A reseller's margin is razor-thin by design. The trick is doing it at massive, efficient scale.
↓ scroll to read
✦ The bottom line
CDW kept $1.07B of profit on $22.4B of sales — under 5 cents per dollar. Thin, but steady and cash-generative.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Net margin
The share of each sales dollar left as profit. A reseller like CDW runs a low net margin because most of each sale is product cost — the skill is profiting on slim spreads.
Wall Street calls this
Net margin
On thin margins, small cost slips hurt — but scale and discipline keep profit steady.
Net income · fiscal year 2025
$1.07
B
About 4.8 cents of profit per sales dollar — slim, but a billion dollars at CDW's scale.
Source · 10-K · Consolidated Statements of Operations · FY2025 · Filed Feb 20, 2026
Cash from operations · fiscal year 2025
$1.2
B
Real cash, roughly in line with profit — funding dividends and buybacks without much heavy spending.
Source · 10-K · Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows · FY2025 · Filed Feb 20, 2026
✓
Lean and steady
Thin margins by design, but consistent billion-dollar profit and cash from sheer scale.