1 November 2023
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ASOS plc
Global Online Fashion Destination
Final results for the period to 3 September 2023
Turnaround on-track, delivering on “Driving Change” objectives and readying for a profitable return to growth in FY25
Summary financial results
£m1 | Period to 3 Sep 2023 (FY23) | Year ended 31 Aug 2022 (FY22) | Change | CCY change (adjusted, LfL)2,3,4 |
Headline measures | ||||
Adjusted group revenue5 | 3,538.0 | 3,936.5 | (11%) | |
Adjusted gross margin5 | 44.2% | 43.6% | 60bps | |
Adjusted EBITDA5 | 124.5 | 183.9 | (59.4) | |
Adjusted EBIT5 | (29.0) | 44.1 | (73.1) | |
Adjusted EBIT margin5 | (0.8%) | 1.1% | (190bps) | |
Adjusted (loss)/profit before tax5 | (70.3) | 22.0 | (92.3) | |
Net debt5 | (319.5) | (152.9) | (166.6) | |
Free cash outflow5,6 | (213.0) | (339.8) | 126.8 | |
Statutory measures | ||||
Group revenue | 3,549.5 | 3,936.5 | (10%) | |
Gross margin | 41.1% | 43.6% | (250bps) | |
Operating Loss | (248.5) | (9.8) | (238.7) | |
Loss before tax | (296.7) | (31.9) | (264.8) |
Strategic update and results summary
- FY23 in-line with guidance provided in our P4 trading update, with H2 adjusted EBIT up more than 100% year-on-year (‘YoY’) and FY23 free cashflow6 up more than £125m YoY despite double-digit revenue decline, reflecting material improvements to core profitability and strong inventory management.
- Executed on Driving Change agenda priorities: reduced stock levels by c.30%, increased profit per order7 by over 30%, refinanced the balance sheet bringing stability with the removal of profit-based covenants, and refreshed the leadership team to bring new energy and expertise.
- Significant operational progress: 84% of the c.£1.1bn stock carried forward cleared through in the year, stock operating under the new commercial model in H2 delivered stronger sell-through, Test & React pilot for high-fashion product produced c.500 options with lead times of c.two weeks, Partner Fulfils scaled to 33 brands across six markets, and technology now in place to accelerate the rollout and provide ASOS Fulfilment Services on Direct to Consumer product.
- With strong foundations in place, FY24 will prioritise a shift ‘Back to Fashion’, leveraging ASOS’ strengths to offer the best and most relevant product, styled the ASOS way, with an exciting and seamless customer experience geared around fashion and excitement. This will be supported by £30m incremental investment into marketing while maintaining an obsession with operational excellence and disciplined capital allocation.
- Final cleansing of stock over FY24 will remain a drag on sales growth and profitability through the year. Expect to exit FY24 with majority of stock operating on the new commercial model and inventory restored to pre-COVID levels, Test & React scaled to over 10% of own brand, and 200% growth in Partner Fulfils.
- Anticipate sales decline of 5% to 15% in FY24, with positive adjusted EBITDA and material cash generation driven by stock sell-through, further reducing net debt. In FY25, we expect to return to growth with EBITDA margin around pre-COVID levels.
José Antonio Ramos Calamonte, Chief Executive Officer said:
“FY23 was a year of good progress for ASOS in a very challenging environment and I am proud of what the business has achieved. We have reduced our stock balance by c.30%, significantly improved the core profitability of the business, strengthened our balance sheet, and refreshed our leadership team. Encouragingly, stock that was brought in under our new commercial model over the summer months has performed strongly and this gives us the confidence to accelerate the rollout of our new processes. As such, we are taking decisive action in FY24 to clear stock brought in under our old model while substantially improving our speed to market and investing in our brand, reminding our customers what we’re really about: fashion.”
CEO Review
Where were we a year ago?
In my first CEO review 12 months ago, I explained that we had more stock than we’d like, which had eroded our profitability and destabilised our balance sheet; and that some of our customers, brands or activities were simply unprofitable. While external factors had amplified the situation, our focus on growth without due consideration for the cost had contributed significantly and our high level of stock was exacerbated by poor operating practices – we were too slow and inefficient. We launched our Driving Change agenda, framed internally as a two-step plan. Firstly ‘Back to Basics’, which involved reducing our stock levels, transitioning to a new commercial model; improving profitability; refreshing our leadership team with the energy and talent required to turn things around; and refinancing our balance sheet. This first stage was ultimately about bringing stability and laying solid foundations. Our next step, ‘Back to Fashion’, is focused on regaining the hearts and minds of our target consumer, accelerating towards our new commercial model, and retaining a disciplined approach to profitability and cash generation.
What have we achieved over the last 12 months?
In FY23 we have refinanced our balance sheet and removed profit-based covenants, providing the flexibility to take the right decisions in the long-term interests of the business, and also returned to cash generation in the second half of the year. Operationally, we comprehensively re-defined our commercial model to align with best-in-class fashion principles: focusing on speed and flexibility of intake with better planning; incentivising sell-through in-season; and clearing stock as-we-go to maintain a healthier stock profile.
We have begun to embed an intense focus on speed and operational excellence throughout our organisation and successfully piloted our best-in-class Test & React model for our highest fashion product, which moves from design to site within two weeks. To increase speed and flexibility with our partner brands, we invested in new technology infrastructure that will enable the rollout of ASOS Fulfilment Services (‘AFS’) to support our stockless Direct to Consumer (‘DTC’) model, Partner Fulfils. We empowered a Central Merchandise Planning team with greater control and oversight over forecasting and managing our stock. We sold through 84% of the £1.1bn of inventory brought forward from FY22 (£130m or 13ppt of which was through the write-off of our oldest stock), reduced intake levels to better align with demand, began to operate Spring Summer (‘SS’) intake on the new commercial model, and ended the year with a cleaner stock position and c.30% less stock (ahead of our c.20% guidance).
As part of the profit focus under our Driving Change agenda, we delivered the c.£300m of profit improvement and cost saving measures designed to mitigate the inflationary and returns rate headwinds and improve core order profitability by over 30%, by exiting or correcting unprofitable brands, customers, and activities. The cost savings are particularly evident in our outbound supply chain with distribution costs as a percentage of sales improving by 120bps due to measures including the discontinuation of UK split orders and favourable negotiations with carriers. We did this while bedding in a new leadership team committed to establishing a culture of operational excellence.
Our progress has been the result of a huge effort by ASOSers, a transformation of our mindset, and a resilience to keep pushing when our results aren’t yet reflective of our actions. While some of these initiatives inevitably led to lower customer acquisition and higher levels of churn, the customers that remain are more profitable and therefore sustainable.
Where are we going?
ASOS has over 23m active customers globally, c.£3.5bn in revenues, and a highly successful collection of own brands operating at scale. We have an enviably strong position from which to build our future. We have churned unprofitable brands, activities, and customers, many of the latter picked up over the pandemic, but we remain c.30% bigger than FY19, with c.4m additional active customers. In FY24 we will accelerate our plans to transition to our new commercial model, prioritising near-term cash generation and the long-term interests of the business over short-term revenue growth and profitability. The benefits of our new model will become clearly visible in our profitability and growth in FY25 and beyond.
While fashion has always been a fiercely competitive industry, I am very clear on what makes ASOS unique and why we have the right to win market share with a profitable and cash generative model. ASOS is structurally set up to win again by putting speed at the heart of its culture and operations. By obsessively focusing on cultivating our strengths, we can offer an exciting proposition to consumers while also generating attractive returns for our shareholders. This stems from five strategic priorities:
1. Best & most relevant product
We must offer our customers the best assortment – the most exciting fashion from the most relevant brands for fashion-loving 20-somethings, perfectly blended with a set of our own unique brands that can only be found at ASOS. Our own brands are already a key differentiator, with more than two-thirds of our global customer base having purchased an own brand item in the last twelve months, and they are a great customer acquisition tool, with 55% of new customer orders containing an own brand product. The combination of exclusive and relevant own brands with the curation of the most exciting and additive product from partner brands is our critical competitive advantage. This is where we must strive for leadership, invest our energy, and focus our innovation. As a pure-play online retailer, without the volume demands of stocking a global store estate, we can move faster with less risk, but we have not been maximising this competitive advantage. We will move faster in everything we do, work more closely with our brand partners, and obsess over bringing the most relevant fashion product to consumers.
2. Destination for style
ASOS is the only place where brands can show their potential in a perfectly blended fashion context, and the only place where consumers can experience their favourite brands with our differentiated visual language, creating an inspirational, rather than transactional, customer experience. This is a core competitive advantage and where we must continue to differentiate. Our in-house studio shoots all our product, creating a distinct visual identity. This not only drives better engagement with our customers but is critical to our relationships with brand partners, who see a huge opportunity to reach a different customer segment than is often their core. This approach is not new: it has always been a core part of the ASOS proposition. But we will make improvements to our customer experience to translate this critical differentiator more directly into economic benefits.
3. A customer journey created around fashion and excitement
Our target market is fashion-loving 20-somethings. This tightly-defined market segment means we can authentically offer our customers an exciting, engaging, and relevant fashion experience, connecting with them at the earliest stage of their fashion journey and providing inspiration, not just a transaction. Their fashion journey does not begin with performance marketing and promotions - by relying on these activities to drive sales, we can miss the key stages in a customer’s journey and risk losing them to peers. Our ability to inspire is a significant competitive advantage, but we must bring that to life for our customers however we engage with them. As we improve our product and double-down on our unique style, we must reignite our brand heat and remind consumers we are first and foremost about fashion, not convenience or discounting. It is our ambition to restore our share of voice and show up at every stage in the customer journey – from discovery to purchase through to loyalty and advocacy. We will build stronger relationships with our best customers and turn them into advocates for our brand.
4. Competitive convenience
Convenience remains a key reason to shop online and we do not overlook its role in our future growth, but we will not look to convenience as a core differentiator. We must always offer a seamless experience, easy to shop, with a competitive delivery proposition, returns policy, and methods of payment. We keep ourselves at the level of our best competitors in this area and will be a fast follower of innovation. We made changes to our proposition over the last year to reflect this, yet we continue to offer delivery within two days to 95% of our customers globally. We also go beyond many peers in our commitment to free returns in core geographies. In some geographies, we have recently introduced paid returns after 14 days, encouraging quicker returns and increasing the likelihood of the product being resold at full price, thus aligning the incentives of our customers with our own interests. We will constantly reassess whether we are investing into the areas that matter most to our customers.
5. Disciplined capital allocation
Our unique value proposition has a flywheel effect on our financials, supporting higher average basket value, stronger full price sell-through, lower returns rates, reduced churn, and faster stock turn, ultimately improving our profitability and cash generation and providing the resources to drive our growth. This is underpinned by operational excellence and efficient capital allocation, allowing us to invest behind our strengths in a disciplined way, relentlessly removing waste to invest into opportunity. We remain committed to our international model, with every region making a positive variable profit contribution in FY23, and we see long-term growth potential in all our core markets. Our core markets (UK, Germany, France, US), are already – or have the potential to be – large and profitable. Accordingly, we will invest our resources significantly into these markets, with dedicated marketing, localised assortment and a best-in-class convenience proposition supported by local infrastructure (i.e., distribution centres). Outside of our core markets, we will typically use central marketing and assortment, leverage adjacent infrastructure, and consider wholesale of our own brand to build brand awareness and supplement our scale. We will constantly reassess the classification of our markets and adapt our approach where necessary to maximise the return on our investment over the mid-term.
Priorities for the year ahead
In FY24 we will focus on delivering three things to develop our competitive advantage:
1. More relevant product through disciplined stock management and an obsession with speed
Managing our stock to optimise value creation
We have significantly intensified our focus on stock management as a critical enabler of our plan to bring the newest and most compelling assortment to our customers. Optimising our stock position and fully transitioning to our new commercial model requires three elements:
(i) Eliminating old stock, turning it into cash:
From FY18 to FY22, our stock levels doubled and so too did our discounts, significantly eroding our gross margin and with it our profitability. While external factors amplified the situation, our stock build-up really was driven by poor operating practices – we were too slow and inefficient and held stock for too long, believing we had limitless “shelf space” and in the knowledge that we could eventually sell the stock profitably. We have made good progress over the last 12 months, clearing 84% of the £1.1bn of stock carried forward into the year, £130m of which was through a write-off of our oldest stock and clearance off-site. We reduced total inventory by 30%, ahead of the c.20% guided at the beginning of the year. But we must finish the job over the course of the coming months. Over FY24, we will clear the remaining c.16% of FY22 stock left over, together with that carried forward from FY23. Our remaining FY23 stock relates predominantly to the Autumn Winter (‘AW’) season, for which intake was ordered under our old commercial model.
(ii) A more disciplined, flexible stock purchasing model:
We must also increase the accuracy and flexibility of our purchasing to improve the quality of available product and reduce older stock carried forward in the future. We have put in place more rigorous planning of stock purchasing, with oversight from a central merchandising team, and we are significantly increasing our speed to market and the flexibility of our intake. By reducing the time from design to site, we have better data to support our purchasing decisions. For our highest fashion product developed under our Test & React model, we can test the demand for a product before committing in significant depth. For our partner brands, we are rolling out Partner Fulfils and AFS alongside our wholesale model to increase flexibility for both parties and maximise the availability of the most exciting product while balancing inventory risk. Given the more than 6-month average lead time on product, orders for AW22 were placed before the rollout of our new strategy and as such, intake remained high over H1 FY23. We were able to adapt intake for SS23 but mainly by reducing width, not depth, which negatively impacted sales over H2 FY23. As we move through FY24 we will benefit from cleaner intake with reduced depth, more accurately reflecting expected stock turn under our new commercial model. Through FY25 we will increasingly benefit from our improving speed and flexibility.
(iii) In-season stock management:
Under our new commercial model, we manage our high-fashion stock in-season, to guarantee that we reach the end of the season with the minimum level of stock unsold, and hence our future operations will not be “polluted” with old stock. This releases cash to invest in new stock, removes detractors from the site, and creates space for newness. This is supported by: improvements to our sourcing, enabling investment into the price and quality of our product; our more disciplined and flexible purchasing (above); and increased fashion-led marketing to drive the right traffic to our site. We will tackle non-performing stock immediately, which leads to a better realised price as discounting closer to the season requires shallower markdown. Ultimately, we focus on new, in-season, full-price product and underscore our value as a reliable source of fashion. This benefits both customers and the partner brands on our platform, creating a virtuous cycle of better relationships with more relevant brands and access to better product. That is precisely what we started to do in SS23. The average age of stock in our October mid-season sale is just 13 weeks, compared to 44 weeks in FY22. This reflects both our progress on clearing through older stock in the last twelve months, as well as our new approach of clearing high-fashion stock close to the end of the season, thus reducing the amount of product carried forward to SS24.
Obsession with speed
Our obsession with speed is key to unlocking more relevant product across both our own brands and our partner brands. Through our very successful pilot, we have now launched c.500 Test & React options going from design to site in around two weeks. To date, we have seen this stock turning three times quicker than our business-as-usual own brand product despite engaging in no promotional activity, while generating a gross margin several percentage points higher than our own brand average. Promisingly, the Test & React options launched to date are resonating particularly strongly with our youngest customers and getting substantial organic influencer pick-up on social media. At present, Test & React makes up less than 1% of own brand sales but scaling this up to over 10% of own brand by the end of FY24 and c.30% in the medium term will bring more exciting product, have a meaningful impact on our gross margin, and support a cleaner stock profile.
Test & React vs. BAU | |
Average cover | c.6 weeks shorter |
Average discount depth | 15ppts shallower |
Gross basket value | >£50 higher |
Average customer age | 2.5 years younger |
Our refreshed commercial leadership team will also bring new ways of working with our brand partners, further strengthening relationships with strategic brands, collaborating on product and marketing campaigns, sharing data and insights, and strengthening our back-end processes to accelerate on-boarding of new product and new brands. Our flexible fulfilment model, encompassing Partner Fulfils and AFS, is an important tool, giving access to both additional product and better availability from highly relevant brands. Over the course of FY23, we have scaled our Partner Fulfils offer to 33 brands in six markets and invested in our technology and team to support twice the number of brands in double the number of markets in FY24 as well as launching AFS.
Better sourcing
We will also offer better, more relevant product by improving our sourcing. Simply by sourcing from the right locations, simplifying our processes, and consolidating our supplier base we see a 2 to 3ppt intake margin opportunity over the mid-term, which brings benefits not just in terms of own brand pricing, but also quality, speed, and corporate responsibility standards in our supply chain. In H2 FY23 we have already achieved a c.2 ppt YoY increase in intake margin on ASOS Design Womenswear, where our changes are furthest progressed. This has enabled investment into lower prices, ensuring our own-brand product is competitive both in terms of price and quality.
2. Strengthen our relationship with consumers
ASOS pioneered the use of cultural marketing, content marketing and organic social media to build engagement and relevance with young fashion lovers. In recent years, exacerbated by our stock build-up, ASOS customer experience and engagement has too often centred around discounting or convenience, not fashion and brand storytelling. Over time, ASOS has become overly focused on promotion and performance marketing and we must re-focus on building higher quality customer engagement centred around fashion inspiration and excitement. Customers will love ASOS because we have the best and most relevant product, because we are a destination for style, because we offer a customer experience geared around fashion and excitement and, but not only, because of the convenience of our offer. We must bring that to life in our communication, in our products, and in all our experiences. We will do this by re-igniting our brand, growing appeal amongst our target audience by being present with our fashion message in the earlier stages of the customer journey, and by focusing every interaction with our customers on fashion.
In FY24, we will invest a greater proportion of our marketing budget into re-igniting our brand, making ASOS famous for fashion again. This will include a £30m incremental investment focusing on the UK market. We will iterate our plans throughout the year as we understand what resonates most with our target customer. Starting in November, we will:
i) Launch a UK brand marketing campaign, “ASOS Your Way,” giving the consumer a richer sense of what ASOS stands for, collaborating with crowd-sourced creators, with 40 million impressions within 12 days.
ii) Run experiential guerrilla marketing activities on a regular pulse including the launch of a London pop-up in November.
iii) Build an always-on influencer programme spanning micro to mega influencers with a combined reach of over 50 million, with the aim of increasing our earned media value (the equivalent value of media a brand receives from creators without paying).
iv) Develop ambassador relationships, working with those ambassadors and collaborators who will authentically strengthen our credentials as a destination for style.
v) Significantly enhance our social media presence.
The benefits of brand marketing are lagging. Within 3-6 months we expect to see greater share of voice on social and increased brand search and over H2, we will start to see increased visits, improved conversion, new active customers, greater order frequency, and a halo effect of stronger returns on performance marketing.
In FY23, customer churn has increased, in part due to actions we have taken to improve the core profitability of the business, including changes designed to improve the behaviours of some of our least profitable customers. Overall, these changes have been successful: profit per order increased by approximately one-third. In some cases, these changes have resulted in us losing very unprofitable customers whose behaviours we are unable to improve, which is an accepted part of the strategy. However, some of our country-level profitability initiatives will have inadvertently caused us to churn higher quality, or ‘not-yet-profitable’ customers, and our approach in FY24 and beyond must be to better connect with our most fashion-engaged customers, thus improving retention.
Our retention strategy includes elements such as improved customer experience, customer care, and personalisation of customer communications. Premier is also a critical tool for improving the customer experience of our most loyal and most valuable customers, driving an increase in UK average customer value of c.75% compared to the rest of our base. At present, our Premier offer is focused on an enhanced delivery proposition, but there is a significant opportunity to enrich our offer, driving lifetime value and preventing early churn amongst our highest quality customers. We will reinvigorate Premier to increase its appeal based on fashion rather than just convenience, including for example exclusive access to events (including the upcoming London pop-up), early access to promotions, and free gifts including Face & Body samples.
3. We will reduce our costs to serve, remove waste and improve our use of data
While we begin to look again towards growth, we will retain our focus on operational excellence, simplifying all our processes and removing wasted time and cost to reinvest into productive commercial activities. One aspect of this is better prioritisation, ensuring we are allocating resource to projects that will generate a return. As such this FY24 priority is as much about saying ‘no’ as it is improving the way we operate.
Under our new commercial model, we will operate with less stock going forward. Having already reduced stock levels by c.30% over the last 12 months, we have a further c.16% reduction planned for FY24. In this context, post the year-end, we have reviewed our capacity requirements and started a process to mothball our second UK fulfilment centre in Lichfield in late FY24 following the completion of our automation work. The decision to open and automate Lichfield was taken in 2019 without the ability to break the contract. Mothballing the site provides an annual cost saving of c.£20m and provides the flexibility to either sell the facility or re-open it, depending on our capacity needs (see note 17 for further details).
A key focus area for waste in FY24 is returns. While we continue to believe that free returns are a core part of our customer proposition, there are good returns and bad returns. Good returns help acquire new customers, increase basket size, and are an integral part of a profitable customer lifetime. Bad returns are from unprofitable customers, serial returners, or for an unnecessary cause – for example, poor quality or inaccurate sizing. We will constantly strive to eliminate bad returns through: closer scrutiny of returns data to identify high returning products, brands, or materials; corrective action to improve the size, fit, and quality of our products; and AI forecasting to drive better decision-making.
Our culture of operational excellence will be aided by increased access to an improved use of data throughout our organisation and we continue to innovate in this area. We continue to develop our data science and machine learning capabilities which we deploy both across our business areas and to improve the customer experience. In addition, this year we have started to explore how generative AI can support our business – we have early access to Microsoft’s AI and Copilot capabilities. Having already rolled out GitHub Copilot to support software engineering, we will soon be piloting 300 business users with Microsoft 365 Copilot which will support our internal productivity. We are also collaborating with Microsoft on developing use cases for generative AI.
Outlook & guidance
Over FY23, we improved our core profitability, delivering c.£300m of benefits under the Driving Change agenda; made good progress on improving our stock profile; gained confidence in our operational initiatives including our new commercial model, Test & React, and Partner Fulfils; and laid strong foundations for the years ahead.
Our mid-term priorities are leveraging our strengths: to offer the best & most relevant product; be a destination for style; build a customer journey created around fashion and excitement; and offer competitive convenience. These things will drive our economic model, delivering stronger order economics and delivering better customer lifetime value.
In FY25 we expect to deliver revenue growth and return EBITDA margin to around pre-COVID levels (c.6%). In the medium-term we have confidence in our ability to return to double-digit growth; steadily improve gross margin back towards c.50%; maintain EBITDA sustainably ahead of capex, interest, tax, and leases; reduce capex to 3-4% of sales; and deliver inventory of c.100 days.
FY24 is about taking the necessary action to get us to that path. We expect the annualisation of Driving Change agenda profit initiatives to broadly mitigate the impacts of fixed cost deleverage from our expected revenue decline.
However, our priorities of accelerating towards our new commercial model and strengthening our relationship with consumers require investment in the near term. These investments are twofold:
i) Incremental marketing investment of c.£30m (c.1% increase in our operating cost ratio) into re-igniting our brand, making ASOS famous for fashion again.
ii) The discounting of stock carried forward to exit the year with a clean stock position. We may use off-site clearance channels, sacrificing margin to limit cannibalisation.
As such, our expectations for FY24 are:
- Sales decline of 5 to 15%, with P4 FY23 trendscontinuing through the first half of FY24 and a return to growth in the final quarter of FY24.
- Adjusted EBITDA positive.
- Stock back to pre-COVID levels (c.£600m as previously communicated).
- Capex of c.£130m.
- Positive cash generation, reducing our net debt position.
The mothball of our second UK fulfilment centre in Lichfield will result in the remaining £45m automation spend, usually classified as capital expenditure, being recorded as an adjusting item in the FY24 income statement.
ASOS has ended FY23 a smaller but more resilient business and remains one of the leading players in online 20-something fashion. While the market has evolved and our model has adapted accordingly, we mustn’t lose sight of our core purpose. Our strength in the past came from our relentless focus on bringing the most exciting fashion to consumers with a focus on inspiration and style. By doubling down on that winning formula and evolving our culture to place speed at the heart of everything we do, we can win again.
ASOS will next update the market with a post-close H1 trading update in March 2023, followed by a full H1 results update in April 2023.
José Antonio Ramos Calamonte
Chief Executive Officer
Read the rest of the RNS here.
Notes
1 All numbers subject to rounding throughout this document.
2 Constant currency is calculated to take account of hedged rate movements on hedged sales and spot rate movements on unhedged sales.
3 Calculation of metrics, or movements in metrics, on an ex-Russia basis involves the removal of Russia from FY22 performance. This adjustment allows YoY comparisons to be made on a like-for-like basis following the decision to suspend trade in Russia on 2 March 2022. The exception to this is visits, where ASOS has also excluded any visits from Russia in FY23, in addition to FY22.
4 Like-for-like sales are adjusted to remove the benefit of the additional three days of trading in P4 FY23 (1 June to 3 September 2023) vs. P4 FY22 (1 June to 31 August 2022) and the additional three days of trading in FY23 (1 September 2022 to 3 September 2023) vs. FY22 (1 September 2021 to 31 August 2023). The impact of the additional days is c.3% at group level in P4 FY23 and c.1% in FY23.
5 The alternative performance measures used by ASOS are explained and defined and reconciled to statutory measures on page 38-40.
6 Free cash flow is net cash generated from operating activities, less payments to acquire intangible and tangible assets, payment of the principal portion of lease liabilities and net finance expenses.
7 Profit per order is calculated as variable contribution divided by billed orders.
Investor and analyst meeting:
The group will be hosting an in-person presentation for analysts at 9.30am at ASOS HQ, Greater London House, NW1 7FB. A live webcast will also be available, and a recording of the presentation will be uploaded to the ASOS investor relations website afterwards.
To access live please dial +44 330 088 5830 and use Meeting ID: 868 8702 0931and passcode: 474916. A live stream of the event will be available here.
A recording of this webcast will be available on the ASOS Plc investor centre website after the event: https://www.asosplc.com/investor-relations/
For further information:
Investors: | |
Holly Cassell, ASOS Head of Investor Relations | Tel: 020 7756 1000 |
Media: | |
Jonathan Sibun / Will Palfreyman, Teneo | Tel: 020 7353 4200 |
Background note
ASOS is a destination for fashion-loving 20-somethings around the world, with a purpose to give its customers the confidence to be whoever they want to be. Through its app and mobile/desktop web experience, available in nine languages and in over 200 markets, ASOS customers can shop a curated edit of nearly 50,000 products, sourced from nearly 900 global and local third-party brands alongside a mix of fashion-led own brand labels – including ASOS Design, ASOS Edition, ASOS 4505, Collusion, Reclaimed Vintage, Topshop, Topman, and Miss Selfridge. ASOS aims to give all its customers a truly frictionless experience, with an ever-greater number of different payment methods and hundreds of local deliveries and return options, including Next-Day Delivery and Same-Day Delivery, dispatched from state-of-the-art fulfilment centres in the UK, US, and Germany.
Forward looking statements:
This announcement may include statements that are, or may be deemed to be, “forward-looking statements” (including words such as “believe”, “expect”, “estimate”, “intend”, “anticipate” and words of similar meaning). By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty since they relate to future events and circumstances, and actual results may, and often do, differ materially from any forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements in this announcement reflect management’s view with respect to future events as at the date of this announcement. Save as required by applicable law, ASOS plc undertakes no obligation to publicly revise any forward-looking statements in this announcement, whether following any change in its expectations or to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this announcement.
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