Van de Velde profit still under pressure

Lingerie group Van de Velde has been through a difficult year: turnover grew slightly, but its profit is still facing pressure. Investments also resulted in a sizeable increase in costs.

Additional costs

The chain presented varied results: 2017 turnover grew 1.2 % to 209 million euro, but actually dropped 0.6 on a like-for-like basis. Its EBITDA got hammered 10.1 % and dropped to 55.7 million euro. Nevertheless, group profit went up slightly, from 33.6 to 33.9 million euro. Over the past year, Vande Velde invested a lot in its brands’ positioning, ICT and e-commerce, which cost another 5.1 million euro.

Like-for-like retail turnover grew 4.2 %, mainly thanks to strong European sales, which went up 8.3 %. There was a 2.5 % drop in the United States, but that was considerably lower than last year’s drop.

For 2018, Van de Velde targets a 4 to 5 % turnover growth. “We want to bring back our turnover growth to our historic average, partially thanks to the introduction of Marie Jo Swim and the impact of our 2017 initiatives. The scalable platform we are building will definitely drive up investment costs”, the company said.