Confident ahead of Christmas trading.
Kogan.com held its first annual general meeting after being listed on the ASX in July. Kogan.com founder and CEO, Ruslan Kogan told investors that the company expects a “strong Christmas trading period.”
“Based on the strong performance across our business, the Board has revised guidance for the 2017 financial year over and above the prospectus forecasts. Kogan.com now expects pro forma EBITDA of between $8 million and $9 million in FY17, up from our prospectus forecast of $6.9 million,” he said.
“There is no doubt that the 2016 financial year was a transformational year for us. We completed the implementation of our ERP project which provides us with increased automation and the platform required to scale our business. We also launched Kogan Mobile; grew Kogan Travel; and acquired the Dick Smith online business, fully integrating it into our platform,” he added.
The successful launch of Dick Smith in early May delivered sales of $6.5 million in under two months. “We are very pleased by this performance and proud of the team’s ability to have Dick Smith launched well ahead of schedule,” Kogan said.
“It is still early days for us, but we continue to be pleased by the top line contribution from Dick Smith since its relaunch and the additional operating leverage we are generating through this channel.
“We continue to see strong growth in unique active customers (transacted in the prior 12 months). As at December 31 2015, we had 621,000 active customers. At the end of October 2016, this has grown to 763,000, representing growth of 22.9% in the last 10 months,” Kogan said.
Kogan.com chairman, Greg Ridder further commented, “Kogan.com’s growth initiatives are designed to support its vision to further consolidate our position as Australia’s largest pure play online retail website through leveraging its core business strengths.
“The majority of funds raised from Kogan.com’s recent IPO are being invested in accelerating the company’s growth strategy, including investment in new private label products and marketing,” he said.
Euromonitor estimates that the Australian online retail market was valued at $17 billion in 2015 and is forecast to grow at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.5% in the period through to 2019.