Ted Baker losses deepen as Covid hampers turnaround

For the 53 week period ending January 30, 2021 Ted Baker reported losses before tax of £107.7m, a deepening of 38.8% on the previous year. 

The fashion retailer’s underlying profits also slipped into the red for the first time, from £4.8m to a loss of £59.2m. 

Group revenues for the period slumped 44.2% to £352m which Ted Baker blamed on the ongoing coronavirus crisis and its effect on trading globally. 

Overall retail sales including ecommerce were down 42.2% to £254.3m, while Ted Baker’s wholesale sales were down 50.3% to £85.3m.

The retailer said ecommerce sales alone were up 22% to to £144.9m, while growth in directly operated ecommerce channels was 30.2%. 

Ted Baker said it finished the period with net cash of £66.7m, “well ahead of management’s expectation” and upgraded its financial targets expecting a net cash position by 2023. 

Despite a tough year of trading due to coronavirus store closures around the globe, chief executive Rachel Osborne said the retailer was making good progress on its turnaround plan. 

“We are making good progress against our strategic transformation plan and Ted Baker is increasingly well placed to take advantage of the significant growth opportunities ahead of us. The Ted Baker brand has strengthened further, with the number of active customers growing to 1.2m by the end of the year.

“While the impact of COVID-19 is clear in our results and has amplified some of the legacy issues impacting the business, Ted Baker has responded proactively and is in a much stronger place than it was a year ago. During the period, we delivered robust cashflow generation, fixed our balance sheet, refreshed our senior leadership team and today we are upgrading our financial targets for the second time since outlining our new strategy last summer.

“Additionally, we have made good progress with our sustainability strategy, Fashioning a Better Future, including the mapping of all of our factory partners within our supply chain and significantly increasing our usage of cotton from sustainable sources to 69%.

“We are a year into Ted Baker’s transformation plan and continue to believe that we have the right strategy and team in place to set the business up for a stronger, more sustainable future.”