Sheffield-based Pick house Sanderson Electronics Plc reports a healthy growth in profits with pre-tax profit up 18% to just under UKP2m on turnover growing a mere 4% to well over UKP6m. Sanderson’s chairman Paul Thompson emphasised the group’s image as a worldwide computer services company saying that it has nearly 700 employees in 30 offices in 11 countries. Furthermore, Sanderson, counting asssociated companies General Automation Inc in which it holds a 49% stake and SGA Pacific where it controls 45% of the shares, now claims to have an installed base of around 8,000 computer systems and a combined annual turnover of UKP50m. To accomodate this growth, the group has organised itself into five divisions: Sanderson UK, General Automation European, General Automation US, SGA Australia/SE Asia and SGA New Zealand. Sanderson and associates now derive UKP15m of their revenue from maintenance, software licence fees and support contracts. This revenue stream was boosted to its present level by General Automation’s acquisition of CIE Systems from C Itoh, which brings in UKP2.5m of hardware maintenance revenues per year. Over all, Thompson is optimistic that Sanderson’s coverage of geographically diverse markets will protect it from the effects of the UK’s high interest rates and the softening of the UK market for computer systems.
