ECM.L Regulatory News (ECM)

ELECTROCOMPONENTS PLC

Interim Management Statement

Electrocomponents reports strong Q1 trading

Electrocomponents plc, the world's largest high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, has today issued its first interim management statement for the year ending 31 March 2011 which covers the period from 1 April 2010 to 30 June 2010

Since we last reported at the end of May, trading in both our International and UK businesses has improved further.

During the first quarter, Group revenue grew by around 24% year on year with the International business growing by around 30% and the UK by around 12%. Within the International business Continental Europe grew by around 22%, North America by around 43% and Asia Pacific by around 30%.

We continue to implement our strategy, in particular strengthening our electronics and eCommerce offers, while driving our strong offer for maintenance engineers.

During the quarter electronics has been the Group's best performing product category and we have introduced three new market leading web based services which help electronics design engineers search, design and buy products from RS. These include 'Component Chooser', a 3D Computer Aided Design tool and a virtual prototyping platform. We continue to expand our electronics range, introducing around 10,000 new products from major brand suppliers across the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific. On 5 July we launched "DesignSpark" our online portal providing electronics design engineers with trusted and reliable information and resources and free of charge tools helping speed up their design processes.

Group eCommerce revenue has grown by around 43% in the first quarter and our North American business reported eCommerce sales growth of over 100%. eCommerce share exited the quarter at around 47% of Group sales.

There has been no significant change to the Group's financial position during the period.

As previously announced, Helmut Mamsch, the Chairman, will not be seeking re-election to the Board at today's AGM. The recruitment for Helmut's successor is progressing well. Pending the appointment of the new chairman, Rupert Soames, the Senior Independent Director, will become acting chairman and Adrian Auer will become acting Senior Independent Director and acting chairman of the Remuneration Committee.

Ian Mason, Group Chief Executive, commented:

"The new financial year has got off to a healthy start across all our markets with significantly increased levels of customer activity. In the first quarter Group revenue grew by 24% year on year.

While the sustainability of the economic recovery remains unclear we will benefit from the implementation of our clear and focused strategy. With the continued investment in our international markets, strong customer offers across electronics and maintenance and commitment to exploit the full potential of eCommerce we are confident of making continued progress in the year".

Enquiries:

Ian Mason Group Chief Executive 01865 204000

Simon Boddie Group Finance Director 01865 204000

John Sunnucks/ Tulchan Communications 020 73534200

David Allchurch

Notes:

All revenue growth rates are adjusted for trading days and foreign exchange rate movements.

There will be a telephone conference call today at 08.00h for analysts and investors with replay access to 30 July. Dial in instructions are set out below.