Manchester-headquartered online fashion retailer Boohoo has reported a 40% rise in profit for the year to February.
The firm made a pre-tax profit of £43.3 million in the year to February 28th, up from £30.9m a year earlier. Revenue soared 97%, to £579.8m, ahead of company forecasts, and there has also been a strong start to the current year according to the report.
The comapny’s joint CEOs said: “Against a backdrop of difficult trading in the UK clothing sector, the group continued to perform well, gaining market share in the expanding online sector.”
The growth is partly down to the 2016 acquisition of PrettyLittleThing – a company started by co-founder Mahmud Kamani’s son – and US-based Nasty Gal. Boohoo said it now has 6.4m active customers – a 22% increase on a year ago – and that PrettyLittleThing is serving 3m customers, which represents an increase of 128%.
Boohoo said capital expenditure in 2018/19 would be £50 to £60m and forecast revenue growth of 35-40% with an EBITDA margin of 9% to 10%. Beyond 2018/19, it forecast sales growth of “at least” 25%, whilst maintaining a 10% EBITDA margin.
