About You got off to a good start in its 2021/22 financial year

The online fashion retailer About You got off to a good start in its 2021/22 financial year thanks to numerous new customers and strong demand for new collections and fashion brands. The Hamburg-based company announced that sales climbed by 65.5 percent to 422.1 million euros in the first quarter of May at the end of May. About You confirmed the outlook. The Otto subsidiary recently went onto the Frankfurt stock exchange and was valued at just under four billion euros. "The successful IPO in June has further increased our level of awareness and our financial strength," said company boss Tarek Müller. The numbers were well received on the stock market. The About You share was up more than two percent. The Zalando competitor recently expanded into three new markets - Greece, Portugal and Norway. It should stay that way for the time being, even if Müller can envision long-term activities outside of Europe. "We still see a lot of potential in our 26 existing markets, and we will continue to focus fully on that," he said. About You now has 9.2 million active customers, 42 percent more than in February. However, the big competitor from Berlin, which presented its quarterly figures on August 5 and grew strongly during the Corona crisis, now has 42 million. In contrast to many of its competitors, About You also operates a technology division that sells infrastructure solutions to companies such as Marc O'Polo and North Face. Sales in this area rose in the past quarter by almost 136 percent to 34.5 million euros. Because of the high investments in the expansion of the business and new collections, for example with the singer Lena Meyer-Landrut, About You is still in the red. The adjusted operating loss (Ebitda) widened to 12.3 million euros after 10.7 million euros in the same period of the previous year. CFO Hannes Wiese said: "We are confirming our forecast and consider it realistic to achieve the upper half of the sales forecast for the year as a whole." In the best-case scenario, the proceeds are likely to be 1.75 billion euros. About You does not want to be unsettled by the rapid spread of the Delta variant. "We are monitoring the situation very closely, but currently have no cause for any worries," said Müller.