Arrow upbeat as Q2 profit almost doubles

Distributor's top-line growth driven by EMEA boom

Distributor Arrow is optimistic for the rest of its fiscal year after it saw net profit in its last quarter almost double compared with last year.

For the three months to 29 June, Arrow's net profit rocketed 42 per cent annually to $127.9m (£75.39m) as consolidated, as-reported revenue jumped five per cent to $5.68bn over the same period.

Its Global Components business saw Q2 sales rise by five per cent over the same period to $3.57bn, driven by a nine per cent revenue hike in EMEA which was the region's fifth consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth. The division's Americas and Asia-Pacific branches saw sales rise two per cent and five per cent respectively.

Arrow's Global Enterprise Computing arm enjoyed a 10 per cent sales rise last quarter, taking revenue to $2.11bn. It said the division's growth in both the Americas and Europe came from infrastructure, security, virtualisation and software but was offset by a decline in proprietary servers.

The distie expects its total sales for the third quarter to come in between $5.25bn and $5.65bn.

Arrow's chief executive Michael Long was upbeat about his firm's performance.

"We delivered strong results in the second quarter as we continued to accomplish our strategic objectives," he said. "Global components, as well as the software and services portions of enterprise computing solutions, again delivered growth.

"Business conditions for the hardware portion of enterprise computing solutions improved from the first quarter, as we anticipated."