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Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Wayside Technology Group conference call.
At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time.
(Operator Instructions).
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Ms.
Melanie Caponigro.
Ms.
Caponigro, you may begin.
Melanie Caponigro - IR Contact
Thank you, and good morning.
Welcome to Wayside Technology's fourth-quarter 2010 earnings call.
Before turning the call over to Simon Nynens, the Company's Chairman and CEO, I will dispense with the customary cautionary language and comments about the webcast for this earnings call.
We released earnings for the fourth quarter at approximately 5 p.m.
Eastern time Thursday, February 3, 2011.
The earnings release is available at the Company's Investor Relations website at waysidetechnology.com.
Today's call, including all questions and answers, is being webcast live and can be accessed via the website, earnings.com.
A rebroadcast of this call will be available at waysidetechnology.com.
This conference call and all associated webcasts contain time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, February 4, 2011.
A detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties are discussed in our Forms 10-Q and also in greater detail in our Forms 10-K.
Wayside Technology Group, Inc.
sees no obligation to update and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements.
Now I would like to turn the call over to Simon.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Thank you, Melanie, and good morning to everybody.
I would like to start this call by thanking everyone here at Wayside Technology Group for delivering record results.
I am very proud of the great team that we have here at Wayside Technology Group.
We are not focused on growth for growth's sake; we are focused on growth because we firmly believe we are better, faster, and more passionate than any of our competitors.
Alright, about Q4 -- revenue was up 54% and income from operations increased 79%.
Our 2010 revenue surpassed the $200 million mark at $207 million.
And our basic net income per common share was $1.01.
The Board has approved a quarterly dividend of $0.16 per share.
Cash and marketable securities amount to $15.5 million, representing 58% of equity as of the end of December 2010.
We are very well-financed and ready to invest in our future growth.
Dan Jamieson, our Vice President and General Manager of our Lifeboat Division, will discuss Q4 for our Lifeboat.
Dan?
Dan Jamieson - VP and General Manager, Lifeboat Distribution
Thank you, Simon.
Lifeboat's Q4 and overall 2010 results continued to reflect strong year-over-year growth across all segments of the business, including increases in revenue, margin, and income from operations.
The primary growth factors in Q4 and throughout 2010 were the successful penetration and expansion of pivotal software lines within a variety of Lifeboat's premier reseller accounts.
In addition, Lifeboat successfully targeted solution provider accounts, such as value-added resellers, systems integrators, and other consultancy-type companies, throughout the quarter and the year.
The penetration and expansion of secondary software vendor lines made vital contributions to our overall expansion as well.
During 2010, Lifeboat signed new distribution agreements with over 30 new vendor partners.
These new partners fit into varying segments of our go-to-market, worldview software ecosystems, including virtualization, security, application lifecycle management, and application and network infrastructure.
Our European Office, launched in February of 2010, and located in the Netherlands in a town called Almere, a suburb of Amsterdam, continues to grow successfully.
The office's multilingual capabilities -- we speak German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and English in the office -- as well as our flexibility to be able to conduct business in euros, Great British Pounds, and US dollars, has proven extremely valuable to both our vendor and reseller partners.
We're currently exploring the possibility of opening an office in the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular interest in the Singapore area.
Lifeboat's Annual Partner Summit, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey during Q4, was a fantastic success, with 34 vendor sponsors participating and over 160 resellers in attendance.
We'll be hosting our Annual Partner Summit in Atlantic City again this year in October.
We continued to enhance our IT capabilities in Lifeboat during the year, with an emphasis on creating Electronic Data Interchange, EDI, with our major vendor and reseller partners.
In addition, our unique electronic licensing key allocation system, developed internally by our IT team, continued to prove very valuable and effective to both our reseller and vendor partners.
Thank you, Simon.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Thank you, Dan.
Shawn Giordano, our Vice President for Programmer's Paradise and TechXtend Division, will now discuss Q4.
Shawn?
Shawn Giordano - VP of Sales, Programmer's Paradise and TechXtend
Thank you, Simon.
Sales teams in both the Programmer's Paradise and TechXtend Divisions performed exceptionally well in the fourth quarter.
Strong sales throughout the entire quarter resulted in a 43% year-over-year revenue growth.
In addition, we experienced a healthy increase in larger transactions.
These are defined as deals over $50,000.
Our order volumes increased across our transactional software lines as well as our key publisher and manufacturer partnerships.
We continue to focus on solution selling, delivering strategic value to our customers, helping them solve problems in the area of server and desktop virtualization, storage virtualization, business continuity, and disaster recovery.
Being flexible and providing the best customer experience possible continues to be our focus.
Thank you, Simon.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Thank you, Shawn.
Kevin Scull will now discuss the balance sheet and income statement in a little bit more detail.
Kevin?
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
Thank you, Simon, and good morning, everyone.
I will discuss our fourth-quarter financial results on a company-wide basis as well as per segment.
Net sales were $64.9 million compared to $42.3 million last year, representing a 54% increase.
Sales for our Lifeboat segment were $45.8 million compared to $28.9 million last year, representing a 58% increase.
Sales for our Programmer's Paradise segment were $19.1 million compared to $13.4 million last year, representing a 43% increase.
Gross profit was $6.2 million compared to $4.4 million last year.
Gross profit as a percentage of net sales was 9.6% compared to 10.3% last year.
Gross profit as a percentage of sales for our Programmer's Paradise segment was 10.2% compared to 9.5% last year.
Gross profit as a percentage of sales for our Lifeboat segment was 9.3% compared to 10.6% last year.
Total selling, general and administrative, SG&A, expenses were $3.8 million compared to $3 million last year.
As a percentage of sales, SG&A expenses were 5.9% compared to 7.1% last year.
Selling costs increased by $500,000 as a result of increased volume and the Company's investing in and rewarding employees for strong sales growth.
Our net income amounted to $1.5 million compared to $900,000 last year.
As a percentage of sales, our net income was 2.3% compared to 2.1% last year.
On a fully diluted basis, our earnings per share were $0.33 compared to the prior year at $0.20.
Now moving on to the balance sheet.
Compared to our year-ago balance sheet, the following accounts had significant fluctuations.
Accounts receivable increased by $15.5 million and accounts payable increased by $12.6 million, both due to the increased sales volume compared to last year.
Our book value per share is $5.62 and equity now stands at $26.7 million.
Cash and marketable securities make up 58% of our equity.
This concludes my remarks.
Simon, back to you.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Thank you.
Now before we move on to our Q&A session, let me make one more comment.
We thank our vendors, the software publishers, for their trust and partnership.
We like to win, which is what drives us -- not making our numbers or internal budgets.
It's a great feeling of winning a new line or servicing a customer better than our competition.
That is what drives us.
So, thank you, software publishers, for allowing us to serve your customers as an extension of your sales and marketing teams.
We look forward with great confidence in the people who make these results possible -- our team here at Wayside Technology Group.
And to them, I say thank you again for hard work during this past quarter, record results, and your continued passion to win.
Operator, we can now start with the Q&A session.
Operator
(Operator Instructions).
Aaron Lehmann, LSP Partners.
Aaron Lehmann - Analyst
Congratulations on a super quarter.
I joined a little bit late, so I am sure that I missed some of the things you may have said that I have a question on.
You're at a stage right now where your run rate is well over $200 million.
Was this a quarter that is an anomaly?
Or can we look for more of the same?
And the second part of my question is, how much did Europe contribute, your new Office in Europe, which you established earlier in the year?
And are there any plans for expanding that operation into other parts of the world, such as South America or Japan and the Far East?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
So what I'll do is I'll answer the first part of the question and then I'll ask Dan Jamieson to answer the second part of your question.
To answer the first part of your question, was this quarter an anomaly?
I think if you look at our past results, we've shown strong growth in previous quarters.
So as we continue to expand having that said, the fourth quarter, the revenue was a tremendous success in Q4, as many pipelines opened up and many of our customers started ordering again.
In terms of how that will relate to 2011 remains a question to be answered.
I just want to make sure -- we do not issue forward-looking guidance.
Having that said, we look forward with great confidence to 2011 and previous quarters have shown strong growth.
We do not currently see any signs in terms of vendors changing their model, so we continue to grow as our software publishers grow.
Dan Jamieson, if you can confer to the international part then.
Dan Jamieson - VP and General Manager, Lifeboat Distribution
Sure.
Thanks, Simon.
Europe, we launched in February and the office is profitable within two quarters.
We're real excited what's going on over there.
It's important to note that we've been working internationally and within the European market for over two decades now, so we have real strong business to start out with; but being in-country in the Netherlands and having that Pan-European approach has really proved both extremely valuable to our vendor partners who are working with us over there and our reseller partners.
So that's strong business.
We continue to invest in it and we're going to continue to grow it.
Regarding Latin America, that's a great emerging market for us as well.
We work down there.
We had a Latin American road show down there last year.
We think we're going to do that again this year.
We had Portuguese capabilities here for the Brazilian market and we've got Spanish capabilities for the rest of Latin America.
So it's a focal area.
And as I mentioned in my remarks, we're also real interested in the A-Pac region and opening that up.
We're especially looking in the Singapore area now to possibly expand what Lifeboat is doing worldwide.
Operator
Jim Devlin, Henley and Company.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Tremendous quarter.
This is a Company record, right?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Yes, correct, Jim.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay, great.
Congratulations and things just look tremendous.
So, that being said, I have like a couple of quick questions.
If you guys are opening the satellite office in the Pacific Rim, I guess, what do the margins look like in the Pacific Rim as an opportunity versus the United States?
Are they comparable?
Better or worse?
How does that work?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
I think in the Pacific -- maybe Dan, you want to comment a little on that?
Dan Jamieson - VP and General Manager, Lifeboat Distribution
Yes, sure, Simon.
You know, I think it kind of mirrors what we see throughout the other parts of the world.
It's a kind of blend, you know?
I think we can look to some healthier margin on some of the more complex, uniquely-positioned products, but on some of the more commodity-style products, we'll probably see a little more margin pressure.
So I would say it's pretty much a blend.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay.
And then (multiple speakers) -- oh, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Yes, just to add to that, Jim -- for us, it's not so much a question of immediately are the margins higher, let's go into that market; I'll look forward to the growth in Asia.
And having visited Asia, there's tremendous potential in the next coming years.
And that -- I firmly believe that's a market where we have to be.
Having that said, we want to be careful in terms of entrance into that market.
And the same as we did in Europe -- we really want to go hand-in-hand with our partners, the software publishers, so if they see an opportunity, we're going to go there together.
So that's what we're currently exploring.
That's what we're excited about.
We're not going to jump into a market like that with 20 people burning SG&A.
That's not something we look forward to.
We're going to dip our toe in the water and make a conscious decision in terms of moving forward there.
And it starts with a small office and we look forward to grow that.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay.
And as far as SG&A retaining or courting new employees, are you able to get them at or less than you would be able to retain an employee there in New Jersey?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
I think cost similar in Singapore, actually.
European sellers are also, you know, starting to be really equal, depending on the region where you are.
Having that said, the compensation in terms of margin, like we said, is typically better.
And the growth potential is just huge for us.
So that's the main reason why we're so interested in that region.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay.
Now my second question, there's a report out from Goldman Sachs that talks about mobile e-commerce -- basically 70% of all large e-commerce websites don't offer like mobile e-commerce at this point, or what they call m-commerce functionality.
Is that a category that you guys offer?
Or is that something that you guys look at?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
In terms of the software, so we sell the software that people use to build other software applications.
So some of our products address that market.
I think the most burgeoning part of our business right now is still virtualization and security are two very hot markets that we see tremendous growth in.
So those are the two markets that I would say definitely are driving growth for us right now.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay.
And then just a financial balance sheet question.
We still maintain a very large slug of cash on the balance sheet.
I think it was about $15.50 a share at the end of the quarter -- a little less than $4 a share.
What kind of interest rate do you guys get on that money?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
So, that's twofold, actually, Jim.
If you look at the overall treasury rate -- Kevin, what are we currently achieving on those --?
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
It's less than probably a half-a-percent.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Yes.
And if you look at the interest, Jim, it's quite similar to last year; it's not what it was a couple of years ago any more.
Having that said, the reason that we really look to that cash position is for our large finance transactions, okay?
Those could be $1 million deals that we finance for A-plus rated customers.
And they don't have to go through a leasing company.
And it's definitely a unique competitive advantage that we can offer our software publishers.
If they do have large deals with customers, they would like to get paid immediately, but they would like to work with a channel partner.
What typically happens is a leasing company gets involved.
Well, since we have that excess cash, we can utilize that to transact those deals without the use of a leasing partner -- a tremendous unique competitive advantage.
So that's what we're using it for.
And if you look at the average income rate that we have really actually achieved on those deals, that's much higher.
That's north of 6% to 8%.
So (multiple speakers) --.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
So -- well, with that nice slug of cash, I guess it's about -- at this point, about 25% or 30% of your net market capitalization -- I mean, absent making an acquisition or something like that.
I mean, have you guys explored maybe initiating like a one-time special dividend, then instead of getting a half-of-one-percent on that large amount of cash, maybe redistributing the cash to the shareholders?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
We explored it, I would say, almost on a yearly basis with the Board.
But looking at our fast growth and the way we -- listen, we're here seriously to make this -- that our internal objective is we're going to be a really, really large company.
That has to be the objective.
We're a public company.
We look forward to $1 billion in sales.
That's what we're striving for.
And not for the $1 billion mark in and of itself, but just like I said before -- we feel we're better than our competition.
And a lot of software publishers and customers are realizing that right now.
If we look forward to that growth, we're going to utilize that cash in terms of these finance deals growing the business.
So right now, I don't think a one-time dividend would be applicable.
But to answer your question, yes, we do revisit that on a very regular basis with the Board.
Operator
Alan Weinfeld, Kern Suslow.
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
Hi, Simon and the team.
Again, can't believe you topped last quarter, but you did it and --
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Thank you.
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
I can just say that I think it was awesome.
So, looking at 2011, obviously, we have -- are going to have tougher comparisons in the second half, and should we just really conservatively model only 10% to 15% type earnings increases there, just because of what we're looking at?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
To answer that, like I stated before, we do not give forward-looking information (multiple speakers).
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
(laughter) I know all of that.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
(laughter) It's very hard to look into the future, because you build these beautiful plans and two weeks later, reality happens.
What's most importantly, like I said before, we are building this Company for the long-term.
And I want to be clear about this.
We just had the meetings with employees as well, and the same question for employees in terms of what is our internal budget?
Our internal budget and objective is to be the most trusted and respected IP provider in our industry.
We will grow, but we will grow in a way that will still have these vendors who sign with on with us, hopefully, in three, four, five, 10 years.
Not to oversell our capabilities, but to make sure that we are trusted and respected and we do what we say.
And so far, that strategy in the last couple of years has resulted in tremendous amount of loyalty to our Company, a lot of our customers actively pushing lines to our Company, and the result has been tremendous sales growth.
But again, sales growth is not our objective, per se.
It is the objective of winning from our competition.
So if I have to put that in numbers for next year, I can give you the plus side.
I think we have the wind in our sails right now.
Vendors are extremely happy with us.
We go to our large customers, the VAR community -- they're all very pleased with our results and the hard work that we do, especially when it compares to our competition.
The downside is, if you look at our high-growth, we earned a lot of vendor rebates and discounts because of our tremendous growth in 2010.
So if you look at a risk, that's what something that I would see as a risk, and that's why we added it to our press release -- that on the downside.
Having that said, that is the business that we're in and we have been in since 1982, so that's something that we have to manage.
So that's as honestly as I can answer your question in terms of 2011.
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
But is there anything seasonal about either the first quarters historically or about the first quarter 2011, which would make the 40-something percent sales growth type of trend here -- and maybe it's not a trend, because again, we have been sort of going against easy comparisons -- shift downward towards the under 10%, high-single digit range or even low single-digit range in the first half?
I know -- I don't want a number -- I'm saying would there be just a dramatically swoop down just because of seasonality and no change in your business -- or your business just can't change that quickly?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Right, right.
There's definitely seasonality in there.
I definitely want to state that.
Q1 is typically one of our slowest quarters.
Q4 is typically our strongest quarter.
Having that said, it's the end of January, it's really early into the season.
We haven't heard of any vendor or customer changes yet, so we look forward to servicing the same lines, the same customers.
But it always depends on, like we said, the last month and the last two weeks in that quarter.
So that about Q1.
Operator
Steve Emerson, Emerson Investment.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
Again, congratulations.
You're really on the road as a growth company.
Is there a lot of seasonality in the vendor rebates and discount?
Is that basically a Q4 function?
Or is it pretty spread out across the year?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
No, it relates directly to the amount of revenue growth that we generate for our software publishers.
Having that said, we had a lot of market growth, a lot of growth we've shown for our software publishers in the last year.
We grabbed a lot of market share as well from our competitors.
And as a result, we earned a tremendous amount of rebates and discounts, especially in Q4 -- that was close to $1 million compared to $0.5 million for the fourth quarter of '09.
For the full year, that was $2.4 million for the full year compared to $1 million in '09 -- exactly maybe a result of our aggressive sales growth.
So it's not so much seasonality as it is related directly to our sales growth for software publishers in a certain quarter.
Having that said, again, we have the wind in our sails.
The current customer base is very pleased with us.
So that, again, is mainly what we're focusing on, is expanding our line cards but not so aggressively that we lose track of our services.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
Q1, is that -- if you have similar sales growth as you're demonstrating, would you have a similar portion of rebates and discounts?
Or, again, (multiple speakers) is that $1 million likely to go way down in Q1 other than just seasonality?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
No, the plans -- there have been a couple of changes in the plans.
They're getting a little more aggressive; they're setting their targets a little more aggressive for us to reach.
But other than that, that have not been any significant changes yet in those plans.
So if we show the same amount of sales growth, we're definitely looking for the same amount of revenue [mix].
Steve Emerson - Analyst
Excellent.
I tend to ask you this every call, but can you give us some kind of proportion of revenue relating to security and relating to virtual memory, if possible?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Again, the reason that we're careful with that and we can talk about those segments, the reason that we're careful about that is, again, the competition might be dialing in as well and we don't want to give away our high-growth vendors and set them up a perfect list of targets that they can go after.
But I can assure you, those two markets are growing very significantly.
And Dan, maybe you can add something in terms of the Lifeboat perspective nationally, as well as internationally.
Dan Jamieson - VP and General Manager, Lifeboat Distribution
Yes.
Thanks, Simon.
I think I agree with you, Steve, we take a cautious approach here, we don't want to -- [to say] appearance that we're just tap dancing around it.
But with that said, virtualization continues to be a really explosive trajectory space for us.
I think now, too, as it comes to -- as they strive and get greater penetration on the virtualization front, we've been able to cross-pollinate our efforts with our security go-to-market strategy.
And now, all the folks that had really gotten out of the gate strongly and quickly, and deployed virtualization, now they're trying to catch up on the security side.
So we're able to capitalize on that as well.
But we also have some real success in the application lifecycle management space and in the application and network infrastructure space.
So we're really trying to hit on all cylinders.
But to Simon's point, the virtualization securities, really, it's an extraordinary story that's being told in that space.
Operator
Alan Weinfeld, Kern Suslow.
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
I don't know if I missed this at the beginning of the call, but did you say exactly how many shares you might have bought back in the quarter?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Sure.
Kevin?
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
We still have about 477,000 available to purchase back, but during the quarter, we bought roughly back 10,000.
Mainly just we're limited based on the moving average of what we can buy.
We're always looking for blocks.
And two days after this call when we're available to buy again, we'll be right back in the market looking to buy more shares back.
Because we still think it's a great value.
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
But you're as much a value investor as you think others are.
So it does make a little difference the stock in October -- I'm sorry, yes -- October 2nd was at the [10's] and when you're open, it could be high [$14 to $15]?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
To answer your question in terms of are we still interested in the buyback program, absolutely.
We continue to see our stock as great value.
Again, like Jim Devlin was referring to as well, if you look at our overall market cap, you subtract the cash and marketable securities from that, and then you compare that to our income from operations on a [DE] level, we think it's a very attractive stock.
And we continue to see our growth in the future.
And that's why we continue to buy those -- look forward to buying those stocks to block as well as open market.
But we're limited by open market rules in terms of what we can buy back.
Alan Weinfeld - Analyst
I 150% agree, Simon.
Thank you.
Operator
Jim Devlin, Hanley and Company.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Just one follow-up question.
On previous conference calls, I guess maybe two -- like, maybe three or four quarters ago, when you opened the sales office in the Netherlands, you talked about the IT spend on software and the EU was equal to about 70% to 80% of the US market.
If you do go ahead on this Pacific Rim initiative -- which I can't see why shareholders wouldn't be 100% for that type of growth opportunity -- what does the gross spend on software in the Pacific Rim look like compared to the growth spend on software here in the US?
Do you guys have any analytics?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Yes, I mean, if you look at the piracy rate in terms of software piracy in India and China, there's some pretty specific reports out there -- that's 87%, 90%-plus.
If you look at the potential market cap, it should be at least equal to the European market or the US market, since the growth is phenomenal in the Asian market.
And the piracy rate is primarily the reason that that's being held back.
If you look at current sales, if you take a typical global software publisher that we've -- you know, the typical global software publisher that is represented in all the markets, what they typically see is I would say about 35% in the US, 35% in Europe, and then the remaining two -- Latin America and Asia Pacific.
So -- and those two markets, by the way, are growing both very rapidly, Latin America market as well -- which we, by the way, cover as well.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
(multiple speakers) [Both are growth] markets.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
So, I mean, you seem to have that as a growth initiative on the plate.
Would you guys, somewhere down the line, maybe look at opening a satellite office in Latin America?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Right now, how we handle that region is by going there regularly.
I think our next Latin America trip is planned -- Dan, is that April or May?
Dan Jamieson - VP and General Manager, Lifeboat Distribution
Yes, it's coming up in the springtime.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
(multiple speakers) Okay.
And I kind of missed the beginning of the call, too.
Did you guys break out what percent of your topline came out of Europe?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
International sales in Q4 amounted to 15% in Q4.
It amounted to 17% in Q3.
15%, however, on 54% growth.
So 15% of the $65 million came out of international.
That would be Canada, Europe, as well as Latin America and Asia markets.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay.
So 15% for this quarter.
In Q4 of last year, do know what international sales were?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Kevin, do you have that number?
I don't have it handy.
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
Yes, give me one second.
Q4 last year was 17%.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Of [$42 million].
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
That was a smaller number, obviously.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Yes.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay, great.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
As we've stated before, Jim, similar sales growth that we've seen in the US, which is very high-grade growth rates as well internationally, so.
Jim Devlin - Analyst
Okay, great.
Thanks, guys.
Operator
Steve Emerson, Emerson Investment.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
As a follow-up, how many sales reps do you have now?
And what kind of growth are you thinking of for this year?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
So, in terms of our total employees, Kevin, can you share with Steve what we had for December 31, what is in our 10-K -- the total number --?
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
A little over 100 employees worldwide.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
And what does that compare to?
Kevin Scull - VP and CAO
Last year, I believe we -- we had high 90s last year.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
Okay.
And what's your objective or obviously what range are you thinking of growing that?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
So we're actively hiring new employees, Steve.
But our main objective is to make sure that we reach the internal targets that we set for earning that trust and respect.
And that is in the terms of the investment that Dan Jamieson was talking about -- our investment in EDI.
And that's why also our income from operations is growing significantly faster than our growth in revenue.
We're really investing in those EDI lines and investing in the customer sales and support side.
That's what we're looking to invest in -- that's what customers see as value.
So if you're asking are we going to see our employee sales growth having to keep up with our sales growth?
No, I don't think we need to hire as fast as our sales growth.
We need to hire the higher-end people who can handle those larger lines.
So that's what we're looking forward to.
We're not looking to double our employee base next year.
We tend to keep that in line with the growth objectives.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
And technology investment as an expense item, how -- do you have a figure for last year and what kind of figure you're looking for this year?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
We have that internal number.
I do not want to share that publicly [because that of] information.
Having that said, Steve, the main -- our main expense is in terms of headcount, our IT team, in terms of the consultants and employees that we have at Wayside Technology Group, that created such unbelievable values, has especially the virtual inventory system that we created highly liked.
And what that is, is we can take on virtual licenses from our customers in our virtual license warehouse, and then as soon as a reseller sells a license to an end customer, we ship that license within an hour.
Something that a lot of our customers in the VAR as well as the DMR market appreciate enormously.
So that's what we're looking forward in terms of IT spend, where we get the recognition from our customers or our software publishers.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
And finally, are gross margins stabilizing, do you feel, at this point?
Or is it always like in the past, the big deals get a discount, the moderate-sized deals typically are pretty much like in the past?
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
If you look at the margins, continuing price-fighting, that will never change, I think; continuing -- if you look at Lifeboat numbers in terms of excluding vendor rebates and discounts, continue to trend downwards.
But again, we take opportunities of sales growth at maybe slightly lower percentages that we're getting into it, but it's generating more gross margin dollars.
And that's what we're after.
So, it depends.
Like Dan Jamieson was saying, it really depends on the kind of software that we sell, and the overall blend of the software that we sell to our customers.
But the price-fighting will continue.
I don't think that's ever going to go away.
That's just part of the business.
Steve Emerson - Analyst
Thank you again.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
Thank you.
Operator
I'm showing no further questions at this time.
Simon Nynens - Chairman, President and CEO
We thank you.
I would like to thank everybody for their interest in our company.
We look forward to reporting Q1 at the end of April of this year.
Thank you.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference.
This concludes our program for today.
You may all disconnect and have a wonderful day.