British e-commerce company The Hut Group reported revenue growth of 42 per cent to £1.6 billion in 2020.

Underlying profits grew by 35 per cent to £152 million after £2.6 million of self-funded furlough costs.

But the UK business also incurred an operating loss of £481.8 million, largely attributed to its IPO and covid-19 costs.

The company’s beauty lines saw 57 per cent growth, while its nutrition brand increased revenues by 36.2 per cent.

The Hut Groups OnDemand offering, a proprietary production facility that enables brands and influencers to launch product lines, also did well with a 69 per cent rise in revenues.

However, it’s technology arm significantly less growth at 7.3 per cent.

"Our global D2C brand building capabilities and proprietary Ingenuity technology platform has enabled us to further develop both our external brand relationships, and our expanding portfolio of Beauty and Nutrition own brands,” said Matthew Moulding, founder and chief executive, The Hut Group. “Leveraging the platform to build an impressive client base of blue-chip consumer brands has been a highlight of the year, supported by encouraging momentum in the current year Ingenuity Commerce pipeline.

Moulding added: "Management's purpose for the IPO was to step change THG's access to funding in order to capitalise on Covid-19 accelerated market changes. As we progressed through 2020, those changes became more apparent in terms of the volume and scale of opportunities available to the Group, as evidenced by the c. £400m committed to acquisitions since IPO, most notably the acquisition of Dermstore in the US.”

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