Tech Data executives reiterated many of things they said during the company's fiscal 2010 first quarter conference call in its annual shareholders meeting -- stressing that it's balance sheet is stronger than it has been in the company's history despite the economic recession and an overall industry sales slump of 8 percent to 15 percent in the last year.

For its fiscal 2009 year, the company topped $24 billion (US) in sales, which Robert Dutkowsky, CEO of Tech Data, said was an all-time record for the distributor. With growth being an important component of its strategy, he noted that industry analysts have suggested there was a decline of eight to 15 per cent in IT spending in the last year, so that means Tech Data's customers are spending approximately that much less. However, Dutkowsky stressed Tech Data's strong balance sheet.

"Tech Data's a company that's built on scale and scope, and in the last fiscal year we used many of our strategic initiatives to improve the size and scale of the company," he said.

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