South African ICT group Datatec has reported a decline earnings for its financial year ending February 2013, which it attributed to a weaker second period for subsidiary Westcon.
Operating profit declined to US$141.373 million from US$150.644 million, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell to US$185.5 million from US$190.2 million in 2012.
Revenue, however, increased by four per cent to US$5.25 billion.
Datatec chief executive Jens Montanana said: “Last year presented contrasting trading periods and differing divisional achievement. In the first half we performed well in most operations around the world and met our financial expectations.
“However, in the second half, Westcon experienced a slowdown in revenues, particularly in Europe and North America. Logicalis, by contrast, continued to perform strongly throughout the year especially in the UK and USA.
Datatec has operations in more than 50 countries and more than 6,000 employees worldwide. Subsidiary Westcon is a distributor of converged communications solutions, which accounted for 73 per cent of Datatec’s revenue this year, down from 73 per cent in 2012.
