Shop Direct grew its revenues by 1.5 per cent to £1.95 billion for the year to 30 June but reported a statutory pre-tax loss of £24.7 million compared with a £24.9 million pre-tax profit for the same period last year. The business cited the cost of establishing a new customer fulfilment centre as well as additional costs to reimburse customers for wrongly charged interest.
Very revenues had increased by 9.9 per cent to reach £1.4 billion which was attributed to improvements in customer recruitment, a 39.5 per cent increase in use of its app, and growth in sales of electrical goods and seasonal merchandise. However, Littlewoods revenue had dropped by 14.5 per cent to £569.7 million as a result of the closure of its commission scheme in the previous year and a fall in performance in the furniture and homewares categories.
Shop Direct CEO Henry Birch said: “Four months into my role as CEO, I’m hugely excited by the potential of Shop Direct. Today we’re announcing results that show a good underlying performance in a competitive external market.” Adding, “Impressive growth in Very and increases in group revenue and EBITDA show the resilience of our business, which is mobile-first, multi-category, and both a retailer and credit provider.”
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