Insight Enterprises to Buy PCM in Deal of Massive Channel Proportions

Insight Enterprises has entered into an agreement to acquire PCM Inc. in a deal valued at more than $580 million dollars.

The deal brings together two of the largest channel organizations in North America. Both companies are listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbols NSIT and PCMI, respectively, and PCM was just recognized as the No. 3 company on the MSP 501 list published last week.

In a conference call outlining the terms and strategy behind the deal, Insight executives said the acquisition will help the Tempe, Arizona-based company increase momentum in four key market segments: supply chain optimization; connected workforce solutions; cloud and data center transformation; and digital innovation.

The deal will also help Insight accelerate its managed services business, which is a fast-growing part of the company. For the past several years, Insight has worked diligently to broaden its business beyond product reselling. The work has paid off. Last year, for example, Microsoft recognized Insight as the Worldwide Partner of the Year for Artificial Intelligence. Earlier this month, Forrester Research named Insight a “strong performer” in a new report on midsize, agile software development service providers. In the report, Forrester praised the company for its ability to blend device and software expertise to drive customer innovation.

Among other things, the acquisition of PCM will provide Insight significant expertise in key vertical markets important to Insight, including health care, retail, financial services and entertainment. The acquisition also provides Insight with more than 2,700 client-facing professionals who work in sales, and technical and services delivery. In all PCM, which was founded in 1987, has offices in 40 locations spread across the U.S. and Canada.

In recent news, PCM has partnered with RingCentral to provide cloud solutions to enterprise customers, and received authorization from Microsoft to sell Microsoft licensing services and cloud technology to the U.S. federal government. Since last year, PCM has also looked at new ways to accelerate and broaden its business.

As for terms of the deal, Insight agreed to pay PCM $35 per share of stock, which is a 36% premium over the average trading price over the last month. (In midday trading on Monday, PCM shares were up more than 40% over the close on Friday, June 21.)

For 2018, Insight reported income of $164 million on sales of $7.1 billion. PCM, meantime, reported earnings of $22.8 million on sales of nearly $2.2 billion.