Midwich's H1 suffers blow from pandemic

AV distie will resume M&A plans it had halted earlier this year

Midwich's share dipped six per cent today as its H1 results showed the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AV specialist's revenue dropped over four per cent to £302m for the six months ending 30 June 2020. There was an operating loss of £700,000 in the same period.

National lockdowns and pivot to remote working delayed some projects, according to the report by MD Stephen Fenby. Some of those projects have since started, but others are now "unlikely" to be carried out, he added.

"The coronavirus pandemic represents the biggest shock to our business sector. As the crisis unfolded, we took decisive action to protect our teams, preserve cash and support our customers and vendors. These continue to be our key priorities as the pandemic continues and will optimally position the group as the recovery continues to gather pace," he said.

"Although significantly impacted, our market strength, combined with the diversity of our group in terms of geographical spread, vendor breadth, technology focus and end user markets have partially mitigated the negative impact of the crisis."

The acquisitive AV distie entered the US market earlier this year with the acquisition of Starin Marketing for $46m and snapped up Australian UC firm Vantage Systems, but parked further M&A plans in March to weather the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.

Fenby said that the company is now resuming conversations it had paused at the outset of the pandemic and is driving forward with its M&A strategy.

"Whilst we continue to monitor the pandemic, we have increasingly shifted our focus to the future - bringing back our teams, reopening offices and resuming some face to face customer interactions," he said.

"We have launched new vendor relationships and further developed our expertise in the unified communications (UC) sector. Our acquisition programme has also recommenced with a number of exciting opportunities in the pipeline. Group revenues have improved month on month since April."

"The coronavirus pandemic has been a shock to the global economy, however we believe that the AV industry is well placed for the future. We see no overall change in long term prospects for the industry. Although some segments of the market may be slower to recover, other trends (such as the increased adoption of UC) have unsurprisingly accelerated. "