Online sales surge boosts Zara owner Inditex
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Loading... - Courtney Trump
- 14 Mar 2021
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A 41% jump in online sales for the owner of Zara helped drive higher sales and profits last year.
Inditex, which also owns brands including Pull & Bear, Bershka and Massimo Dutti, said a tenth of its sales were online in 2017.
It was the first the time Spanish company has broken out figures for online sales.
Like-for-like sales, which excludes new store openings, rose 5%, while net sales were up 9%.
Net profits were 7% higher at €3.37bn on revenues of €25.34bn.
Its 88,000 staff worldwide will share a €562m (£499m) bonus pool.
The 10% figure for online sales is not far behind the 12% for Swedish rival H&M, but is far lower than the 40% for the UK clothing chain Next.
Inditex chief executive Pablo Isla said it had been a year of "solid growth", with recent investment in technology and logistics leaving the company well placed for continued progress.
During the year the company spent €1.8bn, much of which went on further integrating its stores and online businesses in each market.
At the end of the financial year Inditex had 7,475 stores worldwide, a net increase of 183.
It opened its first stores in Belarus and launched Zara online sales in India, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.
Zara's online stores in Australia and New Zealand start trading on Wednesday.
Inditex websites had 2.42 billion visits in 2017 and serviced as many as 249,000 orders an hour.
Shares fell 2.5% in Madrid to €23.65 and are down about a quarter over the past 12 months.
