The FTSE 100 investment return over the 12 months to July 2025 came to 22.2%, combining a 19.1% price gain with a trailing dividend yield of around 3.1%. A £20,000 stake placed a year ago would now be worth £24,440.
That is a solid outcome, but one index constituent has eclipsed it by a wide margin. Computacenter (LSE: CCC), the infrastructure services group, rose 114% over the same period, making it the top-performing FTSE 100 stock across those 12 months.
The Index Held Firm After a Volatile Start
The FTSE 100 struck an all-time high of just above 10,910 on 27 February before sliding as Donald Trump’s trade offensive unsettled global markets. The index recovered ground and finished the year well ahead, illustrating the case for sitting through short-term turbulence.
For context on the longer arc: advice platform Unbiased calculates that the average Stocks and Shares ISA has compounded at 9.64% a year over the past decade, against 1.21% a year for the average Cash ISA. Over 30 years at those rates, £20,000 grows to £304,406 in equities versus £64,868 in cash.
Computacenter’s FTSE 100 Investment Return Outpaced the Index
Computacenter was promoted to the FTSE 100 in June after a string of strong trading updates. The group helps large organisations manage hardware, software, and cloud networks, and demand from AI infrastructure and data centre projects has driven its growth.
Full-year 2025 revenue on a gross invoiced income basis rose 32% in constant currency and 31% on a reported basis, according to the company’s pre-close trading update published on the London Stock Exchange on 22 January 2026.
The Computacenter Final Results 2025 show UK revenue of £1,419.2m, up 22.5% from £1,158.1m in 2024. UK Technology Sourcing revenue climbed 33.4% to £940.9m, while UK Services revenue rose 5.6% to £478.3m.
The results also disclosed a total impairment loss of £20.2m on French operations, comprising an £8.3m impairment of non-current assets and an £11.9m goodwill impairment, driven by sustained underperformance in that market.
The Computacenter Q3 2025 Trading Update had already flagged momentum, reporting performance for the nine months to end of Q3 2025 as ‘comfortably ahead of last year,’ with Technology Sourcing driven primarily by North America and the UK.
Earnings Picture Is Mixed Despite the Revenue Surge
Revenue growth has not yet fully fed through to the bottom line. Simply Wall St reports that full-year 2025 earnings per share came to £1.47, down from £1.54 in FY 2024, with net income falling 10.0% to £153.7m. The profit margin compressed to 1.7% from 2.5%, reflecting higher costs. Revenue of £9.19bn beat analyst estimates by 6.6%, while EPS missed by 12%.
Computacenter also expanded its footprint in January 2026, acquiring AgreeYa Solutions Inc. The deal is listed among the company’s regulatory announcements on Investegate.
Valuation and the Road Ahead
At a price-to-earnings ratio of 27, the shares trade at a premium after their 114% run. Whether that premium is justified depends on earnings recovery.
The analyst consensus price target stands at £48.92, according to Simply Wall St, with FY 2026 EPS forecast at £2.18. That would represent a roughly 50% jump in net income, against a 22% growth forecast for the UK IT sector broadly. Computacenter also operates to tight margins, and any slowdown in corporate technology spending or a reversal in AI investment could weigh on both revenue and profits.
The FY 2026 earnings print will be the first hard test of whether the AI infrastructure cycle can sustain the growth rate that drove the share price to its current level.
