Arrow Electronics - Q4 2013

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Arrow Electronics Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Conference Call. My name is Patrick, and I'll be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will facilitate a question-and-answer session. If at any time you require operator assistance, please press star zero, and an operator will be happy to assist you. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Greg Hansen, Vice President and Treasurer. Please proceed, sir.

Gregory Hansen (VP and Treasurer)

Thank you, Patrick. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Arrow Electronics fourth quarter conference call. I'm Greg Hansen, Vice President and Treasurer of Arrow. I'll be serving as the moderator on today's call. If you'd like to access today's call via webcast, please visit our investor relations website at www.arrow.com/investor and click on the webcast icon. With us on the call today are Mike Long, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer; Paul Reilly, Executive Vice President, Finance and Operations, and Chief Financial Officer; Andy Bryant, President, Global ECS; and Eric Shook, President of Global Components. By now, you should have all received a copy of our earnings release. If not, you can access the release on the investor relations section of our website, along with the CFO commentary and the non-GAAP earnings reconciliation for the fourth quarter and full year.

Before we get started, I'd like to review Arrow's safe harbor statement. Some of the comments made on today's call may include forward-looking statements, including statements addressing future financial results. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or facts to differ materially from such statements for a variety of reasons. Detailed information about these risks is included in Arrow's SEC filings. We'll begin with a few minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a question-and-answer period. As a reminder to members of the press, you are in a listen-only mode on this call. Please feel free to contact us after today's call with any questions you may have. At this time, I'd like to introduce our Chairman, President, and CEO, Mike Long.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thanks, Greg, and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us today. We had an excellent fourth quarter, completing a good year in 2013. We executed well on all of our organic strategy initiatives. We executed on M&A that further accelerated our strategy, and we drove best-in-class financial performance, and we returned a substantial capital to our shareholders through our buyback program. In the fourth quarter, sales of $6.2 billion were ahead of our guidance, and we're up 14% over the prior year. Operating income and diluted earnings per share advanced 29% and 31%, respectively, year-over-year. Operating margins were up over last year's fourth quarter in both businesses, and we posted record operating income.

Cash generation was again very strong at over $200 million, and return on working capital grew significantly to 31%. We continue to invest in our business and advance what is already one of the most comprehensive set of solutions in the market. Looking at Global Components, the overall market remains stable, with lead times and cancellation rates operating within normal ranges. Our sales of $3.4 billion were at the high end of expectations, advancing 8% year-over-year, with increases in all three regions. Book-to-bill at 1.03 was ahead of prior year. Our Americas regions showed steady growth at 3%. Asia continued its strong growth trends, advancing 11% in the core business and 9% overall. The highest growth region was Europe, with sales growth of 10% year-over-year on a constant currency basis.

Gross margins, while holding steady sequentially, were down slightly in the core year-over-year. Operating income increased 16% year-over-year, or two times our growth in sales. For the full year, Global Components grew modestly. The economic environment in Europe and the Americas tempered our growth. Asia again saw strong growth. Year-over-year sales and operating income trends improved in the back half of the year, and we look forward to continued improvement. Operating margins fell somewhat year-over-year. In Enterprise Computing Solutions, our supplier matrix expansion and terrific execution in the quarter drove our record sales and operating income. Sales advanced, excluding the impact of Computerlinks, 13% year-over-year. Computerlinks added $208 million in revenue in the quarter, and we continue to see excellent growth in storage services and software in both regions.

Our server business also saw growth year over year. ECS's operating income advanced 30% in the fourth quarter to a record level. Operating margins advanced to 5.6%. For the full year of 2013, again, our supplier matrix expansion and excellent execution drove growth year over year. We achieved a 12% increase in sales and a 19% increase in operating income, also improving operating margins to 4.7%. We continue to execute on our strategic transformation towards selling a comprehensive solution with focus on higher growth, higher value segments targeted at the data center. Across our business. Our productivity initiatives exceeded our target of $75 million, and we chose to invest the excess into expanding our sales and engineering teams.

We're pleased with our performance in 2013, as we balanced our initiatives to be more productive, with continued investments to accelerate growth in sales in 2014 and beyond. As we look to the first quarter, we expect no meaningful change in the markets we serve. But as we proved once again in 2013, we're able to produce strong results independent of the market environment, and we look forward to continuing this in 2014. Paul will now provide an update on our financial results for the fourth quarter.

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Thanks, Mike. Fourth quarter sales of $6.2 billion were up 7% ahead of the midpoint of our guidance. Adjusted for the impact of acquisitions and changes in foreign currencies, sales advanced 8% year-over-year. Global Components sales of $3.4 billion increased 8% year-over-year and were at the upper end of our guidance. In the Americas, sales were up 3% year-over-year. Americas core sales advanced 2% sequentially, which is in line with traditional seasonality. In Europe, sales in constant currencies increased significantly, advancing 10% year-over-year, with all regions contributing. Sequentially, core sales in Europe decreased 4%, which is in line with traditional seasonality. Sales in Asia were also strong year-over-year, growing 9%, with significant contributions from China.

Core sales in Asia Pacific grew 1% sequentially, also in line with traditional seasonality. Sales in our Enterprise Computing Solutions business were $2.7 billion, well ahead of our expectations. As you will recall, our early third quarter end cutoff, compared to some of our suppliers, caused some sales to be pushed into our fourth quarter. In the Americas, sales grew 19% year-over-year and were up 46% sequentially, ahead of our traditional seasonality. The expanding need for computing power, our strong execution, and expansion of our value-added services and product offerings all drove the stronger-than-expected revenue growth. In Europe, sales in constant currencies advanced 23% year-over-year, primarily due to the acquisition of Computerlinks. Excluding the impact of Computerlinks, sales advanced 94% sequentially in constant currencies. Our consolidated gross profit margin was 12.8%.

Year-over-year, gross margins were down approximately 30 basis points, principally due to our substantial growth in ECS and Asia components, and lower by 50 basis points sequentially on a higher mix, a higher seasonal mix of ECS sales. Operating expenses increased 4% year over year on an absolute dollar basis. Adjusted for the impact of acquisitions and changes in foreign currency, operating expenses were 90 basis points lower as a percentage of sales, driven by our operating leverage and efficiency initiatives. Operating income was $266 million, a 29% increase over last year's fourth quarter, and that growth is two times the growth in our sales. Operating margins advanced year over year as well, increasing by 50 basis points to 4.3%, the highest level in eight quarters. Revenue growth, operating leverage, and our efficiency initiatives all contributed to the improvement.

Global Components operating margin of 4.3% increased 30 basis points year-over-year. Global Enterprise Computing Solutions operating margins were 5.6%, also up 30 basis points year-over-year. Net income advanced 23% year-over-year to $172 million. Earnings per share at $1.71 and $1.69 on a basic and diluted basis, respectively. Diluted earnings per share advanced 31% year-over-year. Cash generation from operating activities in the fourth quarter was a strong $215 million and was $451 million on a trailing twelve-month basis. At 113% of our 2013 GAAP net income, our trailing twelve-month cash flow once again exceeded our targeted level of 70%.

Return on working capital for the fourth quarter was 30.9%, and return on invested capital was 12.7%, significantly outpacing our weighted average cost of capital. For the full year 2013, sales increased 5% to $21.4 billion, with growth of 1% in Global Components and 12% in ECS.... Operating income advanced 2% to $823 million. Global Components operating income was down 7% year-over-year to $596 million, or 4.4% of sales. ECS operating income advanced 19% year-over-year to $367 million, as operating margins improved 30 basis points to 4.7%.

We purchased $50 million of our stock in the fourth quarter and approximately $350 million in 2013. In the first half of 2013, our excess capital was deployed primarily towards share repurchases, with acquisitions our primary use of our capital in the second half of the year. The authorization remaining under our existing share repurchase program is $150 million. Our capital priorities remain the same: funding organic investments and strategic M&A, and returning cash to shareholders, all while maintaining an investment-grade rating over the long term. This is a high-level summary of our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2013. For more detail regarding the business unit results, please refer to the CFO commentary published this morning. Now turning to guidance.

We believe that total sales will be between $5.1 billion-$5.5 billion, with Global Components sales between $3.3 billion-$3.5 billion, and Global Enterprise Computing Solutions sales between $1.8 billion-$2 billion. We expect earnings per share on a diluted basis, excluding any charges, to be in the range of $1.14-$1.26. Our guidance assumes an average tax rate in the range of 27%-29%. Average diluted shares outstanding are expected to be at 102 million, and the average US dollar to euro exchange rate for the first quarter to be 1.3521.

Gregory Hansen (VP and Treasurer)

Thank you, Paul. Patrick, will you open the line for questions at this time?

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. If your question has been answered or you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. Questions will be taken in the order received. Please press star one to begin. Our first question comes from the line of Jim Suva with Citi. Please proceed, sir. Your line is open.

James Suva (Managing Director)

Thank you, and congratulations to you and your team there at Arrow. My question is regarding there's been a recent amount of news about IBM selling its x86 servers. Can you help us understand how much of your total companies or computing systems is IBM in total, and then the breakdown of how much is it, of it is x86, and how do you see this relationship in transition playing out?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thanks, Jim. First off, for putting the x86 business that's for sale to Lenovo in perspective, it generates less than 1% of our company's gross profit. And I'm sure you've already seen that the new owners have said that they do not expect any disruption with their VARs or distribution network. And in addition, we do have an expanded relationship with Lenovo around the ITAD business and the EF business that we have. So we already do have business with them. We don't expect any impact, and we don't expect that there'll be any impact in the business going forward.

The other one around the franchising of sort of Tech and Ingram, as you put it, you know, we've really transformed the ECS business over time as these markets have evolved, and we are really not a big box shipper of product. We're a more solution-oriented selling organization, and you can obviously see that by the operating income that get generated versus the different category of distributor. The large majority of our sales come from software services and storage, and you can really see that success of transformation over the last five years and what that's done to both our growth and operating margins. I would still say our goal is to be the leader in the data center and to have the proper expertise to do that, and that's what we're doing.

So we don't expect any impact from that either. Hopefully, that gets to your question.

James Suva (Managing Director)

Great. And then as a quick follow-up, specifically for 2014, are there any quarters that end, like, on an odd weekend or odd date that we should be mindful of as we build out seasonality for 2014 for your company?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, Jim, there is. I'll let Paul highlight it. I'm kind of laughing because this happens to be our year where we have some of that weirdness in the calendar. And, I'll let, I'll let Paul go through it with you.

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Right, Jim. For the full year, it all equals out to the same thing. In the first quarter, though, exactly to your point, we have one less shipping day than we had in last year's first quarter. And as you can imagine, because we transitioned quite a bit of our business to have a greater focus on software, and much of the software business goes out in the last day or two of a quarter, from the suppliers... that will have a negative impact on our first quarter, so that we'll lose a day of shipment. And, you know, that could be anywhere from, you know, $70 million-$100 million on a gross billing basis. You know, that would mean a contribution margin of 8%-10%. So you can see why there's some impact in Q1.

I think Q2 evens out, and I think we're short again in Q3, and I think, I think we pick up two days in Q4. So this is kind of funky, and we, you know, even internally, we have to try to remember that as we do our, our comparisons year-over-year and try to think about how we're managing the business, and how we can improve the business.

James Suva (Managing Director)

Thank you, and congratulations again to you and your team at Arrow.

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Thank you, Jim.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed, sir.

Mark Delaney (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks very much for taking the question. I'm hoping, I'm hoping you can help us to better understand what's happening with gross margins, because gross margins, on a consolidated basis, have come down on a, on a year-over-year basis in Q4 for two years in a row. So can you help us think, about your gross margins going forward, and if we should think about, any stabilization or if you can, maybe even improve the gross margins?

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Sure, Mark, thanks for the question. And, you're right. When we look at it, you know, two years in a row now, we've seen the quarterly trend in the fourth quarter, downward in GP. You know, it's kind of, kind of interesting, in that our success in computing, as an example, where we're driving really great returns and great incremental operating income dollars, does come with a lower GP, so mix is changing that. And, you know, while we say that, we also have Asia, which is also growing faster than the other two businesses, so it's a bit of a mix issue. When I look at it, though, each of the last two fourth quarters over the last two, three years, we've seen both ECS and our Asia Pac business drive operating income percent up.

So when I look at it, you know, big drivers absolutely are at the mix level. For sure, also, we're seeing, you know, still some of the, the carryover of the weakness in our European components business, where, the economies are still very fragile, where maybe the, the, the consumer, quote-unquote, so our end customer, has a little bit of leverage over us today. But, you know, I think that's more situational. And as the world's economies tilt back to being more stable, we'll see improvement. I mean, I kind of look at it, you know, also on a consolidated basis, and, you know, you look at it, just go back to a couple years ago, we actually were able to get it to be to be flat sequentially.

We're down a little bit this year, but I look at it, it's definitely gonna go back up, but we also need a little bit more vibrancy in our components business in North America and in Europe.

Mark Delaney (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you for that, Paul. For my follow-up, I'm hoping you can help to better contextualize the revenue guidance in the components part of your business for the March quarter. You guys have mentioned the book-to-bill was 1.03 in the fourth quarter, and that was the best book-to-bill ratio that you've had in the fourth quarter for several years. So can you help me understand the positive book-to-bill with the outlook for the components revenue to decline slightly on a quarter-to-quarter basis in the March quarter?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Well, the components business itself, as we're seeing it, is falling largely within seasonality, and the positive book-to-bill helps us to build the backlog. But the shipment schedules that we see we would call falling within norm. You know, we right now are not expecting a big change in the market conditions that we've seen in the near term. You know, there are some signs that things are getting better, but overall, our plan is based off of more of the same market conditions, and as Paul indicated before, one day less of sales for the quarter, and all three regions are really right in there. I would say North America right now is within or at the high end of normal seasonality in the components business.

Europe, we're expecting it to be actually in line with normal seasonality. And, Asia Pac, we're expecting it to be at the low end of normal seasonality range right now with all the write-ups that have been there. But if you add it all up, the expectations are to be right in seasonality.

Mark Delaney (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you very much, and good luck.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yep, thanks.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Amitabh Passi with UBS. Please proceed, sir.

Amitabh Passi (Senior Technology Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thank you. I apologize for the background noise. Mike, just a quick one. On the book-to-bill, the 1.03, was that across all geographies? Could you maybe just overlay that with more specific geographic commentary? And I was wondering if you're actually starting to see Europe accelerate, or would you again characterize that as relatively stable?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

I would call Europe, for us, relatively stable right now. The book-to-bill of 1.03 in the fourth quarter, that was up over the prior years. We had indicated all three regions, North America, Europe, and Asia, were all above one. So there was, you know, no particular region pulling the other two out, but the regions themselves were all above one.

Amitabh Passi (Senior Technology Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. And then just for my follow-up, Paul, for you. I think we've now seen restructuring charges about five years in a row. Can you just help remind us where we are. Are you anticipating any more charges going to the P&L? Are you largely done?

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Well, look, we always have a continuous process improvement approach to what we're doing, and the way we look for efficiencies in our business. You know, it is always a better customer experience and supplier experience if we're simpler to do business with. So I think we'll still be going at it as we move forward. You know, we kind of look at it as a pretty good trade. You know, I look at the fact that we were able to, this year, as Mike mentioned, generate more than our targeted $75 million on an annual basis. A lot of that did take place in Europe as an example, which has higher statutory requirements for folks, having severance. But the payback is about a year.

You know, looking at it at a high level, the restructuring cost itself was around $80 million, and we got more than $75 million, and we're able to reinvest it back in the business. So, you know, when I look at it, I look at a pretty good trade, a one-year payback, so we'll keep at it.

Amitabh Passi (Senior Technology Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Sheerin with Stifel. Please proceed.

Matthew Sheerin (Managing Director)

Yes, thanks. Just another question on the operating margins as it relates to the component business. I know you did grow year-over-year. It looks like you're gonna be getting into some tougher comps, particularly in the last September, you were closer to 5%. And so, as you've got that mix issue with Asia still doing better than Europe and North America, and then short lead times still putting pricing pressure out there, are you still confident you can get to 5% margin sometime this year in components?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, Matt. We continue to make pretty good progress towards the long-term goal. We feel, we feel confident that we'll return this business to the targets. We exited 2013 thirty basis points higher than 2012, and fully expect to return to 5% this year.

Matthew Sheerin (Managing Director)

Okay, great. That's helpful. And then, just this bigger picture, Mike, it looks like we've been, this component cycle, sort of been stuck in this period of equilibrium, one to one book-to-bill for a while, still pricing pressure, lead times still relatively short. What do you think it's gonna take for the cycle to kick into at least a faster gear, if you will, over the next couple of quarters? Is it really just demand at this point?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny because you're absolutely right. We haven't seen the lead times extend, as a general rule. We've seen customers get pretty much what they want, when they want it, and as you know, we've been through that cycle before. Although, what's kind of interesting now is you're seeing, at different times, different regions pick up and have a good quarter. And I would say, if you saw two regions pick up and start growing a few percentage points more, you'll start to see some stress on the demand. It's really not gonna take a lot to stress the demand, because there's not a lot of excess capacity out there right now because the manufacturers have been supplying product that has been really equal with the demand they have.

So their ability to sort of crank up their factories is not immediate. And just a little good news in the economy or in a couple of regions are going to change things pretty dramatically, I believe.

Matthew Sheerin (Managing Director)

Okay. All right. Thanks a lot, Mike.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Shawn Harrison with Longbow Research. Please proceed.

Shawn Harrison (Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, two clarifications on ECS. First, how much will Computerlinks contribute to the March quarter? And then secondarily, Paul, based upon that $70 million-$100 million number, my math says it's something around maybe a, a nickel of earnings headwind. Just if you could, you know, I guess, see if my math makes sense.

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Yeah. So you know, going in reverse order of your questions, you're right. So this one-day cutoff could be 4%, 5%, 6%, $0.06, sorry, not percent, but negative impact for us, you know, year-over-year. So that's in the ballpark. So I would agree. You know, we have some seasonality that runs through. We had two months of Computerlinks in Q4. We'll have three months. Looks like the revenue on three months will be about, in Q1, will be about flat with the two months we had in Q4.

Shawn Harrison (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And then as a follow-up, noticed the $50 million of share repurchase activity during the fourth quarter. If you could comment on just kind of what your total available liquidity is right now and kind of plans for cash deployment during 2014.

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Okay. So, yeah, Sean, let me start with our strategy, right? We have a long-term capital structure strategy to be mid-tier investment grade rated. We believe that organic investments have the highest reward and the lowest risk. We'll continue to do that. As Mike alluded to in his comments, you know, we were able to get a higher targeted savings level, so we reinvested some of that back in sales and field application engineers. You can't grow sales without more salespeople. It's just kind of like and one of the laws of nature. So that's what we're investing in. Strategic M&A, so Computerlinks, which we did in the second half of 2013, and we'll continue to look for great opportunities that expand and strengthen us geographically, new product sets and service offerings.

Then finally, excess capital will be returned to investors. Right now, our bias is towards a buyback program, which we feel has been very successful. $350 million last year, going back to investors is a pretty healthy level of return. So that's kind of how we think of it going forward. We've also mentioned around our target on cash flow is to convert $70 million of operating income. We've exceeded that now for four or five years. But that would, you know, based upon whatever model you have, take 70% of that to get you cash flow from operations, and then we have a CapEx at about $100 million, give or take.

So that gives you an idea of the remaining capital between $300 million and $400 million, if my math's right, at a high level, based upon what, expectations are or consensus for Q1 from you all out there, and then looking for the full year. So somewhere between $300 million and $400 million, which we'll look to utilize for further organic investments or strategic M&A or whatever is the excess return to investors.

Shawn Harrison (Senior Research Analyst)

Guys, you're very helpful. Thanks, Paul.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Alexander with Raymond James. Please proceed.

Brian Alexander (Senior Managing Director)

Okay, first question on computing, maybe for Andy. I think the organic growth this quarter was 13%, which is obviously much faster than the overall market, and faster than the suppliers that you serve. So you referenced, or Mike referenced in the prepared remarks, the supplier matrix expanding a couple of times. Is there any way to parse out how much of your organic growth is coming from new versus existing suppliers? And when you look at your existing suppliers and the growth with them, are you growing faster than they are across the board, or are there specific areas within your supplier base where you're gaining more share? And I have a follow-up.

Andy Bryant (President, Global ECS)

Okay. So Brian, it's Andy. I'll take it in reverse. So when you ask the question about new lines, certainly a tremendous amount of our organic growth is coming from the recruitment of new vendors who are attracted to the value model. As an example, today, in North America, we've got over 130 vendors that we support. You go back five years in time, that number was maybe half of that. So we've had tremendous growth and new vendor, I'll call it, new vendor acquisition. As far as the existing lines that we have, we see a trend by some of our big suppliers to use the channel more and more, particularly in the mid-market, which is the customer base that we serve. And yes, we are outgrowing them for a couple of reasons.

Again, the focus on the channel, number one, and then two, I think the mid-market customer may be doing just a bit better in some cases than some of the large enterprise customers.

Brian Alexander (Senior Managing Director)

So as you look to 2014, do you think that your growth will continue to meaningfully outpace your supplier base, or, you know, are we coming toward the end where maybe the growth rate for Arrow will converge with the supplier base?

Andy Bryant (President, Global ECS)

Yeah, that's always our goal. Our goal is to outgrow the market, and I think it will continue in 2014.

Brian Alexander (Senior Managing Director)

Okay, and then a follow-up for Paul, just to make sure I understand, the March quarter guidance as it relates to seasonality. You mentioned the vendor cutoff issue, and then you also mentioned one less day of sales. For ECS specifically, are those the two reasons that cause your guidance to be below seasonal? You know, excluding those factors, you basically would be looking for a seasonal outlook. And on the cutoff issue, is that one vendor or multiple vendors?

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Yes, we would be more in line with traditional seasonality, absent the cutoff, the one day less shipping, and it's a couple, a handful of suppliers. It's not a broad swath of suppliers.

Brian Alexander (Senior Managing Director)

Okay. All right, thanks.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Cross Research. Please proceed.

Steven Fox (Managing Director)

Hi, good afternoon. Just following up on Brian's question. Just took a quick look through your 10-K, and you talked about just different enterprise computing sales by products, and it looks like services business was down for the full year, and it looks like storage contributed the bulk of the growth. And I was just curious if you could maybe comment on those observations in terms of whether that's accurate and what would be the drivers there. And then I had a follow-up.

Paul Reilly (EVP, Finance and Operations, and CFO)

Hey, Steve, just one point of clarity before we get into some of those details. Remember that storage is recorded on a gross revenue basis, and services are recorded on a net revenue basis. So the mix change is a bit distorted because we're talking about big storage sales, and we're talking about small services sales. So the mix changes, but the rewards in GP and operating income are not out of balance. So sometimes it's a little bit. We can make some broad assumptions around how the business is operating because the difference in accounting for revenue dollars.

Andy Bryant (President, Global ECS)

Right. Yeah, I would just add, Steve, it can be that, you know, services still grew 19% year-on-year. And services, particularly in the resold maintenance area, are a following indicator of the sales we make on the infrastructure. So when you see storage rising at 23% and servers start to grow again, our annuity base grows in the services area, and the growth follows. So, I think we're in good shape.

Steven Fox (Managing Director)

Great. Just a little quick follow-up on that, Andy. So in terms of storage, would you then not say that it was especially beneficial of the strategy you laid out in the answer to Brian? Or, or is there something else going on specific to storage?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Oh, no, storage is a great story. I mean, remember, the 23% growth is coming on top of record revenue performance in that segment. So to be growing 23%, given the position we have in the market, it's, it's a great story. And we are adding, you know, some flash vendors, and we're adding some of the emerging storage vendors into our, our portfolio, so very much a part of the strategy.

Steven Fox (Managing Director)

Great. And then just, one real quick question on components. The 5% target, I assume that's for at some point during the year, not for the full year. And also on the book-to-bill for the components business, the 1.03, given what you said about the market, does that imply that, you know, the, the backlog is more weighted towards over 90-day type of shipments? Thanks.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, the backlog, anytime we see that, we do see an expanded backlog, but let's remember, 1.03, you know, it's not negative, and I would call that slightly over positive. So we would not, you know, take something like that and really alter our thinking on shipments throughout the quarter, given normal cancellation cycles and things like that. So, I would plan it as a small uptick. Our plans are still to deliver 5% this year on the components business in total for the year, and we expect it to go up, quarter-over-quarter as we progress throughout the year.

Steven Fox (Managing Director)

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yep.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Sherry Scribner with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed. Ms. Scribner, please check the mute feature on your phone. Your next question comes from the line of Kriti Shetty with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Hi. Thanks. This is Sherry Scribner. Can you guys hear me?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, we can, Sherry.

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Okay, great. Sorry about the confusion. I wanted to ask a little bit about the Europe business. The growth there was pretty strong this quarter. I wanted to know if you think that you guys are gaining share there, or what, in particular, you're seeing.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

So, Sherry, is your question driven towards components European growth year-over-year, or is it on the ECS side year-over-year?

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Both.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Okay. Well, in the components business, Sherry, if you remember, we were in the middle of converting our computer system in the first half of the year in Europe. And, you know, we believe that slowed our growth a little bit. As that system came online and people got familiar with it, we've now seen the business pick up there for us, which I think is good news for us. I wouldn't call a huge market share victory yet, because we've really only seen a couple of quarters of that growth in the second half of the year, and we'd fully expect to see Europe do better even this year. But I think the new computer system is a big help for them because if you remember, we were sitting with something like five inventory pools there. Now we have one.

So the ability to really service a customer need is, right at our fingertips for every sales rep and, can happen on a much faster basis. So that's, that's good there. And then, as you know, in, our computer products group, between, the acquisitions and the matrix strategy, we've really been growing significantly and much faster than our suppliers in the European market, with that business. And we would really expect that to, continue as we've, loaded up now with even a, a bunch of new software, vendors that we didn't have before through the acquisition of Computerlinks. So all in all, Europe for us, is looking pretty good.

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Okay, that's helpful. And then, in terms of thinking about the system rollouts that you guys have been talking about for a number of years, are we essentially done with that now that we've finished Europe? What else needs to happen? And then I just have one other quick question.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

No, we're heading next towards Asia Pac.

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Yep, okay.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

We will be dealing with Asia Pac this year, and then the last one will be on to North America. So there's still some time left on that. But the good news with that is you haven't heard anything about it, and the great news is we haven't had to tell you anything about it. So I think that's all in all the way a computer conversion should go, and we'd like to keep it that way.

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Okay, sounds good. Just looking at the ECS business, very strong growth sequentially. I know you've made some comments about this end market already, but I wanted to get a sense of if you think demand was essentially a bit stronger in the ECS group, or do you think there was some budget flush, or do you think, as you've talked about it, it's mostly your positioning? Thanks.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

... I would call it, good execution on a market that became available in the fourth quarter. How's that? The truth is both teams, North America and Europe, really were out there, beating the bush to bring in a good year. That coupled with having more vendors on the line card and really executing and, increasing our share with those vendors, when you, when you got to the end of the year, and you added that up, it was a very nice year for us. And as you know, the market growth is not projected to be that great in computer products either. Gartner or IDC, I think, are both kind of average or below average growth rates from what we've seen in the past years.

But our expectations are to still be able to outgrow the market this year, given our position in the new product lines we have and the new geographies that we're now involved with.

Sherri Scribner (Director)

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Mm-hmm.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of William Stein with SunTrust. Please proceed.

William Stein (Managing Director)

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, we can.

William Stein (Managing Director)

Great, thanks. I'd like to hit on the components operating margin again. I apologize for following with yet another question on this topic, but you talked about 5% for the full year. I think your target is a bit higher than that. It's encouraging to hear that you can get to 5% for a full year. Can you talk about the key driver there? Is it mix related, restructuring, leverage with revenue growth, or something else, and which region do you expect to benefit the most?

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Well, we expect this year, better performance out of the North America region. And as we've told you, the book-to-bill in North America had picked up. We do expect better performance out of Europe this year also. That will help some of the mix change that we discussed, we got involved with, with Asia Pac outgrowing the other two, too, but this year, we're expecting a much more balanced approach to that.

William Stein (Managing Director)

That's helpful. Then in the systems part of the business, investors have speculated that the industry's transition to cloud-based services could challenge the growth of this business, but it doesn't seem to be hurting you, and maybe even the complexity helps you. Can you give us maybe an updated view on that? And also, we haven't heard about ITAD in a while. I'm wondering if you might be able to update us on that as well. Thank you.

Andy Bryant (President, Global ECS)

Okay, it's Andy. I'll start with cloud. So yeah, we still see a, you know, the cloud is certainly moving along quite rapidly, but it's in the early innings, and there's quite a bit of on-premise acquisition still happening from our customer base, and there's some off-premise acquisition using the cloud. But the mix is still very favorable for us. It's still a lot of private hybrid cloud activity, more than public cloud activity, and we've also prepared ourselves for the resale of cloud with our ArrowSphere tool, which is a unique tool to the market. So we actually continue to see the cloud as an opportunity. And I'll let Mike take the ITAD question.

Michael Long (Chairman, President, and CEO)

The ITAD question, as you guys probably saw, Gartner put us up in the Magic Quadrant. ITAD is still a very viable strategy in here. We haven't talked much about it, and the main reason being, we're still probably a year, possibly two, from it being a huge impact, that would be an interesting breakout for you guys. That's a business that we are putting together, sort of a market at a time, getting it up to scale, and we expect good things from it in the future. But as to right now, there's really not a whole lot to report other than things are progressing, the sales are growing, and we're in progress of investing to get more and more locations.

William Stein (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question and answer portion of the call. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Greg Hansen for closing remarks.

Andy Bryant (President, Global ECS)

Thanks, Patrick. If you have any questions about the information presented today, please feel free to contact me. Thank you, and have a nice day.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.