Sales for Rexel SA, Paris, increased nicely in 1Q 2012, jumping 7.4% to: €3.227 billion (US $4.24 billion). In a press release announcing the results, Rudy Provoost, chairman of the management board and CEO, said, “Rexel posted a strong performance in the first quarter, in a globally challenging context. Sales continued to grow, driven by the Americas, northern Europe and China, and we further improved our profitability through gross margin enhancement and cost control. Since the start of the year, we expanded our footprint in fast-growing markets and strengthened our presence in mature markets with eight acquisitions, which will fuel growth in the coming quarters...
"Rexel is poised to continue its profitable growth by providing its clients with value-added services and further developing its energy efficiency-related business, while continuing to focus on operational excellence. We are fully on track to achieve our financial targets for the full-year.”
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.