Farfetch on Thursday said it expects to return to growth next year after reporting its first year-on-year decline in sales on its platforms in the third quarter.
But jump-starting sales won’t come cheap: the luxury marketplace also said growth will come partly from new partnerships, including deals with Richemont, Neiman Marcus and others, which will cost $170 million to implement.
Investors did not take the news well. Farfetch’s stock plunged to $6.52 a share in the hours after the company laid out its plans in a regulatory filing, matching an intraday low. (The company concurrently discussed other business strategies to an audience of analysts and investors in New York).
Farfetch said its gross merchandise value—a measure of goods primarily sold through its online luxury marketplace—will grow as much as 22 percent to nearly $5 billion by the end of 2023 and reach $10 billion by 2025. The company’s GMV fell 5 percent in the third quarter of the year, and it is forecasting a nearly 7 percent drop for the full year.
The company anticipates around $500 million in GMV next year will come from deals with luxury retailers like Bergdorf Goodman, Ferragamo and Yoox-Net-a-Porter owner Richemont, where Farfetch will provide software and other services to help run those firms’ e-commerce operations. Farfetch is slated to take a nearly 48 percent stake in Yoox-Net-a-Porter, pending regulatory approval.
The company also promised investors that its EBITDA profits will improve by as much as 3 percent, by cutting as much as $85 million in operational costs. Farfetch’s operating losses recently widened to $218 million in the third quarter of this year.
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Farfetch Reports Rare Drop in Online Sales
The strong dollar worked against the luxury marketplace, which has struggled to grow as consumers return to physical stores.
