Computacenter warns over chip shortages as interim profits rise

In the six months to 30 June, adjusted pre-tax profit rose 59.4% to £118.9m on revenue of £3.18bn, up 29.2%. Computacenter said industrial customers had made significant increases in expenditure, and this has been complemented by continuing business within the public and financial services sectors.

The company said trading across all of its major geographies apart from France was "pleasing", with significant strength at the end of the second quarter and June the most profitable month in its history.

"The group has seen increasing levels of business returning from key industrial customers, some of which were largely suppressed during 2020," it said. "This is coupled with ongoing public sector spend and has created significant organic revenue growth for the group."

Chief executive Mike Norris said: "The vast majority of our customers have returned to business as normal and, other than the reduction to our cost base due to the inability to travel and a continued improvement in the utilisation of our technical resources, Covid-19 is now having very little impact on our business.

"However, the ongoing supply shortages in the industry has risen to the top of our challenges. The effects on our business are difficult to fully quantify. While there has been, and will continue to be, pressure on our revenues, our position in the market as one of the larger players in most of the geographies in which we operate has enabled us to gain market share. While we look forward to the supply chain issues being behind us, we are not expecting this until well into 2022 but, as you can see by the performance in the first half, we are rising to this challenge."