PCM CEO highlights market 'softness' after releasing results

PCM's CEO Frank Khulusi highlighted "softness" in the UK market after the reseller published its global results.

The US-based reseller saw its overall revenue for the three months ending 30 June decline two per cent year on year to $546.4m (£414.5m), while operating profit jumped 144 per cent to $13.2m.

The firm's UK revenue was $13.5m, compared to $18m in Q1. PCM's UK sales in Q1 last year were £362,000, due to the fact the UK organisation had only just launched.

Khulusi said the UK business was affected by Brexit uncertainty and a lack of capabilities in the public sector.

"For the second quarter for the UK it's typically seasonally strong from a public sector perspective," he said. "We are new to the market and none of the acquisitions we made are that strong on the public sector side from an overall sales perspective, so for us it really becomes a 2019 thing.

"We recently won in a couple of public sector contracts. These give us the licence to hunt, and then you backfill with salespeople whose job is to try to get as much as they can in sales.

"We expect that activity to help us during the second quarter of next year, but we were not able to participate in that at all in the second quarter of this year.

"In addition to that, there is a little bit of softness in the UK market surrounding Brexit. We don't think that affected us because we're still small and growing in that market, but we hear a lot of good things to come in the future."

PCM launched in the UK last year, and has since made a series of acquisitions and opened its first PCM-branded office.

The 144 per cent growth in operating profit was attributed to a reduction in costs - particularly the termination of a Pakistani services contract and cuts to communications costs - and an increase in gross profit

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• PCM UK