Virgin Wines profit soared in its first half as it more than doubled margins thanks to “stringent” cost management.
EBITDA was up 122% to £1.75m for the six months to 29 December as margins jumped from 2.3% to 5%.
Sales for the wine retailer nudged up 2% to £34.3m, with sales to repeat customers up 5% and commercial revenue up 6.5%.
Subscribe to Retail Gazette for free
Sign up here to get the latest news straight into your inbox each morning
Virgin Wines said that it took a “disciplined approach to customer acquisition and focused its resources on acquiring high quality new customers”.
This resulted in a 22% rise in its new customer conversion rate as well as a 14% decrease on its cost per acquisition.
Virgin Wines CEO Jay Wright said: “Whilst new customer acquisition remains challenging, we have maintained our disciplined approach, and our new Warehouse Wines value offering which launched in late October has had an encouraging initial response.
“We go into the second half encouraged by our performance and in line with the key drivers behind our business model, whilst remaining mindful of the challenging consumer landscape.”
Click here to sign up to Retail Gazette‘s free daily email newsletter
