Tag: computacenter

Computacenter has bought €13 million turnover Swiss VAR PathWorks, adding a reseller arm to its operations in Switzerland as part of what has been a significant worldwide spend. Read more…

Computacenter has told the City that its  full-year results to be “comfortably in excess of previous expectations”.

Computacenter said it has gathered traction across all geographies of its supply chain business, but Germany, in particular, stands out.

“The six months of trading to 30 June 2018 shows considerable progress for Computacenter in adjusted profitability, and even further progress in adjusted earnings per share following the buyback completed in February 2018, against the same period last year.

“While there is still a significant amount to do in the second half of the year, Computacenter’s board believes that the group’s trading result for the 2018 financial year will now be comfortably in excess of its previous expectations set out in the Q1 trading update.”

In the Q1 update, Computacenter said that the UK business had seen revenue growth of 31 percent, driven by a one off £34 million deal in particular.

A rather cushy £34 million software licensing deal helped Computacenter record a 23 percent year-on-year leap in first quarter revenues.

Computacenter announced that its Q1 performance beat expectations, particularly around its supply chain (product supply) business.

“This leads the Board to believe that 2018 is likely to be a year of further progress for

in profitability as well as earnings per share”, it said.

It was the UK which helped Computacenter do so well. This was partly due to a one-off, £34 million software licence sale with an unnamed customer.

Even without that, UK growth was up 21 percent, with its supply chain up 52 percent and services down by seven percent.

That beats the 19 per cent growth recorded by Computacenter’s larger German arm. The outfit’s French revenues were flatter than crepes.

From a group perspective, supply chain revenues rose by 27 percent, a business Computacenter said had benefited from its customers’ drive to digitalise their business.

Services sales, which grew just two percent in Q1, are coming under savage pricing pressure; however, Computacenter added.

“We are responding to our customers’ desire to take cost out of long-term support contracts by increasing the competitiveness of our services offerings through productivity improvements which protect our profitability. However, this market trend does put corresponding pressure on our services top line growth which is currently being more than compensated by the supply chain performance.”

Computacenter saw its UK bottom line tighten up in Q3 with revenue up eight percent year on year to £33 5million.

Overall the group saw revenue jump 27 percent to £931 million with Germany once again the standout performer.

Revenue in the German business was up 26 percent to £453 million, while France’s sales pogoed 34 percent to £127 million.

Of the UK business, Computacenter said: “Whilst the UK is growing slightly slower than the group , the results in the third quarter clearly demonstrate an improved performance.”

Computacenter announced that the momentum it experienced across the group, particularly in Germany, in the first half of the year has been maintained if not improved during the third quarter of 2017.

“Whilst the fourth quarter is our most difficult comparison to 2016 of any quarter in the year, we remain on track for a record performance. New technologies, digitalisation and our customers’ appetite to invest is as buoyant as we can remember, which is obviously driving our professional services and supply chain services.”

The company warned that its target market’s desire to reduce operating costs, and therefore the cost of running their IT, has intensified which is eroding its contractual services base, thus increasing the need to invest in productivity and innovation to remain competitive. Whatever that means.

Computacenter has appointed a new UK managing director as the outfit reshuffles its management deck.

Neil Hall, previously director of business enablement and contractual services, has taken on the UK role with Kevin James becoming chief commercial officer.

Andy Stafford has also re-joined Computacenter as chief operating officer. Stafford previously had been the company’s IT director in the late nineties.

Stafford worked at Deloitte and Virgin, before working at Accenture for a decade and then moving to Unisys.

Hall, who takes the UK managing director role, joined Computacenter in 2001 and held a number of roles before becoming group director of business enablement and contractual services in 2015.

James is now chief commercial officer. He  joined Computacenter in 1990 before leaving in 1999 and re-joining in 2005. He took on the UK managing director role in 2015.