Overstock revenue down for Q4, but up for full year

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah  – Revenue for e-commerce retailer Overstock came in at $612.7 million for the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31, 2021, representing a 9% decrease from last year’s figure of $668.7 million.

“Navigating the operating environment in our industry during the fourth quarter was challenging,” said Johnathan Johnson Overstock CEO. “Despite challenges, we were committed to delivering on our profitability targets—and we did just that, driven in part by our largest Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — or Cyber Five — period in the company’s history.”

Gross profit for the fourth quarter was $139 million or 22.7% of total net revenue compared to $150 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. The company’s diluted earnings per share was 68 cents for Q4.

“The foundational operational improvements we have made over the past two years have stabilized the business and positioned us well to navigate through economic- and industry-specific cycles over the long term,” said Johnson. “We are proving we can adjust to, execute through and take advantage of both positive and negative jolts in the market. It’s encouraging that nearly one-third of the overall home furniture and furnishings market continues to be transacted online. I believe increasing our brand association with home positions us favorably for 2022 and beyond.”

For the full year, total net revenue was $2.8 billion, an increase of 11% year-over-year, with gross profit of $624 million or 22.6% of total net revenue. Full year diluted earnings per share from continued operations was $3.57, an improvement of $1.45 from last year.

On the call with investors, Johnson said, “We have increased brand association with home by 15% over last year, we expanded our number of home SKUs by 150% with 94% of sales in home categories and we are continuing our execution of removing non-home items from the website which will be complete by the end of the second quarter of this year.”

Removing non-home items from the website supports a higher average order value and translates to a bigger share of the wallet driving market share growth, according to Johnson.

Also on the call with investors, Johnson said one of the key initiatives for the current year is to increase Overstock’s penetration into the Canadian market with an end-of-year goal for Canada to grow to 10% of U.S. revenue.  “We are working with partners to hold more product in local Canadian warehouses and targeting our efforts to build awareness in Canada,” he added on the call.

While not offering specific guidance for the upcoming quarters, Overstock is anticipating revenue growth in the high single digits for the full 2022 fiscal year.  “For the past couple of years, Q2 has been the largest quarter of year from a revenue perspective,” Johnson said. “Unemployment is down and housing starts are up. We believe that wherever the market grows we can outpace it.”