Poland's e-commerce platform Allegro sees faster growth at home

By Adrianna Ebert

GDANSK (Reuters) -Poland's biggest e-commerce platform Allegro expects core earnings growth to accelerate in its home market, it said on Thursday, citing the impact of higher wages, after its second quarter results beat market expectations.

Its shares gained more than 9% in early trade and were 6.3% higher at 0940 GMT.

Allegro, which holds around a third of the Polish online market, based on gross merchandise value (GMV), has so far defended its position in its home market from competitors such as Amazon, which launched in Poland in 2021.

It expects its GMV, an industry metric used to measure transaction volumes, to grow by 10-11% in Poland in the third quarter, with revenue up 19-21%. On the group level, it sees GMV rising by 8-9% and revenue by 3-5%.

Chief Financial Officer Jon Eastick said he expected Allegro to keep growing, even though customers were still trading down to cheaper products.

"The economic situation in Poland for the consumer is somewhat better than it was this time last year," Eastick said, pointing to faster increases in real wages in particular.

"I think it's a good indication that the real wages are rising. So that’s positive. And in that way, there may be some positive impact on growth in the fourth quarter", he added.

The group, which has not provided an outlook for the full year, forecast core profit growth of 30-32% in Poland for the current quarter.

Its second quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) from Polish operations rose 22% on the year to 673 million zlotys ($152.4 million), above the 638 million expected by analysts polled by the company.

It said the Allegro.cz platform in Czech Republic, officially launched on July 31, had already gained 600,000 active buyers. In Poland, active buyers increased for a fifth consecutive quarter to 14.3 million.

($1 = 4.4156 zlotys)

(Reporting by Adrianna Ebert; Editing by Milla Nissi and Barbara Lewis)