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Investors to download £75mln from Computacenter

Published: 09:57 24 May 2013 BST

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IT equipment and services company Computacenter (LON:CCC) has confirmed plans to return £75mln to shareholders.

It follows a move from engineering software firm Aveva (LON:AVV) on Thursday to pay a special £100mln dividend to its investors.

Computacenter’s 48.7p a share pay-out will equate to just below 11% of its market value. It will be accompanied by a share consolidation.

Chief executive Mike Norris said: “We are very pleased to confirm, as previously announced, the return of approximately £75 million to our shareholders.

“The cash-generative nature of Computacenter's business has resulted in a net cash balance in excess of our current needs.

“This has placed us in a position where we are now able to make the second significant one-off return of value to our shareholders, while maintaining an appropriate balance sheet structure to continue growing the business and serving our clients.”

The company had warned investors last month that weakness in the Eurozone would see it make just “modest progress” this year. The City read between the lines and saw this as a profit warning.

In a note entitled ‘CCC the ATM’, broker Panmure Gordon says the shares pay a “very handsome” 15.1% yield and it should have the ability to pay more one-off ‘specials’ in the future.

Analyst George O’Connor said: “Today isn’t a day for quibbling about the impact on Computacenter’s business model from the well flagged changes in the PC/server industry – or whether it can migrate its ‘little’ tweaks to large ones – it’s about thinking of that cash and its future uses.”

Shares picked up 8p to stand at 450p each, valuing the company at just under £700mln.

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