Electrocomponents plc, the world's leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, today issues a trading update for the year ending 31 March 2014 ahead of publishing full-year results on 22 May 2014.

In the final quarter Group underlying sales growth(1) was around 4%. International sales growth was around 6% and UK sales were flat. Within International, Continental Europe grew by 5%, North America grew by 8% and Asia Pacific grew by 7%.

During the quarter eCommerce sales continued to grow faster than the Group as a whole, benefitting from our improvements to online functionality. Group eCommerce sales growth was around 7%, resulting in eCommerce comprising around 59% of Group sales in the quarter
(Q4 FY13: 57%).

                          Sales growth (1)
Quarter to Mar 2014 Year to Mar 2014
Region
Continental Europe                5%           4%
North America                8%           4%
Asia Pacific                7%           2%
International                 6%            4%
UK                0%           -2%
Group                 4%            2%
UK excluding Raspberry Pi (2)                0%           -1%

As expected, the Group gross margin has remained stable during the year and operating costs have been tightly controlled. We anticipate that Group headline profit before tax(3) for the full year will be in line with market expectations(4).

Ian Mason, Group Chief Executive, commented:
"Group sales growth in the final quarter was 4%. Sales trends across our International business, which has grown to comprise over 70% of Group sales, have gradually improved as the year has progressed. This partly reflects the improvement in manufacturing Purchasing Managers Indices during the year, but we also believe that our International sales growth reflects share gains from our numerous smaller competitors."

Enquiries:

Ian Mason Group Chief Executive 01865 204000
Simon Boddie Group Finance Director 01865 204000
Matt Jones Head of Investor Relations
and Corporate PR 		01865 207427
David Allchurch / Martin Robinson Tulchan Communications 020 7353 4200

Notes:

(1)  Sales growth rates, unless otherwise stated, are adjusted for trading days and currency movements ("underlying sales growth/decline").

(2)  The Raspberry Pi is a low-cost credit card-sized single-board computer designed and developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charity established to promote computer development skills in education across the world.

(3)  Headline profit before tax is reported profit before tax before reorganisation costs.

(4)  The consensus for full year headline profit before tax is £101 million (FY13 as restated: £94.1 million).

Electrocomponents plc - Conference Call Dial-in Instructions

There will be a telephone conference call today at 08.00h for analysts and investors with replay access to Friday 11 April 2014. Dial-in instructions are set out below.

Date: Thursday 3 April 2014
UK Time: From 07:50h for 08:00h call
Telephone number: +44 (0) 1452 55 55 66
Conference ID: 9965372
Chairman: Ian Mason

Electrocomponents plc - Replay Dial-in Instructions
(available until Friday 11 April 2014)

Replay Telephone number: +44 (0) 1452 55 00 00
Conference Access number: 9965372#
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