(Alliance News) - Computacenter PLC on Friday upped its interim dividend despite its profit falling in the first half as it faced a tough comparator blamed on "materially altered" IT equipment spending during the pandemic.
Pretax profit in the six months to June 30 fell 6.4% to GBP107.8 million from GBP115.2 million a year ago. The company pinned the drop on higher amortisation costs for past acquisitions and a difficult comparator from the year before.
"The impact of Covid-19 and the more recent supply shortages for IT equipment materially altered customer buying behaviours in 2020 and 2021, including the split of sales volumes between the first and second halves of the year. In 2021 an abnormally high percentage of our full-year profits came in the first half of the year, which means we have a more challenging comparison for the first half of 2022 than for the second half," it explained.
Revenue grew 17% to GBP2.83 billion from GBP2.43 billion. However, the computer services company noted that revenue in the UK business decreased by 7.1% to GBP653.8 million from GBP703.4 million.
Further, cost of sales widened by 20% to GBP2.40 billion from GBP2.0 billion.
The Hertfordshire, England-based firm upped its dividend to 22.1 pence per share, an increase of 31% from 16.9p.
"This is in line with our policy that the interim dividend will be approximately one third of the previous year's total dividend," Computacenter explained. Its dividend for 2021 was 66.3p, declared in March.
Looking ahead, the company said it remains "on track to deliver our stated expectations of profit growth for the year as a whole".
It added that the outlook for the second half is positive, expecting further growth.
By Tom Budszus; tombudszus@alliancenews.com
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Computacenter (CCC)