The memory crisis is creating an environment in which Softcat’s strengths “shine brightest”, its CEO said as it unveiled “exceptional” full-year results.
The UK’s largest reseller’s top line vaulted 30.5% to £4.72bn in its year to 31 July 2026, with second-half growth slowing only slightly on its bumper first half (dipping from 33.3% to 28.5%).
Gross profit and underlying operating profit advanced by 24.7% to £616.3m and by 19.4% to £215.1m, respectively.
In his CEO commentary, Graham Charlton claimed AI is making IT infrastructure “more critical, complex and strategically important for our customers operations”.
“At the same time, memory chip supply constraints have added complexity to pricing, availability and planning. This is exactly the sort of environment in which Softcat’s strengths shine brightest,” he added.
£99bn market
Softcat’s full-year results come after LSE-listed peer Computacenter confirmed its UK arm broke the £2bn sales barrier in its fiscal first half – on the back of rising demand for AI infrastructure.
Just yesterday, Softcat and Computacenter’s more software-focused peer Bytes Technology Group unveiled 19.6% top-line growth for its fiscal first half.
Charlton last month vowed its blockbuster US acquisition of GDT – which is set to close in Q1 of calendar 2027 – would not suck attention away from its UK business.
In her review, CFO Katy Mecklenburgh estimated that Softcat serves 20% of the customers in a UK&I addressable market worth £99bn and growing at around 10.5%.
It boasts an average 20-25% wallet share with those customers, she added.
This means Softcat has a “significant future growth opportunity” to “attract new customers and go deeper with existing ones”, Mecklenburgh claimed.
“Outstanding performance”
During fiscal 2026, Softcat saw software gross invoiced income vault 25.3% to £2.599bn, with hardware GII advancing 41.6% to £1.405bn and services jumping 30.1% to £715.9m.
Gross margins declined from 13.7% to 13.1% year on year, which Mecklenburgh chalked up to higher sales of lower-margin products including client devices and more public sector work going via framework agreements.
Although Softcat’s Microsoft business grew strong, margin was impacted by the vendor’s infamous January 2025 fees shake up, she added.
The LSE-listed goliath expanded its customer base by 3.4% to 10,500 and grew gross profit per customer by 20.6% to £58,500.
Average headcount swelled by 10.8% to 2,925.
Charlton branded the results as “outstanding”.
“Growth in gross profit and underlying operating profit came in significantly ahead of our expectations at the start of the year, reflecting the strength of our culture, the quality of our customer relationships and the benefits of the sustained investment we have made over many years in our people, capabilities, systems and data,” he said.
Looking ahead, Softcat expects to deliver “high single-digit” uderlying operating profit growth in FY2027, slightly ahead of gross profit growth “following very strong two-year growth” across FY2025 and FY2026.
