Full year results at Clipper show that turnover had grown by almost £200m, greatly boosted in the national shift towards eCommerce. Revenues came in at £696.2m for the year ending 30 April 2021 which was up 39.1 per cent from £500.7m in 2019/20. Profit before tax, amortisation and exceptional costs was £28.8m, up from £21.3m the year before. Exceptional costs of £800k were incurred, including £500k linked to aborted acquisition costs and £300k of redundancy costs.
Clipper had racked up significant organic growth driven by high efulfilment volumes as a result of the shift to online, with volumes up and contracts extended, with clients including ASOS, Farfetch, John Lewis, Westwing and Wilko. New contracts were secured with Linenbundle, Revolution Beauty and Unipart, and there was also volume growth with existing customers, including Asda and Morrisons.
The group grew its estate, with 16 million sq ft of space now under its management in over 50 locations in five territories across Europe. It also took on 2,000 more staff to support further growth.
Following the end of the financial year, Clipper acquired Wippet, which is set to launch an online B2B marketplace to serve the healthcare sector in the UK. It has also begun new operations with Mountain Warehouse and JD Sports.
Steve Parkin, executive chairman of Clipper commented: “I am pleased to report a very strong set of results, which in a very fluid environment demonstrates the ability and agility of the Group and the robustness of our business model to capitalise upon opportunities and deliver growth. We have grown revenue by £195.5 million to £696.2 million and we have also grown Underlying EBIT by a much larger 52.4 per cent to £31.4 million.
“The market has witnessed significant recent change particularly with the acceleration of the growth in efulfilment which now represents 70 per cent of our logistics revenue. Our unique proposition, which offers the full end to end range of services within the eCommerce field, has allowed the Group to benefit from this strong dynamic and will provide further momentum in the coming years. Our recent contract wins demonstrate that we are our customers’ partner of choice both in and outside of the UK, for delivering innovative, sustainable, and resilient added value solutions.
“I would like to personally thank all of our colleagues throughout the business, for their commitment and engagement in maintaining our services through the pandemic.
“Our highly deployable asset-light model has enabled us to reinforce our pan-European proposition during the financial year, which together with a strong pipeline of new business activity ensures that the Group is in an excellent position to achieve further growth both domestically and internationally. The prospects for the Group remain strong and we are confident that we will deliver further shareholder value accretion in the coming years”
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