Qurate Retail Q1 revenue down 8 percent, but profits widen

Video commerce giant Qurate Retail reported an 8 percent drop in revenue in the firsts quarter of the year, but it managed to widen its profits.

The media conglomerate made revenue of 2.64 billion dollars in Q1, down from 2.89 billion dollars a year earlier.

That came as revenue at its biggest brand QxH fell 5 percent to 1.6 billion dollars.

Meanwhile, revenue at QVC International fell 12 percent to 592 million dollars, at Cornerstone fell 13 percent to 259 million dollars, and at Zulily fell 17 percent to 192 million dollars.

Despite the revenue drop, the company managed to widen its net profit in the quarter to 20 million dollars from a profit of 1 million dollars a year earlier.

Qurate Retail president and CEO David Rawlinson said in a statement: “In the first quarter, we saw meaningful improvement in revenue trends at our largest businesses, QVC US & QVC International, while performance remained soft at HSN, Cornerstone and Zulily.

“Our customer file continues to be pressured and while we have multiple efforts underway to re-activate customer groups, we expect the impact of these initiatives to take several quarters. Against this backdrop, we are intensely focused on factors in our control.”

Rawlinson said the company’s turnaround is underway, and it expects “material improvement” in its profitability in the back half of the current year.