Acquisitions Fuel ePlus Q3 Revenue Hike

Coming off its acquisition last month of Cisco-focused unified communication provider VantiCore, ePlus on Monday reported third quarter revenue of $272.6 million, representing growth of 18.5 percent from the same period last year.

The sales increase was largely due to investments made during the last 12 months to improve offerings and expand the solution provider's geographical footprint, the company said.

"Over the past 15 months, including the VantiCore acquisition completed in January 2012, we acquired three companies which created three new branches. The majority of the acquired staff is customer-facing and revenue-producing sales and engineering positions.," said Phillip G. Norton, ePlus' chairman, president and CEO during Monday's conference call.

"These acquisitions added more than 400 customers, creating additional cross-selling opportunities as we leverage our full range of products and solutions into these new accounts," Norton added. "We believe that our value-added solutions focus, strong balance sheet, and seasoned management team will enable us to continue to gain market share."

EPlus' total costs and expenses increased 19.2 percent to $258.2 million, compared with $216.7 million during the prior year's quarter, due to an uptick in the cost of sales, products and services, salaries and benefits, and general and administrative expenses.

"We are building recurring revenue streams through the development of multi-faceted managed services, and utilizing our strengths in staff augmentation, video, collaboration, and security to capture the increased demand for advanced IT solutions," Norton said.