Kogan Shows It Can Still Grow

Investors got a little excited yesterday after online retailer Kogan reported a solid operating performance in the June half-year.

The company reported gross profit growth of 12% for the June half of the 2018-19 financial year ahead of the release of its financial results next month.

In Tuesday’s update, Kogan revealed it grew active customers 16% for the June 30 year, reporting 1,609,000 shoppers up from 1,388,000 over the same period last year.

Kogan said its gross transaction growth was up over 9% with the June half of 2018, with gross profit growth up 12%.

Kogan claimed operating costs were down 2%.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation rose 25% plus, according to Tuesday’s report.

“In contrast to what has been reported as a tough retail environment, we have been able to grow the business and earnings while investing significantly in the Kogan.com customer experience and enabling our long term strategy,” CEO Ruslan Kogan boasted in yesterday’s statement.

“We have a very exciting pipeline of new business units that will delight our customers in even more ways and bring more competition to some very important industries.

“We will soon be launching Kogan Credit Cards, Kogan Super, and Kogan Mobile New Zealand. We also launched Kogan Cars just before the end of June, and formed a strong partnership to power Kogan Energy which is set to launch before the end of calendar year 2019,” he said.

Kogan said that at June 30 it had no bank debt “cash of $27.5 million and total inventories of $75.7 million (comprised of $67.3 million inventory in warehouse and $8.4 million of inventory in transit).”

The shares jumped more than 6% at the start of the session but eased to end up 4.8% at $5.44 at the close.

About Glenn Dyer

Glenn Dyer has been a finance journalist and TV producer for more than 40 years. He has worked at Maxwell Newton Publications, Queensland Newspapers, AAP, The Australian Financial Review, The Nine Network and Crikey.

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