Sales and profits up as Vistaprint targets "higher expectation" customers

Vistaprint has filed a 21% year-on-year sales leap in its Q1 results, with the online print giant logging sales of $333.9m (£208.7m) in the three months to 30 September, and operating profit doubling to $16.9m from $8.4m a year ago.

Discounting currency fluctuations and the impact of recently acquired businesses, such as Netherlands-based People & Print Group, Pixartprinting in Italy and FotoKnudsen in Norway, year-on-year sales growth was a more modest 6%.

However, when the sales from the acquisitions are included then Europe represented the single largest growth region, with sales increasing from $94.7m to $138.4m.

 “We are off to a good start to fiscal 2015 and remain confident,” said president and chief executive Robert Keane.

“Quarterly revenue was in line with our expectations for improved growth in our Vistaprint brand and strong growth from recent acquisitions. Profitability, operating cashflow and free cashflow were also strong."

However, gross margin slipped slightly from 65.2% in 2013 to 61%.

According to its results while the number of orders placed slipped from 7.1m in Q1 2013 to 6.8m this year, the average order value increased from $39.40 to $43.32, not including the companies acquired in the past 12 months.

“Clearly we are bringing in slightly fewer customers than we were before, but the value per customer is higher. The second thing I would point to is our trailing 12 month (TTM) bookings per unique customer which has consistently moved up… It’s a steady, slow movement up as we shift towards a balance that has more of the higher expectation customers and fewer of the price primary,” said Keane

“Price primary is driven a lot by impulse purchases and we’re not abandoning it by any means, but the mix is slowly shifting so the move from $67 almost two years ago to $75 in average TTM bookings is a result of that.”

While the company didn’t reveal a country-by-country breakdown of sales, it said that it was experiencing positive growth in the UK, where it opened its first office earlier this year.

The company expects annual sales to report growth between 15%-20% and be in the region of $1.5bn.

Seperately it is also asking shareholders to approve a change of name of the parent company to Cimpress at next week’s AGM.