ePlus Targets AI Infrastructure Spending, Touting Buybacks and Dividend for Shareholders

ePlus is pitching a new wave of corporate AI spending as an infrastructure buildout, one the company says it is positioned to capture while also returning capital to shareholders through a dividend and share repurchases.

The company's stock is up 24.5% year to date and Zacks recently rated it a strong buy. ePlus CEO Mark Marron responded that the company has spent “34, almost 35 years in tech infrastructure, arguing that the practical requirements of AI align with ePlus’s core business. “When you think about AI and what AI, the capabilities of AI, it really comes down to compute, storage, networking, security, and the related services,” Marron said on AInvest's Capital & Power.

His message arrives as corporate leaders increasingly talk about AI less as a cost-cutting tool and more as a revenue driver. A recent ePlus survey published in October, states that “nearly three quarters of organizational leaders now identify revenue growth as the primary objective of their AI initiatives,” ahead of customer satisfaction and cost reduction. Marron agreed, saying the survey showed a shift away from “efficiencies and cost reductions” toward “that revenue generation play,” describing customer interest in how AI can support go-to-market sales and service teams.

But Marron also emphasized that much of the enterprise base isn’t ready to scale. “80 % of the customers don’t feel that their infrastructure is AI ready,” he said, adding that “over 60 % are just in the early stages of their AI journey.” ePlus’s approach, he said, is to start with “envisioning sessions” to define use cases, then move through “data readiness” and “infrastructure readiness.”

To translate that into a productized on-ramp, Marron said ePlus “just rolled out what we’re calling private AI as an infrastructure where we have GPU enabled systems that they can buy.” He described the offering as “cost effective” and “predictable,” and said it could be “their first foot into the AI space before they make some bigger investments.” He also said ePlus can host proof-of-concept work in a lab environment where customers can “load their workloads,” test optimization, and evaluate “power and cooling.”

Security, Marron said, remains the first obstacle in AI discussions. “First fear is security, data privacy is always the first fear,” he said, adding that customers also worry about misinformation, the “cost versus return,” and a “skills gap.”

For shareholders, Marron pointed to capital-return actions and balance-sheet flexibility alongside the AI-led strategy. “We initiated our first quarterly dividend last quarter, quarter before last. We’re doing a share buyback,” he said, adding that the company has “a lot of flexibility” and sees room for “either acquisitions or organic hires.”