E-tailer The Hut sees sales and earnings surge

THE HUT Group, the fast-growing Cheshire e-tailer has reported surging first half sales and earning figures.

The Northwich company, which operates 15 branded leisure, lifestyle and entertainment website, said revenue, boosted by acquisitions, in the six months to the end of June had surged 54% to £66.2m.

Ebitda for the group, which counts retail grandees Sir Stuart Rose and former Tesco supremo Sir Terry Leahy among its shareholders, rose from £300,000 to £4m.

Founder and chief executive Matt Moulding said: “The Group is positioned as market leader in a number of differentiated and high growth sectors with significant barriers to entry.

“The combination of our market positioning and constant advances in customer insight through data analytics is driving both customer and revenue growth.”

Margins rose as The Hut moved away from lower-margin categories such as music and books and ended ‘white label’ operations for other retailers. 

Mr Moulding added: “The group’s gross margin progression is very pleasing and now that we have integrated recent acquisitions and are delivering significant operating leverage, the EBITDA progression is a major highlight”.

Chairman Angus Monro added: “Management has successfully integrated two large acquisitions in the past 18 months whilst at the same time delivering substantial organic sales and earnings growth.

“The strong trading performance of the business is testament to the calibre of the management team and the strength of the business model.” 

The Hut said it now has a database of 6.6 million unique customers. In the first half visitors to its websites, which include MyProtein and zavvi, rose from 32 million laast year to 44.1 million.

The group is known to be looking at an Stock Market listing in the medium term, at which point Sir Terry Leahy could take over the role of chairman from former Matalan boss Monro.