CHS revels in tripled Q1 profit

Distributor's Q1 figures show European sales account for three-quarters of total business.

CHS Electronics' share price crept up by just over one point at theters of total business. end of last week, despite the distributor's latest figures revealing it had tripled its first quarter profit.

According to the results for the period ended 31 March, CHS increased net income from $6.7 million for the comparable quarter to $20.6 million.

The distributor, which saw its share price edge up by 1.67 per cent on 7 May, increased turnover by 100 per cent to #1.8 billion from #877.1 million for Q1 1997.

According to Peter Rigby, director of marketing and communications at CHS, Europe was responsible for nearly 72 per cent of the total results. 'This area always does a significant portion of the business, so if Europe doesn't do well, CHS doesn't do well,' he said.

In a statement, Claudio Osorio, CEO and chairman of CHS, said the share of European capital had doubled to four percentage points for share of sales in each of the products the vendor distributes.

Rigby added that costs for last month's $87.7 million acquisition of Metrologie would not figure in the distributor's results for some time (PC Dealer, 29 April). 'We are still going through due diligence so we do not have a final price,' he said.

Operating profit for the first quarter also rocketed to $36.9 million compared with $14.6 million for the same quarter in 1997, while gross profits increased by 96 per cent to $122.6 million from $62.5 million.

Osorio stated that sales outstanding now stood at 34 days, while within the distributor's assets, inventories had been slightly reduced to $629,786 for Q1 this year from $693,503 in the comparable quarter for last year.