Comms Dealer

Ingram Micro shares rose +6.5% as it reported Q3 figures and Q4 guidance.

In addition to beating Q3 revenue estimates (while posting in-line earnings per share), the distributor says it expects Q4 yr/yr revenue growth of 8%-12%.

A near-50% Y/Y increase in mobility product sales (boosted by a new Verizon channel deal in the US) to $2B helped drive the Q3 revenue but earnings were squeezed by a 15 bps drop in gross margin to 5.75%, which was caused by the mix shift towards mobility and systems sales.

Alain Monié, Ingram Micro CEO, commented: "We delivered strong third quarter financial results as we continue to take advantage of market opportunities to drive very solid revenue growth, improved returns and robust earnings growth and leverage.

"Revenue grew 11% and strong operating leverage led to a 19% increase in non-GAAP operating income. We are benefiting from new wins and strong market share and we are enhancing earnings power through disciplined cost management and execution on our global organisational effectiveness program.

"We also maintained our focus on optimising the balance sheet, generating cash flow from operations for the quarter while growing the business significantly. I am very pleased with our third quarter performance, which reflects the strength of our diversified geographic reach, solutions portfolio, partnerships and strong execution."

Worldwide sales increased by more than $1bn to $11.2bn from $10.2bn in the third quarter last year. Worldwide gross profit was $646m, compared with $599m in the 2013 third quarter.

Gross profit increased by 8% year-over-year benefiting from strong sales across most regions, it says. Gross margin was down versus last year as revenue growth was led by a greater mix of high volume sales, particularly in mobility and systems.

Europe's revenue of $3.2bn was up 9% year-over-year in dollars and up 8% in local currency. Non-GAAP operating income increased 8%, and non-GAAP operating margin was relatively flat at 64 basis points as revenue growth was driven primarily by sales in high-velocity products.

The region is benefiting from cost savings as a result of the initial implementation of the organisational effectiveness initiative, and it expects to see improvements in Europe's cost structure in 2015. Europe Technology and Other Solutions revenue grew at mid-single digits in local currency.

Solid growth in Germany, Ingram Micro's largest country in the region, was led by strength in retail markets. Spain and Italy experienced robust growth, benefiting from double-digit increases in both SMB and retail. The UK had another solid quarter of growth in SMB, it says.

Europe Mobility delivered solid double-digit local currency revenue growth, led by strong smartphone sales in Germany across all leading vendor lines, primarily into retail markets. Spain and Sweden also contributed well to the region's Mobility growth.

AKJ, the billing software solutions specialist, has been working closely with Ofcom and industry groups to ensure that its Affinity billing platform is fully compliant for Ofcom's 'simplifying Non Geographic Numbers' legislation which comes in to force in June 2015.

Primarily, these changes are to restore confidence among consumers using 08 numbers, but will also provide commercial transparency for companies and organisations using Non Geographic numbers.

AKJ has regularly engaged with Ofcom to ensure that Affinity is compliant for the new legislation changes which finally come into force next year.

In turn, AKJ is also working closely with its customers to understand how it will be presenting NGCS call charges and will be drawing upon this research in continued configuration of the Affinity billing platform.

Derek Watson, AKJ's Managing Director said: "Clearly displaying the NGCS access and service charges will be a top priority next year throughout the telecoms and ICT industry and we want to reassure our entire customer base that the Affinity billing platform will be fully compliant in line with Ofcom's changes.

"AKJ is carrying out individual customer research asking how customers want to display this new information. Feedback will be taken into consideration to ensure the Affinity final update is both simple and user friendly."

AKJ advises anybody who is unsure what the legislation means to their business to contact Ofcom or the Federation of Communication Services.

tIPicall has set the dates for a brace of product launch roadshows (to be staged at the 8 club in Moorgate, London) that will showcase the company's latest proprietary hosted PBX (11th November); and highlight how international numbering and international SIP works, and why tIPicall believes this is the fastest growing opportunity in telecoms (18th November).

The first event, sponsored by Yealink, will focus on tIPicall's hosted PBX and UC solution OnePBX and Yealink handsets (the first handset manufacturer to be accredited for meeting ITSPA security recommendations).

Other focus areas include getting hands on with a variety of applications such as softphone, iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Mobile; along with new hosted bundles being launched including UK and international calls.

The follow-up event will reveal how international numbers work, the capabilities tIPicall has with these numbers, and discuss international SIP, how it works and reasons to sell it.

Planet Hippo Internet (part of The Network Selector Group) has acquired i4 Visual Media's hosted services business.

Essex-based i4 is a provider of web design services and will immediately migrate all domains over to Planet Hippo's servers.
 
Darren Lavender, Managing Director of Planet Hippo, said:  "This is the latest in a series of strategic acquisitions that will enable Planet Hippo to expand its reach across the UK. 

"We are making significant investments in new data centres and expect to make further acquisitions over the coming months."
 
Grant Horsfall, Managing Director of i4 Visual Media, added:  "We have been impressed by the professionalism and commitment to customer service shown by the Planet Hippo team and are confident that it will continue to meet the needs of our customers on an ongoing basis.

"This deal with Planet Hippo will allow us to focus on the delivery of high quality web design solutions and ensure our customers have a reliable and resilient hosting service for their web operations."

Maintel has acquired Proximity Communications and its subsidiary Achilles Professional Services for £9.6m. The acquisition boosts Maintel's data, wireless and network security capabilities, adding to the enlarged group's UC, data and wireless portfolio including managed and cloud-based services.

Proximity grew EBITDA in excess of 20% per annum over past three years. Approximately 50% of revenues are recurring.

Eddie Buxton, Chief Executive of Maintel, commented: "We are delighted to have acquired such a high quality and respected business which complements and builds on Maintel's expertise and skills in the unified communications, managed services and networking space.

"Proximity boasts a diverse customer base with well developed, long term relationships across a range of medium and large enterprises.

"The acquisition is expected to be earnings accretive for its first full year of ownership to December 2015."

Philip Carse, Principal Analyst, Megabuyte, commented: "In calendar year 2013 Proximity grew EBITDA 25% to £1.3m on revenues down marginally at £12.4m, generated £1.7m of operating cash flow and spent just £67k on capex.

"Maintel more often than not makes an acquisition in the Autumn (Datapoint in September 2013, Totility in October 2011 and various Redstone assets in October 2010), and this year is therefore no exception.

"As with the previous deals, this one looks well considered, adding a nicely profitable and cash generative business, customers, complementary skills and scale, and strengthens Maintel's Avaya relationship, for a reasonable price (the 7.4x EBITDA compares with Maintel's own 9.9x 2013 EBITDA at £5.00 per share).

"The deal should boost run rate revenues by about 30%, somewhat lower than last year's Datapoint deal, which added 45%. It is, however, by far the company's largest deal in financial terms, given that the larger Datapoint was acquired out of administration."

C4L is now running its MPLS network coreTX in parallel with their existing Cisco network, a significant milestone in the rollout plan.

C4L has raised additional funding to deploy coreTX on new, privately owned dark fibre routes between key data centre locations across the UK, installing Juniper MX480 or MX960 routers at each PoP.

Having already migrated all external connectivity and upstream Tier 1 providers from their existing network to a new 100Gb dedicated fibre ring, C4L's capacity planning, stability, traffic management and DDoS mitigation strategies which were not previously available, are now live positioning them able to commence planning for full customer migration to coreTX.

It claims a new suite of diagnostic tools have closely monitored and seen no outages on the coreTX network, despite fibre failovers, site reconfiguration and various real and simulated network traffic events.

As well as creating several shorter paths for traffic and utilising all the available fibre to keep latency to a minimum, C4L state they have commissioned new fibre links, each with N+2 failover paths configured by default to ensure it is carrier grade.

Their aim is to provide levels of network stability, security and scalability that are in excess of both their current network and the connectivity market as a whole.

Simon Mewett, CEO of C4L, said: "As a result of some limitations in our initial rollout, we have creatively redesigned the network and taken important strategic decisions to raise the additional investment necessary.

"Although this inevitably caused a delay in rollout completion, I am pleased to confirm that coreTX will now be upgraded to a 100% Juniper network, removing all interoperability concerns between multiple vendors.

"coreTX has been thoroughly tested and proven, validating both our design and selection process and demonstrating that the Juniper MX core delivers a truly carrier grade network".

A team of students from years 12-13 at St Edwards School, Queen Elizabeth School and Bournemouth School for Girls met VoIP Unlimited MD Mark Pillow to discuss strategy for this year's Enterprise and Skills Challenge.

Designed to develop employability and entrepreneurial skills in Dorset's young people, the Enterprise and Skills Challenge will see teams of students across the county create their own small businesses selling real products with the support of a local business expert.

Student Georgina Leonard said: "I wanted to sign up to this project for the experience that could be gained and to see what skills you need to start up a business."

As a team mentor, Pillow will counsel his group of students in how to raise starting capital in order to design, buy-in or manufacture an innovative product to sell in an effort to help them win the Bournemouth University Company of the Year Award, one of the sponsored trophies on offer.

Pillow said: "I'm looking forward to working with these students and mentoring them through this opportunity. The Enterprise and Skills Challenge enables students to gain hands on experience of running a small business while learning vital skills that can be used in the future.

The programme will conclude in February 2015 with a showcase of talent judged by prominent local business people and an award ceremony with individual and group awards for a number of business categories.

Deloitte's recent CIO Survey 2014 reports on how CIOs are operating with the aim of managing IT services, while simultaneously striving to support business growth.

In light of the survey results, Piers Linney, Co-CEO of UK-based Cloud Services Provider Outsourcery calls on CIOs to use their resources to enhance all areas of the business, moving away from simply a 'keep the lights on' approach.

Deloitte's findings underline the point that the size of IT budgets are preventing CIOs from investing in new technology due to substantial funds being used to support essential IT services - only 22 per cent of IT budgets is being used for new technology.

Though the lack of budget has been identified as a restriction, the report recognises two different trends amongst CIOs. Some have identified the benefit of investing in innovative IT alongside core services but struggling to gain the support from senior management within their organisations, while others are simply focusing on 'keeping the lights on' and not paying attention to the potential of IT to raise profit margins, value-add and maximise business growth.

Linney said: "The way in which CIOs manage IT has a vital impact on the direction that companies move in, more so today than ever before. The solution to greater business success will involve leveraging services through a sustained IT programme that will enable CIOs to reduce the budget that they use to support day-to-day IT requirements and then use these savings to provide the fuel for investment in new technology - technology that will actually add commercial value to that core business.

"Conforming to this programme will be achievable through making strategic investments in a cloud IT infrastructure, while monitoring the ROI to effectively calculate cost savings. With time, the legacy budget will be significantly reduced as the scalability in the innovative infrastructure and IT services will provide an improvement in service value, with savings being used in other areas of the business.

"To ensure that this is achieved, CIOs must take the opportunity to regularly communicate with top-level management in order to identify what needs to be improved in the business and gain a greater perspective of the requirements of the IT system to support the wider demands of the company. As consumer trends such as BYOD and flexible working continue influencing the way people want to work, CIOs must become more aware of how a business's workforce model needs to bend to cope with these unprecedented changes.

"In summary, big changes are happening in technology, and it's in the hands of CIOs to be alert through investing in solutions that will enable their business to achieve growth. The Deloitte survey results highlight the need for CIOs to be mindful of their value in supporting the GDP, particularly after the economic downturn, because how productively and effectively businesses operate ultimately impacts on the whole economy."

STL Communications has renewed its supplier partnership with the Sahara Force India F1 Team for another three years, building on its 14 year relationship with the team which was previously known as Jordan, Midland and Spyker F1.

STL provides communications solutions including phone systems, support to broadband, lines, calls and factory/trackside VoIP.

"We have a close working relationship with Sahara Force India in an industry in which communications are critical for winning or losing a Grand Prix," said STL MD Brendon Cross.

"During race weekends we play our part in ensuring telemetry from the track reaches the team back at the factory in Silverstone, which ultimately helps to ensure the car performs to its maximum."

The team's Chief Operating Officer, Otmar Szafnauer, added: "Communication is at the heart of everything we do and having a reliable partner is of paramount importance for operating efficiently at the track and in our Silverstone factory."

Pictured: Szafnauer (right) with STL's Philip Donigan.

Avnet Technology Solutions has moved from its old office in Bracknell to new UK headquarters in the same town. 

Avnet has taken one third of the 17,000 square metre facility known as The Capitol Building which has recently undergone a refurbishment to Avnet's specifications. The new building has links to the major road and rail network in the Thames Valley as well as close connections with Heathrow and Gatwick airports, making it convenient for Avnet's suppliers, business partners and their end user customers.

The new premises offer Avnet, its employees and visitors a wealth of benefits such as increased office space and additional meeting rooms, the capacity to host special events and seminars, plenty of car parking and on-site catering. 

Miriam Murphy, senior vice president, North region, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA, commented: "The building is impressive and by providing our suppliers and business partners with access to highly functional and well-presented facilities we are underlining our commitment to working with all our partners to help them grow. 

"Set in eight acres of green space yet just a few minutes' walk from local amenities, it is a pleasant and inspiring workplace, which we are confident will help to continue to attract some of the best talent in the industry."