Computacenter PLC
13 June 2000
COMPUTACENTER PLC
TRADING UPDATE
There has been much discussion of the slower than expected recovery of the IT
market across Europe, post Y2K. Computacenter, as a market leader in the
supply of distributed IT systems and services, has, not surprisingly, been
affected by this general market condition. Consequently, whilst profits were
in line with our expectations in the first quarter, we are seeing a shortfall
relative to budget in Q2. We also anticipate the delayed recovery will
affect Q3, albeit to a lesser extent.
With the growth of e-commerce, the IT challenges facing our corporate
customers have changed substantially since 1999. One consequence is that it
is taking them longer than we anticipated to bring new projects on stream
post-millenium. Also, widespread deployment of Windows 2000 is not expected
to gain momentum until the latter part of 2000 and this is having the effect
of slowing down new IT infrastructure roll-outs at the present time.
We are however, beginning to see the first very large Windows 2000
implementations. For example, Computacenter has recently won a 35,000 user
European roll-out project for Windows 2000 for one of our largest corporate
customers. We have also seen our open systems business, especially the
deployment of Sun Microsystems solutions, go from strength to strength this
year on the back of accelerated demand for e-commerce applications. The
consequence is that our order book for H2 is continuing to build and we
expect the recovery in demand for products and services to accelerate through
Q3 and Q4 of this year.
Our outlook on profitability for the Group is that, whilst Computacenter
remains strongly in profit, our results for this financial year are likely to
fall short of current analysts' expectations. The relative resilience of
Computacenter's profitability through the Y2K period (profit before tax for
the period spanning the millennium, July 1999 to June 2000, is expected to be
in excess of £55 million) is a direct result of our market leading position.
In the medium and longer term we remain extremely confident about the outlook
for the Group. Our strategy of continued investment in developing the range
and scale of our service businesses remains unchanged and on track.
Enquiries:
Computacenter PLC
Mike Norris, Chief Executive 01707 631 519
Phil Williams, Corporate Development Manager
Brunswick Group Limited
Jon Coles 020 7404 5959
Catriona Booth
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