Another huge turnover growth for Zalando

German online fashion retailer Zalando has managed a 23 % turnover increase in 2016, and the ambitious online shop now forecasts an equally large increase for 2017.

Minor net profit drop

The company’s total turnover grew 23 % to 3.64 billion euro, not as strong a growth as the year before but still well within the group’s expectations. Turnover grew 14.8 % to 1.8 billion euro in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), but growth was even more impressive in the rest of Europe: up 29.6 % to 1.57 billion euro.

Its adjusted EBIT grew from 107.5 to 216.3 million euro, while its margin went from 3.6 to 5.9 % – entirely thanks to the German-speaking countries. The rest of Europe resulted in a 3.3 million euro loss, leading to a 120.5 million euro net profit, a slight drop compared to the 121.5 million euro net profit from the previous year. Remarkably, net profit gets a huge hit in the fourth quarter, from 102.7 to 60 million euro.

Nearly 20 million customers

Zalando also considers its visitor numbers to be very important and they are very impressive indeed: the website received 1.99 billion visits last year, up from 1.66 billion the year before. The share of mobile devices grew from 57.1 to 65.6 % and its number of active customers also grew from 17.9 to 19.9 million. In line with the other increases, the number of orders grew from 55.3 to 69.2 million, but the average spend dropped slightly, from 67.8 to 66.6 euro.

Earlier this week, Zalando also finalized the acquisition of multichannel retailer KICKZ, a deal that should be done by the end of June 2017. A fee was not disclosed, but the specialist in basketball items should help strengthen its position in the sporting equipment branch.