Tag: financial figures

Morrisons gets into online food

Posted on March 14, 2013 by - News

smartphone-shoppingMorrisons has bitten the bullet and announced that it will be going head- to-head with its supermarket rivals in the online food space.

The supermarket giant, which posted its first drop in profits for six years has said it aims to offer this service by January next year and is reportedly in talks with Ocado to help it begin conquering the online food shopping space.

The giant saw its pretax profit drop to £901 million in February this year compared to the £935 million made in 2011.

It said that in a bid to grow over the next year it had implemented a range of measures to ensure this happened. It described its moves into online as an “important step.”

Supermarkets are doing all they currently can to bring customers through the door. This month Tesco announced a range of plans to help it get ahead of its competitors offering price promises and claims that it was buying eatery Giraffe to attract a different range of consumers.

Morrisons has also not rested on its laurels recently also announcing that it was building up its army of 12 convenience stores, and snapping up  62 sites from the administrators of Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster.

Computacenter says “stumble in Germany” resulted in profit loss

Posted on March 12, 2013 by - News

poundsComputacenter has reported a four percent profit loss for the full year claiming it “stumbled in Germany”.

The British company said its profits stood at £71.3 million in 2012, compared to £74.2 million in 2011.

It blamed the loss on higher costs from new contracts, which bled into margins in the services business in Germany, its second-largest market by revenue.

And 2013 doesn’t look to be an easy road with the company claiming that this year would be dependant on the speed of recovery from the “problem contracts” in Germany, which it said was unpredictable.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom with the company reporting group revenues jumping 2.2 percent to £2.91 billion  compared to 2011’s  £2.85 billion.

Mike Norris, Chief Executive of the company said: “We expect 2013 to be a year of progress for Computacenter. While the Group financial outcome for 2013 will be dependent on the in-year performance of Germany and the speed at which we recover from our problem contracts, which is unpredictable, we are confident that these contracts will improve.

“More importantly, winning, contracting and taking on new contracts successfully, is more fundamental to the long-term growth of the business and its strategic development. This will be underpinned by our new Group operating model, which has taken effect in the UK and Germany, since the start of 2013.”

VMware to fire and hire staff

Posted on January 29, 2013 by - News

fireVMware has become the latest company to announce that it will be slashing jobs.

VMware, which reported revenue growth of 22 percent for 2012 compared to 2011, raking in around $4.61 billion, said that it would be handing around seven percent of its 13,800 staff their pink slips as part of a restructuring effort.

The announcement was driven by a slowdown in its 2013 earnings predictions,

However, it said it plans to hire in other areas.

Speaking with analysts, VMware chief exec Pat Gelsinger said a lack of government spending, plus increasing competition from the likes of Microsoft, meant that the company had to focus on specific products and geography.

This means taking away a focus on areas such as its online presentation software, SlideRocket and looking more at software-defined data centres and hybrid cloud services. Translated, this means VMware will slash 900 jobs in areas that are not profitable, where it hopes to save roughly $20 million for the first quarter of 2013.

Gelsinger did say that 1,000 jobs should be created by the end of the year as the company keeps up with competitors in its new focus areas. He said the company will shovel talent into the new roles, which support “growth opportunities” as well looking for new recruits in these areas.

The announcement comes after security software firm Symantec admitted it would be culling management jobs to save cash.