Koovs’ share prices leaps by a third after sales at Indian online retailer beat forecasts
Koovs' share price leapt this morning after the Indian-focused online retailer said sales almost tripled last year to hit £10m for the first time.
The company, which was founded four years ago by former Asos chairman Lord Waheed Alli, said sales jumped by 189 per cent to 981m Indian rupee (£10m) in the year to 31 March.
Visitors to its website increased by 110 per cent year-on-year to more than one million per week and the company now has one million registered users, an increase of 226 per cent over the year.
Koovs also announced a design collaboration with London illustrator Hattie Stewart, known for her cartoon-style "doodle-bombs" on top of photographic images.
Shares have soared by nearly 30 per cent to to 21.85p today on the back of the better-than-expected performance. Peel Hunt analysts said sales were ahead of its £9.4m forecast, thanks to its investment in marketing and efforts to raise the brand's awareness through media campaigns.
However shares are still just a fraction of their value when the company floated in March 2014 at 150 per share.
The company's stock market value crashed in April last year when Koovs reported it had just £12m of net cash left of the £22m raised in 2014, and said that marketing costs had been £2.1m higher than anticipated.
In September, the company announced plans to raise up to £35m over three years to invest in marketing, product range and to grow the business. The first tranche of that – £1.1m – was raised through shares issued to management in October, followed by a £4.5m rights issue in January.
Lord Waheed Alli, a Labour peer who chaired Asos until 2012, also stepped back as executive chairman of Koovs in September and hired the former boss of alertme.com Mary Turner to take over the reins.
Turner said: “The business has achieved strong growth in volumes, ahead of our target for the year. Our focus is to bring affordable western fashion to the growing urban, aspirational, youth movement in India – a market which represents 75 per cent of all online transactions across India."