Covid-19 impacts Quiz full year sales, posts 66 percent decline

Quiz Group revenue decreased 66 percent to 39.7 million pounds for the full year to March 31, 2021. The company said in a statement that sales decline in large part was due to the significant impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on trading conditions, including the enforced closure of stores and concessions.

Commenting on the company’s results, Tarak Ramzan, founder and chief executive officer of Quiz said: “We remain confident in the strength and appeal of QUIZ as an occasion wear led brand, as has been evidenced by the increase in demand and positive trends across our operational KPIs as social events returned during the summer. This continues to underpin the board’s confidence in our ability to continue to improve performance and achieve profitable growth as more normal trading patterns return.”

Highlights of Quiz’s full year performance
The company added that further to this decline in revenues, the underlying operating loss incurred was 9.4 million pounds and including the non-recurring transactions, a pre-tax profit of 6.2 million pounds was generated compared to FY20 loss of 28.6 million pounds.

The company further said that underlying EBITDA generated declined to a loss of 4.9 million pounds, which represented a negative EBITDA margin of 12.3 percent. Including the nonrecurring transactions, EBITDA was 10.7 million pounds. Underlying group loss before tax was 9.6 million pounds, while profit before tax reflecting non-recurring transactions was 6 million pounds.

The underlying loss per share was 7.54 pence, while after reflecting the non-recurring transactions, the profit per share was 5.

Gross margin for the year decreased to 53.4 percent from 60.3 percent reflecting an increased level of discounting in part as a result of the enforced stores and concessions closures.

All Quiz retail channels report drop in revenues
Sales through the Quiz website declined 42 percent and sales through third-party websites declined 44 percent in the year. The impact of the reduced demand during the year was reflected in the number of active customers at 31 March 2021 which had declined 49 percent in the year to 323,000.

International sales include revenue from Quiz standalone stores and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and franchises in 20 countries were down 65 percent to 7.6 million pounds. Revenues in Ireland declined 85 percent in the year to 1.2 million pounds. Franchise sales for the year declined 48 percent to 6.4 million pounds.

Sales in the group’s UK standalone stores and concessions decreased 82 percent to 10.5 million pounds.

As part of the company’s cost cutting measures, Quiz store portfolio restructuring is now complete, resulting in a smaller store footprint focused on more attractive locations, a significantly lower rental cost base, linked to revenues generated, and more flexible leases. Group’s store estate comprised 61 stores in the United Kingdom and four in the Republic of Ireland at the end of the year.

The company has witnessed gradual improvement in sales since the removal of restrictions on large scale social events with performance approaching pre pandemic levels on a like for like basis. As a result, the group has achieved sales of 30.6 million pounds for the five months to August 31, 2021, representing a 17.4 million pounds increase on the revenues generated in the period from 1 April to 31 August 2021.