The goal of £1bn in sales is firmly in Asos’ sights, the company said as it reported a 93% rise in profits and a 46% rise in revenues this week.
The fashion pureplay expects to hit the financial goal in 2015, when it expects revenues from five significant markets to feed into the total. It said in its full-year statement that “all of our international markets are performing strongly and our unique position on the global stage of internet apparel retailers is now firmly established.”
It said that among 15-34-year-olds it was the “second most-visited apparel website on the planet” and that 69% of its traffic now hailed from outside the UK, up from 58% a year ago.
Chief executive Nick Robertson said: “We remain positive in our outlook for 2012/2013 as we continue our journey to becoming the world’s number one online fashion destination.”
The update came as Asos reported a 46% rise in group revenues to £494.9m, a 49% rise in retail sales, to £481.6m, and pre-tax profits of £30.3m, up by 93% on the previous year. While UK retail sales rose by 7%, international sales were up by 103% and now account for 59% of Asos sales.
Some 16% of Asos’ traffic is now via mobile, the company said, while sales of its Asos own-brand now account for 55% of its sales. At the same time, menswear sales grew by around 60% in the year, diversifying revenue streams.
During the year new websites launched in Italy, Spain and Australia. The company is now working to enable the Asos platform to handle non-western language character sets in order to serve customers in languages such as Russian and Chinese. Highlights also included the transition to a new warehouse which, said Asos, was “delivering significant efficiency gains.”
Asos said it now had 8.0m registered users, of whom 4.4m were active, and hailed from 160 different countries.
