Boohoo posts interim sales up 50% and ups full-year guidance

Young fashion etail group Boohoo achieved revenue up 50% to £395.3m in the six months to 31 August 2018 and said all brands and territories had put in a strong performance during the period.

Adjusted EBITDA for the six months was up 43% at £39.6m, giving a margin of 10%. As a result of the strong performance the Manchester-based business has upped its full-year revenue growth guidance to between 38% and 43%, up from the previous guidance of 35% to 40%, with adjusted EBITDA margin of between 9% and 10%.

Boohoo, which recently announced the appointment of new CEO John Lyttle of Primark who joins next March, said it had achieved strong sales growth both in the UK and internationally. UK group sales were up 43% and international sales were up 62%; international now accounts for 41% of total sales.

Flagship brand boohoo.com achieved growth of 15% during the period with sales of £209m and now boasts 6.7m active customers, a figure which is also up 15% year-on-year. PrettyLittleThing recovered from disruption caused by a change in warehouse facilities to achieve growth of 132% with sales of £168.6m and 4m active customers. Nasty Gal sales hit £17.7m, up 111%.

Joint CEOs Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane said in a statement: “Our group results for the first half year show yet another strong performance, delivering record sales and profits. All of our brands performed extremely well across all territories as we continue to gain market share. We achieved market-leading growth in all markets, with Rest of Europe and the USA being particularly pleasing. Growth in the UK, our largest market, remains very strong.

"We successfully executed a major relocation of the distribution centre for PrettyLittleThing, which represents a key milestone as we develop a distribution network capable of generating £3 billion of net sales globally, in line with our vision to lead the fashion eCommerce market. This relocation was carried out with a low level of disruption to the operations of PrettyLittleThing and is a credit to the project team. Our extended distribution centre in Burnley, which will have a significant element of automation to drive efficiency savings, is scheduled for operational use in 2019.”

Kamani will step into the role of group executive chairman when Lyttle arrives next March, while Kane remains a director on the board with responsibility for creative direction and product proposition.