Insight brands UK 'solid' as it reports Q3 growth

Microsoft programme changes prompting services surge

The UK has been singled out as a star performer at Insight so far this year, as the company announced an annual sales and profit surge in Q3.

For the three months to 30 September, net profit at Insight jumped 20 per cent annually to $20.8m (£13.61m) on net sales of $1.34bn - up eight per cent over the same period.

In EMEA in Q3, Insight did not disclose net profit, but gross profit fell nine per cent annually to $40.95m. Sales in the region over the same period were down six per cent to $293.6m, but in constant currency, actually grew by the same amount.

Insight's chief financial officer Glynis Bryan, said in the last nine months to date, certain regions - including the UK - have been stand-out performers.

"In EMEA net sales year-to-date are up four per cent year-over-year in constant currency with solid top-line performance in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and the Nordics," she said.

In recent months, Microsoft - one of Insight's biggest vendor partners - has moved to encourage consumption of its cloud products among customers and has adjusted its channel rebates accordingly. In the past, partners were rewarded on cloud sales alone.

This, Insight said, has prompted it to swot up on its services offering.

"We are growing our services business at a pretty good rate in North America and in EMEA particularly and Microsoft programme changes are kind of triggering [that] at this stage," said Bryan.

Insight is also a key partner of HP - which is set to split in two on Monday - and Dell, which has recently announced plans to acquire EMC, is also an Insight partner.

Insight's chief executive Ken Lamneck said both developments were positive for the reseller.

"On the HP front, that's gone very smoothly," he said. "We're really seeing no disruption. We had virtually no issues at all from an IT point of view and they flipped the switch a few months back. So I don't think we're going to see really any changes.

"On the Dell-EMC front... we have a strong relationship with both companies. We have a strong partnership and all indications that we've had from Dell is ‘business as usual'. Of course, this can take probably nine months before a lot of this comes together, but all the indications are that we should see things pretty much operating the same way as we had in the past."