Infrastructure services firm and reseller Softcat has issued a positive trading update for the half year going up to 31 January 2021, with “strong” demand from the public sector cited. Softcat's share price is currently up over 9%.
The publicly listed firm said “trading has continued to be positive since our Q1 statement on 16 November 2020”, and added that it was “significantly ahead” of where it expected to be at this stage.
It went on: “Demand from our public sector customers has remained strong and the corporate picture has continued to improve but is also somewhat mixed, with some customers pursuing large projects and others taking a more cautious approach.”
The performance in the public sector comes as IT Europa reports that Softcat has just named Louise Fellows as its public sector director, after joining from VMware where she was director of UK and Ireland public sector business. Ongoing investment in Softcat's multi-national and technical capabilities continued throughout 2020 despite the challenges of Covid-19, said Softcat, enabling it to play “an important role” in large projects with both corporate and public sector customers.
On the financial year as a whole, Softcat said: “Much still needs to be done in the second half of the financial year which remains difficult to forecast, but with the seasonally important December trading period behind us we are significantly ahead of where we expected to be at this stage.”
The first-half results will be announced on Wednesday 24 March. For the full year to the end of July 2020, the company's services business saw sales jump 36.6% to £115.3m.
