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InnerWorkings Announces Full-Year, Q4 Earnings

Top 40 distributor InnerWorkings (asi/168860) increased gross sales 6% in 2016 to $1.09 billion, while fourth-quarter revenue just outpaced Q4 2015, ticking up to $270.4 million from $270.3 million, according to an earnings statement released late last week. The Chicago-based firm also engineered gross profit gains of 10% in both the fourth quarter of 2016 and last year as a whole.

“2016 was another record year of profitable growth and new client wins,” said InnerWorkings CEO Eric D. Belcher. “The success of our strategy in developing global scale across a full suite of marketing execution solutions has yielded improving margins and we expect this trend to continue in 2017.”

According to InnerWorkngs, full-year gross profit tallied $263.5 million, up from $240.2 million in 2015. Meanwhile, Q4 gross profit reached $68.7 million, a rise from $62.5 million during the same three-month span the prior year.

In 2016, non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.38, an increase of 58% from 2015. Significantly, non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA reached a new record, hitting $59.2 million for the full year. In the last quarter, non-GAAP diluted earnings per share skyrocketed 100% to $0.12.

The positive momentum at InnerWorkings was especially evident in the fact that the distributorship signed new contracts in 2016 totaling $140 million of annual revenue at the full run-rate. Nearly half of this stemmed from expanded relationships with active clients.

“We ended the year on a very strong note, exceeding our revenue and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share guidance for 2016, even after raising our expectations in November,” said Jeffrey P. Pritchett, chief financial officer of InnerWorkings. “We enter 2017 well-positioned to execute against our plan, with a robust backlog of new contractual revenue and a very strong balance sheet.”

As for the current year, InnerWorkings expects 2017 annual revenue to range between $1.155 billion and $1.185 billion, representing annual growth of 6% to 9%. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $65 million and $68 million this year, which translates to growth of 10% to 15%.

Additionally, the distributorship forecasts 2017 non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be $0.44 to $0.47 – forecasted year-over-year growth of 16% to 24%.

With reported 2015 North American promotional product revenue of $147 million, InnerWorkings ranks 11th on Counselor’s list of the top 40 largest distributors by revenue in the industry.