IT solutions integrator Insight Enterprises (NASDAQ: NSIT) beat Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q1 CY2026, with sales up 1.2% year on year to $2.13 billion. Its non-GAAP profit of $2.88 per share was 17.9% above analysts’ consensus estimates.

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“In the first quarter, we delivered double-digit gross profit growth across every geography, as well as double-digit adjusted earnings from operations and adjusted diluted earnings per share growth. Total gross profit grew 14% with Cloud gross profit increasing 35% and Core Services gross profit growing 19%, the two critical priority areas of our strategy.”

Company Overview

With over 35 years of IT expertise and partnerships with more than 8,000 technology providers, Insight Enterprises (NASDAQ: NSIT) provides end-to-end digital transformation solutions that help businesses modernize their IT infrastructure and maximize the value of technology.

Revenue Growth

A company’s long-term sales performance can indicate its overall quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years.

With $8.27 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Insight Enterprises is one of the larger companies in the business services industry and benefits from a well-known brand that influences purchasing decisions. However, its scale is a double-edged sword because finding new avenues for growth becomes difficult when you already have a substantial market presence. To expand meaningfully, Insight Enterprises likely needs to tweak its prices, innovate with new offerings, or enter new markets.

As you can see below, Insight Enterprises struggled to increase demand as its $8.27 billion of sales for the trailing 12 months was close to its revenue five years ago. This shows demand was soft, a tough starting point for our analysis.

Long-term growth is the most important, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss new innovations or demand cycles. Insight Enterprises’s recent performance shows its demand remained suppressed as its revenue has declined by 5.3% annually over the last two years.

This quarter, Insight Enterprises reported modest year-on-year revenue growth of 1.2% but beat Wall Street’s estimates by 1.9%.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 1.1% over the next 12 months. While this projection implies its newer products and services will fuel better top-line performance, it is still below average for the sector.

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Adjusted Operating Margin

Adjusted operating margin is an important measure of profitability as it shows the portion of revenue left after accounting for all core expenses – everything from the cost of goods sold to advertising and wages. It’s also useful for comparing profitability across companies because it excludes non-recurring expenses, interest on debt, and taxes.

Insight Enterprises was profitable over the last five years but held back by its large cost base. Its average adjusted operating margin of 5.1% was weak for a business services business.

On the plus side, Insight Enterprises’s adjusted operating margin rose by 1.9 percentage points over the last five years.

This quarter, Insight Enterprises generated an adjusted operating margin profit margin of 3.8%, down 1.1 percentage points year on year. This reduction is quite minuscule and indicates the company’s overall cost structure has been relatively stable.

Earnings Per Share

Revenue trends explain a company’s historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth – for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions.

Insight Enterprises’s EPS grew at 11.6% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years, higher than its flat revenue. This tells us management responded to softer demand by adapting its cost structure.

We can take a deeper look into Insight Enterprises’s earnings to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Insight Enterprises’s adjusted operating margin declined this quarter but expanded by 1.9 percentage points over the last five years. Its share count also shrank by 15.9%, and these factors together are positive signs for shareholders because improving profitability and share buybacks turbocharge EPS growth relative to revenue growth.

Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a shorter period to see if we are missing a change in the business.

For Insight Enterprises, its two-year annual EPS growth of 2.1% was lower than its five-year trend. We hope its growth can accelerate in the future.

In Q1, Insight Enterprises reported adjusted EPS of $2.88, up from $2.06 in the same quarter last year. This print easily cleared analysts’ estimates, and shareholders should be content with the results. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Insight Enterprises’s full-year EPS of $10.72 to grow 1.4%.

Key Takeaways from Insight Enterprises’s Q1 Results

It was good to see Insight Enterprises beat analysts’ EPS expectations this quarter. We were also glad its full-year EPS guidance outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. Zooming out, we think this was a good print with some key areas of upside. The stock traded up 5.4% to $72.74 immediately after reporting.

Insight Enterprises put up rock-solid earnings, but one quarter doesn’t necessarily make the stock a buy. Let’s see if this is a good investment. We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).