The Hut Group, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing online Health and Beauty brand owners and retailers, today announces its results for the year ended 31 December 2015.

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Group Sales up +35% to £334m (2014: £248m)
• International Sales up +46% to £167m (2014: £114m), now accounting for more than 50% of Group Sales
• EBITDA up +33% to £30m
• Strong growth in own brand revenues, representing 52% of total revenues
• Continued strong cash generation, with £42.2m of cash generated from Operating Activities (2014: £38.2m) and a year-end cash position of £141.5m (2014: £54.6m), providing significant firepower for strategic initiatives

OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

The Hut Group continued its commitment to invest in infrastructure and people ahead of consumer demand in order to ensure long-term scalability.

• Completion of The Hut Group’s £120m bespoke design and build 1 million sq. ft. distribution and nutrition production centre at Omega, Warrington.
• Myprotein became the World’s No 1 Online Sports Nutrition brand during the year
• Lookfantastic Group positioned to become World’s No 2 Online Prestige Beauty player during 2016
• £10m invested in The Hut Group’s market-leading nutrition production facility driving scalability, productivity, innovation and quality control. The Hut Group’s best-in-class nutrition production facilities are widely recognised externally including gaining the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Grade A Global Food Safety Standard, ISO certification, LGC-owned Informed Sports certification and UKAS accredited laboratory testing certification.
• £12m investment in The Hut Group’s proprietary technology platform which continues to drive significant volumes of low cost and highly relevant traffic to The Hut Group’s websites. 22 trading websites were launched during the year taking the total to 72 websites on the platform. These sites extend the Group’s global reach, trading internationally in 21 languages, supported by 19 currencies and 16 localised payment options.
• Continued evolution of our beauty model with the acquisition of two beauty brands Mio Skincare and Grow Gorgeous. These acquisitions diversify our beauty offering as we continue to develop our sales mix towards own-label, repeat purchase beauty products.
• 9m orders shipped to 192 countries, demonstrating the global scale of the Group’s operating platform.
• Total retail visits in 2015 increased 29% year-on-year with 324 million total website visitors. Total unique customer increased 27% to 8.2 million. International Retail visits grew 36% to 115 million.

PEOPLE HIGHLIGHTS

The Hut Group has an unwavering commitment to its people and invested heavily in the North West with:

• 630 new jobs created in the North West by the end of the year including
• A record 130 graduates from the Russell Group of Universities and other top European Institutions
• 90 new high value technology jobs
• The Group expects to generate a further 2,000 new jobs over the next 3 years

Matthew Moulding, CEO of The Hut Group, commented:

“I am pleased to report another landmark year for THG as we develop into a truly global business and major British export success, with international sales accounting for over 50% of our revenues for the first time. Overall we had a strong performance in 2015 with Group revenues up +35% to £334m (2014: £248m) and earnings up 33% to £30m (2014: £23m).

We reached the milestone of 8 million customers worldwide, following significant investment in our product offer, delivery options, customer experience and marketing. We also successfully launched 22 trading websites during the year, taking the total to 72 websites on our proprietary platform. These sites extend the Group’s global reach, and we now trade internationally in 21 languages, supported by 19 currencies and 16 localised payment options.

We have continued the evolution of our Beauty model with the acquisitions of beauty brands Mio Skincare in 2015 and Grow Gorgeous in 2016. These acquisitions diversify our beauty offering as we continue to develop our sales mix towards own-label, repeat purchase beauty products and we expect to complete further complementary deals in 2016.

Our target of becoming the World’s No 1 in online Health & Beauty is now firmly in our sights and we have stepped up our investment in people, technology, logistics and marketing to support the significant global potential of the THG business.”