Naked Wines revenue surges as online demand jumps

Naked Wines said revenue jumped in April and May as online wine purchases rocketed during Covid-19 lockdowns in the UK and US.

Announcing annual results the web-only wine retailer said demand rose to pre-Christmas levels during the crisis and that its systems coped well with the sudden surge. Revenue rose 81% in the first two months of the current financial year.

Naked Wines' pretax loss for the year from continuing operations to the end of March almost halved to £5.4m from £9.9m as revenue rose 13.7% to £202.9m, helped by rising demand at the end of the year as governments implemented coronavirus lockdowns.

The company sold its Majestic and Lay & Wheeler branch operations in late 2019 to concentrate on selling less mainstream wines online. Business surged during the Covid-19 emergency as families unable to eat out spent more on alcohol and online shopping boomed.

Nick Devlin, Naked Wines' chief executive, said: "We are ending the year with great momentum behind our growth plans and a simplified, well-capitalised online pureplay model that is ideally suited to the current climate. I believe the enduring impact of Covid-19 will be to accelerate trends towards direct, online models in categories like wine."

Repeat customers' contribution to revenue rose 15% to £45.7m in the year to the end of March and sales retention rose 2 percentage points to 83% as Naked Wines increased investment in new customers by 20% to £22.9m.

James Crawford, the group's chief financial officer, will move to become UK managing director permanently after doing the job on an interim basis. Naked Wines said he wanted to have a commercial role at the company and that it was looking for a new CFO.