Wolford improves but makes loss, E. Europe soars, France and UK are tough

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 6, 2017

High-end hosiery and intimates specialist Wolford has gone through some tough times of late but is its performance anywhere near to getting back on track? Well, its half-year results released Wednesday showed that the firm’s business is much more stable than it has been, even if it’s still lossmaking and markets like France and the UK are tough.

For the May to October period, the company saw a total revenues rise of 3.7% to €70.15 million. The rise during Q2 was 3% to reach €41.06 million.

However, the company is certainly progressing online with revenues during the first half up an impressive 33% on the back of successful marketing campaigns.

Wolford’s own retail stores saw a narrow sales rise of 1.9% while wholesale rose too, but only by 1.2%.

The Australian firm’s earnings before interest and taxes (Ebit) improved but stayed in negative territory with the Ebit loss hitting €6.18 million after €7.86 a year ago. The figures were helped by those rising sales but also by lower fixed costs. It even managed a profit on an Ebit basis of €1.04 million for Q2.
 
Overall the firm’s net losses for the half fell to €6.62 million from a loss of €8.07 million a year ago.

So plenty of good news mixed in with the bad. The company highlighted the return to stability, saying that its revenue decline a year ago had been down to “planning mistakes”. It obviously didn’t repeat those mistakes this time because revenue stabilised and improved in most key markets.

The US rose 3.7%, Germany was up 2.8%, Italy rose a strong 8.5%, Austria 8.2%, Spain 7.9%, Belgium 5.6%, Switzerland 5.4% and Scandinavia 2.9%. Meanwhile Eastern Europe powered ahead by 36.6%. 

But there were some losers on the sales front too with France down 2% and the UK down 5.5% as Brexit issues continued to weigh on that market.