(Reuters) -Poland’s biggest e-commerce platform Allegro expects its earnings to rise 8-12% in its home market this year, it said on Thursday, and proposed a share buyback of around 1.4 billion zlotys ($364 million).
Its shares rose around 8% at 0817 GMT, on track for their biggest one-day rise since May last year.
It reported fourth-quarter core profit of 975.2 million zlotys in the Polish market, beating analysts’ consensus estimate of 960 million in a company-compiled poll.
“Customers’ purchases with us grew more than three times faster than Poland’s retail sales as a whole,” CEO Roy Perticucci said in a statement.
Allegro sees group adjusted core earnings (EBITDA) rising 10-17% in 2025 after reporting better than expected 5.2% growth to 790.9 million zlotys last year, helped by narrower losses in its international operations and better margins in Poland.
JPMorgan analysts wrote in a note that the outlook “spells upside to our and consensus expectations” both in Poland and international operations.
Allegro also adopted a capital allocation policy and said it planned to return surplus capital to shareholders via buybacks with decisions made year to year.
The company, which has also rolled out its marketplaces in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, said it would pause further launches abroad as it builds shopping frequency.
Allegro saw good signs on the frequency in the fourth quarter, which includes the peak holiday season, but it still needs to see acceleration in the rate that people shop, CFO Jon Eastick told Reuters.
“And when we’re successful with that, we’ll start to think about doing other markets again and other launches,” he said.
Allegro, which has been developing its platform in Poland since 1999, still has the biggest chunk of Polish e-commerce but is facing competition including from Amazon and Temu.
Its marketing expenses rose 31% in 2024 as it spent more partly to fend off competition.
Eastick said Allegro was starting to see the expected improvements in the economics from marketing and purchasing traffic in the international markets.
“But the key point vis-à-vis the Chinese is that there should be no step backwards. We need to defend our share of voice, and that’s what we’re doing,” he added.
($1 = 3.8467 zlotys)
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Rachna Uppal, Mark Potter and Milla Nissi)
