Revolution Beauty eyes US expansion despite losses widening
A strong revenue performance was offset by rising costs
Revolution Beauty has revealed plans to expand its presence in the US market, despite seeing its H1 losses widen to £15.2m on the back of rising costs.
The beauty retailer revealed the loss for the six month period ending 31 August came despite group revenues surging 39% to £78.6m.
It said the performance was driven by international store group growth across a number of categories; North America Store Groups +102%; UK Store Groups +78% and ROW Store Groups +56% as stores “rebounded” from Covid-19 related trading restrictions.
The retailer added that adjusted EBITDA also increased by c.39%, compared with the first half of last year, to £5.1m.
During the period it said it managed an “acceleration of growth and brand presence” in North America, which is now the group’s largest geography in stores, representing 26% of sales.
It added that it will look to continue this growth with new partnerships with blue chip retailers, with agreements signed to launch in 2,800 US stores and 350 UK Boots stores in the UK by February of next year.
Adam Minto, chief executive, said: “This is a momentous year for Revolution Beauty. We have continued to focus on accelerating the delivery of our strategy to expand distribution of Revolution Beauty brands around the world. We doubled sales in the US, grew our global community to almost 7 million, and floated on the London Stock Exchange.
“We expanded our global distribution launching our Makeup Revolution Brand into 1,800 US Target stores in H1, increased our direct-to-consumer customer figure by over 200,000 and signed agreements to launch into 2,800 US Stores from Q4, and 350 UK Boots stores from February 2022.”
He added: “Our digital first strategy underpins our success. Our ability to anticipate trends through our social and influencer-led marketing approach, coupled with our speed to market, ensures we are continually innovating ahead of the market. This approach means our DTC digital customer base is growing strongly, while our in-store distribution network grows in our key markets of the US and UK, as more retailers come to us for our market-leading innovations.
“As anticipated at our trading update in October, we continued the strong momentum in the first half into the seasonal peak of beauty in the third quarter, with sales growth across online and in-store, driven by Halloween and the start of Christmas trading. We remain confident of meeting market expectations for the full year, though we continue to be mindful of ongoing volatility and disruption caused by the pandemic.”
He concluded: “The medium and long-term growth drivers and opportunity in mass beauty remain strong, and we are confident in our strategy, the resilience of our business model and our differentiated products as Revolution Beauty continues to win new customers around the world.”
