South Africa-based reselling and services player, Datatec, has updated the market on its expected performance for its financial year to the end of February 2013. Revenues will be in the $5.2bn-$5.3bn range – down from the already reduced forecast of $5.4bn announced in January (see Datatec warns on full-year performance).
Profit after tax is expected to be between $83m and $88m – versus a previous forecast range of $80-$90m, which doesn’t sound too bad except this forecast was already reduced from $104m.
Datatec’s distribution business, Westcon, has been the pain-point and “has continued to report performance below expectations especially in the US and Europe”. Furthermore, Datatec has decided to divest Westcon’s operations in Indian. In contrast, Datatec’s Logicalis business “continues to perform strongly and slightly above plan”. Indeed, we recently had a very encouraging and interesting meeting with new UK CEO, Mark Starkey. More on that shortly for subscribers.
Meanwhile, we’ll have to wait until mid-May for the year-end results to be released in full.