Computacenter founders have added more than £150 million to their combined fortunes after the company upgraded its annual profit forecasts for the fourth time this year, with shares jumping almost 10 per cent in early trading on Monday. Peter Ogden's near-25 per cent holding saw its value rise by £119 million, while Philip Hulme's 7.6 per cent stake gained £37 million. Ogden's stake is now worth £1.3 billion and Hulme's holding is valued at £405 million.
The Hertfordshire-based business, one of the FTSE 100's few technology stocks, is capitalising on strong demand from customers building the data centres that power artificial intelligence. The company now expects to report profits of no less than £425 million this year, up from a target of £380 million set less than two months earlier. Shares jumped as much as 455p to 5045p, taking gains over the past year to 85 per cent and valuing Computacenter at nearly £5.4 billion.
Business in the third quarter was driven by hyperscale and neocloud customers in North America and the UK, the company said. Its order backlog rose from £9.3 billion at the end of June to £12.6 billion at the end of September. Neil Wilson, an investor strategist at Saxo, said Computacenter is cashing in on surging AI demand in the US and UK.
Founded in 1981, Computacenter began as an IT services contractor for large businesses in Britain from the 1990s onwards and expanded into Europe and the US before listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1998. The company's shift into data centre hardware and services accelerated in 2022 when it secured a contract with what it described as one very large volume customer, believed by analysts to be Facebook owner Meta. Computacenter entered the FTSE 100 in June this year.
Investment director Russ Mould at AJ Bell noted that Computacenter is acting as a middleman in AI infrastructure, procuring, assembling and installing hardware required to run artificial intelligence models. He cautioned that this work is typically lower margin than software sales and other technology services, but said the company's recent growth trajectory has been significant. He flagged management's strategy day next month as an opportunity to demonstrate the growth is not temporary.