BOOKTOPIA ADDS TO LOSSES AS SALES FALL
BOOKTOPIA is the latest pure-play online retailer to crash further into deepening losses as the heat comes out of the online shopping frenzy experienced at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The online bookseller, which has gone through a tumultuous year marked by falling sales and boardroom upheaval led by its ousted chief executive Tony Nash, has posted a 15 per cent drop in its interim revenue to $110.077m, as its losses blew out to $3.894m for the half, from a loss of $633,000 in the first half of 2022.
Its underlying loss of $1.334m was against an underlying profit of $5.757m.
Booktopia, the nation’s largest domestically owned online book retailer, recorded huge leaps in its sales and earnings in the early months of the pandemic as households in lockdowns and stuck with travel restrictions ordered up books.
But with the opening of the economy and the end of restrictions, the appetite for books has normalised.
Booktopia said on Tuesday the total number of units shipped was down 16.7 per cent at 3.94 million, while the average selling price per unit shipped was down 2.4 per cent at $27.60.
Booktopia chairman Peter George said the first half presented difficult trading conditions. “We have taken the necessary action to build a better business for the long term,” he said.
Booktopia has kickstarted a costcutting initiative that will deliver about $12m-$15m of annualised savings in 2024 and beyond, and which includes job losses.
Other pure-play online retailers to suffer losses include Catch Group, owned by Wesfarmers, which recorded an interim loss of $108m, and Kogan.com. which doubled its interim net loss to $23.8m.
Booktopia shares fell 1.5 per cent to 32c on Tuesday.