The Hut Group powers ahead as sales surpass £1bn mark

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 10, 2020

The Hut Group has proved why it’s one of Britain’s fastest-growing private firms, posting soaring sales and profits for the year ended 31 December 2019.

The Manchester-based group owns several beauty and wellness brands such as Espa, Mama Mio and Myprotein but it’s so much more than that. It also operates several multi-brand retailers including Lookfantastic, which is a major player in the the online beauty market, and a proprietary e-commerce technology engine that is quickly expanding.

This combination helped the business grow sales by 24% to £1.1 billion in 2019, after rising by the same amount last year. The beauty division generated nearly half of last year’s revenues (46%), followed by wellbeing (36%) and technology (17%). The latter is poised to take a more central role within the business following significant progress in 2019, including the opening of a fulfilment centre in Poland and a new agreement with Nestlé Health Science to internationally scale its brands. 

During the year, gross profit increased by 22% to £511 million, up from £417 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was up 22% to £111 million.

Matthew Moulding, founder and CEO, said 2019 was a year of “significant progress across the group”, aided by “huge investments” in infrastructure, technology, brands and people.

“THG has continued to develop our end-to-end technology platform, THG Ingenuity, which powers both our own brands and a growing number of major global consumer groups," he said. "We have significantly expanded our global fulfilment capability, broadening our reach to customers in 169 countries. [We have] also made important investments in our THG Experience portfolio, expanding the offering of our influencer platform, bringing over 5,000 influencers currently to both our own and our partner brands.

“Our people are the key to our success, and we have continued to invest in our talented teams. The development of the business campus continues at pace and demonstrates our commitment to investing in our people. THG has an excellent platform for growth with an outstanding portfolio of prestigious brands.”