Online tyre retailer Delticom has entered a further national market with the launch of a B2C portal in Turkey. The new site follows the format the company has successfully adopted in existing markets and can be found at lastik-online.com.tr.
Online tyre retailer Delticom reports that its revenues in the first half of this year rose 10.7 per cent year-on-year to €250.2 million. EBIDTA for the period between 1 January and 30 June was up 6.4 per cent to €6.6 million, although the EBITDA margin contracted from 2.7 to 2.6 per cent. EBIT decreased 32.3 per cent in the reporting period to € 1.4 million, while consolidated net income totaled €0.7 million, up from the €0.2 million net loss reported a year earlier. Earnings per share were €0.06.
Online tyre retailer Delticom has begun rolling out the first in a series of new national websites that combine tyre sales, tips and information in the one location. Delticom’s name for the new information portal is TyresNet, and it says it aims to “open up the world of tyres and wheels” to motorists and tyre, rim and wheel suppliers. The first two sites to go live cater to the German (reifen.de) and Austrian (reifen.at) markets.
At Delticom’s Annual General Meeting in Germany yesterday, shareholders were informed that the online tyre retailer would distribute a dividend of € 0.25 per share for the 2014 financial year – only half that of the previous year. This smaller dividend particularly reflected a three-quarter drop in net profit – a decline “mainly due to the higher cost base after the Tirendo acquisition.” Andreas Prüfer, head of the company’s board of management, also told shareholders that the Tirendo business concept “of achieving 50 per cent or 100 per cent growth in the online tyre market through high advertising and personnel expenses did not prove successful.”
While climatic conditions affected sales at Delticom in the three months to 30 September, it was its 2013-acquired Tirendo operation that wreaked havoc on the bottom line.
Starting 1 January 2015, Thierry Delesalle will take over responsibility within Delticom’s Management Board for both the company’s consumer market passenger car tyres and complete wheel set business in Western European markets, and for marketing. In his role as a purchase manager and head of country management, Delesalle has been responsible for the daily operations of Delticom’s B2C E-Commerce passenger car tyre business in Western Europe since 2011. In his current position, he works closely together with the online tyre retailer’s marketing department and reports directly to the Management Board.
New winter sizes have entered Delticom’s Star Performer exclusive brand line-up in time for this year’s cold season. The new products are already available from Delticom’s national online portals, including the company’s UK consumer and B2B sites.
For the first time in its 15 year history, online retailer Delticom has reported negative net earnings. The German firm says it ended the first half of the 2014 financial year with a net loss of approximately €200,000; it says this minus result is primarily attributable to an accumulated, after tax loss of €8.0 million from Tirendo, the Berlin-based online tyre retailer Delticom acquired in September 2013. The perhaps understated comment from Delticom on 14 August was that “Tirendo’s performance in the first half of the year is significantly below planning, both in terms of revenues and earnings.”
This month, online tyre dealer Delticom celebrates 15 years in the business. The company was set up in Germany on 2 July 1999 by former Continental sales managers Rainer Binder and Dr. Andreas Prüfer, together with internet expert Timon Samusch. Initial capital invested in the company was DM 60,000 (approximately €30,000 using the changeover rate), and turnover in the second half of 1999 amounted to DM 1.8 million. On 15 January 2000, the four-employee company (at the end of 2013 Delticom had 254 employees) launched its first B2C portal, the German-market reifendirekt.de site, and the following May it entered the B2B segment with autoreifenonline.de. At its absolute peak, Delticom received 600 orders a day in 2000.
UK and European motorists are increasingly choosing to purchase tyres through the Internet. The latest research published by one of the largest tyre e-tailers, Delticom also suggest – perhaps unsurprisingly – that consumers are increasing tending towards their online retail platforms. These results of the research have been published in the Delticom Report “Tyres Online 2014”.
Net income at online tyre retailer Delticom took a dive in the first quarter of 2014, despite a year-on-year rise in sales revenue. While the addition of Tirendo sales and an early start to the summer season drove revenues up 16.4 per cent to €94.3 million in the three months to 31 March 2014, the good news ended there. EBITDA declined 26.0 per cent to €2.4 million in the first quarter, and ppa-effect pushed EBIT down to €0.3 million, a year-on-year reduction of 88.4 per cent. EBIT margin was 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, as opposed to 3.1 per cent a year earlier. Net income shrank – to use the word Delticom applied in its 3-Month report – by 98.8 per cent, to €20,400.
The influence online tyre retailing is growing so fast that 20 per cent of Europe tyres sales could take place online by 2020. That’s the view of market analysts at Frost & Sullivan, which also reports that the influence of the internet on the auto industry can be seen in the continuous growth of the eRetailing market for automotive parts in general. According to the analysts, eRetailing of automotive components has given aftermarket participants a fresh boost and presents a new sales channel dynamic enough to be in sync with evolving macro-economic conditions and also flexible enough to address customer needs by offering a personalized shopping experience.
Consolidated net income at online tyre dealer Delticom has decreased for the second consecutive year, falling 47.9 per cent year-on-year to €11.6 million for 2013. This is 67.8 per cent lower than the 15-year old company’s best ever net income of €36.0 million, which it achieved in 2011. Nevertheless, upon releasing its 2013 Annual Report the company defended this result by claiming its business model “has once again proven its resilience” and that Delticom ran a profitable business last year despite an “adverse” market environment.
During the course of last year more than a million new customers purchased tyres through Delticom’s online portals. And for the first time in the company’s history, the number of repeat purchasers also passed the half-million mark.
Rainer Binder, one of the two founders of online tyre dealer Delticom AG, was appointed to the company’s Supervisory Board, effective 1 January 2014, by the district court (Amtsgericht) in Hanover, Germany. At its meeting on the following day, the Delticom Supervisory Board elected Binder its chairman. He has swapped roles with Andreas Prüfer, who on 1 January 2014 rejoined the company’s Management Board and was appointed co-CEO.
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