FTD.com grows revenue and earnings

FTD.com is really blooming. The Downers Grove, IL-based online retailer of flowers, reported today that revenue in its fiscal year second quarter grew 24% to $40.4 million from $32.5 million in the same quarter a year ago, while its profits grew 83% to $3.3 million from $1.8 million.

The company says the growth came at the web site, from the acquisition of National Flora and from an increase in average order size.

In the second quarter of fiscal 2002, the company took in 624,000 orders, with an average value of $58.93., That was up 21% from 514,000 orders in the same quarter of the prior fiscal year, with an average value of $57.

The company said that excluding orders attributable to the National Flora business, which it acquired in the second quarter of fiscal 2002, Internet orders accounted for 86% of orders for the second quarter of fiscal 2002 compared to 83% in the prior fiscal year quarter. Including the National Flora business, which primarily generates orders from telephone sales, the order mix was 78% Internet.

Specialty gift orders increased 76% for the second quarter of fiscal 2002 compared to the prior year quarter and comprised 15.4% of total orders for the second quarter of fiscal 2002 compared to 10.7% for the second quarter of the prior fiscal year.

Operating expenses were $9.3 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2002 compared to $8 million for the same quarter of the prior fiscal year. The number of customer accounts grew to 4.2 million from 2.8 million a year earlier. National Flora customer accounts at the time of acquisition totaled 300,000.