Avnet, pretty much followed Arrow in the glum face stakes when it presented its first quarter results last week.
Barron's magazine elicited the scariest quote from Avnet CEO Roy Vallee when he revealed that he had sliced $60m off the December quarter income guidance due to the dollar's strengthening against the euro. http://online.barrons.com/public/search/results.html?mod=b_hpp_header
Despite this, Vallee remains in bullish mood. The company has cash and while the instinct right now would be to stuff it under the Avnet mattress, he and his team are still on the lookout for acquisitions. The company has just bought the UK's Abacus Group, and more may follow either in Europe or Asia/Pacific. Vallee clearly scents there could be bargains out there, though future action may be to grow the company's IT rather than electronic components business.
First quarter revenues of $4.49bn were up 7% on last year, but income fell to $92.8m from 105.5m in the same quarter of last year. Business conditions as Vallee recognises are not great. He cites sluggish demand in several end markets through September, so he has been fast to take action on costs and plans to slice $50m off the company's cost base by the end of March 2009.
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