XP death sparks revenue boom at Computacenter UK

London-listed outfit logs blistering 27 per cent growth in local product sales in Q1

Computacenter's UK product business is growing like it's the 1990s all over again as the death of Windows XP prompted corporate customers to open their wallets.

According to a Q1 trading statement this morning, Computacenter's UK product revenue mushroomed 27 per cent year on year in Q1, with overall UK sales bouncing 20 per cent to £350.4m.

This puts Computacenter's UK operation comfortably ahead of Germany, which briefly overtook it to become the largest country by revenue a couple of years ago. Germany saw sales fall two per cent in constant currency to £267.7m while France saw sales rise by 10 per cent in constant currency to £114.7m.

The London-listed firm stressed that some – but not all – of the product growth was attributable to "recent Microsoft operating system" changes. This suggests many of its corporate customers upgraded their estates in Q1, if not to Windows 8 then to Windows 7, to avoid running XP after its 8 April end of life.

"We currently have the strongest professional services order backlog in the history of our UK business, and we have a number of very significant contractual services bids that are expected to reach a conclusion over the next few months," Computacenter added.

While everything is going swimmingly in the UK, overall sales were up by a more muted eight per cent to £745.1m in Q1.

France remains a concern, with much of the revenue growth there coming from the lowest-margin areas of its business, Computacenter said. Consequently, the firm will continue to cut its Gallic cost base in a move anticipated to lead to full-year exceptional restructuring charges of between £7m and £9m.