The Very Group’s CEO has pointed to the “challenging retail” environment as the North West ecommerce group releases its annual results.
Total group revenue fell 1% (£2.13bn), but “careful cost management” saw its pre-exceptional operating profit grow 17.1% to £218.3m, that’s its highest level since FY19.
Very UK had a slight growth in revenue – £1.84bn (FY23: £1.82bn) and Very Finance revenue rose 3.1% to £435.0m (FY23: £422.1m).
“Our unique business model, combining multicategory digital retail with flexible ways to pay, is more relevant than ever for our customers,” stated Robbie Feather, CEO at The Very Group.
“In a challenging environment, our results reflect a resilient retail performance that remained ahead of the UK online non-food market, as well as a continued strong Very Finance performance. This top line resilience coupled with our continual focus on strong cost management, has driven robust earnings growth in the year. Our results are thanks to the inherent strength of our business model and our loyal and growing customer base. This is underpinned by the tireless work of our people and the benefits of our customer focused investment.”
During the year, the group said it moved forward in its “multi-year tech investment roadmap” investing in a more cloud-based system, this included the ongoing migration to new ecommerce platform, Skyscape; AI-powered product discovery in the Very website and app; and a new app for Very Ireland.
It stated the the new real-time customer feedback system had meant a “record-breaking customer satisfaction score in FY24.”
The company has also used data to understand customers and enhance their retail experience, leading to its best year net promoter score of 40 – up 4pts year-on-year.
During the period it processed a total of 31.9m items, with its fastest dispatched order taking 16 minutes (from order placement to being ready to dispatch).
