Why This Matters to Distributors: CDW’s quarter signals that AI infrastructure spending has moved from planning into active deployment across a wide range of enterprise customers. For distributors evaluating their own technology strategies, the results underscore a clear market shift: organizations that offer integration expertise and full lifecycle support — not just product fulfillment — are capturing the most ground.
CDW Corp. reported first-quarter 2026 net sales of $5.68 billion, up 9.2% from a year ago, as enterprise customers accelerated spending on AI-related infrastructure hardware across the company’s commercial, government and education segments.
The Vernon Hills, Ill.-based technology solutions provider posted net income of $235.4 million for the quarter ended March 31, up 4.7% from $224.9 million in the first quarter of 2025. Earnings per diluted share were $1.82, compared to $1.69 a year ago.
Growth was driven primarily by increased customer demand for data storage and servers, networking products, software and mobile devices, CDW said. Average daily sales reached $90.2 million, up from $82.5 million in the prior-year period across the same 63 selling days.
“As customers move from AI exploration into real, production environments, they are increasingly relying on partners with the integration, governance, and lifecycle expertise to execute at scale,” said Christine A. Leahy, chair and chief executive officer, CDW.
The commercial segment, CDW’s largest, generated $3.57 billion in net sales, up 9.6%. Financial services customers led all categories with a 28.2% jump to $428.4 million. Healthcare revenue rose 4.9% to $766.7 million and corporate customer sales climbed 8.4% to $2.37 billion. Government segment net sales grew 4.6% to $632.9 million. Education came in at $675 million, a 2.5% gain. CDW’s combined UK and Canadian operations posted the quarter’s fastest growth, rising 17.9% to $802.5 million.
Gross profit margin narrowed to 21.0% from 21.6% a year ago, which CDW attributed to a lower contribution from certain product categories. Selling and administrative expenses rose 7.0% to $814 million, driven by higher compensation costs and investments to support AI initiatives.
“Strong demand for infrastructure hardware, combined with disciplined execution, drove solid net sales growth and resilient profitability in the first quarter,” said Albert J. Miralles, chief financial officer, CDW.
Leahy said CDW remains confident it will outpace U.S. IT market growth by 200 to 300 basis points for the full year, even as economic and geopolitical uncertainty persists.
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