Computacenter to IPO Biomni

Computacenter has outlined plans to IPO its Biomni subsidiary after posting soaring profits for 1999. The reseller giant today said it would float its 50 per cent share in the business-to-business e-commerce "in the first six months of the year". The announcement came four months after Biomni was started with Computacenter's sister company Computasofte-Commerce. Biomni provides corporates with software to order office must-haves - from PCs to paperclips. Computacenter saw profits and turnover grow for the seventeenth successive year. Pre-tax profit was up 16.3 per cent to £75.1 million, while sales rose 11 per cent to £1.76 billion for the year ended December 31 1999. "We were very pleased with the good earnings performance, and we've got through the Millennium part one - the slowdown at the back end of 1999 which was quite drastic - and we've produced these results despite that slowdown," said Mike Norris, Computacenter chairman and CEO. "We do expect a slow start to 2000, in effect the mirror image to the slow quarter of last year." "Just like 1999, 2000 will be a game of two halves," said Norris. "In 1999 we went in at half time well up, and hung on well in the second half. This year it's going to be the other way around. "We're already seeing demand recover, we're already seeing our utilisation get close to capacity again, and our pipeline for Q2 is extremely buoyant."® Related story Computacenter touts e-commerce for the corporate rich