ePlus inc. Stock

ePlus inc. (ePlus) provides technology solutions across the spectrum spanning security, cloud, data center, networking, collaboration, artificial intelligence, and emerging solutions, to domestic and foreign organizations across all industry segments.

Segments

The company operates through two business segments, Technology and Financing.

The company’s Technology segment sells IT hardware products, third-party software and maintenance contracts, the company’s own and third-party advanced professional and managed services, and the company’s proprietary software. The company’s Financing segment operations primarily consist of the financing of IT equipment, software, and related services. Both segments sell to commercial entities, state and local governments, government contractors, and educational institutions.

The company’s solutions are consisted of world class leading technologies from partners, such as Amazon Web Services, Arista Networks, Check Point, Cisco Systems, Citrix, Commvault, Crowdstrike, Deepwatch, Dell EMC, F5 Networks, Foresite, Fortinet, Gigamon, HPE, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, Microsoft, NetApp, Nutanix, NVIDIA, Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, Proficio, Pure Storage, Rubrik, Splunk, Varonis, and VMware, among many others. The company possesses top-level engineering certifications with a broad range of leading IT technologies that enable the company to offer multi-vendor IT solutions that are optimized for each of the company’s customers’ specific requirements. Underpinning the broader areas of cloud, security, networking, data center and collaboration are specific skills in orchestration and automation, application modernization, DevSecOps, zero-trust architectures, data management, data visualization, analytics, network modernization, edge compute and other advanced and emerging technologies.

The company also provides consulting, professional, and managed services, IT staff augmentation, and complete lifecycle management services in the areas of security, cloud, networking, data center, collaboration, and emerging technologies.

The company also offers a wide portfolio of technology and other capital asset financing solutions to customers across commercial and government enterprises, designing programs that are tailored to fit their unique processes, structures, and requirements. The company’s expertise in core and emerging technologies, buttressed by the company’s robust portfolio of consulting, professional, and managed services, has enabled ePlus to remain a trusted advisor for the company’s customers.

The company’s scale and financial resources have enabled the company to continue investing in engineering and technology resources to stay at the forefront of technology trends. The company’s cloud/hosted, proprietary software solutions are focused on giving the company’s customers more control over their IT supply chain, by automating and optimizing the procurement and management of their owned, leased, and consumption-based assets. These solutions have expanded to include private marketplace experiences to the company’s customers to support platforms such as those on AWS marketplace.

The company’s go-to-market strategy focuses primarily on diverse end-markets for middle market to large enterprises. The company serves customers in markets, including telecom, media and entertainment, technology, state and local government and educational institutions (‘SLED’), healthcare, and financial services. For the year ended March 31, 2023, the percentage of revenue by customer end market within the company’s Technology segment included 26% for the telecommunications, media and entertainment industry; 20% for the technology industry; 14% for healthcare; 14% for state and local government, and educational institutions (‘SLED’); and 8% for financial services. Sales to Verizon Communications Inc. represented 22% of the company’s net sales for the year ended March 31, 2023. The company sells to customers in the United States (‘U.S.’), which accounts for most of the company’s sales, and to customers in select international markets, including the United Kingdom (‘U.K.’), the European Union (‘EU’), India, Singapore, and Israel.

Products manufactured by Cisco Systems represented approximately 40%, 39%, and 36% of the company’s technology segment net sales for the years ended March 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021, respectively. Products manufactured by NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Juniper Networks, Dell/EMC, and Arista Networks, collectively represented approximately 23% - 25% of technology segment net sales for the last three years.

Solutions

Technology segment

The company provides a range of IT products and advanced professional and managed services to help the company’s customers improve productivity, profitability, and revenue growth while reducing operating costs. The company’s Technology segment’s products, solutions and services include the following:

Product Revenue

IT sales consists of hardware, perpetual and subscription software, maintenance, software assurance, and internally provided and outsourced services. The company’s customers view technology purchases as integrated solutions, rather than discrete product and service categories, and the majority of the company’s sales are derived from integrated solutions involving the company’s customers’ data center, cloud, network, security, and collaboration infrastructure. The company holds various technical and sales-related certifications from leading manufacturers and software publishers, which authorizes the company to market their products and enables the company to provide advanced professional and managed services. The company actively engages with emerging vendors to offer their technologies to the company’s customers. The company’s flexible platform and customizable catalogs facilitate the addition of new vendors’ products with minimal incremental effort.

Managed Services

Managed services proactively monitor and manage a broad range of technologies on-premises and in the cloud with services, such as managed infrastructure, service desk, Managed Power Protection, and first call lifecycle support (i.e., eLSS), to ensure support of a broad cross-section of technologies spanning multiple original equipment manufacturer (OEM) solutions. These solutions are built in a flexible subscription model to monitor, manage, and maximize business critical technologies—including cloud, security, data center, mobility, and collaboration based on an ITIL Framework with SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, and HIPAA accreditation based. The company also provides ePlus Automated Virtual Assistant (AVA) for Collaboration Spaces. ePlus AVA uses robotic process automation accompanied by ePlus Managed Services to present an exceptional experience for users in video-enabled conference rooms and workspaces.

Service desk provides outsourced functions, including but not limited to, server and desktop support to respond to the company’s customers’ business demands while minimizing overhead.

Storage-as-a-Service is a solution powered by Pure Storage Evergreen//One that provides customers with on-premises storage in a consumption-based model with on-demand burst capacity, backed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and ePlus expert Enhanced Maintenance Support (EMS). This allows customers to consume storage in a cloud-like model in their data center in a time of uncertainty of what upcoming capacity needs will be due to ongoing cloud migrations.

Cloud Hosted Services provide cloud-hosted offerings, including Cloud Managed Backup and Cloud Disaster Recovery. These data protection offerings, delivered under SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA frameworks, are focused on delivering confidence to the company’s customers in their ability to rapidly recover when incidents, such as ransomware occur.

Cloud Managed Services are focused on helping the company’s customers consume public cloud in a way that reduces time-to-market for new applications, lowers their ongoing cloud costs, and increases security. By taking day-to-day cloud management off their hands, the company’s clients can focus on the applications that drive their business.

Managed Security Services help customers strengthen their information security profile with industry-leading tools, technology, and expertise - often at a fraction of the cost of in-house security resources. Services include Security Operations Center (SOC), Vulnerability Management, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), and Incident Response (IR).

Professional Services

Professional services focus on cloud infrastructure, unified communications, collaboration, networking, storage, hyper-converged infrastructure, and virtual desktop infrastructure, supported by security and managed services solutions.

Staff augmentation services provide customers with flexible headcount options, which may range from service desk to infrastructure to software developer skills. Staff augmentation allows customers to access talent, fill specific technology skill gaps, or provide short-term or long-term IT professional help, which also includes services, such as Virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) and Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO), used to complement existing personnel and build three-to-five-year IT roadmaps.

Project management services enhance productivity and collaboration management and enable successful implementations and adoption of solutions for the company’s customers.

Cloud Consulting Services is a global team of architects and consultants focused on assessing customer workloads for cloud, assisting with the selection of the appropriate cloud solution, design and build of cloud platforms, application modernization and migration, automation, and ongoing management and optimization of cloud platforms.

Security solutions help safeguard the company’s customers’ business and information assets, including:

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) services help ensure customers are meeting governance and compliance requirements by leveraging regulatory frameworks, industry best practices, and supporting controls - thereby allowing customers to effectively identify, assess, and mitigate risk.

Technology Introduction and Deployment services help customers rapidly adopt and integrate key security controls and embrace efficiencies across technology types like network, endpoint, data, and cloud.

Financing segment

The company specializes in financing arrangements, including sales-type and operating leases; loans, and consumption-based financing arrangements; and underwriting and management and disposal of IT equipment and assets. The company’s financing operations include sales, pricing, credit, contracts, accounting, risk management, and asset management.

The company primarily finances IT equipment, communication-related equipment, and medical equipment. The company may also finance industrial machinery and equipment, office furniture and general office equipment, transportation equipment, and other general business equipment. The company offers its solutions both directly and through vendors.

The company offers enhanced financing solutions, and the company’s business process services approach automates a significant portion of the IT procurement process and reduces the company’s customers’ cost of doing business. The solution incorporates value-added services at every step in the process, including:

Front-end processing, such as procurement, order aggregation, order automation, vendor performance measurement, ordering, reconciliation, and payment.

Lifecycle and asset ownership services, including asset management, change management, and property tax filing.

End-of-life services, such as equipment audit, removal, and disposal.

Growth Strategy

The key elements of the company’s strategy include being the company’s customers’ partner of choice for comprehensive it and lifecycle solutions, including consulting, managed and professional services, and financing; and building the company’s geographic footprint.

Sales and Marketing

The company focuses its sales and marketing efforts on becoming the primary provider of IT solutions for each of the company’s customers. The company actively seeks to acquire new account relationships through personal relationships, electronic commerce, and leveraging the company’s partnerships with vendors and targeted demand-generation activities to increase awareness of the company’s solutions. The company targets middle-market and large commercial entities and state and local governments, and educational institutions. The company undertakes direct marketing and leverage digital marketing and social media campaigns to target certain markets in conjunction with the company’s primary vendor partners, who may provide financial reimbursement, outsourced services, and personnel to assist the company in these efforts.

The company markets to different areas within a customer’s organization, including business units, as well as the IT department, lines of business, or finance department, depending on the solutions.

Intellectual Property Rights

The company has patents in the U.S. In the U.S., the company’s registered trademarks include e+, ePlus, OneSource, Where Technology Means More and GRIT: Girls Re-Imagining Tomorrow. The company also has registered IGXGlobal, and IGXGlobal an ePlus Technology, inc. Company and certain variations thereon in the U.K. and the EU. The company has over 20 registered copyrights, in addition to unregistered copyrights in the company’s website content, software, marketing and other written materials.

History

The company, a Delaware corporation, was founded in 1990. It was incorporated in 1996. The company was formerly known as MLC Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to ePlus inc. in 1999.