Sweaty Betty underlying performance “slightly lower”, but Wolverine buyout dents headline results

Sweaty Betty may have been owned by US giant Wolverine since summer 2021 but as a UK-registered company, it’s still filing its accounts and it has just done that, for the year to January 2023.

The company said that turnover fell 8.5% – or £15.5 million – to £167.7 million. And the cost of sales increased to £101 million from £88 million. Gross profit was down to £66 million from £94.5 million and EBITDA fell to £130,868 from £17.6 million.

The operating loss was £4.6 million after a profit of £13.8 million in the previous period and the pre-tax loss was £5.1 million, down from a profit of £13.7 million. The net loss was £4.3 million, down from an £11.4 million net profit.

Of course, 2022 was an unusual year for the company given the aforementioned acquisition by Wolverine and it said its performance was impacted by the reorganisation of its North American wholesale operations. 

Overall, the underlying performance was only “slightly lower” than in 2021, reflecting the broader economic and sociopolitical environment. But it wasn’t quite the massive decline that the profit numbers would suggest when taken at face value.

It’s hard to draw any conclusions from these specific results, but it’s clear that Wolverine has ambitious plans for the brand and in recent periods it has been working to fulfil these ambitions.

For instance, in late 2022 it launched in Northern Ireland and also opened a concept store at the new Battersea Power Station mall. In early 2023 it announced plans to open its largest northern England England Store at Liverpool one and its leadership was revamped about the same time with a new global grand president joining later that year. That Liverpool One store opened last June and in October the brand launched on the M&S-owned platform Sports Edit.