3. HP-Compaq margin crunch
3 May 2002
As Norris himself has acknowledged in multiple interviews, 3 May 2002 may well go down as the worst (and also paradoxically the best) day in Computacenter’s history as its largest vendor HP closed its acquisition of arch-rival Compaq.
By denting PC resale margins, the mega-deal “hurt us more than any single event”, Norris told the FT in 2019.
Riffing on the same topic in an interview with The Register in 2012, Norris described the move as “very, very painful”.
Computacenter’s 2005 pre-tax profits nearly halved to £34m with rumours swirling in November of that year that Ogden and Hulme wanted to take the company private again.
Crucially, however, the episode set the stage for Computacenter’s push into more margin-rich services as it sought to become less reliant on vendors.
Today, it claims to have “the largest service capability of any VAR in the world”, with over 13,400 billable people helping its customers. Managed and professional services generated 10% and 7% of its 2023 top line, respectively.
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