Coolblue‘s profitability has suffered badly in the last few months, especially due to staff shortages. This is bad news days before the webshop’s planned IPO.
Break
The company’s main concern is its distribution centre in Tilburg, which is short on staff, causing Coolblue to have to put a break on its activities over the last few months. Shortages were remedied by less advertising and a deliberate slower delivery, Dutch newspaper FD reports.
As Coolblue tried to fight the staff shortage by raising wages, this had an adverse effect on its profitability – which was already hampered by the expensive launch in Germany and the expansion into new services such as installing solar panels. ING analysts now expect Coolblue’s gross profit margin to drop to 2.7 % in the last six months of this year, compared to 4.6 % in the first six.
These lower margins may cause a decrease in interest in Coolblue’s IPO, which is planned for later this month. The banks involved estimate the electronics webshop’s market value to be around four billion euros, with one divergent estimate of around six billion.
