Insight reports sales rise (but only with PCM's revenue included)

Insight has reported a rise in revenue for its Q2, with the addition of PCM's sales salvaging what would have otherwise been a quarter of decline.

Revenue for the period ending 30 June 2020 was up seven per cent year on year to $1.97bn.

This was the reseller's first Q2 with the added sales from PCM, which it acquired in August last year.

Insight said sales in the core business were down year on year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

CEO Ken Lamneck said he expects Insight's current quarter (Q3) to be tough.

"Some markets in Europe and Asia are open for business, while most major cities in North America are partially open, with many businesses still in work-from-home mode," he said.

"As a result we expect demand trends to be down in Q3.

"In July hardware bookings were down year on year by more than 10 per cent in the North America business, as clients extend the use of their assets in this uncertain environment."

Sales in EMEA were up three per cent to $392m, including PCM's UK business.

Growth in hardware and services sales in EMEA was partially offset by a decline in software sales, which Insight said was a result of customers choosing cloud solutions over on-prem software.

Lamneck said that Insight focused on driving up gross margin, which hit 16.5 per cent in the quarter - a record for Insight.

The chief exec was more confident about software sales over the coming quarters, saying Insight expects them to outperform hardware revenue.

"But we do not have visibility as to how the global economy and overall IT demand will respond over the coming quarter," he caveated.

Insight said that the PCM business is almost completely integrated into the wider firm, adding that it will no longer breaks out the acquired firm's revenue.

It added that it is still on target to hit savings of between $40m and $45m in cost synergies this year as a result of the merger.

Despite the uncertainty, Lamneck expects demand for devices to stay strong throughout the year.

Much like Insight's counterpart CDW reported earlier this week, sales across the government and education sectors have been strong and are likely to continue, the CEO added.

"Certainly in the second half [of the year] we'll see a pretty robust increase in Chromebooks in education, as distanced learning becomes much more the norm," he said.

"There's certainly a huge increase of Chrome being sold… and that will bolster the device spending category.

"But from the infrastructure side, that's probably going to be pretty much the same for the second half of the year."

Insight was also positive that the decline in spent could be levelling off. Booking rates in Q2 were down 20 per cent year on year, it said, but in the first month of the current quarter they were down just 10 per cent.

"So it's improving, but it's still a negative number," Lamneck said.

"We of course did say that we would have growth in Q3, and certainly a lot of that is because we will have two more months of PCM in the numbers."