H1-2020 report Icecat: solid growth and expanding footprint

Results of Icecat in the H1-2020 report. The revenues of Icecat N.V. (NPEX: ICECAT) have increased by 8.4% over the first six months of 2020 to 4.8 million euros compared to the same period last year. The gross profit increased by 5%. The operating expenses remained stable, and the EBT of Icecat improved by 24% to 939K euros. This is the main reason for the improved cash position by 15% to 4.8 million euros. A solid cash position has proven helpful in recent acquisitions. For example like Cedemo per Q2-2020. Which contributes to around half of the realized growth, and is instrumental for other take-over or investment scenarios.

Innovating out of the crisis

Icecat maintained growth of the business despite the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. And strives to maintain growth during the rest of 2020. It has become a certainty that during 2020 a recession will materialize in major markets. But on the other hand, the e-commerce market continues to develop. From Q2 on, Icecat is focusing on integrating the Monaco-based Cedemo activity and realizing commercial and operational synergies.
The uncertainties regarding the possibly multicyclic nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, and effects on the economic climate, lead to more cautiousness in the market. Especially regarding investments in e-commerce, and thus in Icecat’s services.

For this reason, we focused our marketing on our free Product Information Management (PIM) entry-level services to brands and e-commerce businesses. This expands our footprint and ensures maintaining a healthy deal flow and pipeline. Further, we continue to focus on the innovation of PIM services and partnerships. Icecat has been selected by Facebook as a content partner, the same as for Google, Amazon, and Alibaba before. Regarding innovation, Product Stories, a new digital asset, has been rolled out on behalf of brands like DELL and Huawei. And a new service introduction is Icecat’s Brand Rank Page, a real-time statistical ranking of manufacturing brands based on their relative position in the global e-commerce market.

Expanding Icecat’s footprint during the crisis

The COVID-19 lockdowns are accompanied by a quickened adoption of e-commerce, which is visible in our online footprint. The number of product data sheet (PDS) downloads during H1-2020 increased by 62% to 2.9 billion compared to the same period one year earlier. But also the number of new registrations increased by 48% to 4.2K new registrations. Icecat’s database contains now 8 million PDSs, each available in around 50 languages. This implies that the relevance of Icecat has increased and that the freemium models fit the current market circumstances well.

The Icecat Vendor Central is now embraced by an increasing number of (online) retailers, who individually activate their brand suppliers to register as a brand editor.

Finally, Icecat is listed in the top 50 Dutch data science companies after a positive response in the science community and media outlets to our studies into the potential multicyclic seasonality of COVID-19.

See the Interim Report 1st half year 2020 for Icecat N.V. (PDF)