Photobox Group sales up 34%

International growth has helped to drive sales up at web-to-print giant Photobox Group by more than a third.

In the 12 months to 30 April 2016 the company posted sales of £288.5m (2015: £215.3m) with underlying EBITDA of £45.9m (2015: £28.6m), a year-on-year growth of 60%.

Significant growth in international sales, driven by the group’s 2014 and 2015 acquisitions of Hofmann and Germany’s PosterXXL respectively, was cited for the impressive leap in overall sales, 50% of which came from outside the UK, as well as the hige rise in EBITDA.

Within the group, sales were up 10% for Photobox while Moonpig saw revenues increase by 17% year-on-year with more than half of its transactions now being carried out on mobile devices. 

Reporting the first set of results since taking over as group chief executive in June this year, following Stan Laurent’s departure, Jody Ford called it a stellar year for Photobox Group.

“We increasingly live out our lives in photos - with the average mobile user snapping, sharing and saving several thousand of them every year,” he said. 

“Many of those mean something special to the people behind and in front of the lens and in the last year alone we’ve helped bring half a billion photos to life for our customers."

The group reported that 72% of sales in the past year had come from repeat customers, highlighting the importance of growing loyalty, with a record 5 million active customers recorded using its photo businesses, Photobox, Sticky9, Hofmann and PosterXXL. More than four million photobooks were ordered across the year. 

Ford said: “We are the clear European leader in this market and intend to invest heavily in the next few years to make the experience even easier for our customers, continuously working on being more mobile, more relevant and more imaginative in the products we offer.”