Hardware sales carry on falling at Morse

Service hatch

By Drew Cullen • Get more from this author

Posted in Channel, 15th January 2003 11:34 GMT

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play

Morse's Q2 sales to 31 December, fell to £92m (2001: #115m), contributing to a slump in interims of £185m (2001: £226m).

Morse is, among other things Europe's biggest Sun reseller, and derived much of its growth in the late 1990s from flogging this hardware to the finance and telecom sectors. Fewer people are buying Sun kit lately, particularly in those benighted sectors.

So Morse, in common with any publicly-quoted computer reseller, draws attention to its service revenues, - safe, recurring, higher margin and boring. Which is what investors want to hear. Of course, when it's computer dealers we are talking about, service business is often low rent and/or product sale-related - installs, post-sales maintenance and the like.

In Morse's case, service revenues were £32m(2001: £28m) resulting in sales for the half year of £57m (2001: £51m). With half-year sales growth up 12 per cent, services are, by default, becoming ever more important to Morse. It supplies no revenue breakdown of the services mix.

Here is Morse's Q2 press statement. ®

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play