UK fashion retailer Fat Face has hailed a strong year for the company as it booked higher sales and earnings, boosted by investment in areas including in e-commerce.
Total sales were up 7.4% to GBP238.4m (US$303.1m) in the 52 weeks ended 2 June, from GBP221.9m a year earlier. Like-for-like sales grew 4.9%, led by a strong womenswear performance.
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E-commerce sales were up 11.8% thanks to investment, and now represents 18.2% of the business from 17.2% in 2017.
During the year, the company opened five new stores in the US, bringing the total in the country to 11, achieving 20% like-for-like sales growth on an annual basis.
EBITDA increased 5.6% to GBP30.2m from GBP28.6m. On a constant currency basis, EBITDA jumped 23.4%.
“We’ve had a really strong year at FatFace, growing both sales and EBITDA and maintaining the positive momentum created in the prior year,” said chief executive Anthony Thompson. “This was thanks to the hard work and investment in the business over the last 24 months. Our long-standing full price trading stance also continued to work well, especially at key trading times.
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By GlobalData“We made further investment in e-commerce and successfully added increased capacity at our distribution centre. As a result, the business has strong foundations on which it can build in the coming five years.”
Thompson acknowledged that the current retail environment remains “difficult,” with no prospect of conditions improving in the short term – but said the company will continue to invest in US expansion.
