Catawiki, an Amsterdam-based online catalog and auction house for collectible, has made a loss of more than €12 million last year. As per the report from RTL Z, major shareholder NOM acknowledges that the company has gone through difficult times. As per the annual accounts deposited by Catawiki with the Chamber of Commerce, the turnover increased from just under €17 million in 2015 to nearly €47 million in 2017.
On the other hand, the losses also peaked from €7.2 million in 2015 to €20 million in 2017. In the recent financial statement, Catawiki’s revenue remained at €45 million but made a loss of around €12.3 million. With continuous loss and no new capital injection, the equity is expected to go negative this year. As per the company claims, the required changes have been made. They also said, “a point of sustainable profitability is approaching.”
The supervisory board was changed back in May due to the departure of four supervisors – Jeroen van Onna (NOM), Lorrie Norrington (Lead Edge), founder Marco Jansen and investor Arthur Kosten (formerly Booking.com). However, the major American shareholder Lead Edge remained represented in the supervisory body.
If you are unaware, Catawiki is an auction website, which hosts over 160 weekly auctions in various categories, including comic books, coins, stamps, art, and much more. It was founded by Marco Jansen, René Schoenmakers, in 2008.
As a part of the written explanation, Catawiki explains themselves as ‘healthy and fast-growing company’, and expecting to auction around €350 million worth of objects this year. Moreover, the company does not expect to make any profit in the near future but will operate with positive cash flow.
According to Jeroen van Onna:
After a deep analysis of the results, Catawiki is now concentrating on the most interesting categories. We also looked at which countries were causing so many problems that we were throwing money in. We stopped doing that.
According to the major shareholder, the restructuring has paid off. “The new management is doing great and performs better than expected every time.”
Main image credit: Catawiki
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