6/21/12

E-commerce grows 7% for Otto Group in fiscal 2012

The web also accounted for nearly 50% of all sales.

The day isn’t far off when e-commerce will represent 50% of all revenue at Otto Group, the second largest online retailer in Europe behind Amazon.com Inc.

For its just-concluded 2012 fiscal year, Otto, No. 2 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Europe, reported:

• E-commerce sales grew year over year to $6.64 billion from $6.21 billion, an increase of 6.9%.
• In Germany, Otto’s core market, e-commerce sales grew year over year by 9.5% to $4.26 billion from $3.89 billion in fiscal 2011.
• Total sales increased about 2.0% to $14.55 billion from $14.27 billion.
• Otto didn’t break out figures for net income but operating profits declined 19.2% to $676.3 million from $836.9 million.

The web accounted for 45.6% of total sales compared with 43.5% in the prior year.

“Our aim is still to secure moderate growth while continuing to increase profit,” says Otto CEO Hans-Otto Schrader. Otto is the parent company of Crate & Barrel, No. 59 in the 2012 Internet Retailer Top 500.