Kogan.com shares surge as customer numbers grow

Shares in Kogan.com shot up 9.8 per cent on Monday after the online retailer said its number of active customers had surged in August.

Ruslan Kogan, founder and chief executive of Kogan.com.

Shares in Kogan.com shot up 9.8 per cent on Monday after the online retailer said its number of active customers had surged in August, as shoppers continue to favour online retailing over heading to shopping centres amid the COVID-19 restrictions.

The company’s share price, which closed at $20.66, has increased five-fold since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, after trading at below $4 a share in March.

In a market update on Monday, Kogan said that based on unaudited results, its number of active customers had grown by 126,000 to 2.3 million over the month of July, while gross profit had grown more than 160 per cent.

Monthly gross sales had grown more than 110 per cent year on year and gross profit was up 160 per cent compared to the same month last year.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation was more than $10m for the period.

The update came ahead of the company’s annual results announcement later this month.

Kogan offers a suite of products including electronics, insurance, mobile phone plans and credit cards. Its e-commerce platform offers goods with its own branding, as well as from companies like Apple, Ugg and Cookmaster.

In its results for the half-year through December 2019, Kogan posted revenue of $219.5m, down 5.3 per cent year-on-year, which the company said was due to a successful launch of Kogan Marketplace, where only the seller fees are recognised as revenue.