Computacenter shares advanced 57.5p to 447.5p, up 14.7 per cent, yesterday. The rise, which made it the FTSE350's fifth best performer on the day, comes a couple of days after an HSBC broker note upgraded the stock from 'add' to 'buy'.

Mark Wallace, HSBC analyst told AFX, the financial newswire, that Computacenter's latest trading statement "confirmed that there was some kind of stability returning to its marketplace."

The signs now are that stability is returning to the relatively mature corporate PC marketplace, and the big beneficiary of this will be Computacenter, Wallace told AFX.

The company "doesn't have to do much to win market share - it can just sit and pick up business from those which are failing", he said. ®