Arrow hints at market recovery as sales fall in Q1

“We continued to execute well in a challenging market environment and delivered first-quarter sales in line with our expectations, with non-GAAP earnings per diluted share above the high end of our guidance range,” said Sean Kerins (pictured), Arrow’s president and chief executive officer.

“In the current environment, we’re focused on managing factors within our control including effective use of working capital, appropriate cost discipline, and protecting our strategic growth priorities,” added Kerins.

Kerins did hint at potential green shoots of recovery.

“While the industry’s cyclical correction is ongoing, we are beginning to see improvement in leading indicators with customer inventory levels declining, our book-to-bill ratios for both semiconductors and IP&E improving in all regions and our backlog continuing to trend towards more normal levels. From an end-market perspective, we saw relative strength in transportation in the Americas, aerospace and defence in EMEA, and consumer verticals in Asia,” said Kerins.

In the first quarter of 2024, global components sales decreased 24 per cent year over year. Americas components first-quarter sales decreased 29 per cent year over year. Europe components first-quarter sales decreased 26 per cent year over year and decreased 27 percent year over year on a constant currency basis. Asia-Pacific components first-quarter sales decreased 18 per cent year over year.

“Our enterprise computing solutions business continues to navigate a mixed IT spending environment. In EMEA, we once again achieved year-on-year billings and gross profit dollar growth in the first quarter, and in North America, we continued to make progress in the market for IT-as-a-service. Looking forward we’re well-positioned to serve the growing demand for cloud and AI-driven solutions,” commented Kerins.

Global  ECS sales dropped year on year to $1.73 billion from $1.88 billion.