The continuing difficult market conditions are also affecting About You Holding SE. Nevertheless, the Hamburg online retailer is looking positively at the current financial year and plans to get out of the red. This emerges from the current annual report, which About You published on Thursday.
“Our results in fiscal year 2022/2023 reflect the macroeconomic challenges our industry is currently facing,” said Tarek Mueller, CO-CEO at About You. “Fiscal year 2023/2024 is a year of change for About You to lay the foundation for profitable growth.”
About You: double-digit sales growth
In the financial year that ended in February, About You was able to achieve a sales increase of 10 percent to 1.9 billion euros compared to the previous year. In the previous fiscal year, the company achieved sales growth of 48.5 percent.
Adjusted for special effects, loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was EUR 137 million, which corresponded to an adjusted EBITDA margin of -7.2 percent. The reason for this was the lower gross margin – driven by discount campaigns due to increased inventories – and costs for the expansion of the European distribution network, according to the announcement. Overall, the loss was 229 million euros. This means that it has increased by around 84 percent compared to the previous year.
In the home market of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH), About You achieved sales growth of 9.1 percent to EUR 916.3 million compared to the previous year, despite declining sales in online fashion retail in Germany. In the rest of the European market, About You was able to increase sales by 17.3 percent to EUR 900.4 million thanks to “higher brand awareness in new markets”. In the past financial year, About You had almost 12 percent more active customers (12.7 million), whose average order frequency was 3.1.
About You expects growth of up to 11 percent
About You also plans to increase its gross margin and improve its fulfillment, marketing and administrative costs as a percentage of sales in the current fiscal year, according to the announcement. The online retailer expects sales growth of between one and eleven percent compared to the previous year due to the ongoing difficult overall economic situation.
“In the past fiscal year, we initiated and pushed ahead with important measures to increase our profitability. Now we will continue to invest our capital in a disciplined manner and focus more on profitability,” says Müller. “Our goal is to break even in adjusted EBITDA at group level in fiscal year 2023/2024, while still growing faster than the market.”