Ted Baker (LON:TED) saw its revenue fall by 44% to £352m during 2020 as the retail industry was left reeling from the multiple lockdowns across the UK.
The UK fashion brand also confirmed it made a pre-tax loss of £107.7m, rising from £77.6m the year before.
In better news for the company, Ted Baker secured two long-term territory licenses in March to broaden its reach into Indonesia, the Middle East and North Africa.
While its retail sales fell by 42.2%, Ted Baker‘s eCommerce sales rose by 22% £144.9m. This in part a result of the fashion brand’s increased investment.
James Andrews, Personal Finance Expert at money.co.uk, said:
“If you set out to design a shop to do badly under coronavirus restrictions, you’d end up with something a lot like Ted Baker,” said Andrews.
“It’s reliance on physical stores – not infrequently in airports – while shops were shut and holidays outlawed. Concessions in department stores that are now in insolvency or closing branches. A focus on workwear as people set up home offices and special occasion outfits while weddings and other parties were banned.”
“The good news for investors is that as offices reopen, weddings start again and travel tentatively returns later on in the year, things will get better – especially as the firm continues its pre-pandemic push into online sales.”
In response to demand for climate aware clothing, Rachel Osborne, chief executive of Ted Baker, said the company had improved its sustainability strategy.
“We are making good progress against our strategic transformation plan and Ted Baker is increasingly well placed to take advantage of the significant growth opportunities ahead of us. The Ted Baker brand has strengthened further, with the number of active customers growing to 1.2m by the end of the year,” Osborne said.
“While the impact of COVID-19 is clear in our results and has amplified some of the legacy issues impacting the business, Ted Baker has responded proactively and is in a much stronger place than it was a year ago. During the period, we delivered robust cashflow generation, fixed our balance sheet, refreshed our senior leadership team and today we are upgrading our financial targets for the second time since outlining our new strategy last summer.”
“Additionally, we have made good progress with our sustainability strategy, Fashioning a Better Future, including the mapping of all of our factory partners within our supply chain and significantly increasing our usage of cotton from sustainable sources to 69%.”
