Computacenter completes Pivot and BT Services France deals

Computacenter is starting November with its two most recent acquisitions finally completing, and building on a decent headwind from the third quarter.

The channel player issued a Q3 trading update at the end of last week indicating that today it would complete its deals for Pivot in North America and BT Services France, which will be renamed Computacenter NS.

Investors were told that the impact of the two deals on 2020 fiscal results would be marginally positive, but the wisdom of the acquisitions would be seen more strongly in 2021.

The firm issued the trading update the day before prime minister Boris Johnson announced that England was going into a four-week lockdown, starting later this week, striking a positive tone about the prospects for the rest of its fiscal year.

It indicated that trading in the three months ended 30 September had met expectations. “We are highly pleased with the performance, as a whole, across all our major geographies,” it said.

“The board is very comfortable with its current expectations for the full year, as we have entered the fourth quarter with good short-term visibility and a strong backlog of orders.”

The firm got the green light from shareholders to complete the Pivot deal, which had been announced back in September, on 23 October and has moved quickly to wrap it up.

Toronto-headquartered Pivot operates across North America and will add even more muscle to Computacenter’s US operations, building on the 2018 acquisition of San Francisco-based FusionStorm.

The BT Services deal was announced back in March, but things take a while with works councils and other procedures, resulting in the process not completing until today. BT’s domestic operations in France covered management and maintenance of IT and network infrastructure, and related professional services. During the fiscal year ending in March 2019, the business generated total revenue of €118m (£104m).

The biggest channel players have fared pretty well during the pandemic and Computacenter’s trading update came just a couple of weeks after Softcat delivered a solid set of full-year numbers.

The channel player reported an 8.6% increase in revenues, passing the £1bn mark, while operating profits improved by 10.9% year on year to £93.7m for the 12 months ended 31 July 2020.

Computacenter has also been consistent throughout the year, with a trading statement covering its H1 numbers showing that pre-tax profits were substantially ahead of the equivalent period last year.