US reseller Insight has reported a year on year sales increase of one per cent, up to $1.9 billion.
Insight CEO Ken Lamneck picked out the reseller’s growth in services as a highlight of the quarter.
Services sales increased 13 percent to $275 million, but still a small portion of revenue.
“The demand environment continues to be challenged but we focused on answering our clients’ most pressing IT needs while helping many to plan for investments needed to support the businesses as the economy recovers”, he said.
“During the third quarter, we saw a double-digit growth in services and cloud solutions which improved gross margins to a new third quarter record.”
Lamneck said that he’s confident that second lockdowns across Europe will not have too much of a detrimental effect on business.
In EMEA product sales for the third quarter fell six percent year on year to just shy of $304 million, while services climbed 19 percent to $37.3 million.
The CEO said that devices have been the strong growth drivers over recent quarters, with emerging tech projects taking a back seat.
He thought Chromebooks had stellar growth, particularly in the education space.
“It’s clear that devices is what’s driving the growth in the industry right now from a channel point of view,” he added.
Insight said that some of its hardware bookings were not realised in Q3 and so will carry through into its current quarter.
It expects Q4 sales to rise sequentially, thanks to public sector buying.
Insight’s share price rose 10 per cent yesterday, taking its valuation to $2.15 billion.
