Computacenter maintained a cheery tone in its Q1 2024 trading update, despite cautioning of lower first-half profits and a “challenging” UK market.
Having broken the £10bn sales barrier in 2023 on the back of a bumper H1, the LSE-listed giant said the first quarter of 2024 was “broadly in line with our expectations”.
“Germany and North America delivered solid underlying performances while the UK remained challenging,” it said.
Computacenter’s Technology Sourcing revenue “returned to more normal levels” against some big wins in the same period last year, while services revenue fell on the back of the expiry of certain managed services contracts, it said.
Adjusted profit before tax for the first half is consequently set to come in below 2023, Computacenter cautioned.
The Hatfield-based giant has delivered a 19-year unbroken run of profit growth, which as CEO Mike Norris (pictured above) recently highlighted to us was achieved despite it having to lap artificially high comparables set during the Covid era.
But despite the Q1 slowdown, Computacenter said it expects to make “further progress” in 2024, with growth likely to be weighted to the second half of the year.
Computacenter gave investors further cheer by characterising professional services opportunities across the group as “encouraging”. It also stressed that it commenced a “large four-year public sector contract” in the UK at the start of Q2.
“We have a strong and growing pipeline of Technology Sourcing opportunities in North America for the rest of the year,” Computacenter added.
Computacenter’s share price was up 1.5% in early trading this morning.
