Avnet sales fall blamed on weak June

Distributor pins hopes on Magirus acquisition to provide future growth

Avnet is looking to its acquisition of the Magirus Group to improve its future growth figures after posting a 44 per cent drop in quarterly net profits, which it has blamed on weak June sales.

Net profit for Avnet's fourth quarter, which ended on 30 June, fell from $239m (£152m) to $133m year on year as revenue fell by 8.8 per cent to $6.3bn.

While sales at Avnet's Electronics Marketing arm dropped 10.8 per cent on a pro-forma basis, Avnet Technology Solutions (TS) fared even worse as pro-forma sales fell 13 per cent to $2.54bn.

Rick Hamada, chief executive of Avnet, said a weaker end to June was to blame.

"Similar to our components business, TS experienced a weaker than expected June as a number of customers in both the Americas and EMEA regions chose to defer their final purchasing decision during the last two weeks of the month," he added. "As a result, sequential growth was below normal seasonality."

The Magirus Group's storage, virtualisation and cloud offerings are expected to provide chances for further growth for Avnet following the July acquisition.

Magirus, which posted revenue last year of $530m, has 4,500 reseller partners and employs 400 staff.

Hamada added that the Magirus acquisition is part of its long-term growth plans.

"We are excited about the opportunity to accelerate progress once we received all appropriate regulatory approvals and complete the recently announced acquisition of the Magirus Group," he said.

"With $500m annual revenue in highly complementary suppliers and key geographies, this acquisition will provide us with incremental opportunities in high-growth technologies such as storage, virtualisation and cloud computing while adding to our overall scale in this region."