Continued sales growth

Sales in the first quarter 2013 exceeds one billion Swedish krona

CDON Group AB (NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Mid Cap: CDON) announces its financial results for the first quarter, 1 January – 31 March 2013.

First Quarter

• Net sales up 10% year on year to SEK 1,051.1 (954.3) million
• Gross profit of SEK 148.1 (135.6) million with a gross margin of 14.1% (14.2%)*
• Operating profit of SEK -7.8 (-12.1) million*
• Net income of SEK -17.3 (-13.1) million*
• Basic earnings per share of SEK -0.25 (-0.18)*
• After the end of the quarter, the Board of Directors resolved upon a preferential rights issue of about SEK 500 million

* Figures for 2012 include SEK -14 million in one off items relating to the Fashion segment

Paul Fischbein, President and CEO of CDON Group commented: "We start 2013 with record sales where we, for the first time, pass one billion krona in net sales for the first quarter. The Group's stores continue their strong development, while we continue our work to enhance customer satisfaction and cost efficiency by improving our internal processes and strengthening our routines.

Gymgrossisten.com continues its positive development and combines an accelerated growth rate with a strong operating profit. Further, Gymgrossisten.com improves its market position by launching new brands and products. Within the Sports & Health segment, we also launched Milebreaker.com two days ago, an online store entirely created for endurance athletes. Cdon.com continues to broaden its range and keeps showing growth despite the continuous decline in media related product sales. Nelly.com also keeps its growth momentum even though sales in the first quarter have been negatively influenced by the long lasting cold winter in the Nordics. The company has strengthened its organisation and delivery capabilities, and we have already seen many of the projects that were initiated a few months ago starting to generate positive results.

Our logistics company continues its improvement work according to plan. Many projects that are meant to increase efficiency were launched during the first quarter and even if the financial result for our logistics operations have improved compared to the fourth quarter of last year we still expect further large result improvements for the logistics company during 2013. A fully efficient and competitive logistics operations will provide us with significant advantages in our future expansion.

E-commerce is a winning sales channel that each year constitutes a larger proportion of the total retail sales. Since its inception in 1999, CDON Group has built well-known brands and established market leading positions in Nordic e-commerce within all our four segments. Our strong market positions in combination with a strengthened infrastructure provides us with a good position to exploit the continued market growth resulting from the growing number of consumers doing an ever increasing amount of their purchases on the internet. To exploit our unique position and potential, our Board of Directors today also announced a resolution to infuse CDON Group additional financial resources in the form of a rights issue for SEK 500 million, with preferential rights for existing shareholders.”

    
The company will host a conference call today at 13.00 Stockholm time, 12.00 London time and 07.00 New York time.

To participate in the conference call, please dial:
Sweden:                             +46(0)8 505 137 93
International:                       +44(0)20 7784 1036
US:                                     +1 646 254 3363

The access pin code for the conference call is 6760147.
To listen to the conference call online, please go to www.cdongroup.com.

    
For additional information, please visit www.cdongroup.com or contact:

Paul Fischbein, President & Chief Executive Officer
Phone:                +46 (0) 10 703 20 00

Media, Investor and analysts enquiries:
Fredrik Bengtsson, Head of Communications and Investor Relations
Phone:                +46 (0) 700 80 75 04
E-mail:                 press@cdongroup.com, ir@cdongroup.com

About CDON Group
CDON Group is the leading e-commerce group in the Nordic region. Established in 1999, the Group has continuously expanded its product portfolio and is now a leading e-commerce player in the Entertainment (CDON.COM, Lekmer.com), Fashion (Nelly.com, Heppo.com and Members.com), Sport & Health (Gymgrossisten.com, Bodystore.com and Milebreaker.com) and Home & Garden (Tretti.com and Rum21.se) segments. CDON Group’s online stores attracted approximately 244 million site visits and more than two million unique customers in 2012.

The information in this announcement is that which CDON Group AB is required to disclose under the Securities Markets Act. This information was released for publication at 08:00 CET 17 April 2013.

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