Kenneth Lamneck
Analyst · Raymond James
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year of 2011 operating results. During the fourth quarter, we continued to execute on our strategic initiative, while at the same time keeping a disciplined eye on our expenses.
Solid sales performance combined with continued SG&A leverage resulted in double-digit growth and earnings from operations in the quarter. Consolidated net sales increased 2% to $1.4 billion, up from $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, and on a constant currency basis consolidated net sales also grew 2%.
Gross profit was $179 million, up 4% year-over-year, and gross margin was 13.2%, up approximately 30 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2010. Earnings from operations increased 13% to $42.2 million or 3.1% of net sales, compared to $37.3 million or 2.8% of net sales reported in the fourth quarter of 2010. And excluding severance expenses in both periods, EFO margin in the fourth quarter 2011 was 3.2%, up from 2.9% a year ago.
Net earnings and diluted earnings per share were $34.7 million and $0.78 in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to $25 million and $0.53 in the fourth of 2010. The Q4 ‘11 net earnings and EPS results include approximately $7.6 million from certain tax benefits, which Glynis will cover later in the call. And we achieved return on invested capital of 11.4% in the fourth quarter, up from 10% at the end of 2010.
Within our consolidated results for the fourth quarter, our North America segment reported sales growth of 1% year-over-year, as higher software sales and services offset a decrease in sales in our hardware category. Despite modest top line growth, gross margin improved 72 basis points year-over-year and because we continue to control our expenses, we saw virtually all of this gross margin expansion flow through to the earnings from operations line.
For the full year of 2011, our North America segment reported sales growth of 10% and earnings from operations growth of 18%, excluding severance expenses, clearly demonstrating a leverage that exists in our operating model. In EMEA, we saw sales growth of 2% in constant currency in the fourth quarter. We anticipated effect of partner program changes drove gross profit down 2% year-to-year in constant currency, which resulted in declining earnings from operations in EMEA in the quarter.
For the full year, EMEA team drove sales growth of 2% in constant currency, despite continuing economic turbulence in the region and grew earnings from operations approximately 70% on a constant currency basis, excluding severance expense in both years. Additionally, the team successfully implemented new IT system in the Netherlands and Germany in the back half of 2011, given us earlier success and an important initiative for organization. In Asia-Pacific sales increased 16% in constant currency in the fourth quarter, but due to lower margin, driven by primarily by client mix, earnings from operation was relatively flat year-to-year.
For the full year, Asia-Pac business grew to top line 24% and bottom line by 17% in constant currency. On a consolidated basis and for the full year 2011, we reported net sales of $5.3 billion and earnings from operations of $147.4 million, the highest levels reported in the company’s history. We also delivered diluted earnings per share in excess of $2 per share, another record. And just as important, returns delivered on invested capital at 11.4% were notably higher than a cost of capital for the year. As we head into 2012, we are well positioned to continue to drive progress towards the long-term, strategic and financial objectives.
Our global priorities in 2012 will continue to be focused on driving profitable growth to investment in people, training tools within our sales organization and expanding our service capabilities while controlling our costs, all in pursuit of continued progress for the stated long-term objective of 3.5% earnings from operation margin.
In North America, we plan to continue to invest in our sales force by adding sales reps to both the field and inside sales team. In 2011, we added approximately 100 net new sales reps to our inside sales team in Tempe and Montreal. In 2012, we will continue to invest here as well as adding field reps and engineers in key cities throughout the U.S. We will also continue to invest in training for our sales reps to ensure they have knowledge across our portfolio product and service offerings.
In 2011, our sales reps who went through training in our focus product categories, in 2012, we’re trying to deepen this training to include specific products and service solution areas such as mobility to cloud, unified communication to collaboration, data center, network and security and office productivity. This training, along with a more focused strategy around key services offerings, is intended to add more services as a percent of our total sales over time and we are making progress in this initiative.
To expand our services capabilities around office productivity, we recently acquired Ensynch, a professional services firm with multiple Microsoft Gold competencies across the complete Microsoft solution set, including cloud migration and management. And we’ve just launched our new cloud solution here in North America. Our vision related to the cloud is to provide a wide range of solutions, support services, and a shopping experience, so that our clients can learn, shop, and provision their cloud to be through one special aggregation point.
In North America, the Insight Cloud Solution Center or as a service aggregation portal, which is linked to insight.com enables the procurement, delivery, billing, administrative support of on demand services provided through the cloud. Similar cloud solutions have been offered in EMEA as well. All of these activities are driven by our primary focus of penetrating our total adjustable market or TAM and cross selling into our existing client base. While we concentrate on these initiatives, we will also seek to optimize the performance under partner specific incentive programs, including dealer registration, and improve our sourcing and pricing methodologies throughout the business.
Now moving to EMEA and Asia-Pacific. We plan to continue our strategy to expand in the middle market and also continued softness in the public sector. This strategy is serve to flow in 2011, particularly in EMEA, and we plan to continue to expand our hardware capabilities in certain countries in our European footprint in conjunction with a rollout of our new IT system in the region and in line with our strategy to expand our offerings available to our broad-client base.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, we began selling hardware in the new systems in Netherlands and Germany. And to accelerate our plans in these markets, we’ve recently closed the acquisition of Inmac, an IT solutions provider located in the Frankfurt and Amsterdam. With this acquisition, we have added 170 mix to our organization, roughly half of these in sales and marketing, as well as our local warehousing distribution capabilities in Germany. In net 2011 revenues were approximately $120 million in sales. We’re excited about this acquisition as a platform for growth that it provides in these important markets.
And globally we’ll plan to continue to invest in our IT systems in 2012. In May, we will continue the rollout of our new IP system with implementations across our footprint throughout 2012 and 2013. In North America, we will complete the integration of various systems we acquired through acquisitions on to the common SAP platform we use. The development work is now complete and testing is underway. The integration is expected to current stages in Q2 through Q4 of this 2012 year.
Lastly, we will be disciplined in managing our controllable cost structure and improving productivity throughout the business. In 2011, we had some early successes here as we invested in our sales force and our IT initiatives, while taking specific actions through this cost in other parts of the business. As a result SG&A as a percent of sales decreased 30 basis points year-over-year. We continued to focus on managing the costs as we head through 2012 and expect to demonstrate further leverage as our business grows.
I’ll now hand the call over to Glynis who will discuss the fourth quarter and full year operating results of our business segment. Glynis?