Sales grow – losses expected

About You

The management of the fashion platform: Hannes Wiese, Tarek Müller and Sebastian Betz (from left to right).

Dusseldorf The digital fashion platform About You presented the preliminary figures for the fourth quarter and the full year on Tuesday morning. According to this, consolidated sales in the fiscal year ending at the end of February were between 1.73 and 1.755 billion euros, an increase of 48.3 to 50.5 percent.

In the fourth quarter, growth was somewhat weaker and was between 30 and 38 percent. According to the company, which has been listed in the SDax since September, sales in the fourth quarter were between 400 and 425 million euros. “Covid-19-related restrictions and delivery bottlenecks” have recently affected business.

Like many companies, About You is currently not providing an outlook and refers to May 24th. Then About You wants to present final figures. Even though sales increased significantly, the fashion platform continued to make a loss. The losses in the past financial year add up to around 60 to 70 million and are thus even higher than in the previous year. The adjusted Ebitda margin is expected to be between minus four and minus 3.4 percent.

For the first time, About You was able to generate more sales in the rest of Europe than in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Co-CEO and co-founder Tarek Müller was satisfied with the preliminary results. Since the IPO in June, all the goals set have been achieved. And we have grown in all areas, including the business customer segment. “The preliminary results published today underscore how robust About You’s business model is, even in a volatile market environment.”

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Müller is also optimistic that the long-term goals will be achieved: firstly, break-even in the 2023/2024 financial year at group level and group sales of five billion euros in the 2025/2026 financial year.

Stock recovers only slowly

About You launched its so-called “Global Shipping Platform” last December. The online shop is now available in more than 100 countries. So far, About You has its own online shops in 26 countries, but neither in Ukraine nor in Russia. The direct effects of the Ukraine war were therefore initially manageable for the company, but About You has noted increased trade volatility in Central and Eastern Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine.

In his analysis in the morning, Volker Bosse, analyst at Baader Bank, writes that potential effects in the current financial year are being closely followed by investors: “This includes geopolitical conflicts – depending on the duration, intensity and outcome – affecting consumer confidence in Europe and thus negatively affect consumer demand for fashion products.” Otherwise, Bosse rates the figures as “solid”.

At the end of May, the company will also present its sustainability report. Since the IPO in June, the value of the share has halved. On Tuesday morning, it initially rose by more than five percent to EUR 12.15 and then fell again to EUR 11.41.

More: Zalando makes ten billion euros in sales for the first time – the share loses nine percent at times

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