Picnic sweetens huge losses with promising Dutch results

Dutch online-only supermarket Picnic continues to raise both its turnover and its losses, as it says investing in growth comes before profits. The first (tentative) profit figures in the Netherlands do offer a hopeful perspective.

Invest in growth

Picnic’s turnover grew 34 % last year to 1.2 billion euros, according to the annual report that Dutch newspaper the FD quotes from. However, the retailer also sees its losses grow, from 208.7 million euros in 2022 to 220.6 million in 2023.

CEO Michiel Muller is still satisfied, as sales are growing much faster than losses. Picnic continues to invest in growth, building new distribution centres and expanding into new cities, especially in France and Germany. Muller told the FD that Picnic “could cut those investments and make a profit, but we do not want to.” Picnic served 2.3 million customers at the end of last year – a 30 % growth – and now operates in 450 cities.

Dutch profits

German sales grew 41 %, French sales even more than doubled (+ 147 %). In its home market, sales went up 28 % to 796 million euros. This means that Picnic is growing five times faster than the market, Muller argues. The CEO refers to figures from research firm Circana, that note a 6 % growth for online groceries. Earlier this year, the CEO had already confirmed that Picnic made its first profit in the Netherlands at the end of last year, partly thanks to investments in robotisation.

To be clear, this is not a net profit, but a positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation). Muller does not say exactly how much profit is involved, but said that were the company to perform for a full year as it did in the last four weeks of 2023, there will be a gross operating profit of four million euros on the books at the end of this year.