Despite further declining sales, the Otto Group expects business to stabilize over the course of the year. “In our first half of 2023/24, sales were around three percent below the previous year’s level,” said the head of the Hamburg trading and services group, Alexander Birken, to the “Handelsblatt”. Birken therefore expects a “stable sales level” for the year as a whole. The forecast for the operating result is also confirmed by the business development to date. The Otto Group continues to expect positive earnings before taxes and interest (EBIT) in the “low three-digit million range” for 2023/24 (until the end of February), said the Otto boss.
High inflation and the slump in consumption following the Russian attack on Ukraine pushed the Otto Group into the red in the previous financial year. “The return to the old profit strength will take two years,” Birken said in May when presenting the business figures for 2022/23. The bottom line for 2022/23 was a loss of 413 million euros, after a profit of more than 1.8 billion euros in the previous year, which benefited from the online boom during the corona pandemic. At 16.2 billion euros, sales in 2022/23 were at the same level as the previous year (16.1 billion euros). While domestic sales fell by 9.2 percent to 9.0 billion euros, business volume abroad climbed by 9.6 percent to 7.2 billion euros.
Birken pointed out in the “Handelsblatt” that sales for the entire online trade in Germany fell by 14 percent in the first half of the year. “This shows us that we are still competitive even in particularly challenging business models and that we can maintain market share, and in some cases even gain it, even in the current crisis.”(dpa)