ECS Holdings increased its third quarter net earnings by 4.5 per cent to $8.7 million.

Revenue rose 11.4 per cent to $999.3 million for the three months to Sept 30.

This was contributed mainly by the enterprise systems and distribution segments.

Revenue from enterprise systems segment grew by 32.3 per cent to $322.8 million, mainly driven by higher sales of networking hardware, servers, software products and enterprise storage.

The distribution segment saw moderate growth of 4.2 per cent to $668.4 million, mainly from increased sales of media tablets, consumer storage and printers, partially offset by a decrease in sales of notebooks.

Gross profit margin declined to 3.8 per cent from 4 per cent, mainly due to lower margins achieved in the enterprise systems segment.

Margin declined to 5.9 per cent from 7.7 per cent, mainly due to lower margins achieved for networking hardware and enterprise software during the quarter.

Total operating expenses were 6.2 per cent higher as a result of higher provisions made for doubtful debts and fair value loss on financial instruments.

Earnings per share climbed to 2.37 cents from 2.27 cents previously while net asset value per share firmed to 99.32 cents compared to 92.83 cents as at Dec 31.

ECS expects its full year profit to be better than last year's.