Services investments eat into Kelway operating proft

European sales growth boosts VAR's turnover but operating profit drops by more than 20 per cent

Kelway has insisted a string of one-off costs has eaten into its operating profit figure for last year as turnover for the firm edged up.

For the 12 months to 31 March, turnover for Kelway Holdings crept up annually by 1.3 per cent to £355.1m, while operating profit dropped by 21.9 per cent to £9.6m over the same period - according to documents filed with Companies House.

The firm claimed the reduction in operating profit was down to high levels of investment in services - it invested £1.4m into its Serviceworks cloud platform and £600,000 into its Peterborough services centre on top of incurring £300,000 in executive redundancy costs over the year. Without these costs, it claims its operating profit would have crept up two per cent annually.

Turnover in Europe boosted Kelway's top line, having grown 32.1 per cent year on year to £35m. UK turnover slid a fraction of a per cent from £301.7m in 2012 to £301.2m this year, while sales in the rest of the world dipped 15.9 per cent to £19m.

Kelway said it continued to perform well in the year, and that it seeks to manage the risk of losing customers to key competitors by providing added value services, improving response times in the supply of products and maintaining strong relationships.

During its fiscal 2012, Kelway snapped up Irish Microsoft LAR Business and Scientific Services (BSS). Its buyout of formerly Dixons-owned VAR Equanet was closed at the commencement of its 2014 fiscal year.