Good day, and welcome to the Boohoo webcast and conference call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Lyttle, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our call this morning. I'm joined today by Carol, Neil, and Alistair. Today, we're announcing a very significant transaction for the group, and we're incredibly excited about the opportunities which today's acquisition will bring to the group. It's also a step change in our strategy, which will accelerate our ambition to be the leader in fashion and now beauty e-commerce. I will talk you through our presentation this morning, and then we'll open up the line to Q&A at the end. We'll now move on to the next slide. This morning, we are announcing the acquisition of the Debenhams brands out of administration. We now have extensive experience acquiring and integrating established brand names onto our platform.
As we've done with previous acquisitions, we are just acquiring the brand name and associated IP of Debenhams online business, which includes an extensive customer list. We have an excellent track record of integrating new brands quickly. The administrator will continue to operate the website for the next couple of months while the inventory clears, and then we anticipate moving Debenhams.com onto our platform to go live in just a couple of months. The strategic opportunity from this acquisition is clear. Not only are we materially, materially increasing our target addressable market and entering new product categories like beauty at scale, but the acquisition also presents an incredibly exciting opportunity for us to launch a marketplace which will enable the group to connect with more brands and more customers. Going forward, we will benefit from three new revenue streams via Debenhams.com. Firstly, we will be launching our marketplace.
We will be working with the existing third-party brands who sell through Debenhams.com and looking to attract new brands over time. We will also be selling our own brands through a single platform for the first time in our history. Secondly, we will be entering the beauty market by continuing to operate the current wholesale beauty, makeup, and fragrance business on Debenhams.com. And over time, we will look to grow the brand portfolio here also. Thirdly, we're acquiring a portfolio of brands and trademarks to add to our existing portfolio of nine brands. From a financial perspective, we are paying GBP 55 million in cash for the acquisition. This will be funded from our existing cash reserves, which stood at GBP 387 million on 31st of December, leaving a significant remaining cash balance to support further M&A opportunities as they arise.
Price paid represents a very attractive multiple. The online business generated approximately GBP 400 million of revenues in their last financial year. In terms of guidance, we will be launching the website on our platform in the next financial year, so there is no change to our revenue growth guidance for FY 2021, and we anticipate modest start-up losses over the coming weeks. We are not providing guidance for FY 2022 at this stage and look forward to providing further detail alongside our full year results in early May. We'll now move on to the next slide. I wanted to provide some color around customer shopping behavior to give context of why we are so excited about the opportunity ahead. 2020 was a challenging year in so many ways. Different stages of lockdown meant that shopping online for fashion has accelerated faster than anyone could have anticipated.
Over the 4 months to the 31st of December, we grew 40%, while the online fashion market grew 26%, according to Mintel. This compares to an overall decline in the U.K. apparel market of 15%. Surveys show that 55% of fashion products are now bought online, up from 33% previously. We believe that this shift is permanent. We already are a leader in fashion e-commerce and are well placed to continue to grow share. What we're seeing alongside the shift to online is a shift in customer expectations and preferences. Convenience, speed, and choice are top of customers' priorities. Instead of visiting department stores, they are looking to access brands, beauty, and homeware in a convenient online location, which we are now able to offer to them through Debenhams.com.
Debenhams is a well-known online destination for these shoppers, far surpassing traffic from major department stores and competing with established platforms. The acquisition today means that not only will we continue to grow share through our brand's pure-play websites, but now we're looking to build share and compete with a new segment of the market through beauty and marketplace. We'll now move on to the next slide. On the next three slides, I'll provide some more color about how our new routes to market will work in practice. Today, the group operates nine pure-play websites, which means each brand operates a separate website. They are high-fashion brands with a highly engaged audience, particularly on mobile and social media. We ship to almost every country in the world from two fulfillment centers currently, with our third going live in the next couple of months.
When we relaunch Debenhams.com, the website will move across to our platform. For the first time in our history, we'll be selling our brands from a single site. Debenhams' customers will be introduced to our brands, which will support further market share gains and greater brand awareness. We'll also be running a marketplace for third-party brands, benefiting from Debenhams' extensive list of existing brand relationships. This means that Debenhams.com acts as a shop window for brands to sell their products and tap into its large customer base. Brands will benefit from being able to leverage and brand -- the brand awareness of and traffic to the Debenhams marketplace. The Boohoo Group will take a commission share from the brands who list their products on the site, but it is not responsible for the fulfillment of the order, customer services or subsequent returns.
As such, this is a low-risk way for the group to extend the brands it connects customers with, with minimal capital investment. The opportunity is untapped, and we're ambitious in our plans for where we can take this business. We will be looking to build on our existing brand relationships and working with the experts in this area of retail to attract new brands to the platform, and we'll be exploring its potential for new categories, including sport and homeware. We'll move on to the next slide now. Next, I'll talk about the beauty opportunity. Beauty is a huge market in the U.K., estimated at around GBP 12 billion, and growing online as more customers look to purchase rather than in store.
Over the last few years, we've started selling some third-party and own brand beauty products through our websites, and we've been talking for some time about wanting to develop our product offering in this exciting growth area. The acquisition of Debenhams provides a fantastic opportunity to tap into this market at scale. Debenhams is a leading player in the U.K. market, coming second in market share in prestige beauty, number one in makeup, and second in skincare. We plan to continue the current wholesale business, meaning we have access to 6 million shoppers who have shopped beauty with Debenhams previously. Members of the current beauty team will be coming across to join the group to support our growth and brand relationships in this area.
We will also be looking to relaunch the Beauty Club, which was a loyalty scheme with 1.4 million members and a strong presence on some social media channels. These shoppers shop with a great frequency and have substantially higher AOVs, and so again, provide a great opportunity for the group to tap into growth in this area. We'll move on to the next slide now. Lastly, as well as entering the beauty market and launching our marketplace, there are multiple opportunities to accelerate the group's revenue growth. For GBP 55 million, we have acquired a top 10 U.K. retail website, which has around 300 million visitors each year and significant brand awareness of 90%.
While our initial focus is on a U.K. customer base, across the group, just under half of our revenue is generated internationally, so there is opportunity to launch the marketplace in our focus international markets over time. We have unlocked new routes to market for our existing brands and have extended our existing brand portfolio by adding Debenhams labels into our portfolio. These include Maine, Principles, Mantaray, and Faith, among other brands and trademarks. We'll be selling these through the website and have the option to launch their own pure-play sites, too. So just on to the next slide. So to summarize, today's acquisition is strategically significant as it represents a huge step which accelerates our ambition to be a leader, not just in fashion e-commerce, but in new e-commerce markets, including beauty, sport, and homeware.
Through launching our marketplace, the opportunity to introduce brands to a large customer base is unlimited. And as we continue to grow and build awareness of our own portfolio of brands, we will grow our customer base. We expect Debenhams to remain a leader in fashion and beauty, and under our ownership, we are incredibly excited about its future potential. So thanks for listening, and now we'll open up the line for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, press star one to ask a question. We will take our first question from Aneesha Sherman with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, and congratulations on the deal. I have two quick ones, please. First is, will you be inheriting any of the existing third-party Debenhams brand relationships, or will you be starting from scratch in building this platform? And the second question is, will your beauty offering be wholesale only, or do you plan to also launch private label beauty products? Thank you.
So in terms, I'll take that. In terms of the third-party relationships, we'll be looking to work with the existing third-party partners who are working with Debenhams.com, and obviously, we'll be starting those conversations this week and looking at our relaunch date, late spring, early summer as a target date with those third parties. In terms of beauty, we'll be the current beauty business is wholesale, but we'll be looking to expand the beauty business to other third-party brands. Some may be wholesale, some may be more of a marketplace, but equally, we'll be looking to develop the in-house Debenhams and sub-brands in terms of beauty. So, the existing, but lots of further development in the beauty, and we're quite excited about that.
... Okay, thank you.
I will now take the next question from John Stevenson with Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Morning all. Just two or three questions from me, if I can squeeze them in, please. First one, just in terms of management bandwidth, I mean, obviously, this is quite a sizable project. In what way does the management team need to sort of expand or change in terms of controlling the Debenhams acquisition as you move forward? Second question, just in terms of beauty brands, I mean, you mentioned about the onboarding process, I think, on clothing. Are the beauty brands sort of committed to the new ownership already, or is this a process you're gonna go through over the coming weeks? And just maybe an understanding of which are the biggest beauty brands in the Debenhams beauty business.
And finally, just, I don't know if you've got any thoughts on which of the clothing brands might go standalone. I guess that would require a significantly bigger SKU count than they sort of deliver at the moment.
So from the management bandwidth, you know, we've demonstrated in the last 18 months the acquisition and integration of Karen Millen, Coast, Oasis, and Warehouse. Equally, you know, if you look at the last number of years, we've grown as a business. So, you know, just at the end of that first year of the IPO, just GBP 110 million turnover, and in terms of where consensus has us for this financial year, you know, clearly, sort of almost 16 times that size. So as we've been going on this journey over the last few years, we've continued to add management bandwidth. And we'll continue to do so over the next 12 months, where we're happy in terms of our internal ability to relaunch Debenhams.com.
But clearly, we will be recruiting teams to assist us, for example, beauty and the Debenhams brand. So that will all be happening in the immediate future. In terms of the beauty brands, you know, I've demonstrated Debenhams is a major player in the U.K. beauty market, occupying sort of top three places in several categories. While we'll be having those conversations with those partners to come on board, based on the position that Debenhams holds, we see those conversations will go quite positively. With regards to, you know, what are the top beauty brands that Debenhams are stocking? It's all the usual premium brands, is what I would say.
You know, kind of in terms of anybody who's familiar with Debenhams. So some of those brands we currently work with across some of our brands, and obviously we'll be entering into a much bigger beauty business now as we go forward.
Okay, great. Thank you, John. And just on the standalone point, any thoughts for initial launch of some of the brands by Principles as a standalone website?
Yeah, listen, we have that in our strategy. Clearly, what we want to do initially is get the marketplace launched. So all our focus at this point will go on relaunching the marketplace, as I said, late spring, early summer. But we do believe there is opportunity for standalone sites, for example, you know, some of the key brands, Faith, for example, Faith shoes as good. Principles, you mentioned, Maine is a really good, strong brand, as is Mantaray. So, but first step is the marketplace.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you.
We'll now take the next question from David Holmes with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, guys. So just a quick question. Obviously, this business is different to what you've done historically. I know there's gonna be start-up losses, and there'll be a ramp-up period, but do you see this changing the margin profile of the group in the long term? That's my first question. Second one is just on fulfillment and distribution. I know you mentioned that on the marketplace, that's not your responsibility, but within beauty, where do you expect fulfillment and distribution centers to lie here?
Sure. If I take the fulfillment, and then I'll hand over to Neil for the margin. So in terms of the fulfillment for the... let's call it, the wholesale side of the business, we spoke last week about a third site to help us with capacity in Wellingborough. And that'll be coming on stream in the next couple of months. But actually, the wholesale side of Debenhams, we will fulfill from our Burnley warehouse site.
And then, hi, it's Neil here. On the margin profile, we don't expect this to change our margin profile going forward. Initially, obviously, it's gonna be a small part of the business, as we build it up, but when we get to more scale with this business, I think the key things here are, one, the marketplace model can deliver the same type of EBITDA margins that we currently do deliver as a group. But we're probably a way off that, but in the meantime, it won't be as proportionately a part of the business to dilute our overall margins materially. But what we will do is be very clear about how that margin profile impacts the overall.
But as you can see, it's gonna be a small part of the business initially, so it shouldn't change it much.
... Thanks a lot.
We'll now take our next question from Georgina Johanan with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me, please. The first one was, you've obviously given some detail about the, well, or implied detail on sort of Debenhams' market share and so on. Is it possible just to share what their market share was in beauty online over the last year, please? That's my first one. And then my second question was just a reminder, really. In terms of Debenhams' relationships with the beauty brands, was that for U.K. distribution only? So at the moment, should we think about this as very much being like a U.K. opportunity in beauty, or actually, are you thinking that quite quickly you could scale that beauty opportunity up into other markets, please?
So on the market share, I think the best indication that we can give was that online market share of prestige beauty was about 15%-20% for Debenhams. That's based on the information that we looked at as part of the acquisition. I suppose on the other one, John may add a bit more, but it is predominantly a U.K. opportunity now, but potential to be international later.
Yeah, I mean, for sure, Debenhams today is U.K., but I think that's where we can bring Boohoo Group and our experience. So if you look at us as our business, we're pretty much 50% U.K. and 50% overseas, so we see that as an opportunity in the future. But step one is to kind of consolidate and launch our marketplace in the U.K.
Thank you.
We will now take the next question from Geoff Ruddell with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everybody. So just one quick question, really, which is that, you know, if you do find yourself with management bandwidth issues, because obviously you've got a lot to do still with your supply chain as well, which will you give greater priority to, the marketplace or the beauty business, please?
I think we, you know, we wouldn't be stepping into this morning without a very confident view that we can launch our marketplace with this beauty business. So we're very confident when acquiring Debenhams late spring, early summer, we will be soft launching Debenhams.com again as a marketplace and with the beauty business.
And which do you see as the bigger opportunity?
We see both actually. Obviously, you know, marketplace, we think is a huge opportunity, but equally, beauty for us is another opportunity. You know, we talked about GBP 12 billion beauty market in the U.K., marketplace takes us into a completely different place. So we see both opportunities as really big steps for us as a business and strategically opportunistic.
Okay, thanks so much.
We will now take our next question from Greg Lawless with Shore Capital. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just then, you talked a little bit about people coming across from Debenhams, in terms of beefing up some of the teams in the new verticals you're in. How many people are coming across? Just on the beauty brands, I think I've read somewhere this morning that Estée Lauder have walked away from Debenhams.com. Just wanted to understand that and, kind of, you know, what are the, what are your relationships with the big brands like Clinique and Chanel, et cetera, please?
So we're just working through the numbers at the moment in terms of people who are currently in Debenhams, and who will be joining us. I mean, clearly the beauty is a big one for us in terms of the relationships and the experience there. So we don't have definitive numbers at this point, but we've been having good conversations, is what I would say. In terms of the Estée Lauder, I think that was really around the concessions in stores, in terms of where they had announced about the closure of those ones, but still available online.
Just to confirm, Estée Lauder is still available online to you, yeah?
When the stock is available. So the way Debenhams have been working with that is on a wholesale model, so buying stock on a weekly basis.
There's more of a Debenhams, sorry, John, to get into the weeds. It's more of a Debenhams issue than, what, a future relationship issue, is what I was trying to get to.
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think basically, look, I think, I think Estée Lauder could see that, look, the store's future wasn't looking very strong. So I think it's the concessions, and I think what they announced was around the 600 jobs, that that would be lost in that basis, because obviously they wouldn't be running it in the stores anymore.
Thanks for clarifying. Good luck.
Yeah, no problem. Thank you.
I will now take our next question from Anne Critchlow with Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Two questions from me, please. The first one, what percentage of the GBP 400 million of Debenhams' online sales were related to click-and-collect through Debenhams stores historically, please? And then the second question, could you just remind us of the capacity of the Wellingborough warehouse in terms of GBP millions of net sales, or where you think you'll get to on that fairly shortly? Thank you.
So we hi, Anne, we believe that it was 20%-25% click-and-collect sales of online in the previous business. And the Wellingborough warehouse, we've not said how much capacity it's got in terms of click-and-collect in terms of net sales. But it's got now 5 million units capacity, and we can expand that significantly, double that. And so plenty of capacity there to across our distribution network with Burnley and Sheffield and Wellingborough, we've got plenty of capacity to house these operations where we are involved in the fulfillment.
Thank you.
Just as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, press star one. We will now take our next question from Charlie Muir-Sands with Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, guys. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first is, can you clarify what your intentions are with respect to supply base? And whether you anticipate having sufficient capacity if you are gonna be shifting the Debenhams private labels over to your supply chain and your historic suppliers, particularly in the context, obviously, of the rationalization you're currently undertaking as well, whether you see having any bottlenecks with respect to getting new product in under those new labels? And then the second question relates to the marketplace. Can you first of all clarify, was Debenhams running this asset-light model itself with respect to customer service and fulfillment, or...
And also expanding on that, a lot of other kind of companies that have gone down that sort of hybrid marketplace model have quickly come to realize that actually, in order to get the economics to work for all parties involved, and indeed, you know, to maintain a high level and consistent level of customer experience and satisfaction, that actually you do need to run the supply chain and the customer services. So if you're not gonna do that initially, how do you ensure that those marketplace partners, you know, maintain a consistent customer experience?
Do you, do you want to talk about the supply chain?
Yes, I'll take the supply chain one first. So in terms of the supply chain, we'll be looking to work with the existing Debenhams supply base. But equally, we'll be looking to plug the Debenhams brands also into our Karen Millen, Coast, Oasis, and Warehouse supply chain, which is obviously very different from the young fashion brands. So we'll hopefully engage with some of the current suppliers, and then we'll use some of our suppliers across our premium brands for Debenhams.
Then on the marketplace model, absolutely, we've got to make sure that this model works through the supply chain with all the brands. And ultimately, that will get down to our ability on the platform to be able to grow those brands, et cetera. Don't forget here that a lot of the brands that we'll be launching will be our own brands, effectively, as a marketplace model, so it'll be a window to the extensive product ranges of those brands. And therefore, this will give us the ability to handle that customer journey and the customer service side of things seamlessly across that. And we'll be able to use that model as well to work with other brands to make it as efficient as possible.
So, a nd then it gets down to how much the commissions that the marketplace is taking successful business model, and we'll be in a great position to be able to do that.
Great. Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Alvira Rao with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just a couple from me. First of all, on the marketplace side, how do you guys think about controlling the customer experience in terms of delivery, returns, things like that? Second, also on the marketplace side, can you walk us through a little bit, you know, in basic terms around the unit economics? You know, what is the typical commission rates? How does this drop through to EBITDA, et cetera?
On the delivery return side, the principle is that the brands will be taking care of all fulfillment in terms of delivery and returns. And it's a similar type of thing to what you would see on Amazon, on Zalando, et cetera, so very similar model to that. On the unit economics, et cetera, I'm not gonna go into that right now. The way Debenhams recognized revenue was they recognized revenue at the gross level, so all of those GBP 400 million gross sales stats are both, those are net revenues, but they're fairly close to the GMV numbers. But as we establish our own relationships, we'll be able to give a bit more color on the unit economics.
And then, of course, what we'll be reporting going forward are numbers at the group level on this, so that if we're selling our own brand, any commission would just be an internal thing that you wouldn't see in the external side of the numbers. So more information on the unit economics will come later.
Thanks.
We will now take the next question from Paul Rossington with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning, can you hear me?
... There's quite a lot of in-interference, Paul.
Sorry, is that better? Can you hear me now? Sorry.
Just about.
All right. Quick question, quick question. Would you expect the marketplace to cannibalize existing own brand website sales? Thank you.
We wouldn't expect it to cannibalize our existing own brand web website sales. And more, it's an extension to an additional channel for those brands. And then, while that's so, you may get a purchase on Debenhams.com that could have up and gone at, say, Boohoo.com or PrettyLittleThing. But overall, the cannibalization won't be significant, is what we would expect. And overall, we'll be able to reach more customers who will try the brands than would otherwise have done. So we wouldn't expect to see cannibalization there, although some of the customers could be similar customers. I think the audience for Debenhams.com is probably a little bit older and in terms of the fashion side of things.
But the beauty side of things, I think there's quite a good opportunity there to get additional customers, even for the younger brands that would be shopping in beauty on Debenhams.
Brilliant. Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Anubhav Malhotra with Liberum. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Just on the customer experience again. So if a customer has six different brands in the basket, and if he wants to return four of them, would he be returning four different shipments to four different addresses? Or do you plan to outsource that to a single, service provider, which will help you do it? Thank you.
So we're looking at an outsource on that at the moment, and again, one of the things to work through. So the customer journey is - and the experience is really, really important in marketplace. So at the moment, the view is that we'll be looking to outsource.
Thank you.
We will now take our last question from Wassachon Udomsilpa with RBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just one question from me, please, about the long-term margin of marketplace. Given that the business is being low risk and having asset-light model, would not margin be higher than the retail business?
It could be, and a lot of that depends on how you recognize the revenue on those sales, et cetera. As I said, before, that Debenhams recognize the revenue for the entire transaction, and then you'd have the cost of the sales for the transaction to get you down to what would effectively the commission rate for, for Debenhams. And in which case that, then you've got obviously costs associated with the platform and the, and the, buying and merchandising that come off of that. But it technically could be as higher margin as, our other businesses. And I think you've seen in the past that, with Debenhams, is that... I think the data shows that the Debenhams' online business could be as higher margin, a double-digit EBITDA margins, et cetera.
But we'll have more information on that as we know what the financial metrics are associated with the different ways that we're going to be dealing with different customers. And of course, as I said before, on the fashion side, a lot of the brands that are going to be on the platform will be our own brands as well. So most of that is going to be a cut-through to a similar margin to what we see today.
Thank you very much.
That concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference back to the management team for any additional or closing remarks.
So thanks, everybody, for joining us this morning, and excitement, very much so in terms of our acquisition of Debenhams and another chapter on the Boohoo Group story. So thank you very much, and speak to you all soon. Thank you. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.