Bechtle has “significantly” raised its full-year revenue and profit outlook after becoming the latest mega VAR to post expectation-busting results.
Mainland Europe’s largest reseller saw business volumes (gross sales in UK money) hike around 18% year on year to €2.27bn in its second quarter, according to preliminary data unveiled this morning.
Earnings before tax topped market expectations by surging by a fifth to around €80m.
Its shares leapt by around 10% on the news.
Buoyed by its H1 success, Bechtle now expects full-year business volumes to grow by more than 10% on 2025’s €8.6bn tally (up from 5-10% previously).
Similarly, it now expects 2026 EBT to swell 5-10% on the €324m it generated last year (up from 0-5% previously).
The results come after LSE-listed peer Computacenter said it expects its first-half profits to double amid surging UK and US sales.
Bechtle in December told us it is open to further UK&I acquisitions as it looks to grow a £1bn business here.
The Neckarsulm-headquartered outfit turbo-charged its UK business earlier in the decade with its acquisitions of ACS, Tangible Benefit and Qolcom.
Although yet to make a UK acquisition in 2026, Bechtle has dipped into its reserves to snap up businesses in the Netherlands, Portugal and Hungary.
Bechtle in May said it had made a “very strong start” to 2026 as it stressed that price increases in the IT market – particularly for PCs, servers and storage – had “not so far dampened demand”.
How long the major VARs can go without ongoing memory shortages denting sales is another question, with analyst Omdia warning earlier this month that half of the partners it surveyed in the EMEA expect their revenue to decline in the second half this year. Much of the growth they enjoyed in Q2 was driven by upfront spending by customers wanting to secure access to infrastructure ahead of potential supply crunches, Chief Analyst Alastair Edwards counselled.
Bechtle’s Q2 growth came in even higher than the 13.2% top-line increase it registered in Q1.
Its first-half performance shows that it has “so far successfully navigated the persistently challenging industry environment”, the 16,500-employee outfit said.
