Industry bike shortages peg back Signa Sports United, P&A sales offset
The new parent to WiggleCRC has published a quarterly update (Q4) within which it blamed bike shortages for pegging back otherwise strong results.
Known supply constraints shaved the company’s overall growth back to 10% from 19%, if complete bike sales were excluded. Full-year net revenues of €872 million represented a 24% increase and the company said “robust performance in bike parts and accessories and other verticals more than offset the decline in full-bike sales.”
Forward looking the disruptions to supply are branded “severe”, yet full year guidance for 2022 is to take net revenue into the region of €1,440 to €1,550 million, up significantly from the €872 million registered in FY21 where a 24% increase was registered. This will be in part down to bringing the new businesses under the wing of the group.
Stephan Zoll, CEO of SSU, said: “We are thrilled to begin our journey as a public company and are looking forward to the opportunity ahead of us. The Company is well positioned to execute on our organic strategy as well as take advantage of attractive M&A opportunities. In addition to our public market debut, closing the acquisitions of WiggleCRC and Tennis Express mark key milestones in our strategy.”
Further forward looking factors that could peg back the business were a heightened sense that inflationary pressures would halt consumer spending, though should Covid persist it is expected other outgoings will be cut before sporting spend.
Subsequent to the reporting period, SSU completed its business combination with Yucaipa Acquisition Corporation on December 14, 2021 in a transaction that provided gross proceeds of $484 million, and began trading on the NYSE on December 15, 2021. The Company also closed the acquisitions of WiggleCRC and Tennis Express on December 14 and December 31, 2021, respectively.
Zoll added: “Our teams executed extremely well against our stated strategy, delivering double-digit organic growth and compensating for industry-wide supply shortages in the Bike vertical, which dampened our topline results. We leveraged our broad assortment and inventory position to profitably drive strong organic growth in key geographies. The recent U.S. tennis acquisitions of Midwest Sports and Tennis Express, and the recently closed combination with Yucaipa and WiggleCRC, put us in a unique position to globally scale and expand our offerings in 2022.”
Bringing on board the online cycling giant helped boost the group’s customer base by 32% to reach 5.1 million, while total visits across all platforms rose 2% in Q4 to hit 75 million, or 275 million for the year.
