Softcat has signalled to investors that its first quarter has been solid and customer demand is holding up.
The channel player shared a trading update covering the three months to 31 October 2024, with the firm indicating it had seen growth in gross and operating profits during the period.
The statement added that “customer demand remains resilient” and it continued to benefit from offering a broad portfolio of products and services.
Softcat chief executive officer Graham Charlton said it had seen a positive performance in the first quarter of its 2025 financial year.
“As expected in the year to date, customer demand trends have remained largely consistent with those seen in the prior financial year. The breadth and depth of our offering, together with our wealth of expertise, is proving invaluable to customers in an increasingly complex IT landscape,” he said.
“I’m confident that our unique culture and capabilities will enable us to continue building on the current momentum in the business and successfully execute on the significant opportunity we see across our markets,” he added.
The board indicated it remains on track to deliver double-digit gross profit growth together with high single-digit operating profit growth in 2025.
Just a few weeks ago, Softcat published its full-year numbers for fiscal 2024, with the firm delivering again for investors.
Judging the firm by its key metric of gross invoiced income, which increased by 11.3% to £2.85bn, it was a solid performance for the 12 months to 31 July 2024.
Operating profit grew by 9.3% to £154.1m and the firm continued to invest in talent, increasing headcount by 14.3%. Revenue was down 2.3% at £963m.
We think there’s decades of terrific opportunity ahead, which is why we’ll keep balancing strong profit growth with lots of investment for the future
Graham Charlton, Softcat
Speaking at the time, Charlton said there continued to be plenty of opportunity in the UK market for the firm to grow further and customers continued to seek out expertise to help with areas including cloud, security and artificial intelligence (AI).
“We’ve looked hard at our strategy and evolved our plans there, really sharpening our focus on the service and technical skills we need for this age of data and AI that we’re entering,” Charlton stated.
He was also bullish about the prospects for the 2025 financial year, with the firm in a position to ride out some of the challenges that had been a feature of the 2024 fiscal year.
“The guidance we’re putting out and the expectations we have for the year ahead do not depend upon the market improving,” said Charlton.
“We think the opportunity ahead is still bigger than it ever has been. We can’t grow fast enough to get anywhere near our potential in the markets we operate in. We think there’s decades of terrific opportunity ahead, which is why we’ll keep balancing strong profit growth with lots of investment for the future,” he added.
