Computacenter says it is “excited” by its pipeline of enterprise and hyperscale opportunities, despite unveiling lower 2024 sales and profits.
The LSE-listed giant was not quite able to make up ground lost in its “weak” first half, as gross invoiced income for the year slipped 1.6% on a reported basis to £9.92bn.
Despite a record haul in the second half, adjusted operating profit for the full year slipped 9.1% to £246.7m, meanwhile.
This meant the UK’s largest reseller/services outfit was unable to extend its run of 19 consecutive years of increased earnings per share.
CEO Mike Norris characterised it as a “solid” performance “in the context of a tough first-half comparative and a more challenging IT market”.
Breaking it down by region, Computacenter’s UK business saw GII shrink 7% to £2.21bn, while North America and Germany’s contribution rose by 9% to £3.81bn and shrank by 5% to £2.66bn, respectively.
Computacenter was undone by a 12.2% fall in Technology Sourcing sales in its first half. For the full-year, Technology Sourcing was down 2% in constant currencies to £8.28bn, while services revenue rose 2% to £1.64bn (within that, professional services was up 12% to £778m and managed services was down 5% to £860m).
By our calculations, Computacenter grew GII 9% YoY to £5.38bn in the second half, with its UK tally up 2% to £1.13bn.
Why is Computacenter excited?
Computacenter said it is “excited” by its enterprise and hyperscale pipeline.
Its product order backlog stood at £1.57bn as of 31 December 2024 – almost quadruple its £394.1m tally a year earlier.
It ended the year with 192 large customers which generate over £1m of gross profit per annum, up from 179 a year earlier.
Computacenter revealed it is building a new Integration Center in Atlanta to support its growth in the US, where it continues to target hyperscalers.
“In North America, we have established a track record of delivering a high-quality service for hyperscale customers given our expertise in the areas of high-performance computing, networking, low-latency storage, data center infrastructure and software components,” Norris said.
“We won major new hyperscale business in the US during the year, helping to diversify our portfolio of hyperscale customers. Additionally, we won AI-related infrastructure projects in Europe and anticipate more in 2025,” Norris said.
Computacenter claims to have the largest services business of any major VAR, and the largest VAR business of any services player – a feat it claims will stand it in good stead in the current climate.
“Our customers are looking to work with fewer suppliers, and for their partners to have a deep understanding of their requirements, as well as the scale, financial strength, flexibility and cost competitiveness to meet their specific needs,” Norris said.
“Our three core activities – Technology Sourcing, Professional Services and Managed Services – are all critical in helping customers to achieve their IT goals and in Computacenter they have a partner that can deliver for them across each.
Computacenter said it had started 2025 “positively”.
“The size of the projects we are currently delivering gives us good momentum at the start of 2025,” it concluded.
