Luxury online retail Cettire has continued its growth and expansion in FY22, the business has revealed in its first half results.
In the statement, the Melbourne-based eTailer attributed its strong results to its investment into building its brand, customer acquisition and further technology development.
For the first half of FY22, Cettire reported gross revenue lifted 192% to $154.1 million, compared to $52.7 million in H1 FY21.
Sales revenue also increased in the period, with Cettire reporting a 181% rise to $113.7 million ($40.5 million in H1 FY21).
During the period, Cettire's active customer base grew 208% to 209,000 (68,000: H1 FY21), with repeat customers accounting for 46% of gross revenue (34%: H1 FY21).
The eTailer also clocked 23.6 million unique website visits for the half – a 304% increase on the 5.8 million it had in the first half of FY21.
However, despite these strong results, the business was not able to record a profit for the period.
Cettire reported an operating loss of $9.9 million compared to EBITDA of $4.8 million in H1 FY21, and a net loss after tax of $8.3 million compared to a profit of $2.3 million in H1 FY21
Despite this, Cettire founder, CEO and executive director Dean Mintz said the business is excited for its future, given the strength of its growth strategy.
"A lot of the themes from our FY21 results continued in the first half of FY22.
"Cettire again grew very rapidly, substantially increasing unique visitors and active customers, further increasing the proportion of revenues from repeat customers, and overall continuing its growth trajectory.
"At a time when many retailers, both online and bricks-and-mortar, have seen revenues decrease as COVID restrictions eased, Cettire continued to deliver exceptional revenue growth given the high level of customer engagement, the scalability of our capital light, high cash generating business model, and the benefits of our proprietary technology platform flowing through.
"The financial results delivered over the first half of FY22 demonstrate the substantial progress we’ve made in executing our growth strategy.
"A number of important enhancements were implemented to our consumer proposition including further localisation, enabled by our proprietary eCommerce storefront solution, and investing in our brand," he continued.
"What excites us is that Cettire has only just started and is in the early stages of its growth journey.
"The runway ahead is vast and we will continue to invest to capture the significant market opportunity we see for the business," he said.
Other highlight results for the business include a 178% increase in product margin to $42.7 million, compared to $15.4 million in H1 FY21.
The business continued to generate strong growth in operating cash flow, which was up 43% to $12.3 million (H1 FY21: $8.6 million) in the half.
This cash flow was being partially reinvested in brand marketing to raise awareness of the Cettire brand and support long-term growth.
At 31 December 2021, Cettire had a cash balance of $55.5 million and zero debt.
According to the business, 80% of its customers are accessing the site via mobile web, so the coming launch of the Cettire mobile apps will capitalise on this opportunity.
In addition, Cettire is set to launch a beauty category, to support its mission to become the world's leading online luxury destination.
Mintz added that its full steam ahead for the business in H2 FY22, having kicked off the half with unaudited gross revenue increasing 242% on January 2021.
"Cettire has tremendous growth opportunities in the markets in which we have historically been strong and had a localised proposition, such as the US, UK and Australia.
"In addition, we have started to unlock the growth opportunity in multiple high value luxury goods markets, where we already have services, due to the migration of traffic to our proprietary storefront, which supports localised content, currencies and payment options.
"Our growth trajectory has continued into H2 FY22, where we have experienced a further acceleration in our growth rate in January.
"Given the global growth opportunity available to Cettire, we will be running the business to maximise revenues by further investing in brand and customer acquisition, to drive long-term shareholder value.
"Our focus for the remainder of FY22 is to continue to enhance our customer proposition which is centred around our vast selection of luxury products, value and rapid fulfilment, whilst continuing to develop our deep and diverse supply relationships and investing in our world-class proprietary eCommerce technology that can be rapidly scaled to support entry to new product and geographic markets," he said.
Cettire held an investor call at 10.30am this morning to detail the results.
Cettire was founded in 2017 and has a catalogue of over 1,700 luxury brands and over 200,000 products of clothing, shoes, bags, and accessories.