AO World has released its interim results for the six months ending on 30th September 2017, with the group experiencing adjusted pre-tax losses of £6.3m compared with the £1.5m profit recorded in the same period last year.
Adjusted pre-tax profit for the UK reached £7.4m, down from the £13.1m reported in H1 2016 due mainly to “increased market expenditure”, the company said, adding that UK growth “continued to be resilient against a backdrop of a weaker macro-economic environment and strong comparables”.
The company said its overall group operating loss reached £12m “following increased UK brand expenditure” and investment in Europe. However, revenue for the group rose by 13.3% to £368m, while UK website sales were up 9.9% to £282.5m.
“We are broadly on track with our plans for the year as a whole – with the positive impact of improving sales growth through the first half of the year combined with the first half biased phasing of our marketing spend – in spite of the challenging UK market conditions,” said AO CEO Steve Caunce.
“As AO continues to become the destination for consumer electronics for more and more people, we will continue to evolve our brand strategy, underpinned by our commitment to make things easy for our customers because we simply care more. While we are mindful of macro-economic factors we remain confident that we are on track with our plans to be the best electrical retailer in Europe.”
Formed in 2001 when the first Appliances Online website went live the business has gone from strength to strength and have been able to carve out a niche for themselves as a customer service orientated retailer of appliances which was so lacking in the industry at the time.
At AO.com you can now order laptops and pc’s in addition to the home appliances and as such the products on offer number in excess of 4000 now and with fitting services, old appliance disposal and more available its no wonder that more and more consumers are shunning the high street when you can get superior customer service via online retailers such as AO.com