Sheffield Pickpopper Electronic Data Processing Plc had flagged the likely fall in profits for the year to September 30 well in advance, so the 24% slippage to UKP1.0m pretax won’t have raised too many eyebrows especially since profits at the midterm had been halved compared with the first half of last fiscal. The company, which distributes the Pick systems made by the Applied Digital Data Systems subsidiary of NCR Corp has a very healthy main-tenance business which it expects to grow 14% to UKP6m in the current year a comfortable cushion against any downturn. The company says it has been investing heavily in additional sales personnel.
