Computacenter backs guidance but scraps dividend amid pandemic

Computacenter said on Thursday that current trading has been more robust than anticipated as it backed its full-year expectations but pulled its dividend to preserve cash amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In an update for the first quarter to the end of March, the company said trading across the group has been "pleasing" given current conditions. Revenue has declined slightly compared to the first quarter of last year, but profitability has remained in-line with the previous year.

"Current trading has been more robust than we anticipated at the start of this crisis," Computacenter said, noting a surge in demand from many of its customers to enable business continuity particularly around homeworking and network resilience.

"Conversely, particularly in the industrial sector, where a large number of our customers have had to cease production, our engineers and consultants are unable to work," it said.

Computacenter said it was a "prudent" to no longer propose the payment of a final dividend for the year ended 31 December 2019.

"We are confident in the short-term outlook and the board believes that the pre-tax profit performance in the first half of 2020 will be broadly in-line with, or slightly ahead of, that of the first half of 2019. The second half of the year is more difficult to predict but currently our full year expectations remain unchanged."

Computacenter said it will reconsider the extent of its involvement in the UK Government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in the next few weeks, adding that it has been "enormously helpful in the early and very uncertain days of this crisis".