Germany's Thalia reports sales uplift, but profits suffer

German book chain Thalia has come through the pandemic in better shape than expected with sales up 7% to more than €1.1bn (approximately £928m) in the 12 months to 30th September in Germany and Austria.

However the Covid-19 crisis has hit the market leader’s profits hard, according to c.e.o. Michael Busch. While final figures will not be published for some time, he estimates the damage of enforced store closures during two lockdowns in 2020 – the second one in the midst of the crucial Christmas season – to be around €65m, of which only about €18m will be covered by government grants. “I am very pleased with the increase in sales, but this should not distract from the fact that we clearly missed our target for fiscal 2020/21,” Busch said at a press briefing this week.

Thalia’s e-commerce business was the clear winner of the 12 months with online sales up 65% year-on-year and now accounting for 40% of the business overall. As a direct result of the pandemic, sales in the 360 bricks-and-mortar bookstores in Germany (320) and Austria (40) fell 16%, with footfall down more than 34%. Busch stressed that despite these challenges no bookstores were closed – in fact, nine opened in Germany – and there were no job losses.

Driving e-commerce forward while at the same time maintaining and expanding Thalia’s core business in the high street, which has picked up considerably in recent months, is among Busch’s main objectives for the current fiscal year and beyond. He also intends to further evolve Thalia’s digital platform launched a year ago and offers interested booksellers industry solutions for IT, web shop and buying. The platform serves around 470 shops at the moment; for the next 12 months Busch is looking at a minimum of 500 participants.

Germany's book sales as a whole were up 3.9% across all channels in value for the nine months to end-September, and 0.9% in volume, according to recently released figures from trade publication buchreport and Media Control.