Positive profit 90.3% recoil in the first quarter, to $ 1.1 million

The Positivo Informática ended the first quarter of the year with a net profit of r $ 1.1 million, compared with a result of r $ 11.7 million in the same period of last year, which represented a fall of 90.3% compared to the previous year. The company has drop in computer sales and strong growth in sales of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, which have lower value-added computers. The fall, according to the company, had as main cause weaker demand from retailers, who started the year with inventories still high.
For the quarter, sales of PCs totaled 492.4 million units, down 20.9% compared to the first quarter of last year. Sales of tablets, in turn, increased by 11.2 percent to 160.1 million units. Cell phones had increased from 285.7 percent in sales, to 172 thousand units.
Total net revenue of the company had fallen 2.2%, to $ 599.7 million. The earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) totaled r $ 29.1 million, which represented an advancement of 4.4% compared to the previous year. The Ebitda margin in the period advanced 0.3 percentage point to 4.8 percent.
The company highlighted as positive result an increase of 49.4% in sales revenue for the Government in the quarter, totaling R $ 292,7 million. In the quarter, Positive sold 315.7 thousand computers and tablets. For the year, the company estimates deliver 800 thousand PCs to the market, being 500 thousand units in Brazil and 300 thousand units in Argentin and in Uruguay. Tablets orders for Governments add up to 50 thousand units in the year.
The Positive also highlighted an increase of 18.2% in the average price of computers sold, due to the growth in sales of higher value-added monitors, and 1.6% increase in the average price of notebooks sold. The tablets had 3% drop in average sales value.
Positive operating expenses in the quarter fell 19.8%, to R $ 122.7 million, with a reduction of the company's spending on marketing. Net debt totaled r $ 389,1 million at the end of the quarter, growth of .8 32% compared to the previous year. The increase, according to the company, resulted from the payment of higher interest rates compared to last year.