// The Hut Group posts full-year operating loss of £481.8m, citing nonrecurring costs, like its IPO & Covid
// Without those costs, it would’ve posted a profit of £46m
// Full-year revenues surged 41.5% year-on-year to £1.6bn
The Hut Group has slipped into a full-year operating loss of £481.8 million, despite an almost 42 per cent surge in revenues.
The online retail firm said its performance in the year ending December 31 was dragged by nonrecurring costs, like those associated with its IPO listing and the Covid-19-pandemic.
The FTSE 250-listed firm said the costs were a £331.6 million non-cash share-based payments charge, a £105.1 million non-cash impact of the impairment on assets held for sale and sale and leaseback charges, £14.3 million cash IPO fees, and £39.2 million in Covid-related costs.
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The Hut Group said that if it took these costs out of the equation, it would’ve reported a statutory operating profit before adjusted items of £46 million.
Nonetheless, statutory pre-tax losses widened to £534,639, compared to a loss of £45,158 in 2019, after it paid out for share option schemes as well as the costs of the IPO.
The losses also came despite full-year revenues surging 41.5 per cent year-on-year to £1.6 billion.
Meanwhile, The Hut Group’s adjusted underlying earnings came in at £151 million, a 35 per cent increase on the prior year, after absorbing £2.6 million of self-funded furlough costs.
Around 10.7 million new customers shopped with The Hut Group in 2020, with the number of beauty box subscribers up 39 per cent year-on-year and the number of orders from its nutrition and beauty arms rising 41 per cent and 58 per cent, respectively.
The firm said solid trading had continued into 2021, with sales up 58.2 per cent in the first quarter and that its revenue growth guidance of 30 per cent to 35 per cent remained the same.
Separately, The Hut Group’s founder Matthew Moulding pledged to gift £100 million of the firm’s shares to charity and hand all his salary to good causes following its stock market debut seven months ago.
Moulding will give the mammoth stake to the Moulding Foundation that was set up by the entrepreneur and his family last year.
The move sees him become one of the UK’s biggest philanthropists.
The Hut Group said it had already donated £300,000 to charities between last September’s IPO and the end of 2020 instead of paying Moulding and co-director John Gallemore their base salaries.
with PA Wires
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