- Title: Britain's ASOS profit tanks on warehouse woes in U.S., Germany
- Date: 16th October 2019
- Summary: INTERNET (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ASOS WEBSITE
- Embargoed: 30th October 2019 08:46
- Keywords: ASOS online shopping fashion retail warehouses business clothing profit
- Location: INTERNET
- City: INTERNET
- Country: Various
- Topics: Company News Markets,Economic Events
- Reuters ID: LVA001B1CKA6L
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: British online fashion retailer ASOS on Wednesday (October 16) reported a 68% slump in full-year profit, hurt by problems in ramping-up warehouses in the United States and Germany.
ASOS, which issued its latest profit warning in July, said it made a pretax profit of 33.1 million pounds ($42.2 million) in the year to Aug. 31, down from 102 million pounds in 2017-2018. But this was in line with July's guidance of 30 million to 35 million pounds.
Revenue rose 13% to 2.73 billion pounds.
The group is working through a major overhaul of its warehouse and technology capabilities, moving from a UK-focused to a global-centric model so it can better access growth opportunities.
It said in July problems faced while ramping-up warehouses in Atlanta and Berlin had restricted product availability, hitting sales and raising costs.
ASOS said on Wednesday it had made "substantial progress" over the last few months in resolving its operational issues.
ASOS, whose shares have fallen 49% over the last year, said it had made a "solid" start to the 2019-20 year.
Prior to the update, analysts were on average forecasting a pretax profit of 63 million pounds for 2019-20, according to Refinitiv data.
($1 = 0.7836 pounds)
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