British technology services provider Computacenter has raised its annual profit forecast for the fourth time this year, driven by steady demand from AI data centre customers in North America and the United Kingdom. The company now expects to report at least £425 million in adjusted pre-tax profit for fiscal 2026, well above the company-compiled analyst consensus of £387.1 million.
Shares in the FTSE 100-listed firm rose more than 6% on Monday following the trading update, extending a strong run that has seen the stock gain 56.7% so far this year as of Friday's close. The upgrade caps a year in which Computacenter has repeatedly beaten its own expectations as customers redirect spending toward artificial intelligence infrastructure.
A record order book
Computacenter said its third-quarter performance came in ahead of expectations, building on a strong first half. Its technology sourcing revenue in the quarter was driven by hyperscale and neocloud customers in North America and the UK — the large cloud operators and specialist GPU-cloud providers building out AI capacity.
At the end of September, the group's committed product order backlog stood at £12.6 billion, up from £9.3 billion at the end of June. The company also pointed to a healthy pipeline of future opportunities, suggesting the momentum is carrying into the final quarter of the year.
Why AI spending is driving the upgrade
Computacenter designs, sources and implements IT infrastructure for businesses around the world, covering hardware and software, data storage and network connectivity. That puts it directly in the path of the AI build-out: its work includes delivering major infrastructure projects such as large-scale data centres and AI-powered cloud computing facilities.
The company, which was promoted from the FTSE 250 to the FTSE 100 in June, had previously said several clients were reallocating their IT budgets toward AI-related initiatives. Monday's update is the clearest sign yet of how large that shift has become, with AI infrastructure orders now large enough to move the company's full-year profit outlook for a fourth time.
What to watch next
The key question for investors is whether the order backlog converts into delivered revenue at the same pace. A backlog of £12.6 billion is a record for the company, but data centre projects can stretch over multiple quarters, and delivery timing will decide how much of it lands in 2026 versus later years.
For now, though, the direction is unambiguous. With a fourth upgrade in a single year, a record order book and shares near their strongest levels of the year, Computacenter has become one of the clearest stock-market beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure boom — without building a single AI model itself.
