Insight restructuring costs hit EMEA operations

imagesInsight saw its EMEA operations slip into the red because of restructuring costs.

Restructuring costs of $3.2 million made Insight’s EMEA numbers look pretty rubbish. Costs shot up as the company tried to improve the efficiency of its EMEA operations. Apparently things are going to be pants there for some time.

Overall the numbers for the first quarter across EMEA showed that Insight delivered a 9per cent  climb in sales to $330 million but a loss with income dipping by $1.1m compared to a positive position of $2.7 million in the same period last year.

Insight CEO Ken Lamneck said that EMEA was a blight on the balance sheet but otherwise the firm had enjoyed a fairly decent performance in the region.

“The sales growth obviously is pretty 20per cent  constant currency growth, so really solid there. A few big deals are brought down the gross margin related to some large software enterprise agreements and some hardware deals, lower than margin there for — but certainly good growth on a top-line and obviously growth year-over-year on the earnings line as well,” he said.

“But we looked and we said, hey, there is a couple of markets where there is some inefficiency. So we’ve taken that very specific action,” he added.

The CFO Glynis Bryan said that when it took a charge in Europe it did not always see a recovery in the first year and it expected the benefit of the cost cutting to filter in about $2m a year with most of that starting to come through to the balance sheet in 2018.

Sales for the outfit were up 26 percent  to $1.48 billion for the three months ended 31 March. Gross profit was $208 million for the first quarter, up 29 percent  year-over-year.