Ten fat years at Datacentrix
TECHNOLOGY group Datacentrix has posted its 10th successive set of positive annual results, but its directors say they must boost its empowerment profile and attract more skilled technicians to keep the business pumping.
Datacentrix (DCT) once had one of the sector’s highest empowerment ratings, but has slipped as other players made more progress.
Equally pressing is a need to overhaul staff incentives to recruit and retain the right people to support its shift into higher-margin services.
Its share price fell 10c temporarily to trade at 440c yesterday after results for the year to February showed a net profit of R101m on revenue of R1,35bn after a R78m profit on revenue of R1,2bn previously. Headline earnings per share rose from 40c to 52c. A final dividend of 15c topped up the interim dividend of 11c. The operating profit margin inched up from 10,4% to 11,7%.
Chairman Gary Morolo said Datacentrix was one of the few surviving IT players that listed as the market crashed in 1998. Its operations barely changed as it stuck to technologies indispensable for businesses. But it was evolving to sell those technologies as a complete package with higher-margin services around them, Morolo said.
That included offering technology support on an outsourced basis, which demanded more technicians. “We need to get a lot more people in these areas at a time where those skills are in fairly high demand in the industry,” he said.
Management skills needed bolstering, but those skills were equally scarce as people hopped jobs, emigrated or sought a better work-life balance.
Other challenges included boosting its empowerment profile through a wider base of black shareholders and recruiting more women.
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