The big luxury houses aren’t the only ones taking advantage of the relative strength of the American market — The RealReal Inc. is also enjoying something of a growth spurt in the secondhand market for high-end goods.
Revenues for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 increased 19 percent to $206 million, better than the 13.4 percent analysts figured on, according to Yahoo Finance.
Those sales translated into a gross merchandise volume of $642 million, up 23 percent from a year earlier.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization grew 83 percent to $17 million. And adjusted earnings per share totaled 2 cents, better than the flat performance Wall Street expected.
The stock, which closed out the day down 28 percent for the year so far, perked up 5.3 percent to $11.95 in after-hours trading as investors gave their the numbers their approval.
Rati Levesque, chief executive officer, mustered much more enthusiasm for the results and described it as “another record quarter” with record highs in revenues and GMV.
“Underlying those results is a fundamental change in how people shop for luxury fashion, and our purpose-built platform is helping to drive it,” Levesque said. “Customers increasingly start their journey with us and engage well beyond the transaction, to discover what to buy, to track what they own, and to decide when to sell.
“That is the new operating system for luxury fashion ownership, and that is what we are building,” she said. “Our performance this quarter reinforces our conviction in the direction of the business and our ability to execute, and we are raising our full-year outlook.”
For the full year, the company now expects revenues of $806 million to $810 million, stepping up from the $788 million to $797 million previously forecast.
Adjusted EBITDA is slated to total $71.1 million to $72.6 million, up from the $66 million to $69 million in the company’s prior outlook.
The RealReal, an online marketplace for resale luxury goods, was an earthquake of an idea when it was introduced, but the business has had to make several course corrections over the years, and now seems to be getting into something of a rhythm.
It has real scale — its active buyer count for the past 12 months rose 13 percent to 1.2 million — and the average order value increased 8 percent to $629.
The company is also bringing in some more help — with experience working at big businesses.
This week, Alexis Hoopes was named chief merchandising officer of The RealReal.
Most recently she was with eBay, where she led the company’s $10 billion global fashion business as vice president and general manager of global fashion. Earlier, she was senior vice president of e-commerce at Mattel, where she built the company’s direct-to-consumer business, launched two digital commerce platforms and integrated American Girl’s e-commerce operations.
— With contributions from Lisa Lockwood
