Specialist Computer Holdings (SCH), the privately held, UK-headquartered reseller controlled by Sir Peter Rigby and family, has announced top-level financial results for its year to end March 2012. While the figures in the press release tell us something, they don’t tell us everything.
What we do know is that full-year Group sales hit £2.76bn, up 11% from £2.48bn, in-line with the growth achieved in FY11. Operating profit soared by 82% to £34.1m, but we’ll have to wait until SCH files its full accounts to see precisely how this miracle occurred. Even so, the implied 1.2% group operating margin is less than half that of SCH’s larger archrival Computacenter (see Computacenter confirms year of contrasts). SCH’s UK operations grew faster than the rest of the group at 13% to reach £1.13bn.
SCH used to go to market as Specialist Computer Centres (SCC: tech resale and services) and Specialist Distribution Group (SDG: technology distribution). The latter was sold off to US giant Tech Data for $350m last month. The sale of the SDG distie business should allow SCH to concentrate on building the SCC brand and capabilities, notably in services, in which SCC materially lags Computacenter.
We’ll bring you more analysis just as soon as we can get our hands on the full accounts – and hopefully with more on the plans for SCC if we are able to penetrate the cone of silence that usually surrounds the Mysterious House of Rigby.