Ingram shucks off ERP dramas to grow sales $170m

Ingram Micro Australia grew sales by $170 million and dramatically reduced losses for its 2013 financial year.

The company's most recent financials reported to corporate regulator ASIC cover the 12 months to 28 December 2013. Ingram Micro Australia reports on a calendar year to tie in with its global parent.

During the period, the local arm of the world's biggest distributor turned over $1.4 billion, up 14 percent year-on-year. This was $170 million better than its 2012 revenues and nudging closer to the $1.44 billion it turned over in 2011.

The company still posted a loss of $31.2 million, but even this was a marked improvement on previous years; Ingram lost $81.6 million in the 2012 year and $184.5 million in 2011 – and local CEO Matt Sanderson said the distie has actually returned to profit in the eight months since the end of 2013.

"We anticipated a loss in 2013, due in part to significant costs associated with restructuring as we aligned our business to market conditions and a lower revenue level resulting from ERP issues in the prior years.

"However, as we worked to stabilise our ERP implementation, we improved the loss by approximately $50 million year-on-year, compared to that in 2012, which was in-line with our expectations.  

"We attribute this improvement to the early 2013 stabilisation of the ERP system, which is now operating as anticipated and is enabling us to grow the business well and increase our market share across multiple segments, while continuing to demonstrate the global capabilities Ingram Micro has to offer our customers," added Sanderson.

In the eight months since the company filed its 2013 annual report with the corporate regulator, the Australian business has continued to outpace other Ingram units around the  world.

At the end of July, Ingram's global parent, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, published its financials for the second quarter of 2014, and Australia came in for praise during the earnings call.

Chief financial officer William D Humes said: "Strong sales of advanced solutions drove double-digit growth in Australia and Singapore. PC sales were strong in India, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand, leading to modest regionalised growth for this product category for the first time in four quarters."

Ingram's global CEO, Alain Monié, also hat-tipped the Australian arm during the earnings call.

"Since acquiring [Shipwire] in December of last year, Shipwire has continued to grow in all regions where they offer services. As mentioned on our last call, we are rapidly expanding these capabilities internationally. We're currently integrating our Australian and Canadian facilities to better enable emerging companies to easily leverage global world-class logistics.

"This expansion also allows us to rapidly and at low-cost onboard larger logistics services customers in these important regions of growth," added Monié.

The Australian revenues are still a far cry from the bumper results back in 2009 and 2010, when Ingram Micro was turning over more than $2 billion in Australia.