Kogan.com shares jump 20pc as NZ turnaround helps sales surge past $875m

Kogan.com shares jump 20pc as NZ turnaround helps sales surge past $875m

Kogan.com founder and CEO Ruslin Kogan

Shares in Melbourne-based online retailer Kogan.com (ASX: KGN) surged more than 20 per cent today after the company reported group gross sales of $875.6 million for the 10 months to the end of April.

The gross sales figure is up 13.2 per cent on the prior corresponding period, while expanding margins and a turnaround at its New Zealand subsidiary Mighty Ape have also helped drive a 17.4 per cent jump in adjusted EBITDA to $37.5 million.

Shares in the e-commerce group hit a high of $4.14 today and were still trading close to their intra-day high at $4.08 at 3.26pm (AEST).

The business update shows the company is tracking towards the upper end of its full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range of 6 to 9 per cent, with the group recording an 8.6 per cent margin for the period.

Group revenue rose 6 per cent to $433.7 million, while gross profit climbed 11.1 per cent to $177.9 million, indicating the business is extracting more margin from each dollar of sales.

The latest update affirms company founder and CEO Ruslan Kogan's optimism when releasing the company's half-year results in February when he described the company's focus on delivering value to its growing customer base driving "significant momentum" across the company's business.

The core Kogan.com Australian business was the primary engine of the latest results, posting gross sales growth of 18.2 per cent and a 43.2 per cent jump in adjusted EBIT.

The Australian operation achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11.5 per cent, well above the group average.

Active customers on the Kogan.com platform grew 9 per cent, helping push group active customers to 3.5 million as at 30 April 2026, up 4 per cent on the prior corresponding period.

Mighty Ape, the New Zealand-focused online retailer Kogan.com acquired in 2021, remains loss-making at the year-to-date level, recording an adjusted EBITDA loss of $3.8 million on gross sales that fell 14.2 per cent to $101.7 million.

The subsidiary swung from a $700,000 adjusted EBITDA profit in the prior corresponding period.

However, the company points to material improvement in the most recent four months.

Between January and April 2026, Mighty Ape's adjusted EBITDA losses halved, falling 52.8 per cent compared with the same four-month window a year earlier, while gross margin jumped 8.4 percentage points to 37.8 per cent.

The update comes nine months after Kogan.com wrote down $46.3 million in Mighty Ape goodwill in its FY25 results, citing website upgrade problems that disrupted the New Zealand business.

At the time, Kogan framed the issues as temporary and flagged a comprehensive reset of the Mighty Ape operation.

At the half-year mark on 31 December 2025, the group held $71.8 million in cash with no external debt and paid an interim dividend of 8c per share, up 14.3 per cent on the prior year.

The strong trading over the past 10 months lands amid a buoyant period for Australian e-commerce.

Australia Post data shows total online spending in Australia hit $82.6 billion in calendar year 2025, up 14 per cent year on year, providing a tailwind for pure-play online retailers.

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