Kogan ends H1 with nearly 1.7m customers and AU$9m in profit
Online retailer Kogan Australia has announced its financial results for the six months to 31 December 2019, ending the period with just shy of 1.7 million active customers.
For the first half, Kogan posted AU$8.9 million in after-tax profit, up 20% year on year, on revenue of AU$219.5 million -- a 5.3% slip year on year.
Gross sales were just shy of AU$323 million, up 16.4% compared to the same period a year prior.
During the reported period, the company launched its Kogan Super, Kogan Mobile NZ, Kogan Credit Cards, and Kogan Energy business units. It also focused on growing Kogan Marketplace, which the company attributed most of its first half profit to.
Kogan Mobile New Zealand was launched in partnership with Vodafone NZ.
The Kogan brand now comprises Kogan Retail, Kogan Marketplace, Kogan Internet, Kogan Insurance, Kogan Health, Kogan Life, Kogan Pet, Kogan Mobile Australia, Kogan Mobile NZ, Kogan Money Home Loans, Kogan Money Super, Kogan Money Credit Card, Kogan Cars, and Kogan Energy.
"This half has been a period that saw us taking significant steps to invest in the future success of our platform and make it easier than ever for customers to shop with us. You can now use our platform to get an incredible deal on ab wheels or zip lock re-useable sandwich bags and everything in between," CEO and founder Ruslan Kogan said.
"In particular, the continued investment in the Kogan Marketplace platform has led to a transition period for the company. As we progress our investment in the Kogan Marketplace platform, it will enable our business to achieve ongoing growth without the ongoing investment in inventory."
According to Kogan, a key driver of its performance in the half-year to 31 December 2019 was its investment in inventory.
Kogan also boasted its proprietary technology processes millions of events each day to "achieve personalisation and optimisation" across: AI-powered recommendations, personalised marketing, "enhanced" search results, anomaly and fraud detection, and automatic ad generation and spend optimisation.
Kogan attributed 46% of its gross profit to advertising income.
Looking forward, Kogan said it would continue to expand its Marketplace and focus on growth in its new verticals.
"Management are actively working with Vodafone to continue delivering competitive consumer offerings and we expect Kogan Internet to continue scaling in 2HFY20," the company told shareholders on Tuesday.
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