HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - Weak consumer sentiment is weighing on the growth of online fashion retailer About You. The management has reduced its sales forecast for the current financial year, as the company announced in Hamburg on Thursday. However, About You is getting its costs under control: the forecast for the operating result was confirmed and the third quarter was also better than expected. The share price rose sharply by 23 percent, also pulling up other sector stocks such as Zalando.

Analysts praised the figures. The operating result in the third quarter was better than the market had expected, while sales fell short of analysts' estimates. The company achieved strong improvements on the cost side, wrote Jefferies expert Henrik Paganetty. However, consumer sentiment in Europe remains subdued.

About You's turnover fell slightly to just under 552 million euros in the three months to the end of November, despite Black Week falling within this period. This left an operating profit of 19.8 million euros before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and adjusted for one-off effects and share-based payment costs. A year earlier, the Hamburg-based company had made a loss of 43.1 million euros in its day-to-day business. Reduced logistics costs, among other things, now helped. However, the bottom line was not a profit, but the loss was reduced from 62 to 10.4 million euros year-on-year.

However, in view of the gloomy consumer mood, expectations for the year as a whole, which runs until the end of February, have been further reduced: sales growth is expected to be at the lower end of the forecast range of one to eleven percent growth compared to the previous year. However, the management team led by CEO and co-founder Tarek Müller still has its sights set on the break-even point for the adjusted operating result./lew/men/jha/