Online furniture seller Temple & Webster — one of the best performing ASX tech stocks of last year — has landed just shy of break-even in its full-year result.
The e-tailer reported a full-year loss of just $21,000 — a huge turnaroud from the $7.7 million loss reported last year.
Revenue jumped 12.6 per cent to $72.6 million. The business had $9.9 million in the kitty at the end of June.
The shares (ASX:TPW) gained 5 per cent to 79.5c in early Tuesday trade for a market cap of $82 million.
“The 2018 financial year marks the first full-year of results under the turnaround strategy communicated at the end of FY16,” chairman Stephen Heath said in the group’s annul report released today.
“That plan involved simplifying the business by moving from a multi-brand to a single-brand strategy, with all sales now made through templeandwebster.com.au.”
Temple & Webster reckons only 4 per cent of the $13.6 billion market for homewares and furniture has so far moved online in Australia compared to 14 per cent in the UK and 13 per cent in the US.
That should change as the digital-first Millenial generation begins to move into Temple & Webster’s core demographic of 35-to-55-year-olds, the group says.
“This generation has grown up with the internet and already make a significant number of their purchases online in other categories such as fashion and home electronics.”
Temple recently introduced a “visual search technology” that allows customers to search a catalogue by taking a picture with a mobile phone.
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The Temple & Webster report follows good profit results for other homewares retailers such as Nick Scali which last week posted a 10 per cent profit increase to $41 million and Kogan.com which enjoyed a 277 per cent rise to $14.1 million.
At the other end of the scale, however, Elanor Investors Group (ASX:ENN) recently announced it was shutting down old-school retail chain John Cootes Furniture after more than 35 years in business.
Here’s a list of other ASX stocks in the furniture business.