Acquisitive Arrow grows by over a quarter

Distributor announces 27 per cent jump in global sales but component revenues outgrow enterprise business

On target: Arrow claims earnings came in ahead of expectations for Q3

Components drove the bulk of Arrow Electronics’ third quarter growth as the distributor’s revenues came in 27 per cent ahead of last year and profits smashed expectations.

The acquisitive New York-listed outfit - the first of several giant US distributors to post results this week - saw revenues for the three months to 2 October swell from $3.67bn to $4.66bn on an annual comparison

Net profits hit $118.5m, compared with $12.6m a year earlier, when the distributor swallowed $29.1m of restructuring, integration and other charges.

Chief executive Michael Long said Arrow had seen “very strong double-digit” growth in storage, software and industry-standard servers. Total revenues at its enterprise computing solutions (ECS) arm grew eight per cent year on year to $1.22bn.

However, Arrow’s components arm was the real star as revenues from that side of the business hiked 35 per cent to $3.44bn.

Long said: “The positive momentum we have seen in our businesses during the first half of the year has continued with another quarter of terrific performance.

“Earnings per share came in well ahead of our expectations and almost tripled year over year to a record third-quarter level.”

Arrow has acquired a string of distributors this year, including UK security specialist Sphinx, global components player Nu Horizons and US unified communications outfit Shared Technologies.

For its present quarter, Arrow expects total sales of between $5bn and $5.4bn, with components contributing between $3.325bn and $3.525bn of that and ECS between $1.675bn and $1.875bn.