RUE DE COMMERCE 
By
Quarterly information
2010/2011 4th quarter sales
A financial year featuring strong growth in La Galerie-related sales
Sales of e-merchant partners: up 62,4%
High Tech sales continued to be adversely affected by the deteriorated environment
Confirmation of a favourable year on a profitability level
Restructuring of the Group in the first half of the year
The second half exceeded expectations in terms of earnings
Saint-Ouen, 12 May 2011 - 5.45pm
Today, RueDuCommerce Group, the leading independent e-commerce group listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, publishes its sales for the fourth quarter of its 2010/2011 financial year.
Consolidated data (unaudited)
| (? millions) | 4th quarter (January to March) | 12 months (April to March) | ||||
| 2010 / 2011 | 2009 / 2010 | % change | 2010 / 2011 | 2009 / 2010 | % change | |
| Group sales | 75,2 | 89,2 | -15,7% | 312,4 | 352,6 | -11,4% |
| Business volume* | 93,4 | 102,6 | -9,0% | 380,3 | 394,7 | -3,6% |
| Sales of La Galerie partners | 19,6 | 14,4 | 36,1% | 73,3 | 45,1 | 62,4% |
RueDuCommerce achieved consolidated sales of ? 312,4 million for the full financial year, from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011, which was a decline of 11,4% compared to 2009/2010.
* See glossary at end of document
Over the same period, sales of La Galerie's e-merchant partners grew by 62,4% during the year to ? 73,3 million, compared to ? 45,1 million in the previous year.
Overall, the full-year business volume*, which includes all sales of La Galerie partners, totalled ? 380,3 million, a decline of 3,6%.
Therefore, this year of transition underlined how the Group offset the decrease in High Tech sales by La Galerie's rapidly expanding business volume. The contrast between -11,4% of Group sales and +62,4% of partner sales illustrates Management's choice to focus its strategy on the most profitable product segments.
It should be noted that the High Tech market, and "brown" products in particular (TV, cameras), experienced a year of loss in value and slacker sales in 2010, with no genuine technological innovation and strong downward pressure on pricing and profit margins.
The fourth quarter, with a decline of 15,7% in Group sales and a 36,1% increase in sales of la Galerie partners, also confirmed this choice, the effect of which was further magnified by the overhaul of the Group's marketing strategy, as pointed out in our latest communication of January 2011, to position the Group with renewed ambition for 2011-2012.
La Galerie's model asserted itself by combining high growth and profitability
The profitability of the La Galerie online shopping centre, launched in the course of 2007 and the first of its kind in France, was confirmed in the second half of the financial year
La Galerie is also perfectly consistent with the Group's historic ambition of combining high sales growth and profitability, on which RueDuCommerce's success has been built.
Today, the Company is pleased to have brought this view to fruition and is now benefiting fully from the Group's strengths:
Strong brand awareness with consumers, built over more than 10 years in the High Tech market;
A strong customer base of more than 8-million and a leading e-commerce audience in France (7 million unique visitors/month);
A high performance platform and a recognised marketing expertise, in particular with e-merchant partners;
An efficient customer service, which has gained the trust of customers. Furthermore, today, RueDuCommerce is still the only e-commerce website to boast an ISO 9001-certified after-sales service.
At the end of March 2011, RueDuCommerce had one of the most extensive product offering on the French Internet, with more than 2,000,000 products listed and 500 e-merchant partners online, including many websites of leaders in their market: Bricorama, Delamaison, Discountéo, Webdistrib, Thomson, Monshowroom, Sarenza, etc.
* See glossary at end of document
With more than 85,000 e-merchant websites in France at 31 March 2011, compared to 68,000 in the previous year, the success of RueDuCommerce's La Galerie is only in its infancy.
Restructuring of the Group, choice of profitable sales, renewed profitability
The High Tech performance was consistent with that of the last quarters of the year, i.e. marked by a decline associated with the deteriorated environment, an absence of major technical innovation and pressure on margins.
During the year, the distribution of High Tech sales by product family was as follows: IT & Telecoms: 61% (vs. 59% in the previous financial year); TV & DVD players: 16% (17%); Digital Photo & Video: 10% (vs. 11%) and Other Products: 13% (vs. 13%).
In order to respond to this situation and protect its fundamental philosophy of profitable growth, RueDuCommerce implemented a restructuring of its organisation in mid-2010 (see communication of 28 July 2010). The downsizing, intended to reflect unfavourable conditions in the High Tech market, was supported by initiatives to restore profitability, such as sales monitoring and an overhaul of the marketing strategy.
Outlook
The Group will publish its results for the 2010/2011 financial year on 9 June 2011. However, RueDuCommerce has already indicated that efforts initiated in the second half of the year have generated a level of profitability much higher than expected, and that the full-year will show a net profit (including the complete absorption of restructuring costs of ? 2 million).
Furthermore, the steps taken over the past few months have set the Company on the right track at the beginning of 2011/2012, supported by an appropriate organisation and a recovery of marketing investment.
* See glossary at end of document
***
Shareholders' agenda (after close of trading)
09 June 2011: 2010/2011 full-year results
28 July 2011: 1st quarter sales
Glossary
Business volume: includes consolidated sales of products and services distributed by the Company, plus sales of La Galerie's partners.
Overall Group Traffic: the number of visits, i.e. the number of individual sessions initiated by all visitors to Group websites over the past 12 months.
Group Transactions: the number of orders taken by the BtoC business.
Group Average Buying Behaviour: total orders of the BtoC business divided by the number of orders.
| About RueDuCommerce Established 10 years ago, RueDuCommerce is the leading independent e-commerce Group quoted on the Paris Stock Exchange. The RueDuCommerce Group:
As the only ISO 9001-certified after-sales-service French e-commerce website, RueDuCommerce was voted best high tech product website by web users in 2009. The Group is listed on Compartment C of the NYSE Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN: FR0004053338 - Ticker: RDC) Please visit our website for more information: www.rueducommerce.com/corporate: http://www.rueducommerce.com/corporate |
Contacts
Investor Relations
Laurent Bertin - Chief Financial Officer
Laurent.bertin@rueducommerce.com:
mailto:Laurent.bertin@rueducommerce.com
Arnaud Salla
Quadrant Finance
Tel: +33 6 16 17 52 26
arnaudsalla@quadrant-finance.com:
mailto:arnaudsalla@quadrant-finance.com
Press Relations
Cécile Courtois
cecile.courtois@rueducommerce.com:
mailto:cecile.courtois@rueducommerce.com
Agnès Gilbert
Eudoxie PR
Tel: +33 6 84 61 30 71
a.gilbert@eudoxie-pr.com:
mailto:a.gilbert@eudoxie-pr.com
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Source: Rue du commerce via Thomson Reuters ONE
