Ingram Micro Australia produced another $2 billion year in 2016, according to financial results only recently made available to corporate regulator ASIC.
Revenue was essentially flat at the local subsidiary of the world's biggest distributor, with a 1.4 percent decline for the financial year ending 31 December 2016.
Ingram's headcount rose slightly to 537 employees. Net profit after tax was down $1.8 million to $7.5 million.
Chief country executive Felix Wong told CRN that 2016 was a transformative year for the Australian business.
"To align our solutions and service offerings, we focused on bringing together all of our business units – core distribution, life cycle services, commerce and fulfilment and cloud, which allowed us to expand the solutions being made available to our partners," Wong said.
"This can be best seen in the growth we have experienced in our services business. The Australian market is demanding more from us as a distribution partner and we need to ensure we continue to innovate and use best practices from all around the globe."
Wong added networking, security and consumer products continued to see growth and highlighted further opportunities in cloud solutions.
"With the growth in public cloud offerings, the channel’s role has shifted to providing solutions which leverage hybrid cloud, meaning that there is growing opportunity for private cloud solutions such as specialised security stacks, hyperconverged, self-contained racks/cooling and services to integrate and leverage public cloud. Growth in the edge has also created more opportunities in wireless infrastructure at all levels of end user."
The six largest disties in Australia now generate in the realm of $6-7 billion in revenue, though straight comparisons are not straightforward due to their different reporting cycles and the delay in private companies lodging annual reports with ASIC.
Ingram's largest local rival, Synnex, is yet to publish its 2016 financial results, though in 2015 Synnex was slightly bigger than Ingram at $2.08 billion in revenue.
ASX-listed Dicker Data reported $1.18 billion in revenue in the financial year ending 31 December 2016, its second year as a billion-dollar distributor.
Arrow ECS expected to surpass $500 million in revenue after bringing Distribution Central and Observatory Crest under the one roof.
Tech Data, formerly Avnet Technology Solutions, hit $480 million in its financial year ending 2 July 2016.
Westcon's most recently available Australian annual report covers the year ending 29 February 2016, in which it posted revenue of $404 million.
Chinese acquisition
The Ingram Micro results are its first since China's Tianjin Tianhai announced plans to acquire the global Ingram Micro business, including the Australian branch, in February 2016 for US$6 billion.
As part of the transaction, Ingram Micro became part of US$30 billion HNA Group, a global investment firm with interests in aviation, tourism and logistics. The acquisition was finalised in December 2016.
Ingram Micro Australia chief financial officer Peter Mastroianni said the acquisition was not likely to have a significant impact on the Australian business, though Ingram did gain access to HNA's global logistics capabilities.
Ingram is no stranger to acquiring businesses itself. Ingram Micro Australia bought Connector Systems in February 2016, a Sydney-based distributor that specialises in cabling, networking, wireless, security, storage and backup and voice.
Also making headlines last year was the departure of managing director Matt Sanderson, who farewelled Ingram in May after three-and-a-half years at the helm. He was replaced by new chief country executive Felix Wong, who returned to Australia to head up all four of Ingram's business units: core distribution, cloud, commerce & fulfilment and lifecycle services.
On the cloud front, Ingram made inroads with its cloud marketplace, particularly with Microsoft. Ingram added Azure CSP to its cloud marketplace, more than a year after opening the cloud portal in June 2015, giving its partners the option to sell consumption-based, pay-as-you-go cloud computing solutions from Microsoft.
Joining Ingram's cloud marketplace was a handful of new vendors like Acronis, BitTitan and Dropbox.
Updated at 1:53pm on 4 October to include commentary from Ingram Micro Australia.
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
