Computacenter reports ‘flat’ sales for the year

Computacenter has reported preliminary unaudited financial results for the year ending 31 December and says group revenue for the year was “flat”, although it increased by 5 percent in constant currency.

Group services revenue increased by 1 percent on a reported basis and 6 percent in constant currency. Group supply chain revenue decreased by 1 percent.

UK revenue grew by 3 percent for the year, with services revenue increasing by 8 percent, while supply chain revenue was “flat”.

“Pleasingly the pace of our UK services growth remains broadly consistent with the previous year, despite the significant reduction of one particular contract”, said Computacenter.

“The adjusted pre-tax results for the year are anticipated to be in line with the board’s expectations for 2015, as upgraded at the time of our 2015 interim results,” said the firm. “This performance has been achieved despite a substantial headwind throughout the year, due to the strength of sterling against the Euro, which has adversely impacted group profits by approximately £3 million.”

Computacenter warned however that “much still remains to be done to improve [its position] further to make the business sustainable”.

“The prospects for the UK, particularly in services, are still of growth but more modest this year,” it added.

Financial matters have been improved for the group by superior sales growth across its German operations. Final group results for the year will be published on 11 March.

Computacenter has just signed a five year contract to support shared services across Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, Worcestershire Health & Care NHS Trust and Worcestershire’s three Clinical Commissioning Groups.

The contract is designed to improve the reliability of core clinical systems as well as the availability of electronic patient records and other important information. Computacenter will be responsible for managing and maintaining the organisations’ core ICT infrastructure, which includes 500 servers, thousands of networking components and 600 terabytes of storage. It will also help “transform” data centre operations.

@AntonySavvas