Norris: Computacenter not done on UK shopping spree

IT services firm will dip into £100m cash pile if right opportunities come up

Computacenter chief executive Mike Norris has revealed the firm is still in the market for UK acquisitions and has pledged further investment in its home territory.

Continental Europe stole the limelight in Computacenter's interim results announcement as Germany overtook the UK as the London-listed outfit's largest operation.

UK sales slumped by 16 per cent year on year, with product revenues down 23 per cent.

However, Norris said investment in its UK business is a priority and that further acquisitions are possible despite recent M&A activity centring on mainland Europe.

He said 40 per cent of Computacenter's £36m investment in a new ERP system related to the UK business and that the firm is also investing heavily in its UK services business, data centres and call centres.

"Germany is now bigger than the UK, but we are still the UK's largest reseller. My job is to ensure both countries remain competitive with the competition and not with each other," he said.

Recent UK acquisitions include ICS Solutions (April 2011) and Thesaurus (November 2009).

Computacenter is sitting on a £104m cash pile and Norris said the firm could borrow a further £100m if the right acquisition targets came along.

"There's nothing in the immediate future that we have in the hopper, but we have looked at things in the UK and other countries and will continue to look," Norris said. "I am in an envious position, but equally most of our success in the last six years has been through organic growth. The business is still growing profit very well – if you're holding a tiger by its tail, why grab another one?"

Norris admitted the UK product business "struggled" in the first-half but stressed that last year's numbers were artificially inflated by a one-off product deal with a finance firm worth "tens of millions".

"Government spend was down and people were a bit more cautious," he said.

Computacenter has morphed from a product-led to services-led business in recent years and Norris claimed the firm now rarely rubs shoulders with some of the market's more traditional resellers.

"If you asked me to name my top 10 competitors, 2e2 might make it, but Kelway certainly wouldn't," he said.