The Irish unit of computer giant Hewlett Packard has blamed a 17 per cent decline in revenues to €81.19 million last year on the unprecedented demand for electronic devices and related industry-wide supply constraints.
Accounts for Hewlett Packard Enterprises Ireland Ltd show the company’s pretax losses increased by 8 per cent to €6.45 million in the 12 months to the end of October last. Revenues declined from €98.24 million to €81.19 million.
A directors’ note with the accounts said that along with revenues being hit by industry-wide supply constraints, the business was also hit by Covid-19 related delays in the global logistics environment.
“As a result, in the second half of fiscal 2021, we experienced a shortage of electric components with logistics timing issues which resulted in significantly higher levels or order backlog and commodity costs across our hardware segments and, in particular, computer and storage,” the note said.
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The note said that “currently we expect these challenging supply chain conditions to persist in the near term”.
Numbers employed last year reduced from 185 to 163. The staff costs of €21.53 million included redundancy costs of €2.64 million last year and followed redundancy costs of €3.8 million in 2020.
The business recorded an increase in pretax losses after taking into account a €1.76 million impairment of assets.
The accounts said “the decline in the financial result was caused mainly by an impairment of ‘right of use’ assets of €1.76 million, following the ‘Edge to Office’ restructuring plan which involved the vacation of certain premises”.
The company “is continuing to launch certain initiatives that aim to generate turnover growth in future years, improving service delivery for higher quality and lower cost”, the accounts said.
The main activity of the business was the marketing, selling and servicing of computer equipment and the provision of related consultancy for enterprise customers.
At the end of October last, the company had shareholder funds totalling €80.46 million. Its cash funds stood at €5.18 million.
