Zalando delivers strong 2025 results, expects further acceleration in 2026 through scaling AI innovations and announces a share buy-back of up to 300 million euros
 

• Group revenue gains 16.8% to 12.3 billion euros, and adjusted EBIT climbs 15.6% to 591 million euros.
• Zalando continues to execute on its strategy: successfully unlocking the power of AI across its data and infrastructure platform and beyond and pioneering the next generation of agentic commerce in Europe.
• Following the acquisition of ABOUT YOU, Zalando made exceptional progress on capturing synergies and targets to reach the announced 100 million euros run-rate in 2028, one year earlier than initially planned.
• In B2C, the company’s multi-app approach boosts GMV to 17.6 billion euros and adjusted EBIT to 536 million euros, with active customers reaching a new high of 62 million. In B2B, revenue rises 14.6% to 1.1 billion euros, with adjusted EBIT more than doubling.
• Zalando's B2B software unit SCAYLE expands to the US and secures a major win to power the global Direct-to-Consumer business for Levi's®.
• The group expects further acceleration and continued profitable growth for 2026, representing a further milestone towards reaching the company's mid-term targets in 2028.
• On the back of the strong 2025 results and Zalando’s confidence in the delivery of its mid-term margin expansion and strong cash generation, the company announces a share buy-back programme of up to 300 million euros to return excess capital to shareholders.

Berlin, 12 March 2026 // Zalando SE (“Zalando”), Europe's leading technology platform for fashion and lifestyle, reported double-digit growth in GMV, revenue and profit for 2025, as the acquisition of ABOUT YOU and the successful execution of its B2C and B2B strategy helped to serve customers and partners even better. The company expects a further acceleration in 2026 as it scales AI innovations across its business.

The company delivered at the high end of its 2025 guidance, which had been updated following the successful acquisition of ABOUT YOU to reflect the performance of the combined group, across all key metrics. Group GMV rose by 14.7% to 17.6 billion euros, revenue increased 16.8% to 12.3 billion euros, and adjusted EBIT climbed 15.6% to 591 million euros. While the adjusted EBIT margin remained stable at 4.8% at the group level, the Zalando stand-alone margin expanded to 5.3%.

“We accelerated our strategy and rolled out major innovations across B2C and B2B to deliver a strong performance in 2025,” said Robert Gentz, Co-CEO of Zalando. “The unique data and infrastructure platform we’ve built over 17 years now gives us a massive advantage. We have the richest fashion-specific data in Europe, from billions of customer interactions and unparalleled brand relationships, and the continent’s leading logistics fulfilment network. By supercharging that foundation with AI, we are providing our customers and partners with experiences and services that seemed impossible just a few years ago while making our own operations more efficient.”

Supercharging Our Business with AI
In 2025, Zalando used AI to drive efficiency and productivity gains across its entire business. On the marketing front, the company scaled its AI-generated product content from near zero to 90% in just one year, reducing campaign creation times from six weeks to mere days and boosting content output by 70%. In logistics, advanced AI models solved complex supply chain optimization challenges, improving the precision of real-time customer delivery promises by 22 percentage points. Furthermore, by equipping its team of around 3,000 tech specialists with the latest AI coding tools, Zalando significantly increased coding output, seeing increases of over 20% more code changes, even in a complex environment.

In 2026, Zalando will continue using its data and infrastructure advantage to solve fashion's toughest challenges, for example personal matchmaking - the complex task of seamlessly connecting individual customers with the exact products and lifestyle content they love and the right size and fit. Powered by its own foundational models, Zalando's precision in matchmaking has already driven a 13% increase in items added to bags. Simultaneously, by using real body measurements from over a million customers, its Size & Fit AI helps shoppers pick the right size in advance, avoiding size-related returns by more than 8%.

Zalando is also unlocking a new, conversational way to shop by evolving its Zalando Assistant into a true personal lifestyle companion. Engagement surged to six million users - a fourfold increase from last year - as the now-shoppable Assistant is able to learn unique style preferences. To accelerate this vision, Zalando has partnered with Qutwo, one of Europe's most ambitious AI labs, to make lifestyle agents a reality.

Looking beyond its own platform, Zalando is pioneering agentic commerce, an emerging channel projected to capture up to 15% of all online retail by 2030. As one of only two European launch partners for Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, Zalando is building the foundation that allows customers to discover and purchase fashion and lifestyle products directly through AI chatbots like Gemini. Because Zalando is already the number one referred fashion platform by conversational AIs, this early integration gives the company access to entirely new customer groups.

Scaling B2C with Multiple Fashion and Lifestyle Apps
In B2C, the group reached a new high of 62 million active customers in 2025 through its highly effective multi-app approach. Its team of apps - consisting of the brand-led flagship Zalando app, the trend-focused ABOUT YOU app, and the deal-driven Lounge by Zalando app - targets distinct customer needs. Each app engages its user base in a unique way through inspirational content, gamification, or daily deals, increasing the group's total market penetration. Together, these apps drive distribution to reach as many customers as possible, frequency to ensure frequent engagement, and depth to capture the highest possible share of their overall lifestyle spending.

Zalando significantly deepened customer engagement in 2025. The revamped Plus loyalty programme is now available in 17 markets, reaching 16.8 million members and accounting for nearly half of the fourth quarter's GMV. The company’s newly launched, AI-powered discovery feed is already entertaining over nine million weekly users, shifting the platform from a transactional destination to a daily lifestyle companion. This increased engagement - stemming from Zalando’s self-service platform investment, more efficient campaign management, data access and AI-optimized ad performance - fueled 42% growth in Zalando's highly profitable retail media business in 2025.

The company also successfully captured a larger share of consumer lifestyle spending. Categories beyond Fashion, like Sports, Beauty, Kids & Family, and Designer, achieved 13% growth last year, allowing the company to grow alongside its customers' evolving needs. Elevating the Sports category was a central focus in 2025, underscored by a landmark five-year partnership with the German Football Association (DFB) and major sponsorships of premier European marathons to further strengthen Zalando's position as a leading sports destination.

Scaling the B2B Operating System and Scoring a Major Win in the US with Levi's®
In B2B, where Zalando is building the operating system for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce, the company continues to unlock digital business opportunities for brands and retailers and reducing the complexities of cross-border e-commerce in Europe. In 2025, B2B revenues surpassed 1 billion euros - a 14.6% increase year-over-year - and adjusted EBIT more than doubled. Zalando’s modular operating system, which includes ZEOS (Smart Logistics), SCAYLE (Shop & Marketplace Software), and Tradebyte (Marketplace Integration), now serves over 1,200 merchants and enables around 11 billion euros in GMV.

In a defining milestone, SCAYLE today announced its global partnership with Levi's®, one of the world’s largest brand-name apparel companies and a global leader in jeanswear. SCAYLE will become the global commerce platform for levi.com across the U.S., Canada and Europe, securing a lighthouse win in the United States, the world’s largest software-as-a-service market. In 2025, the landmark partnership between ZEOS and UK retailer Next demonstrated the power of Zalando's logistics infrastructure, helping Next achieve a 33% increase in international online sales while reducing fulfilment costs by 6.5%.

Further Focus on Profitable Growth and Returning Capital to Shareholders
For the 2026 fiscal year, the combined group expects GMV and revenue growth of 12% to 17% on a reported basis. Adjusted EBIT is projected to reach between 660 million and 740 million euros, driven by underlying improvements in stand-alone business performance and an accelerated delivery of synergies from the ABOUT YOU transaction.* As a result, the company now expects to realise the targeted 100 million euros in synergies in 2028, a full year earlier than planned.

Zalando also remains fully on track to achieve its 2028 mid-term targets, having consistently delivered on its strategic commitments every year since 2024. Following the ABOUT YOU acquisition, the combined group projects an 8% to 13% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for both GMV and revenue between 2023 and 2028, based on reported figures. Furthermore, the company reiterates its target of a 6% to 8% adjusted EBIT margin by 2028, underpinned by strong free cash flow throughout the period, positioning 2026 as another major leap forward in its trajectory of profitable growth.

Given the strong momentum, the company’s robust fundamentals, its healthy balance sheet and strong cash flow generation, as well as management’s confidence in the future development, the company today announced a share buy-back programme of up to 300 million euros. This corresponds to approximately 5% of shares outstanding. The share buy-back will be financed by the company’s strong cash flow position. Zalando intends to cancel the repurchased shares. Zalando will also continue to invest between 240 million euros and 300 million euros in capital expenditure into its technology platform and infrastructure to capture a larger share of Europe’s 500 billion-euro fashion market.

“Our 2025 results prove our ability to execute: we promised profitable growth and we delivered at the high end of our guidance,” said Anna Dimitrova, CFO of Zalando. “We are bringing that same unwavering discipline to 2026. Our priority remains to drive long-term value creation, and we are now in a position where we can fund our growth and return capital. Consequently, we have decided to buy back shares for up to 300 million euros, commencing shortly after today's publication. This underscores our confidence in Zalando’s future earnings power and our disciplined approach to capital allocation.”

The earnings presentation and annual report 2025 are available on the Zalando Investor Relations website. Zalando will report the results for the first quarter of 2026 on 6 May 2026.

*Our outlook excludes potential impact from a prolonged Middle East conflict. Any potential future impact cannot be reliably assessed at the moment.

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Zalando at a glance

Key figures*
In m EUR	FY/25**	FY/24
Group GMV	17,560.2	15,311.3
Percent growth	14.7 %	4.6 %
Group revenue	12,346.1	10,572.5
Percent growth	16.8 %	4.2 %
B2C revenue	11,278.7	9,657.7
B2B revenue	1,091.3	952.6
Reconciliation revenue	-23.9	-37.8
Adjusted group EBIT	590.7	511.1
Adjusted group EBIT margin	4.8 %	4.8 %
B2C adjusted EBIT	536.0	488.7
B2B adjusted EBIT	53.9	22.8
Reconciliation adjusted EBIT	0.7	-0.4
Net working capital	-676.0	-269.3
Capital expenditure	-222.5	-206.9
Net income	212.7	251.1

 

Key performance indicators*
	FY/25***	FY/24
Active customers (million) (last 12 months)	62.0	51.8
Number of orders (million)	278.6	251.0
Average orders per active customer (last 12 months)	4.8	4.8
Average basket size (EUR) (last 12 months)	62.8	61.0

* Definitions are available in the Annual Report 2025

**  Including ABOUT YOU results from the 11 July 2025 closing date onwards

*** LTM-based KPIs are calculated based on the last twelve months including ABOUT YOU for the full year, while all other KPIs consider ABOUT YOU starting on 11 July 2025.

 

About Zalando

Founded in Berlin in 2008, Zalando is the leading European technology platform for fashion and lifestyle. Connecting 62 million active customers with more than 7,000 brands across 29 markets, our business is built on a unique AI-powered data and infrastructure platform. For our customers, our multi-app approach - comprising Zalando, ABOUT YOU, and Lounge by Zalando - delivers an inspiring, highly personalized shopping experience, serving different customers with different needs. For our partners, we are building the operating system for e-commerce. Through ZEOS, Tradebyte, and SCAYLE, we open our logistics, software, and service capabilities to brands and retailers, enabling them to seamlessly scale their businesses across borders.

For further information, please visit: corporate.zalando.com/en

 

Contact

Media inquiries           
Sarah Syed       
Business & Financial Communications   
presse@zalando.de 
 

Investor/Analyst inquiries
Patrick Kofler 
Investor Relations
investor.relations@zalando.de