Avnet - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 FY2025 revenue was $5.32B and GAAP diluted EPS $1.01; adjusted diluted EPS $0.84. Asia delivered its third consecutive YoY sales growth while EMEA remained the weakest region.
• Results were above company guidance and beat S&P Global consensus estimates: Revenue beat by ~$63M and adjusted EPS beat by ~$0.13; GAAP EPS was above prior year and sequentially higher [functions.GetEstimates].
• Operating margin compressed YoY on mix shift toward Asia; adjusted operating margin was 2.9% vs 3.6% last year. A $9M gain-on-sale leaseback benefited adjusted EPS by ~$0.08, and interest expense fell YoY on lower borrowings.
• Q4 FY2025 guidance implies flat sequential sales at the midpoint ($5.15B–$5.45B; adj. EPS $0.65–$0.75), with lower EMEA in constant currency and flattish Americas/Asia; share count assumption drops to 86M diluted shares and tax rate guided to 21–25%.
• Capital returns remained active: $101M buybacks (~2.3% of shares) and $28M dividends; operating cash flow was $141M in Q3 and $585M year-to-date; gross leverage 3.2x with ~$1.2B committed capacity.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Asia strength: Third consecutive YoY growth; Q3 Asia sales +13% YoY despite seasonal declines; book-to-bill reached parity in Asia, with IP&E above parity company-wide.
• Farnell execution improving: Farnell sales +6.1% QoQ; operating margin rose to 3.0% from 1.0% in Q2; management “encouraged” by progress and targeting steady improvements.
• Cash generation and capital returns: $141M operating cash flow in Q3; $859M over the last four quarters; $101M buybacks and $28M dividends in Q3.

What Went Wrong

• Margin pressure: Operating margin 2.7% vs 3.4% prior-year; adjusted operating margin 2.9% vs 3.6%, driven by mix shift to Asia and weaker EMEA.
• EMEA weakness: EMEA sales -24.1% YoY and slight sequential decline; management cited persistent macro/geopolitical headwinds and consumer confidence dampening.
• Inventory reductions slower than desired: Inventories decreased ~$57M in constant currency QoQ; management still expects additional reductions but acknowledged pace is modest given softer demand.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and welcome to the Avnet Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question-and-answer session will follow with a formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Joe Burke, Vice President, Investor Relations. Joe, please go ahead.

Joe Burke (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Avnet's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. This morning, Avnet released financial results for the Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025, and the release is available on the Investor Relations section of Avnet's website, along with a slide presentation which you may access at your convenience. As a reminder, some of the information contained in the news release and on this conference call contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Such forward-looking statements are not the guarantee of performance, and the company's actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Several factors that could cause or contribute to such differences are described in detail in Avnet's most recent Form 10-Q and 10-K and subsequent filings with the SEC.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or supply new information regarding the circumstances after the date of this presentation. Please note, unless otherwise stated, all results provided will be non-GAAP measures. The full non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliation can be found in the press release issued today, as well as in the appendix slides of today's presentation and posted on the Investor Relations website. Today's call will be led by Phil Gallagher, Avnet's CEO, and Ken Jacobson, Avnet's CFO. With that, let me turn the call over to Phil Gallagher. Phil?

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Thank you, Joe, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on our Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call. I am pleased we delivered financial results ahead of our expectations for the third quarter. We achieved sales of $5.3 billion, near the high end of our guidance, and adjusted EPS of $0.84 above guidance. We also generated $141 million of cash flow from operations in the quarter. Our results were driven by slightly better than expected performance in Asia and Farnell, offset by expected ongoing weaknesses in the West, with Europe presenting the most challenging market conditions. Semiconductor and IP&E lead times and pricing continue to be stable for most technologies. Our global book-to-bill ratio continues to improve, with the Asia region achieving parity in the quarter and with the Americas and EMEA approaching parity.

I would note that the IP&E book-to-bill ratio across the company continues to improve above parity. Our backlog continues to be lower due to a combination of shorter lead times and customers still in the destocking mode. Cancellations have remained at normal levels. Customers continue to work through their elevated inventories. While our inventory is down marginally after accounting for foreign currency, I want to emphasize that inventory on hand, which is comprised of a diverse supplier mix, is a strategic asset and an important part of the value proposition we bring to our customers. We stand at the ready to provide our customers with the product they need as the destocking process runs its course. At the same time, we expect to continue to optimize our inventory composition and reduce core inventory levels where needed in the coming quarters.

Turning to our Electronic Components results, at the top line, our Electronic Component sales decline on a sequential basis and on a year-on-year basis due to the economic backdrop and certain geopolitical factors. On the other hand, Asia was the only region with year-on-year sales growth. In EMEA, we continue to experience weak demand across the region. In the quarter, the industrial end market increased slightly while other verticals were down sequentially. The aerospace and defense end market was the only vertical that showed growth on a year-on-year basis. In the Americas, we saw sequential growth in the transportation and compute end markets while other verticals were down sequentially. All verticals, with the exception of compute, were down on a year-on-year basis. We did not see any meaningful increase in shipments in advance of the anticipated tariff increases.

Results for our Asia region were better than expected, even after allowing for the seasonal declines attributed to the Lunar New Year. Sales for Asia were down 8.5% sequentially. However, sales increased 13% year-on-year, representing the third consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth. While sales for all verticals were down sequentially as expected, we saw year-on-year growth in the industrial, communication, and transportation end markets. Similar to last quarter, we experienced a slight benefit in Asia from customers ordering due to the uncertainty of potential regulatory changes in the U.S. Demand creation revenues as a percentage of total revenues remained stable. Our demand creation wins increased as our field application engineers continue to find ways to create solutions for our customers, even in these challenging markets. One bright spot to mention is Abacus. Our specialty IP&E business in EMEA recorded solid increases in demand creation revenues and gross profit dollars.

Now, turning to Farnell, we are encouraged by the progress Farnell is making as sales increased 6% sequentially and operating income increased to 3% for the quarter. We continue to be challenged given the macro environment in Europe, where a large portion of their sales are derived. While our team still has a lot of work to do, I expect that we will see steady improvements at Farnell. We will continue to execute against our strategy and focus on those growth opportunities we can control, including leveraging existing Avnet core customer and supplier relationships, thus our branding of the Power of One. Now, regarding recently announced tariffs, we understand that this topic is front and center for all Avnet stakeholders. I want to take a moment to talk about what we are doing to mitigate the impact of tariffs on our customers and our own financials.

First, I will start by saying the current environment regarding tariffs is dynamic, and our remarks today are based on what we know at this time. As we've mentioned before, when tariffs on goods originating from China went into effect in 2018, we implemented changes to our systems and processes to minimize the impact of tariffs where we could and passed through tariffs to our customers as seamlessly as possible. In response to recently enacted tariffs earlier this month, our team has been making the necessary adjustments to our systems and processes to capture and mitigate the widening scope of those that are currently applicable. Some of our solutions to minimize the impact include leveraging our global logistics and services footprint, collaborating with suppliers we can minimize impact on our customers, and offering alternative country-of-origin products and solutions that are not subject to tariffs.

To conclude, we are experiencing one of the most challenging and uncertain times that I've witnessed in my 40-plus years in distribution. Supply chains today are very complex, and as I like to say, complexity is our friend. At Avnet, our job, and a big part of our value proposition, is to minimize the complexity so our suppliers and customers can achieve their goals in the most cost-effective way possible. We at Avnet have a long history of adapting to evolving technologies, market cycles, geopolitics, and shifts in regulations. I am confident we will weather these current challenges and emerge stronger. I want to thank our team for their dedication and perseverance in helping us to achieve our goals. It is during times like these that our efforts demonstrate to all of our stakeholders the value that we provide at the center of the technology supply chain.

With that, I'll turn it over to Ken to dive deeper into our third quarter results. Ken.

Ken Jacobson (CFO)

Thank you, Phil, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Avnet and for joining our Third Quarter Earnings Call. Our sales for the third quarter were approximately $5.3 billion, near the high end of our guidance range, and down 6% both year-over-year and on a sequential basis. Relative to expectations, sales in Asia and Farnell were higher than expected, while the Americas and EMEA sales were slightly lower than expected. Regionally, on a year-over-year basis, sales increased 13% in Asia but declined 24% in EMEA and 9% in the Americas. From an operating group perspective, Electronic Component sales declined 6% year-over-year and decreased 7% sequentially. Farnell sales declined 10% year-over-year but increased 6% sequentially. For the third quarter, gross margin of 11.1% was 78 basis points lower year-over-year but 54 basis points higher sequentially, in part due to a seasonal mix shift to the West.

The same seasonal mix shift impacted EC gross margin, which was higher sequentially but down year-over-year. Gross margins for each EC region remained relatively consistent on a sequential basis. Farnell gross margin was also down year-over-year but up sequentially, largely due to an increased mix of on board components. Farnell gross margin at the product category level, including on-the-board components, continues to be stable. Turning to operating expenses, we continue to manage expenses well and take costs out where necessary. SG&A expenses were $435 million in the quarter, down $32 million, or 7% year-over-year, and down $1 million sequentially.

Operating expenses for the quarter included a $9 million benefit from the gain on the sale and lease back of a facility. As a percentage of gross profit dollars, SG&A expenses were slightly higher sequentially at 74%. Foreign currency positively impacted operating expenses by approximately $4 million sequentially and $7 million year-over-year.

For the third quarter, we reported adjusted operating income of $153 million, and our adjusted operating margin was 2.9%. By operating group, Electronic Components operating income was $172 million, and EC operating margin was 3.5%. The year-over-year decline in EC operating margin was primarily due to the sales mix shift to Asia. Farnell operating margin was 3%, up approximately 200 basis points quarter over quarter, reflecting improved sales and gross margin. It is early days, but we are encouraged by this improvement. We believe the Farnell business has stabilized and is seeing modest improvement in the number and size of customer orders. Farnell operating expenses were down $12 million year-over-year but up $3 million sequentially on higher sales. Farnell continues to execute against its cost reduction program, but a majority of the planned actions have been completed exiting the third quarter.

Turning to expenses below operating income, third quarter interest expense of $61 million decreased by $12 million year-over-year and decreased $1 million sequentially due to lower average borrowings. This lower interest expense positively impacted adjusted diluted earnings per share by $0.11 year-over-year. Our adjusted effective income tax rate was 23% in the quarter, as expected. Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.84 exceeded the high end of our guidance for the quarter and included an approximately $0.08 benefit from the gain on sale and lease back of the facility during the quarter. Turning to the balance sheet and liquidity, during the quarter, working capital remained flat sequentially and included a slight increase in reported inventories of $18 million, a $326 million decrease in receivables, and a $307 million decrease in payables.

Sequential increases in foreign currency exchange rates added $93 million to working capital, including $75 million to reported inventories. Excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates, inventories decreased by $57 million compared to last quarter. We remain focused on reducing inventory levels where elevated, noting that we also want to make investments where needed. Our return on working capital was stable with last quarter. We generated $141 million of cash from operations in the quarter, $585 million fiscal year to date, and $859 million over the past four quarters. We expect to generate positive operating cash flows next quarter. Year to date, our debt is lower by $260 million. We ended the quarter with a gross leverage of 3.2 times, and we had approximately $1.2 billion of available committed borrowing capacity.

During the quarter, net cash used for CapEx was $27 million, within our expected quarterly levels of approximately $25 million-$35 million. CapEx is expected to be between $55 million-$65 million next quarter due to the planned purchase of an office building. In the third quarter, we paid our quarterly dividends of $0.33 per share, or $28 million. We also repurchased approximately $101 million of the shares, bringing the year-to-date repurchase total to $251 million. We are ahead of our goal to reduce shares outstanding by at least 5% this fiscal year. Additionally, we have more than $400 million left on our current share repurchase authorization. Book value per share increased to approximately $56 a share, or a sequential increase of $1 per share, primarily due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates.

With regard to our capital allocation, we continue to prioritize our existing business needs, including working capital and CapEx. We remain committed to our roadmap of delivering a reliable and increasing dividend and balancing debt paydown with share repurchases as our shares continue to be undervalued by the market. Turning to guidance, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, we are guiding sales in the range of $5.15 billion-$5.45 billion and diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.65-$0.75. Our fourth quarter guidance assumes flat sales compared to last quarter at the midpoint, driven in part by favorable foreign exchange rates, primarily in EMEA. Our overall sales guidance in constant currency assumes lower sales in EMEA and flattish sales in Asia and the Americas.

This guidance also assumes similar interest expense compared to the third quarter, an effective tax rate of between 21% and 25%, and 86 million shares outstanding on a diluted basis. Our team has made a significant effort to adjust our processes for this latest round of tariffs. For additional context, we currently estimate that between 7% to 10% of our annual Americas sales is from products that originate from China. We continue to work with our suppliers and customers to mitigate the impact of tariffs where possible. In summary, our third quarter performance was better than expected despite the challenging market conditions. Our team continues to focus on generating operating cash flow, and over the past year, we have been able to balance the paydown of debt with returning cash to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends.

Before turning to questions, I want to echo Phil's comments in thanking our team for continuing to focus on the things that we can control. We will continue to work closely with our suppliers and customers to mitigate the impact of current and any future tariffs to the extent possible. Our global scale and the diversification of our distribution center locations, the supplier technologies we provide, and the vertical markets we serve give us the ability to reduce complexities and better serve our customers. With that, I will turn it over to the operator to open it up for questions. Operator.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star two if you'd like to move your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing Star one. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question today is coming from Joe Quatrochi from Wells Fargo. Your line is now live.

Joe Quatrochi (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to kind of understand the puts and takes on the revenue guide for the June quarter. It is a bit weaker than some of your suppliers that have already guided for the quarter, implying that their revenue would be up, low, or mid, or even, in some cases, high single digits sequentially. I wanted to kind of understand the difference there. Maybe as a follow-up to that, how do we think about your inventory expectations given that you are guiding for flattish growth and some of your suppliers are guiding for growth?

Joe Burke (VP of Investor Relations)

Yeah, Joe, thanks. I guess what I would say is I think we've taken the same approach that we have over the past several quarters to kind of come up with a guide. I don't think we view it as conservative. We don't view it as necessarily aggressive as well. I think the real story is the West, in Europe in particular, right? I think in kind of euro, looking at a sequential down 5% plus. I think if you look at the guidance range, if you look at the high end of that guidance range, you could get to those low single-digit growth sequentially. Really, that's all going to be probably coming from Asia, right? Asia is where we have the strength now, and the West is kind of weak. When you get the upside in sales in Asia, it's lower calorie sales.

That is kind of how we're thinking about things. I know we'll get into some questions on tariffs and things like that. Hey, I think we're going to make some more progress. $57 million reduction in inventory in constant currency. We'll make some more progress this quarter. I would say $100 million kind of plus is what we're looking at. We need to kind of work that side of things and think there's more opportunity there to relieve the inventory. That is kind of what we're seeing right now.

Joe Quatrochi (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And then as a follow-up on tariffs, I mean, you kind of touched upon it in the prepared remarks. Opportunities for your supply chain services for your customers, and can you talk about that? What does that look like? Can you remind us of any just kind of the details from the financial profiles of that business?

Joe Burke (VP of Investor Relations)

Yeah. I mean, I think it's an opportunity to continue to help our customers across all of our service offers, including supply chain and service. I wouldn't say it's unique to that. I guess how we look at it is this is where our global scale and geographic footprint helps us. Again, we talked about 7-10% of our Americas business being country of origin, China. And even some of that goes to Mexico or Canada, which wouldn't be subject to tariffs. Look, it's complicated, but I think our footprint is going to serve us well to help customers reduce that complexity. At the end of the day, stuff coming from China into the U.S. is going to be subject to tariffs, right? We can't stop that. We can try to get different country origins and mitigate the best we can.

We're working through that right now. We do see this is another example. I think we referred to it as just more complexity, which serves us better to help our customers deal with that. It is challenging right now in terms of everyone's running around with their heads cut off. The team's doing a great job trying to adjust real-time to what's coming out. We don't listen to the news. We're more focused on what the government actually issues. It's coming at us pretty fast. We think we're lockstep with what the changes are, and we're implementing things as quickly as we can.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Yeah, Joe, I'll just jump in on that. Thanks, Ken. And we're super proud of the team here. We've got a tremendous amount of experience with this. It's not new. I think we re-emphasized that in the script. It's going back to, what, 2017, 2018? It's just a little bit more complex than that, obviously, with what's going on. We have the processes in place. We've got the logistics centers options. We've got the FTZ set up. The word really is because everybody's like, "Are you going to pass it on?" That's going to be the next question. The answer is yes. We are doing that and have done that in the past. The real thing we try to do is mitigate upfront altogether, right? The key is mitigation. That's why we very intentionally put the complexity in the script. Complexity is fine.

That's what we deal with, okay? Our job is to make things simpler, if you will, or streamline for our customers and suppliers. On the guidance, I'm going to re-emphasize what Ken mentioned is, look, we don't stress the team. We don't make up numbers. We roll it up, bottoms up. We have some conversations with the field, regional presidents, saying, "Here's what we believe is our best estimate." I think the guidance this quarter is particularly complex, given the tariffs, given the geopolitical uncertainty, that there was no reason to go and stretch that out. If we do better, we do better. Great. We're very confident with the guide, okay, as we have been in the past. It's what we're seeing today, and that's what we're reporting.

Joe Quatrochi (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for the details.

Joe Burke (VP of Investor Relations)

You got it, Joe.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, that's Star one to be placed into question queue. Our next question is coming from William Stein from Truist.

William Stein (Managing Director and Senior Analyst in Technology)

Hi, can you all hear me?

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Sure can. Well.

William Stein (Managing Director and Senior Analyst in Technology)

Oh, great. I cut out for a minute there. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on Farnell, you did a bit better there than we expected in the quarter, both revenue, but especially in margins. Can you elaborate a little bit on what went on in the quarter and what your longer-term expectations are for that business, please?

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Sure can. Yeah. The word I would use, and we're not celebrating by any stretch, but the word I would use on Farnell is we're encouraged, okay? We put a plan in place with the new leader, Rebeca, and team, and are executing to the plan, both in OpEx reductions as well as SKU expansion and streaming the processes and driving more efficiency. What happened, what's encouraging, you're right, in the operating margin, our goal there, Will, we say this is, "I want to see continuous improvement quarter on quarter, work our way back into double digit." Okay, for what period of time exactly? Tough to call, but we definitely want to see that we went from where we were to one to three, to let's get to five to six right on down the line.

That's the charter for Farnell, and it really moves our needle, as you know, from an EPS standpoint, when, not if, when we do that. Let me give you some encouraging comments here, Will, that happened throughout the quarter. Across the board, we saw customer line items continue to increase in shipments in all three regions, okay? I do not know if that's canary in the coal mine or what as we talk about it, but it was a good sign. It was not any one region, but in Asia-Pac, we are up close to double digit. In Europe and line items, the activity is up into teens and almost 10% in the Americas. Across the board, we saw increased line item activity.

The order values may not be tracking quite at the same rate, but the volume is going up, and we continue to see that as we get into April and the book-to-bill is positive. It is kind of steady as she goes with Farnell. We believe, as you know, passionately in the success for Farnell and the impact it can have on Avnet. We will continue to leverage Avnet and Farnell as that Power of One theme we continue to market out there to suppliers and customers.

William Stein (Managing Director and Senior Analyst in Technology)

Thanks for that. The next thing I'd like to linger on for a minute is inventory. There's always this sort of push and pull, at least in the discussion. I think you tend to always cite that investors push you to keep that number low. I think that's fair. But you, today and in the past, have talked about this as being sort of strategic and highly valuable to both customers and suppliers. I wonder, first, would you consider establishing a higher sort of go forward target level for inventories? Maybe this is the right level for a longer-term level. If not, if you're trying to get them down, I am sort of surprised that even on an FX-adjusted or a constant currency basis, you had revenue down 6% in the quarter.

You talked about trying to get this number down, yet it was only down about 1% on constant currency. Which approach is right? Are you targeting higher levels longer term? If not, why did it not come down faster? Thank you.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

You're talking in total Avnet then, okay? First, I thought you were talking about Farnell. Okay. Let me take a shot at that and pass it over to Ken. As we've stated in the past, Will, and we've supported at least into this as well as our customers, inventory is not a bad thing, okay? In distribution, what we shoot for, we're going to continue—we are going to continue to shoot to bring inventory down more. We have to do that. I want to emphasize that the inventory is not up across the board. We've mentioned this before. Most of our inventory and SKUs by commodity are fine, and actually, we need to invest more, okay? There's a handful, let's just say, of lines that we have more inventory than we probably had anticipated, and we need to work that down.

Some of that was also strategic. We called that out a few earnings calls ago, a couple of calls in a row, that we had a few strategic opportunities to increase our inventory and get some better returns for that. We did it. It is good inventory. Again, we got the returns on it. I think it is a constant balancing act. I mean, at the end of the day, what we shoot for is the right returns, okay? We need to get the right return on working capital and ROCE number. That is ultimately the metric, okay? If we get more inventory and we get higher margins and we get a greater return, that is fine, okay? Right now, we are just a little bit over inventory. We want to bring it down and continue to bring it down.

That is what we are going to track to do. We do not want to bring our inventory down to where we are not competitive, or to where we are not helping the suppliers and customers meet their goals, okay?

Ken Jacobson (CFO)

Yeah. I would just say, I think as the sales go down, it's more challenging, right, to continue to turn the inventory. But we have made a lot of progress in certain areas. Inventory is not one thing. It's lots of things. And there is some progress behind the scenes. Even though you could say optically, the $57 million is not a big number relative to the base, we'd say, but there was a lot of churn within that that was helpful for the future quarters to come. I think I would echo Phil's comments. There's opportunity here. It doesn't mean we're going to just necessarily bring inventory levels down to a target number just for the target number, right? We want to have it within the context of the business.

I think it's a fair statement to say, perhaps in some supplier lines or in some opportunities, we may need to hold more than historical levels, but maybe there's others where we have more opportunity. We continue to drive that with the team. Again, we think we'll make additional progress this quarter. Clearly slower than we would have anticipated a year ago and not where we wanted to be. We do think we're making progress, even if it's modest.

William Stein (Managing Director and Senior Analyst in Technology)

Thank you.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Thanks, Will.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America. Your line is now live.

Wamsi Mohan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yes, thank you. It's Wamsi filling in Ruplu today. A few questions around tariffs for me. Have you seen any activity around order patterns and linearity change at all based on the tariff news? In particular, has there been anything that you can see relative to pull in or maybe activity jumping up in Asia ahead of end products getting shipped into the US?

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Wamsi. How are you doing? I'll go first. Let Ken jump in. The overriding answer is not much, okay? Maybe that's surprising. It kind of is to us a little bit. We thought we would see more, and we were talking about pull-ins ahead of tariffs and things along those lines. We didn't see it. We thought we would actually see it, Wamsi, in the December quarter before all this started. That didn't happen either. I mean, modestly, but not much. We didn't see much in the March quarter. We'll see how that plays out. As we called out in the script, we saw some modest pull-ins in Asia-Pac. Again, the grand scheme of things, not that much, really. Like I said, it kind of surprised us a little bit. We thought we would have seen more.

At the same time, as Ken pointed out in the script, the impact to us today coming out of China is 7-10%. It is not—I think sometimes the perception is that everything we have is getting hit. It is really not. It is still a big, still a sizable number, but as a percentage of our, I will call it, exposable sales to tariffs, it is relatively low.

Ken Jacobson (CFO)

Yeah. I think in Asia, in particular, in the December quarter, maybe we saw $50 million kind of, let's say, attributed to pull-in benefit. And maybe this quarter, it was closer to $100 million, I think, in the guidance. We assumed something similar. We're seeing a little bit of uptick that's contributing to the overall demand, but we're not seeing it be massive swings in demand there. We continue to monitor it. Definitely some uncertainty and definitely some currency movement in Asia as well as of late.

Wamsi Mohan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. That's helpful, Phil. Thanks, Ken too. Maybe just to think through this quantifying that you've done, 7-10%, as we think about that, I think you said that some of that also goes via Canada and Mexico. What is the ability for you to kind of shift maybe geographical exposure there in working with your customers? That's question one. Two, as you think through, are you expecting cash flow timing issues relative to when these tariffs go into effect on that exposable piece? Can you just walk us through the dynamic there based on when maybe payments are being made versus what you might be able to recoup?

Ken Jacobson (CFO)

Yeah. Maybe I'll start. I mean, again, we think our flexibility and our distribution center footprint in particular is helpful. We do have not only warehouse in the U.S., but also warehouses in Mexico. The warehouses in the U.S. are designated as foreign trade zones, which means until the product moves out of there, it's not subject to tariffs. It acts as a buffer there. High-level numbers, that 7%-10% that originates from China, 30% of that probably ultimately goes to Mexico or Canada, so it's not subject to tariffs. We've done certain things with our suppliers to become importer of record so we can control the drawbacks and things like that. I'd say right now, not a significant heavy lift on working capital or cash flow. I think as the tariffs start to multiply, we got to monitor it, right?

Again, our goal is to mitigate or minimize the tariffs, but we're going to have to pass it through if we have to pay them. Customers don't want to pay tariffs. They're already paying what they perceive as high prices. There's always that dynamic. Again, that's not new to us. We'll continue to work through it. We don't see, as of this date with the tariffs, we were kind of commenting on the script of any meaningful working capital drag or cash flow drag beyond what we deal with in terms of sometimes receivables come past due. We work with our customers to collect them. The inventory is still probably the biggest opportunity, much more than the tariff kind of draw on working capital in terms of cash flow.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

we are talking—that is why we focus mostly on the China. I mean, for Mexico, we think at the end of the day, it is going to be less than one, maybe one and a half percent of revenues of products coming in from Mexico.

Ken Jacobson (CFO)

In the Americas.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

In the Americas. Yeah.

Wamsi Mohan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. That's super helpful. If I could just one quick last one, this might be a little unusual, but in terms of your visibility into looking into AI-driven components or components that end up in AI-based systems, how much visibility do you have into that? Would you say that anything has changed, either for the better or worse, in that, to the extent that you have visibility there?

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Yeah. We do have some visibility to that, predominantly in Asia-Pac and within Asia-Pac, Taiwan. We are seeing some benefit. It's not monstrous for us. Wamsi, a lot of that goes direct, and a lot of—and there's some like the number one line out there. We do not happen to have that line. That goes direct. We are seeing ancillary products, if you will, around the AI that we are seeing some benefit. We do have visibility to that. I think we call that it's 3-7% of our—3-5% of our business probably in Asia-Pac, somewhere along those lines.

Wamsi Mohan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Okay. Great. Thanks, Phil.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

That is fine. You can hang up. Thanks, Wamsi. We do believe there is going to be a tail of opportunity coming out of AI on the edge that is going to for sure benefit what we do, okay, and on a more global basis over time.

Ken Jacobson (CFO)

I'd also add that the supply chain services, large OEMs, there's opportunity to participate. We're seeing more and more opportunities to get our foot in the door there in that kind of area with supply chain services.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Phil for any further closing comments.

Phil Gallagher (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks. I want to thank everybody for attending today's earnings call. I look forward to speaking to you again at our full fiscal year 2025 earnings report in August. Have a great day. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.