zooplus AG: New customer acquisitions continue to accelerate in the first quarter of 2019

• Sales increase by 13% to EUR 363 m (Q1 2018: EUR 323 m)
  
• Above-average growth in private label sales of 29%
• Number of registered new customers increases by 15% compared to Q1 2018
• Sales growth rate expected to rise in Q2 2019
• Company confirms full-year guidance for sales growth of 14% to 18%

Munich, April 18, 2019 – Based on preliminary figures, zooplus AG (WKN 511170, ISIN DE0005111702, ticker symbol ZO1), Europe’s leading online retailer of pet supplies, generated sales of EUR 363 m in the first quarter of 2019 (Q1 2018: EUR 323 m), representing
year-on-year growth of EUR 40 m, or 13%. Sales growth adjusted for currency effects also amounted to 13%.

The trend towards a renewed acceleration in the number of new customers that was already evident towards the end of 2018 continued in the first quarter of 2019. With a total of 739 thousand registered new customers, zooplus succeeded in gaining 15% more customers than in the same period of the prior year. The development of overall sales growth continues to be affected by the temporary slowdown in new customer growth, which persisted until the end of the third quarter of 2018. The sales retention rate for all customers and adjusted for currency effects was 93% and just slightly below the figure of 94% reported in the first quarter of 2018.

Once again, the private label business for food and litter developed well above average in the reporting quarter. Sales in this area grew by 29% and continued to rise as a percentage of overall sales.

Dr. Cornelius Patt, CEO of zooplus AG, in his comments on the development in the first quarter of 2019 says: “The year 2019 began with some restrained momentum, as expected. An important factor for the remainder of the year will be the success of the measures taken to boost new customer growth. The pick-up that has already been achieved is still based on the use of Google as the central acquisition channel. Celebrating zooplus’s 20-year anniversary we are now launching additional online and offline marketing tools for scalable and efficient traffic acquisition. From today’s perspective, this approach will lead to an upturn in the rate of sales growth in the second quarter. We therefore confirm our full-year 2019 sales growth guidance of 14% to 18% and are planning to increase our sales by approx. EUR 190 m to EUR 240 m. According to our analyzes, achieving this level would make us the fastest-growing retailer in the European pet supplies market across all forms of distribution and sales channels.”

zooplus will continue to expand its extensive market leadership in online retailing of pet supplies based on its very high level of customer loyalty, which has also been confirmed by independent market studies. An example is zooplus’s ability to take first place again in the recently published online retailing award for 2019 from the Cologne-based Institut für Handelsforschung (Institute for Retail Research) in the category “Fast Moving Consumer Goods”. This institute selects Germany’s best online providers based on customer opinions. In the overall ranking of all 105 online providers reviewed in ten categories, zooplus achieved an outstanding third place. The key criteria examined were customer satisfaction, intent to repurchase and the rate of referrals.

zooplus will publish the full report for the first three months of the 2019 financial year on May 16, 2019, and make it available on the company’s website at http://investors.zooplus.com.