Shares in online homewares retailer Temple & Webster jumped more than 10% at one stage yesterday after the company revealed it has made a strong start to the new 2021-22 financial year thanks to the latest lockdowns in Sydney, Victoria and South Australia (the last two clamps have since been eased)
TPW shares surged to a day’s high of $13.30 yesterday as investors grabbed the news as a sign of a positive impact on retailers from the current Covid lockdowns.
They finally ended at $12.47, up 7.4% for the session.
It seems the lockdowns are again being kind to TPW, which revealed in an update to the ASX yesterday that sales were up 39% for the first 24 days of July when compared to the same time last year.
The company said it was currently experiencing a number of ‘strong tailwinds’, including increasing adoption of online shopping due to COVID, more discretionary spending and stronger housing market growth.
Temple & Webster was a big a beneficiary of COVID lockdowns in 2020 which saw it move from being a marginal online business, to a significant major in its space.
Temple & Webster also unveiled its preliminary full-year results, with 2021 being a record year for the business which was once considered one of the ASX’s worst floats.
Sales rose 85% to $326.3 million and earnings Before Interest, tax. depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) jumped 141% to $20.5 million for the year.
TPW pointed out that it maintained its strong sales growth in the June quarter with a 26% jump year on year (which compares to the 130% surge in the same quarter of 2020).
The retailer said it now had 778,000 active customers, an increase of 62% on the 2019-20 financial year.
This means the company added 100,000 new active customers in the second half of the financial year. Also supporting its sales growth was a 12% increase in average revenue per active customer and increased repeat purchasing.
“Once again Temple & Webster has delivered a record result. While lockdowns during FY20 and FY21 have accelerated the underlying shift from offline to online, pleasingly we continue to see strong growth even when comparing against Covid impacted numbers,” CEO Mark Coulter said in the statement to the ASX.
“While the start of FY22 has been difficult for many Australians, we remain focused on delivering a great experience for our customers, built around the biggest and best range of furniture and homewares, combined with inspirational content and services and a great delivery experience and customer service.”
The company said it was cash flow positive during the year and ended with a cash pile of $97.5 million.
