Arrow slashes expense bill further as profits tumble

Distributor aims to trim its costs down by $75m - $35m more than first stated

Arrow has vowed to shave another $35m off its annual expense bill as it announced a quarterly profit slump of nearly a third.

For the three months to 30 March, the distributor's net income dropped annually by 31 per cent to $77.9m on sales which fell one per cent to $4.85bn (£3.12bn) over the same period.

In February the firm began its "incremental productivity enhancement programme" which aimed to deliver a $40m saving in expenses, but as of today that figure has been upped to $75m.

Its chief financial officer Paul Reilly said that a more thorough review of its options led to the decision being made to almost double its predicted savings. Despite this, he claimed the firm would still "selectively invest in the long-term future of the company".

Its global Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) business' Q1 sales rose two per cent to $1.66bn with storage, software and services leading the division's growth. In Europe, ECS' sales were "modestly below normal seasonality" due to the continued weakening of the region's economies, it claimed.

Sales in its Global Components (GC) division sunk five per cent annually to $3.19bn. Its European branch's revenues slumped the most - 16 per cent - while the Americas region's sales slid by five per cent.

Arrow's chief executive Michael Long said that he was pleased with the firm's growth and expected similar results next quarter.

He said: "We performed well in the first quarter. Sales of $4.85bn were in line with our expectations. Our ECS business continues to deliver excellent performance, reaching record-level first-quarter sales, while posting the 13th consecutive quarter of organic growth.

"As we look to the second quarter, we would expect the world's economies to be consistent with what we experienced in the first quarter, and therefore we would expect to see normal seasonality across our businesses."

In the second quarter the company believes that total sales will be between $4.9bn and $5.3bn.