Easter bunny bashes Computacenter

Corporate reseller left counting the cost of early fall of Easter holidays as Q1 results trail expectations

Computacenter has been left cursing the early fall of the Easter holidays after suffering a slowdown in first quarter sales.

In an interim management statement, the UK’s largest corporate reseller said it had experienced “difficult trading” at its UK and French subsidiaries compared to the same period last year.

But it added that sales in all geographies were “undoubtedly affected” by the Easter holidays occurring in the first quarter.

UK sales hit £346.6m - a drop of 1.5 per cent year-on-year stripping out the impact of acquisitions. Non UK sales in local currency declined 7.1 per cent to €332.8m, which the reseller attributed to lower sales in France.

“It is likely that the pre tax profit will be more skewed towards the second half which may result in the first half being slightly below the first half of last year,” the firm stated.

“This is due to not achieving our revenue growth objectives to date, despite increased investments, and the increased proportion of Group profits generated in Germany, which have always been biased towards the second half of the year.