Rent the Runway’s losses narrowed in its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings reported Wednesday as the digital retailer continues to streamline its costs and work towards profitability.
Despite the improvements the retailer has made, its fiscal 2023 and first-quarter outlook fell short of analysts’ estimates. Its share price plunged more than 11% in after-hours trading.
In the year ahead, the company expects its ending active subscriber count to grow by more than 25% and revenue in the range of $320 million to $330 million. Analysts had been expecting full-year 2023 revenue of $346 million, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.
It projects an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7% to 8% and a year-over-year reduction in cash spend of almost 50%.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2023, the company expects revenue in the range of $72 million to $74 million, lower than the $76.8 million analysts had projected, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 2% to 3%.
Here’s how the fashion rental company performed in the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:
- Loss per share: 40 cents vs. 51 cents expected
- Revenue: $75.4 million vs. $75.2 million expected
The company’s reported net loss for the three-month period that ended January 31 was $26.2 million, or 40 cents per share, compared with a loss of $39.3 million, or 62 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales rose to $75.4 million in the quarter, up 18% from $64.1 million a year earlier.
Rent the Runway, which offers subscription services to rent clothing and accessories and also offers the service a la carte, has been charting a path to profitability after a rollercoaster couple of years decimated its market cap and sent its share price plunging.
Amid the Covid pandemic, the company took a hit when consumers suddenly didn’t have a need to rent clothes and accessories for work and parties. Since then, its subscriber count has rebounded and hit a record high in April after it changed its subscription model.
In March, the company permanently added an extra item to every shipment to improve its value proposition to customers, and as of April 8, the company marked 141,205 active subscribers, the highest active subscriber count the company has seen since its inception in 2009. Active subscribers excludes those with paused memberships.
“That launch delivered 25% more value to our consumers with minimal impact to our gross margins. So we were able to deliver value while, you know, keeping these really financially healthy, gross margins,” Rent the Runway co-founder and chief executive Jennifer Hyman told CNBC.
“And we’re seeing a few different benefits. We’re seeing first, improvements in loyalty across the customer base. We’re seeing improvements in rejoin rates, so people that had churned in the past are coming back to the business, and we’re seeing improvements in pause reactivations, so people who had formerly been in a state of pause are reactivating.”
At the end of the fiscal year, Rent the Runway had 126,712 active subscribers, a 10% increase compared to the year-ago period. In total, the company counted 171,998 subscribers, which includes people with paused subscriptions. That’s an 8% year-over-year increase from the end of fiscal 2021.
