Profits improved in the third quarter and guidance upgraded - Seite 2

Matas’ ambition for financial year 2022/23, as set out in the ‘Renewing Matas’ strategy, is to grow revenue to about DKK 4 billion and keep its earnings capacity, in terms of the EBITDA margin before special items, above 18%.

Management now expects these two financial ambitions to be achieved already in 2020/21. Against this background, Matas has launched a project to update its strategy.

Q3 2020/21 highlights

• Revenue grew by 11.9% year on year in Q3 2020/21, while underlying like-for-like sales were up by 12.8%. All categories recorded higher sales. Boosting sales by 23.4%, Health & Wellbeing recorded the strongest sales growth, while High-End Beauty grew sales by an also strong 11.5%. The number of trading days was unchanged compared with Q3 2019/20.
• Online sales were ahead by 78% year on year, and 84,000 new customers shopped at matas.dk for the first time. Online sales accounted for 25.8% of Q3 2020/21 revenue against 16.2% in the year-earlier period.
• Underlying like-for-like sales in the Group’s physical stores were down by a moderate 0.4% year on year on the back of increasing basket sizes.
• The gross margin for Q3 2020/21 was 43.8%, down from 43.9% in the year-earlier period. The slightly lower gross margin was attributable mainly to a higher proportion of online sales compared with the same quarter of last year and to the fact that part of the sales were accounted for by COVID-19-related articles such as face masks, which were sold at next to no margins.
• Overall costs (other external costs and staff costs) amounted to 21.6% of revenue against 21.5% in the same quarter of last year. Costs were up by DKK 30.9 million as a result of increased freight and logistics costs in the wake of online sales growth. At the same time, greater economies of scale translated into a more efficient and profitable online business.
• EBITDA before special items came to DKK 292.8 million, up from DKK 263.9 million in the year-earlier period. Growth was driven by higher revenue combined with a lower cost to revenue ratio attributable in part to greater economies of scale in the online business. The EBITDA margin before special items was 22.3% against 22.5% in Q3 2019/20.
• Cash generated from operations was an inflow of DKK 514.6 million in Q3 2020/21 against an inflow of DKK 254.2 million in Q3 2019/20, an increase of DKK 260.4 million attributable mainly to a combination of lower inventories and higher trade payables.

9M 2020/21 highlights