Tech Data is a company that can follow currents.
This was the overall impression CEO Bob Dutkowsky and Executive Vice President and CFO Jeffery Howells sought to project during their conference call to explain fourth-quarter and year-end results for their most recent fiscal year.
Tech Data Corp. (NASDAQ: TECD), the Clearwater-based global information technology distributor, is run by people who know when to cut losses and reallocate resources to more profitable, emerging areas, the two executives said.
In the company’s year-end results, Tech Data saw net sales of $27.7 billion, an increase of 3 percent from the prior fiscal year. Sixty-two percent of worldwide net sales came from Europe. The rest came from the Americas.
Tech Data cut out vendors who could not produce a reasonable return on investment during fiscal 2015. European growth was fueled by increased demand for mobile products and data center services, Howells said.
The company will continue investing in distribution, data storage and retail level mobility, or ways to provide more mobile, convenient services. The resources for investing in these emerging areas will come from the diminishing areas such as the personal computer market.
Negatives in the earnings report were explained as symptomatic of European currencies’ poor performances.
“We’re in a growing IT market right now,” Howells said. “The topline is not what we wanted, but the bottom line is good,” he continued. “We had a great year.”
Investing in more areas of business is a sign of Tech Data and its competitors diversifying, Dutkowsky said. Distributors are finding niches in services and territory.
“None of us are mirror images anymore,” Dutkowsky said.’

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