More News » QXL.com falls deeper into the red

QXL.com falls deeper into the red

Despite trimming loses in the quarter ending 31 March 2000, European online auctioneer QXL Ricardo has reported a year-end trading loss of almost £50m.

Financial results, however, did show a narrowing of QXL.com’s losses by 20% to Pounds 9.7 million, on earnings of Pounds 3.12m, compared to a loss of Pounds 12.1 million in the previous quarter.

The dotcom also grew its number of registered users by an 288,000 during the quarter and announced that a Pounds 30m financing facility had been approved by shareholders

But, the year-end picture was substantially bleaker with losses totalling Pounds 49.7m on turnover of just Pounds 15.05m, compared to a loss of Pounds 32.7m in the previous year.

This despite QXL.com managing to grow its user base by more than two million during the year, reaching 2.87 million by the end of March 2001 and increasing the number of items auctioned on its site to 31.7 million.

Notwithstanding these results, QXL CEO Jim Rose expressed confidence in the dotcom’s business model.

‘We have radically transformed QXL in the past 12 months,’ he said.

‘We have achieved rapid consolidation of our European acquisitions whilst successfully shifting our business model to that of an intermediary. We no longer carry inventory and we actively monetise our customer base via listing and success fees.’

Rose said the company had driven ‘top line growth’, and reduced its costs, despite acquisitions and continued to ‘develop strategic partnerships and product enhancements’.

He highlighted QXL.com’s recently announced partnership with Microsoft to offer enhanced auction services via the .NET program

Rose said this would help the company as it progressed on its path to profitability.

Links

E-business: Dighero bids for a bright future with QXL

Share
Was this article helpful?

Leave a Reply

Subscribe to get your daily business insights