Zara owner Inditex swings to Q1 revenue as sales rebound

Spanish fashion huge Inditex has reported soaring sales on the primary quarter of the entire year since it swung to a profit.

For the three months ended April 30, revenue soared 50 percent to 4.9 billion euros compared to last year when the business was hit hard by global store closures amid the first wave of the pandemic.

In comparison to pre-Covid 2019 levels of the same quarter, revenue were down merely 11.5 percent despite 24 percent of trading hours being unavailable because of lockdowns and restrictions, with 16 percent of its stores still closed at the end of the quarter.

Signs of recovery
The group, which owns Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Draw & Bear, said store sales “steadily” improved through the quarter and online sales in frequent currency increased 67 percent.

The business swung to a net gain of 421 million euros in the quarter compared to a lack of 409 million euros last year.

EBITDA was 1.2 billion euros in comparison to 484 million euros a year earlier.

Gross margin expanded to 59.9 percent in comparison to 58.4 percent in 2020.

The business said sales continued to rebound strongly in the time from May 1 to June 6, up 102 percent when compared to same period in 2020 and by 5 percent versus the same period in 2019.

In this period, ten percent of trading hours were unavailable, with just 2 percent of retailers closed.