While some large shoe retailers in Germany are struggling with the current market conditions, the Polish shoe group CCC-Group sees great opportunities in 2023.
Despite a loss in the past financial year, the Polish company is optimistic about the future. Since 2019, the business model has been switched more to online. E-commerce accounted for a total of 52 percent of the CCC Group’s sales in 2022. After investments, the group hopes not only for double-digit sales growth and increasing profitability in the current year, but also to reduce debt and restructure financing sources, according to the announcement. Sales are expected to increase by almost one billion Polish zloty to 10.2 billion Polish zloty (2.21 million euros) in 2023.
The main investments have been completed, said Marcin Czyczerski, President of the Management Board of the CCC Group, in a statement on Tuesday. “We are confident that if the macroeconomic situation stabilizes as forecast, 2023 will be a year of continued revenue growth and a return to profitability for CCC-Group.”
The bottom line is a loss
The group’s revenues in 2022 amounted to 9.1 billion Polish zlotys (1.97 billion euros). This exceeded the previous year’s result by almost 23 percent. Since 2019, the turnover of the CCC Group, which includes the CCC brand, the discounter Half Price and the Modivo Group, has almost doubled. At that time, before the pandemic, this was still around 5.4 billion Polish zloty (1.17 billion euros).
Despite the increased turnover, the company recorded a bottom line loss of 402 million Polish zloty (87.1 million euros). In the last financial year, the deficit was 217 million Polish zloty (47 million euros), while the company was able to record a plus of 224 million Polish zloty (48.52 million euros) before the 2019 pandemic.
The optimistic view could also be supported by the results for the fourth quarter of 2022, which were a little better than the preliminary numbers in February suggested.