Australia’s largest online bookseller has entered into a voluntary share trading suspension, just two weeks after axing 50 jobs and losing its chief executive.
Booktopia Group Ltd notified the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Monday, saying its securities would be suspended from quotation immediately pending an announcement on “further outcomes” from a strategic review, “including its progress in seeking additional funding”.
The suspension would remain in place until the commencement of trading on Friday.
Booktopia announced the strategic review of its business in February after reporting a 21% fall in revenue to $86.3m for the second half of 2023, in comparison to the same time period the previous year.
The company’s net loss between July and December was $16.7m, with net liabilities of more than $20m.
At an investor presentation in February, Booktopia announced it had reduced its sales aspirations by between $1m and $3m based on existing market conditions, citing BookScan figures showing an 8.3% industry decline in January 2024.
Economic pressures affecting consumer spending, an increasingly competitive landscape and the volatility of the book market were cited as the reasons for the downturn.
On 3 June the company withdrew completely the already heavily reduced sales expectations for 2024.
“With this decline in revenue and with the organisational restructure about to be implemented, the company is no longer in a position to provide guidance and withdraws the guidance provided to the market in its announcement made on 9 February 2024,” a company statement said.
The Booktopia co-founder and board member Tony Nash told Guardian Australia on Tuesday he was unable to comment further at this stage.
“We’re in motion at the moment, so [an announcement] will be probably more relevant towards the end of this week or early next week,” he said.
In the past fortnight Nash has stepped into the role of executive director and sales director after the resignation of the chief executive David Nenke on 3 June, just 12 months into the role.
Booktopia is now in the process of making at least 50 employees at its Rhodes headquarters in Sydney redundant, funded in part by a $1m revolving debt facility secured externally.
The Booktopia chairman, Peter George, said the redundancies would result in $6.1m annualised cost savings, which would be realised in 2025 and assist with the company’s restructure.
“The sustained volatility of the economic climate, in addition to changing consumer spending behaviours, have continued to contribute to business results that have been below our expectations,” George said in a statement issued earlier this month.
“The Board remains committed to building a profitable and sustainable business in the short and long-term and as such, we have regrettably had to make the very difficult decision to make a large reduction in headcount … we recognise we will be losing many talented staff in this process.”
