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8 Dec

Rent the Runway Regains Some Momentum With Sales, EBITDA Gains

Rent the Runway Inc. got just a little little bit of its groove back. 

The rental pioneer — which saw a summer slowdown and laid off 24 percent of its corporate employees in September — on Wednesday posted third-quarter gains and boosted its outlook for the 12 months.

Net losses for the quarter narrowed to $36.1 million from $87.8 million a 12 months ago, with probably the most recent period including $5.8 million in restructuring charges. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization tallied $6.6 million, up from losses of $5.6 million on the identical basis a 12 months ago. 

Revenues for the three months ended Oct. 31 increased 31.2 percent to $77.4 million from $59 million.

Rent the Runway’s energetic subscriber count rose 15 percent to 134,240. 

“Rent the Runway is basically resonating with our goal customer despite the uncertain macroeconomic environment that we’re in at once,” said Jennifer Hyman, chief executive officer and cofounder of Rent the Runway Inc., in a WWD interview.

Hyman pointed to gross margins — which stood at 41 percent within the quarter, up from 34 percent a 12 months earlier — as “significantly higher than most other retailers in our space.” 

But Hyman and Rent the Runway still must prove themselves to investors, who need to see if the modern company that went public last fall can turn its model right into a financial powerhouse. 

Just before the outcomes were released, shares of the corporate were trading at about $1.36 — down from greater than $24 shortly after its initial public offering in October 2021 — with a market capitalization of just $83.1 million. But investors took heart from the quarter and the outlook and sent shares of the corporate up 23.5 percent to $1.68 in after-hours trading.

Consumers showed some reticence over the summer and now that more data has are available in, Hyman attributed that largely to a roughly 5 percent price increase Rent the Runway pushed through in April.  

“There’s been a sort of normalization post price increase,” said Hyman, noting that there’s less churn in the shopper base and fewer pauses on the subscription service. 

Going forward, more of the impact from the corporate’s cost cuts and restructuring are expected to flow through into the financial statements. 

Rent the Runway’s rank and file have also adjusted to the reset at the corporate, she said.

“The worker mood and moral rating is substantially back to where it was before the restructuring,” Hyman said. “How I gauge the success of something like a restructuring is the engagement of our team.” 

Jennifer Hyman

The corporate has continued to roll out recent initiatives. 

Its first celebrity collection launched in November, featuring Ashley Park, costar of Netflix’s “Emily in Paris.” 4 recent exclusive design brands — Atlein, Ronny Kobo, Marina Moscone and Toccin — bowed this fall. 

Rent the Runway can also be working on a pilot to wholesale its exclusive design products to an undisclosed third-party retailer. The looks sold can be recent, not from the rental inventory. 

“That is the primary time one other multi-brand retailer has purchased these exclusive design products from us,” Hyman said. “It showcases the patron appeal and the demand for our exclusive design outside Rent the Runway.

“It’s too early to say how the pilot’s going to evolve, but we consider it really highlights the ability of our data and the ability of our platform and the monetization opportunity that exists with our exclusive designs which can be now 30 percent of our inventory,” she said.

While many fashion corporations got here into the 12 months projecting strength and needed to repeatedly warn of weaker results, Rent the Runway has been running countertrend by way of profits. 

The corporate is now projecting an adjusted EBITDA margin of 1 percent this 12 months, up from the forecast in September, calling for a decline of two percent to a flat performance, and higher than the outlook in June, which pointed to a 5 to six percent decline.

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