UK's Computacenter shares hit record on upbeat profit guidance, data centre demand

Sept 8 (Reuters) - Shares in Britain's Computacenter hit a record high on Tuesday after the company said annual profit would top market expectations thanks to robust orders from AI data centre customers in North America.

This is the third time since April that the technology services provider, which helps build and equip AI data centres, has guided annual profit would be ahead of market expectations.

Computacenter has been investing in new infrastructure, expanding sales capacity and acquiring businesses to capture market share from a booming AI infrastructure build-out.

North America was the biggest earnings driver, with operating profit more than doubling and accounting for over 60% of the group's adjusted operating profit, helped by strong demand from major cloud companies and enterprise customers.

The company's shares, which have surged 91% this year, climbed as much as 7% to a record high of 6,015 pence by 0730 GMT.

Computacenter is building a new integration centre in Atlanta, due to open in 2027, and is investing in high-performance cooling infrastructure at its UK Hatfield facility to support cloud customers.

It has expanded its customer base, adding a net 18 major customers over the past year to 216, with North America leading the gains.

The company said it expects adjusted profit before tax for 2026 to be no less than £380 million ($514.71 million), above a company-compiled analyst consensus of £340.9 million.

Its overall adjusted operating profit rose 86.5% to £153.1 million in the six months ended June 30, from £82.1 million a year earlier. Its product order backlog stood at a record £9.3 billion at the end of June, up 323% year-on-year.

"Computacenter remains one of our preferred names in the sector," analysts at Jefferies said, noting that the results, order book momentum and resultant guidance upgrades far outstrip any buy-side expectations.

($1 = 0.7383 pounds)

(Reporting by Prerna Bedi and Nithyashree R B in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Susan Fenton)