Data#3 to miss original second-half target

Major Australian reseller Data#3 has announced it will not meet its original second-half year target.

The board released a trading update to the ASX that said while the original target will not be achieved, it is still "confident that the company’s second half profit would exceed the first half’s profit".

Managing director John Grant told CRN: "In February, we said the second half target is aggressive but not beyond reach – we have now clarified that position."

When asked which areas of the business were underperforming, Grant said that he would provide "no further details on areas of business" as the latest announcement is "not an operational update but a financial one".

"The pipeline of work is still solid but there hasn’t been sufficient traction," he said.

Grant said in February he was "very disappointed" in Data#3’s half yearly results that showed a 1.8 percent decline in revenues in the first half compared to the same period in 2013. But he added that the company was expecting more customer wins in the second half.

"The benefit of these wins will start to flow in the second half and our pipeline remains strong albeit still taking more time than we'd like to convert," Grant said at the time.

In recent months, Data#3 announced at its channel event JuiceIT that hybrid cloud solutions were its future while winning VMware's solution partner of the year award for the Asia-Pacific and Japan region.

The Brisbane-headquartered firm had revenues of $771 million in the 2013 financial year and employs 900 staff spread across 12 locations around the country. The 34-year-old company was publicly listed in 1997.