The boohoo group PLC (LON:BOO) bandwagon powers on with the online fashion products flogger raising full-year revenue guidance after a strong first half.
Group revenue growth for the year to 28 February 2019 is expected to be 38% to 43%, up from boohoo’s previous guidance of 35% to 40%.
The adjusted underlying earnings (EBITDA) margin is expected to be between 9% and 10%.
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The six months to August 31 saw the group deliver record sales and profits.
Revenue rose 50% to £395.3mln from £262.9mln the year before while adjusted profit before tax surged 43% to £35.8mln from £25.1mln.
Net cash at the end of the reporting period had risen to £155.6mln from £119.2mln the year before.
“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,” said Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane, the joint chief executives of the company.
“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," they added.
No tears over @boohoo sales today living up to their lofty share valuation and up a third since my @DTquestor @telebusiness tip here: https://t.co/29mzFonW2v
— James Ashton (@mrjamesashton) September 26, 2018
Broker Liberum said EBITDA was roughly 5% of expectations at £39.6mln, up 43% year-on-year.
“This has been driven by a revenue beat (+50% group growth vs. consensus +46%) and a group gross margin beat of 170bps [basis points – 100 bps equals one percentage point] at 55.3%, reflecting stronger sell-through, stock control and an improved customer proposition, despite obvious challenges from the PLT [PrettyLittleThing] warehouse move,” the broker said.
“We were already forecasting revenue growth at the top end of previous guidance, 40%, so we currently make no change to our forecasts for the FY [full year] and continue to expect group revenue of £809mln. At an EBITDA margin of 9.4% (within management’s guided range) we continue to expect adj EBITDA of £76.1mln. We do not expect any material change to consensus today,” Liberum said.
Shares in Boohoo were up 8.3% at 207.4p.
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Shop this dress - https://t.co/haSwPnc10U
????: rothglam pic.twitter.com/m6zt7Qyidw
— boohoo.com (@boohoo) September 26, 2018