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PREMIER FARNELL PLC - Interim Management Statement

PR Newswire

London, May 16

Premier Farnell plc - Interim Management Statement

17th May 2013

Premier Farnell plc ("the Group"), a global leader in high service distributionof technology products and solutions, today announces its interim managementstatement for the period 4 February to 16 May 2013. The financial andoperational data set out below are in respect of the Group's first quarterended 5th May 2013.

The trends we reported in our fourth quarter announcement of 21 March 2013continued into the first quarter of the current financial year with sales perday returning to year on year growth of 2.8%, reflecting our strategic actionsto drive customer acquisition and market share and strong growth in sales ofRaspberry Pi and associated products. Excluding sales of Raspberry Pi, Groupsales declined 0.6% year on year compared to the fourth quarter year on yeardecline of 6.4%.

Group sales increased 5.7% on a sequential basis as our main MDD divisions alldelivered sales growth over the fourth quarter. We were pleased that MDDAmericas year on year sales decline moderated, improving by 8.7 percentagepoints from the prior quarter as a result of the actions taken to enhance itsperformance, despite ongoing weakness in its end markets. Year on year salesper day growth for the first quarter was as follows:

a. Sales growth is based on sales per day for continuing businesses at

constant exchange rates and for like periods.

b. Excluding the acquisition of Embest, APAC grew 3.2% year on year. The Group

acquired Embest in the second quarter of our 2012/13 financial year.

Our active customer base grew 2.0% year on year, excluding the benefit ofRaspberry Pi, as our targeted customers were attracted by our high serviceproposition. As we highlighted in our full year statement, we are furtherenhancing our proposition through the rollout of our new web platform, systemdevelopments and investments in inventory, all of which are progressing asplanned.

We interact with customers in the way they prefer through our multichannelsales strategy. Field sales and contact centre channels combine with ourleading-edge eCommerce channels, where 57.0% of sales were transacted in thefirst quarter, to deliver a differentiating customer experience. Ourindustry-leading element14 Community is attractive to our target customer basewith more than 20,000 new members joining in the quarter to take the totalnumber of registered users to over 170,000.

Conditions in our global markets remain challenging and customers continue toact cautiously. We continue to manage our business in line with marketconditions and develop initiatives to support customer needs which, alongsidethe impact of product mix, exchange rate movements and the ongoing strength ofRaspberry Pi sales, resulted in gross margin below our fourth quarterperformance. The benefit from our fourth quarter cost actions resulted inoperating margin in line with our expectations and consistent with the levelseen in the prior quarter which, after adjusting for the benefit of the extraweek, was 9.2%. The Group remains focused on managing gross margin and costs inline with the market conditions to optimise financial performance. We continueto anticipate that the Group's performance this year will be weighted towardsthe second half as our strategic focus enables the Group to drive towards ouroperating margin target.

There have been no significant changes to the Group's financial position duringthe period with cash flow and net debt in line with our expectations.

Outlook

Laurence Bain, Group Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"We are pleased that our actions to enhance our proposition and drive saleshave enabled the Group to return to positive growth in the first quarter.However, current market conditions remain challenging with indicators stillweak in all our global markets.

We continue to enhance our customer proposition as we invest in inventory,systems and our differentiating multichannel sales strategy, starting with ournew global web platform which is currently being implemented in North America.

We remain confident in our ability to implement our strategic vision andoptimise the business' performance to grow our active customer base, gainmarket share and drive financial performance."

A conference call for analysts and investors will be held at 8.30am on 17th May2013, details for which are as follows:

For further information, contact:

Laurence Bain, Chief Executive Premier Farnell plc +44 (0) 20 7851 4107Officer

Premier Farnell's announcements and presentations are published atwww.premierfarnell.com together with business information and links to allother Group web sites.

The 2013 Annual Report and Accounts is now available athttp://annualreport2013.premierfarnell.com. The results for the first half ofthe 52 week financial year ending 2 February 2014 will be announced on 19September 2013.