The Kogan.com Ltd (ASX: KGN) share price has sunk 8% as the ASX online retail share revealed its FY22 result, which included a big loss.
Kogan is one of the largest e-commerce businesses in Australia, selling a wide array of products like TVs, clothes, sports gear, phones, furniture and so on.
Kogan’s FY22 result
Here are some of the highlights from the report:
- Gross sales increased 0.1% to $1.18 billion
- Gross profit dropped 9.3% to $184.4 million
- Adjusted EBITDA (EBITDA explained) was $18.9 million
- Actual EBITDA was a loss of $21.8 million
- Adjusted net profit after tax (NPAT) was a loss of $2.9 million
- Statutory loss of $35.5 million
- Operating cash inflow of $61.8 million
The company finished with 3.97 million active customers, while Kogan First subscribers went up 209.7% to 372,000. Another highlight was that Kogan Marketplace gross sales grew 20.3% year on year – sellers on the platform increased 49.1% during the year and there “continues to be a strong pipeline of local and international sellers ready to be onboarded.”
Kogan put the difficult EBITDA profit result largely down to elevated operating costs from excess inventory after consumer demand fluctuated.
The bottom line was hurt by unrealised losses on financial instruments, non-cash equity-based compensation, the continued provision for the likely payment of Mighty Ape tranches 3 and 4 and the bitbuy.com domain sale.
Mighty Ape generated gross profit of $39.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $12.3 million.
What is the e-commerce compay going to do about it?
Kogan said it looks forward to returning to positive operating leverage. It has commenced the process of “driving efficiencies in operating costs and product ranges”.
These moves have already helped the business return to an adjusted EBITDA profit in the fourth quarter of FY22.
Kogan’s variable costs, including warehousing and selling costs, reduced 27.6% year on year in the year.
Kogan was pleased with the increasing renewal rate of Kogan First, which was 84.7%, up from 78.2% in FY21. This demonstrated “strong customer satisfaction” with the program. The company is going to increase the price of Kogan First.
Management comments
Kogan founder and CEO Ruslan Kogan talked about what went wrong as it anticipated ongoing growth of demand:
To ensure we could be there for our customers when they needed us most, we increased both our range and volume of inventory, as well as our logistics footprint to match this expected level of growth.
We were wrong. As the true volatility volatility of the situation settled in – caused by stay at home orders and lockdown ambiguity – e-commerce did not continue to grow as anticipated. This led us to holding excess inventory, and an associated increase in variable costs and marketing costs to sell through the inventory…profitability in FY22 was impacted.
…The simple fact is this: More Aussies and Kiwis will be online shoppers tomorrow than today. Millions of customers are discovering the benefits of shopping from the comfort of their homes, and having a huge range of products delivered to their door at great prices.
We’ve right-sized our business, optimised for efficiency, and we’re pleased to see e-commerce adoption start to normalise and return to its steady and continued growth.
Thoughts on FY23 and the Kogan share price
In FY23, Kogan is expecting to launch an advertising platform, grow Mighty Ape, grow its Kogan First membership. It’s aiming for 1 million subscribers over time.
It’s expecting to return to “positive operating leverage” in the year.
In July 2022, it generated total adjusted EBITDA of $1.5 million and operating costs reduced 19.3% year on year after ongoing efficiency improvements.
If Kogan can get back to producing operating leverage and growing the top line, then things should work out, but the difficult economic environment throws up some more uncertainty.
