Boohoo has filed the accounts for its subsidiary Debenhams at Companies House with the year to the end of last February showing losses that were much, much smaller than the previous year.

In fact, the company reported only a pre-tax loss of £732,000 in the 12-month period compared to a much bigger loss of £11.7 million the year before.

The improved figure came as sales rose a hefty 53% year on year to reach £87.1 million. The gross margin was also up at 48.7% from 44.6%.

Most of the company’s sales happened in the UK with the domestic market making up £73.5 million of the figure and international revenue being £13.5 million. Both of those numbers were up on the previous year, which had seen sales of £52.4 million at home and £4.5 million abroad.

The company is now a digital-only department store targeting the 16 to 45 age group globally.

As part of the wider Boohoo Group, it said it benefited from access to a “formidable suite of relationships and resources and combined this with our insight and understanding of changing consumer demands to build a business platform that delivers value to all our stakeholders”.

In its future outlook statement the company mixed both optimism and caution. It said the global market for online fashion should continue to grow and provide a favourable backdrop for the business as customers around the world seek a wide choice of quality fashion forward products at value prices with the convenience of home delivery.

But it added that the pandemic impacted the business and this is being seen most significantly in the unpredictability of customer demand, as well as the rate of customer returns, increased shipping times and the cost of shipping for both inbound and outbound goods.

For the current year that finishes at the end of this month, in the accounts the company said the challenging external environment would continue and that revenues are expected to decline as the demand factors that hurt the performance in the second half of the previous financial year remain in place.

But on a more upbeat note it said these factors are expected to begin normalising with the company benefiting from the investments being made across price, product and the proposition under its growth strategy. 

Over the medium term, it’s targeting continued improvements in profitability and building towards an EBITDA margin between 6% and 8%.