Russia's Ozon widens loss but transactions surge continues; boosts guidance
MOSCOW, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Russian online retailer Ozon on Tuesday reported a widening loss in core earnings in the second quarter, but raised its full-year guidance for turnover on its platform amid continued explosive growth.
Ozon's adjusted loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) widened to 9.1 billion roubles ($123.93 million) from a loss of 1.8 billion roubles a year ago, the company said.
Ozon, which debuted on the Nasdaq late last year and uses couriers, pickup points and parcel lockers to run one of Russia's largest e-commerce platforms, said this was down to strategic investments as it seeks to scale and increase market share.
Gross merchandise volume (GMV)- a measure of online transactions and Ozon's core business metric - grew 94% to 89 billion roubles in the second quarter, Ozon said.
That pace of growth was slightly down on previous quarters, in part due to the high base effect from 2020, when consumers turned to online shopping amid coronavirus lockdowns.
Nevertheless, the increase prompted the company to raise its full-year GMV growth guidance to 110% from 100% in comparison with 2020, while sticking to capital expenditure of 20-25 billion roubles.
Ozon wants to achieve online transaction volumes of around $34 billion in five years and a third of Russia's rapidly expanding e-commerce market, its chief operating officer told Reuters in May, but is also expanding its presence in neighbouring countries like Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Ozon's Moscow-listed depositary receipts were down 0.1% as of 1212 GMT, underperforming the wider market.
The company said it handled 40.9 million orders in the quarter, up 180% year on year.
Chief Executive Alexander Shulgin said Ozon, which now has 18 million customers, sees an "enormous market growth opportunity" for its core business, as well as in fintech and for its faster delivery unit Ozon Express.
($1 = 73.4300 roubles) (Reporting by Alexander Marrow and Olga Popova; additional reporting by Anna Rzhevkina; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
