Zebra Technologies Corporation Revenue in 2024

Zebra Technologies Corporation reported $4.3B in revenue for fiscal year 2024. This represents a growth of 0% compared to the 2023 figure of $4.3B.

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.