By Anna Pruchnicka
(Reuters) -Poland’s largest e-commerce company Allegro on Thursday trimmed its annual growth forecast following a slow start to the critical trading period around Black Friday.
Allegro said it had seen a slow start to the promotional period leading up to Black Friday on Nov.28 and delayed winter season demand. Like-for-like growth in the first half of November slowed to a low single-digit percentage from above 10% growth in October.
The company’s finance chief Jon Eastick told reporters that a lack of cold weather had affected demand for products like winter tires or clothes.
Allegro now expects its gross merchandise value, a key industry metric used to measure transaction volumes, to rise between 9% and 9.5% in Poland this year compared with earlier guidance for around 10% growth.
GROWTH RECOVERING IN RECENT DAYS
That brought group GMV guidance down to 8-9% growth, compared to the previously guided 9-10%.
Allegro chief executive Marcin Kusmierz added that a longer weekend in November in Poland may have impacted the market, but the company saw growth recovering in recent days.
“We think that they (customers) are going to get much, much more engaged as they usually do second half of November and then through into the Christmas peak and the Christmas rush,” Eastick said.
Allegro confirmed, however, its annual revenue and profitability targets that it had revised higher in September.
Shares in the company were down around 1% at 1318 GMT, after falling as much as 6.3% earlier.
Allegro’s third-quarter adjusted core earnings (EBITDA) rose 17.2% to 1.04 billion zlotys ($283.5 million) in Poland, compared with an average estimate of 978 million in a company-compiled poll.
MANAGING DELIVERY COST, AI ASSISTANT
The company’s GMV in Poland rose 10.4% in the third quarter. Steps to reduce delivery costs, Allegro’s biggest cost line, also supported profitability, it said.
The share of delivery volumes managed within its own partnership service rose to 36% in the quarter, from 34% in the previous one.
Allegro also said that it had launched tests of an AI shopping assistant on its mobile app that would make it easier for shoppers to search for products.
($1 = 3.6690 zlotys)
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Matt Scuffham)
