eCommerce company Catch Group incurred a loss of $17.8 million last year.
The result was attributed to a write down in intangible assets, including goodwill and trademarks by another $25 million.
It also followed bottom line losses of $114 million in 2016.
Despite the double hit, revenue for the business rose to $241 million in 2017.
Underlying earnings also rose to $14 million.
Net profit before impairments however, fell from $10.9 million in 2016 to $7.1 million in 2017.
Catch Group owns eCommerce sites catch.com.au and scoopon.com.au.
It was also responsible for acquiring and relaunching Pumpkin Patch as an online pureplay last year.
UPDATE:
Catch Group has issued a statement on the result.
In preparing the Group financial statements, management tests intangible assets for impairment. Impairment is assessed for each cash generating unit (“CGU”) on the basis of fair value calculations which require the use of cashflow projections. In 2017 management assessed the fair value of the services unit was impaired and accordingly this was written down by $24.9m. The services unit comprised the Scoopon business which was subsequently sold by Catch Group on 1 December 2017. Excluding the goodwill impairment expense, the underlying performance of Catch Group was strong, with the Group posting a 2017 EBITDA of $13.7m, up 12.5% on 2016.
“The current performance of our business is outstanding. The launch of the marketplace exactly one year ago has accelerated our growth and we now generate more than $1M of sales every day with more than $2M weekly sales coming from marketplace.” says Nati Harpaz, CEO of Catch Group.
“The key to growing our marketplace has been the growth in sellers which now tops 1,000 sellers and more than 1M skus available on the website. This number continues to grow despite the fact that we are very selective as to the curation of our marketplace and who we invite to join our eco-system.”