PREMIER FARNELL
Margin 35.2%, down 2.2 basis points
How to explain the mess that is Premier Farnell? This is a company much covered by this column because as a distributor of electronic components to designers and manufacturers it is a good indicator of global economic trends. It is also vulnerable to small variations in revenues and margins.
Most of the company’s woes, though, seem to come from its own actions rather than from those small variations. Revenues were up across the group, except at Akron Brass, the manufacturer that is being sold. Margins were off by 2.2 basis points to 35.2 per cent because of currency movements, the need to cut prices and the wrong mix of products.
The last was a particular problem in