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LONDON (Alliance News) - Online musical instruments and equipment retailer Gear4Music (Holdings) PLC on Tuesday said it swung to a profit in its recently ended first half thanks to rising website traffic and improved conversion rates.
Gear4Music reported pretax profit of GBP966,000 for the six months ended August 31, swinging from a GBP1.1 million pretax loss a year earlier, as revenue grew to GBP21.6 million from GBP12.5 million.
The company said its total website visitor numbers grew to 5.6 million in the period, from 4.4 million a year earlier, with visitors to the UK website growing 13% and visitors to country-specific European websites growing 46%.
Gear4Music said the revenue impact of the increase in website traffic was "magnified" by significant improvements in conversion rates to 3.20% from 2.45% in the UK and to 1.49% from 0.86% in Europe, when compared to the prior year.
The company said the accelerating sales growth into Europe has reinforced its decision to expand its distribution capacity in Europe. Gear4Music said its Swedish distribution centre was on track to be operational in November, and said it signed a property lease on a German distribution centre.
In light of this strong performance coupled with "continuing momentum heading into the important Christmas period", Gear4Music said it expects to deliver full-year results ahead of its previous expectations.
"Whilst we continue to invest to grow the business, it is pleasing to have generated significant profits during the last six months, when historically we've produced the majority of our profits during the second half of the year. Trading remains strong heading into our important Christmas period," said Chief Executive Andrew Wass.
Shares in Gear4Music were down 1.9% at 310.00 pence on Tuesday.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
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