Shares of Santa Ana’s Ingram Micro Inc., the top distributor of computer products, software and consumer electronics, rose on Thursday after the company reported fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s expectations.
Investors sent Ingram’s shares up 3% in afterhours New York trading on a market value of $3 billion.
For the three months through Jan. 2, the company reported sales of $8.8 billion, roughly flat from a year earlier and topping analysts’ average estimate of $8.3 billion in sales.
Excluding charges for stock options, severance pay and other onetime costs, Ingram swung to a profit of $107 million, up from a loss of $564 million a year earlier and surpassing analysts’ average estimate of $85 million in profits.
Ingram Micro ended the year with $911 million in cash and equivalents.
“We ended 2009 on a high note, with strong sequential growth in the final two quarters and good progress in our largest regions,” Chief Executive Greg Spierkel said. “There is still more work to do, but the trends are positive and we are externally focused on growth with enhanced profitability.”
Ingram didn’t give a financial outlook for the current quarter but said it expects “strong year-over-year growth,” Spierkel said.
“We are encouraged by signs of economic growth,” he said. “The improvements we’ve made since mid-2008, coupled with our re-energized attitude toward profitable growth, have us well-positioned for the rebound in demand.”
For the current quarter, analysts, on average, are expecting Ingram to see adjusted profits of $54 million on sales of $7.56 billion.
As a distributor of other companies’ goods, Ingram sees razor-thin margins. It nets pennies on the dollar.
The company got hit with a double-whammy during the downturn as companies and consumers slowed their spending on computers, software and other tech gadgets.
