TD Synnex CEO Patrick Zammit claimed its distribution business “grew faster than the market” in Q1, despite results missing analyst estimates.
The world’s largest distributor – which was on Sunday the subject of a taunt by marketplace rival Pax8 – saw its ultimate top line (non-GAAP gross billings) hike 7.5% year on year to $20.7bn in the three months ending 28 February 2025.
Revenues improved by 4% (or 6% in local currencies) to $14.5bn, while operating income rose more slowly, namely by 1% to $305m.
But analysts expected slightly more, causing TD Synnex’s shares to tumble nearly 18% on the results.
Zammit only assumed the top job in September.
Here we round up six zingers from the former Avnet bigwig on the subsequent earnings call, a transcript of which can be found here.
“We enjoyed very nice growth [in distribution]. We think we grew faster than the market… with a mid single-digit growth… That’s a solid performance.”Patrick Zammit, TD Synnex
Context: Zammit claimed TD Synnex pocketed marketshare in Q1 as its gross billings advanced 7.5%, or 9.5% in constant currency. Splitting that out, Advanced Solutions gross billings jumped 7% year on year, while endpoint solutions pogoed 8%.
He laid the blame of the weaker-than-expected results at the door of Hyve Solutions, TD Synnex’s subsidiary specialising in the design and deployment of hyperscale digital infrastructures.
“In Europe, [the] market is growing. We grew faster than the market”Patrick Zammit, TD Synnex
Context: Europe – where TD Synnex remains the largest distributor despite ALSO’s recent takeover of Westcoast – “contributed nicely to the good performance in distribution”, Zammit said.
Although TD Synnex saw revenues in the region inch up just 0.4% to $5.1bn, on a constant currency basis, the increase stood at 4.3%.
“In Q1, we expanded our reach to 30,000 active partners and 500,000 end users transacting through our cloud marketplace.”Patrick Zammit, TD Synnex
Context: TD Synnex was this week the subject of a guerrilla marketing attack by youthful cloud marketplace Pax8. In a full-page New York Times advert, Pax8 accused TD Synnex and fellow broadline giant Ingram Micro of “selling the past” (see TD Synnex UK&I boss Dave Watts’ response to the ad here).
On the call, Zammit was quick to showcase TD Synnex’s Cloud Marketplace and digital capabilities.
During the quarter, TD Synnex launched its Digital Bridge Microsoft Teams app, which is designed to provide its partner community with a marketplace of pre-built integrations, he said.
The NYSE-listed broadliner’s “fully digital customer lifecycle tool”, PACE, has already gained 50,000 partners in Europe and is now being expaned into the Americas, Zammit added.
“We believe that the impact of tariffs has been relatively limited”Patrick Zammit, TD Synnex
Context: Zammit was asked by an an analyst on the call whether TD Synnex’s Q1 results benefited from any pre-buying by customers to avoid any increase in tariffs.
Zammit thought not, saying that the distributor’s “very strong high-single-digit growth in PCs” during the quarter was instead fuelled by Windows 11 and PC refresh.
“We are cautiously optimistic about the market”Patrick Zammit, TD Synnex
Context: TD Synnex expects gross billings to grow “mid single digits” in its fiscal 2025.
Zammit expressed confidence for the year ahead, picking out PC refresh, cloud and security as growth drivers.
“AI related products are ramping up,” he added.
“In enterprise, it’s not ramping up as fast as expected, but… quarter after quarter we see the weight of AI products increasing.
“And we are also expecting the networking technology segment to recover and software continues to be very strong. So lots of technology segments in distribution justifying us to be cautiously optimistic.”
