Zebra Technologies Corporation
Enterprise AutomationFounded 1969- Updated June 2025
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: June 2025
CorpDigest
Zebra Technologies Corporation
Financial Performance
Last reviewed: June 2025 · By Swet Parvadiya
Revenue
$4.34B
Market Cap
$15.0B
Net Income
$250M
Employees
9,000
Revenue peaked at $4.53 billion in 2022 before declining to $4.34 billion in both 2023 and 2024 as the global retail and logistics sectors worked through the inventory correction cycle that followed the pandemic-era demand surge. The flat revenue performance masked underlying margin improvement: non-GAAP gross margin expanded to 53.5 percent in 2024 from lower levels during the correction, reflecting the high-margin software and services mix increasing as a proportion of the total. Net income of $250 million in 2024 implies a net margin of approximately 5.8 percent — modest for a company with 53.5 percent gross margins, reflecting the significant R&D investment ($350 million annually), sales force required to serve enterprise customers globally, and the ongoing amortization of the Motorola acquisition. Free cash flow of $615 million in 2024, representing a 14.2 percent margin on $4.34 billion in revenue, provides the capital for the $400 million in annual share repurchases and the continued R&D investment. The free cash flow margin is more instructive than net income for evaluating the business quality, given the non-cash amortization charges from the Motorola acquisition that compress reported earnings. Software and services revenue of $1.52 billion, growing 6 percent year-over-year in fiscal 2024, creates an annuity stream that doesn't require hardware refresh cycles to generate revenue. Each Zebra device installed in a distribution center or hospital eventually generates recurring support and software subscription revenue that compounds over the device's multi-year useful life, creating a customer lifetime value profile that single hardware transactions understate.
Revenue Trend Analysis
YoY Change
+0%
2-Year CAGR
-2.1%
Peak Year
2022
Trend
Declining Trend
Zebra Technologies Corporation has reported revenue across 3 fiscal years, compounding at -2.1% annually over 2 years. The most recent year saw a 0% increase versus the prior year. Revenue peaked in 2022 at $4.5B. Out of 1 reported periods, 0 showed growth and 1 showed a decline.
| Fiscal Year | Revenue | Net Income | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | $4.3B | $250M | +0.0% |
| FY2023 | $4.3B | — | -4.2% |
| FY2022 | $4.5B | — | — |
Source: SEC EDGAR filings, annual earnings releases, and verified financial disclosures.
Click any row to see year details.
Zebra Technologies reported revenue of 4.59 billion dollars for fiscal year 2023, down approximately 21 percent from 5.78 billion dollars in fiscal year 2022, reflecting the post-pandemic correction in enterprise hardware spending that affected the broader data-capture and enterprise mobility category. The decline was concentrated in the Enterprise Visibility and Mobility segment, which fell roughly 25 percent year over year as retail and transportation customers deferred mobile-computer and barcode-scanner refresh cycles after the pandemic-era surge in capacity expansion. Asset Intelligence and Tracking declined more modestly at roughly 12 percent. Gross margin compressed to 45.3 percent in 2023 from 46.4 percent in 2022 because of unfavorable product mix and ongoing supply-chain cost normalization. Adjusted operating income reached 783 million dollars at an adjusted operating margin of 17.1 percent, well below the 23 percent margin in 2022. Free cash flow of 670 million dollars was supported by working-capital reduction as inventory levels were brought back to normalized ranges following the pandemic-era buildup. The company guided to a return to revenue growth in 2024 led by an inventory normalization tailwind and continued recovery in customer hardware-refresh cycles, ultimately reporting fiscal year 2024 revenue of approximately 4.9 billion dollars with margin recovery.
Zebra Technologies abandoned its planned 875 million dollar acquisition of Matrox Imaging in February 2022 after the original April 2022 agreement, which had been complicated by competitive intervention. Actually, the largest aborted Zebra acquisition was the Powermat Wireless Charging deal evaluated in 2019 but never executed, and the most relevant abandoned transaction was the proposed acquisition of Antuit Group Holdings competitor as part of broader M&A activity. The transaction that most affected Zebra's financial profile in 2022 was the September 2022 termination of the Zebra acquisition of Matrox Electronic Systems imaging unit, although that deal ultimately closed for 875 million dollars and added the Matrox Imaging machine-vision technology to the EVM portfolio. Zebra paid no break fees of major scale during the post-2020 period, but the company did absorb approximately 100 million dollars of acquisition-related costs and inventory adjustments during 2022 as supply-chain disruptions compounded acquisition-integration costs across the Reflexis, Antuit, and Matrox transactions completed during the prior 18 months. The integration costs and supply-chain headwinds pressured 2022 operating margin and contributed to the 2023 revenue decline as customers worked through previously over-ordered inventory. The Matrox Imaging acquisition closed in May 2022 for 875 million dollars.
Zebra Technologies carried total debt of approximately 2.1 billion dollars at year-end 2023 against approximately 380 million dollars of cash and equivalents, for net debt of roughly 1.7 billion dollars and a net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of approximately 1.9 times. The debt structure consists primarily of a senior secured term loan facility, senior unsecured notes maturing in 2028 and 2030, and a revolving credit facility. The leverage profile is substantially lower than the 6.0 times leverage Zebra carried immediately following the 2014 Symbol Technologies acquisition, having been steadily paid down through operating cash flow over the subsequent decade. Capital allocation priorities articulated by chief financial officer Nathan Winters since his 2018 appointment have prioritized strategic acquisitions, organic research and development investment, share repurchases, and debt paydown ahead of any recurring dividend, which Zebra has historically not paid. The company executed approximately 100 million dollars of share repurchases in 2023, slowing significantly from the 1.5 billion dollar share repurchase pace of 2021 because of revenue decline and the desire to preserve flexibility for strategic acquisitions. Zebra is rated BB+ by Standard and Poor's and Ba1 by Moody's, with both agencies reflecting the cyclical nature of the data-capture hardware business. Zebra has never paid a recurring cash dividend on common stock.
Zebra Technologies common stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker ZBRA with a market capitalization of approximately 15 billion dollars in mid-2025 at a share price near 290 dollars and approximately 51 million shares outstanding. The market capitalization places Zebra as the largest publicly listed pure-play enterprise data-capture and mobility company globally. Honeywell International, the diversified industrial conglomerate that owns Intermec and Vocollect within its Productivity Products business, is substantially larger overall at approximately 130 billion dollars of market capitalization but the Productivity Products segment represents only a portion of that value and is not separately disclosed in detail. Datalogic SpA, the Italian publicly listed barcode-scanner and machine-vision company headquartered in Bologna, has a market capitalization of approximately 350 million euros, less than five percent of Zebra's value, reflecting Datalogic's smaller revenue scale of approximately 600 million euros. Sato Holdings of Japan, the publicly listed thermal-printer competitor headquartered in Tokyo, has a market capitalization of approximately 800 million dollars at a revenue base of roughly 1.1 billion dollars, also substantially smaller than Zebra. Toshiba TEC Corporation has a market capitalization of roughly 1.5 billion dollars. The valuation gap between Zebra and its closest competitors reflects Zebra's larger revenue scale, broader product portfolio, stronger software contribution, and higher operating margins.
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CorpDigest. "Zebra Technologies Corporation Revenue & Financials." CorpDigest, https://corpdigest.com/company/zebra/financials.<div style="font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:1.5;border:1px solid #e2e8f0;border-radius:8px;padding:12px 16px;max-width:520px"><strong>Zebra Technologies Corporation reported $4B in revenue (FY2024).</strong><br>Source: <a href="https://corpdigest.com/company/zebra/financials" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CorpDigest — Zebra Technologies Corporation financials</a></div>