Very Group sales dip but profits rise, fashion has tough year

The Very Group has announced its results for the year to the end of June with the Very and Littlewoods owner saying UK revenue edged up 0.7% to £1.84 billion, but group revenue fell 1% to £2.13 billion. 

We’re told the “underlying retail performance was ahead of the online non-food retail market and delivered growth in market share for Very UK”.

Additionally, EBITDA grew 8.4% to £267.6 million.

It added that a “resilient top line and careful cost management” saw pre-exceptional operating profit grow 17.1% to £218.3 million, its highest level since FY19. And operating costs as a percentage of revenue reached “the lowest the group has ever achieved at 23.2%, despite inflationary pressures”.

CEO Robbie Feather said: “In a challenging environment, our results reflect a resilient retail performance that remained ahead of the UK online non-food market, as well as a continued strong Very Finance performance. This top line resilience coupled with our continual focus on strong cost management, has driven robust earnings growth in the year. Our results are thanks to the inherent strength of our business model and our loyal and growing customer base.”

Looking more closely at the details, the company said its sales results came as it saw “market-beating retail performances at both the Very UK and group level, reflecting strategic investments in pricing and assortment of key categories to keep us competitive in a tough market”.

Very Finance revenue grew 3.1% to £435 million, supported by 2.3% growth in the group’s average debtor book.

At the Very brand specifically, toys, gifts, and beauty grew 3% year-on-year, following a particularly strong peak trading period. Sales across personal care (+15.5%) were a notable highlight.

But Fashion and sports declined 5.5% “in a challenging and contracting market”. That said, certain categories continued to perform strongly, such as casual womenswear (+3%), watches (+3.6%) and premium fashion (+15.5%).

Very continued to expand its retail assortment. In particular, a number of new brands have been introduced in Sports, such as Oakley and Veja, and Fashion, such as Seasalt Cornwall and Diesel.

The company added that it continued to make progress with its multi-year tech investment roadmap, moving towards a more flexible, cloud-based architecture, including ongoing migration to the group’s new user-centric e-commerce platform, Skyscape. 

The platform “makes it easier to team up with best-in-class tech partners to bring a cutting-edge retail experience to customers”. Almost 50% of web traffic now flows through the new platform.

And it rolled out AI-powered product discovery across the Very website and app, offering “more intelligent auto-suggest, and enhanced personalisation in search results, meaning [shoppers] find the right product faster and easier than before”.

It also launched a new app for the Very Ireland brand, bringing key features such as biometric login and augmented reality shopping to Irish customers.