Farfetch UK subsidiary accounts show challenging times ahead of Coupang takeover

Fashion Network

3 days ago

It's a source of ongoing frustration in the UK that privately-held company accounts can be quite out of date by the time they're filed. And while Farfetch as a New York Stock Exchange-listed business used to file in the US quarterly and promptly, now that it's owned by South Korea's Coupang, we only get to see its results as part of a much wider Coupang division that doesn't really tell us how Farfetch is doing.
Yet the company — or to be precise Farfetch UK Limited — still files its accounts at the UK's Companies House and has just done so for full-year 2023. OK, that's quite a bit out of date but it was the year in which the business came close to failure and its 2024 results are due by the end of September, so we may get a more up to date picture soon.
But what do those 2023 figures tell us? Well, as we said, the results are for a UK-based wholly-owned subsidiary of Farfetch Limited, and its principal territories are the UK and other non-EU countries, excluding the US.
Reporting in US dollars, it said its revenue increased to $1.568 billion from $1.541 billion. The cost of sales also increased to $941.5 million from $916.6 million. Gross profit rose to $626.7 million from $625 million. Also on the plus side, the average order value on the marketplace rose to $592 from $549.
The operating loss was huge but narrowed to $519.4 million from $574.7 million although the loss before tax widened to $602.4 million from $455.9 million. The company received a $4 million+ income tax credit during the year as opposed to a $19+ million income tax expense the year before, but the net loss for the period was $598 million compared to a loss of just under $475 million a year earlier.
The e-tailer said the second half of 2023 (during which time the business hit crisis mode and was eventually taken over by Coupang) saw the retail market for luxury goods suffering a 'significant downturn' and this along with other macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges had a 'material adverse impact' on the results of Farfetch Limited Group.
While it added that the directors 'anticipate the business environment will remain competitive', it said that 'with careful focus on appropriate diversification as well as continuous review of… the activities of the group, the directors are confident in the group's ability to continue to operate'.
So there we are, not exactly up to date but showing just how challenging the year in which Farfetch was taken over was.
Coming more up to date, its owner Coupang reported its own Q1 2025 results back in May and they showed that in its Developing Offerings segment (which actually includes International, Eats, Play, and Fintech as well as Farfetch) net revenues were $1 billion. That was up 67% year on year on a reported basis and 78% on a currency-neutral basis. We don't know any details of just what went on to cause that revenue leap.
The Developing Offerings segment's adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $168 million, but that was an improvement of $18 million year on year.
There were only three mentions of Farfetch in the entire quarterly results release so it doesn't seem likely that we'll get any more information in future Coupang results reports. Fingers crossed that the Farfetch UK results for 2024 do arrive by late September as scheduled.