was trying to understand also. Is it mix-driven? That's going to be a bigger headwind to your revenue conversion. Can you talk about what's going on there from a netted down effect in the guide?

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and sorry, I missed that part of your question. That's my fault. No worries.

speaker
David Vogt
Analyst, UBS

All good.

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

Gross to net increased in Q4, and we've got an increase into Q1. There's a couple of dynamics. One, strategic technologies continues to become a bigger portion of our business. A lot of that business is software, which, as you know, is netted. Additionally, within Hive, there are a number of programs that are also net, and as the mix changes, that does influence that metric. And so if you think about how we set Q1, that's probably a realistic assumption of kind of the run rate gross to net that we expect for FY26. Hopefully that helps.

speaker
David Vogt
Analyst, UBS

And that would suggest that software in Hive continues to grow as a portion of the overall billings pie. Is that a reasonable takeaway?

speaker
David
Chief Financial Officer

Exactly right. You're right.

speaker
David Vogt
Analyst, UBS

Great. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Patrick for closing remarks.

speaker
Patrick
President and CEO

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I want to close by emphasizing that we remain committed to profitable growth and free cash per generation. Our strategy is designed to ensure that every step forward strengthens our business and supports greater long-term value creation. With our reach, our people, our unique capabilities, and our momentum, We are confident in our ability to continue to succeed. Thank you and have a great day.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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