Zalando reported gross merchandise volume up 20.7 percent and revenue up 20.8 percent for the second quarter, and its shares fell as much as 18 percent on the day. Those two facts are not in tension. They are the same fact seen from two distances. Strip out the acquisition of About You and compare like with like, and the underlying business grew GMV 4.4 percent and revenue 1.1 percent.
The market did the arithmetic quickly. What was published as a quarter of more than 20 percent growth is a quarter in which the group bought most of its growth and grew the rest by roughly one percent. That is worth an operator’s attention well beyond anyone holding the stock, because Europe’s largest fashion platform decelerating to low single digits changes what a marketplace channel is worth to the sellers on it.
The two sets of numbers
| Metric | As reported | Pro forma, About You in both periods |
|---|---|---|
| Group GMV | 4,915.0 million euros, up 20.7 percent | Up 4.4 percent |
| Group revenue | 3,424.4 million euros, up 20.8 percent | Up 1.1 percent |
| Adjusted group EBIT | 204.8 million euros, up 10.4 percent | not restated |
| Active customers | 62.5 million, up 18.3 percent | not restated |
Zalando completed the About You acquisition on 11 July 2025. Any comparison of the second quarter of 2026 against the second quarter of 2025 therefore compares a group that contains About You against one that does not. The reported growth rate is arithmetically correct and commercially uninformative, which is a combination worth recognising because it will appear again in other companies’ results all year.
One number in that table was already telling you this before the pro forma figures were published. Adjusted EBIT rose 10.4 percent while GMV and revenue rose more than 20 percent. Profit growing at half the rate of the top line is what buying revenue looks like from the inside.
The guidance is the part that moved the price
The quarter itself beat expectations on profitability. What sent the shares down was the outlook. Zalando now expects GMV and revenue growth in the lower half of its original 12 to 17 percent reported range, and narrowed adjusted EBIT guidance to between 680 and 720 million euros.
Read the guidance and the pro forma figures together and the shape becomes clear. Even the lower half of 12 to 17 percent is a reported number, which still contains the acquisition for part of the year. The organic component underneath it is the 4.4 percent, and that is the rate a seller on the platform should be planning against.
A platform growing 4 percent while you assumed 20 changes which channels deserve your stock. Sellerboard rebuilds net margin per SKU and per channel from your settlement data, so the decision about where to put inventory rests on what each channel actually returns rather than on its published growth rate.
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What is genuinely working
Two things, and neither is the headline.
B2B is the real story in this quarter. Segment adjusted EBIT rose 257.7 percent to 41 million euros, with margin expanding from 4.3 percent to 12.2 percent. That is a business changing character rather than a business growing. Zalando selling logistics and software to other retailers is a higher-margin activity than selling clothes, and the margin move says the shift is happening rather than being announced.
The acquisition is delivering on cost. About You synergies contributed more than 10 million euros to adjusted EBIT in the quarter. That is a real number attached to a real integration, and it is the strongest defence of the deal available in these results.
Chief financial officer Anna Dimitrova framed the quarter as showing that “the resilience of our profitability reflects the quality and mix of our earnings” from higher-margin businesses. On B2B that framing is supported by the segment figures. Applied to the group it is doing more work than the numbers can carry.
Co-chief executive Robert Gentz put the emphasis elsewhere, saying the company’s “fast-scaling AI capabilities are already delivering measurable benefits” across operations. Take the specific claims in that area at face value only where a figure is attached to them, and note that neither AI nor B2B explains a group growing 1.1 percent on revenue.
What this means if you sell on Zalando
Three consequences follow, and they are more concrete than the share price.
Your growth assumption is probably wrong. A partner programme pitched against 12 to 17 percent platform growth is being pitched against a reported figure that includes an acquisition. If you have been modelling your Zalando revenue as growing with the platform, the number to model against is closer to 4 percent.
Expect the commercial terms to tighten. A platform with decelerating organic growth and a profit line under pressure has a small number of levers, and the ones that reach sellers are commission, fulfilment pricing and the cost of visibility. Nothing has been announced. The direction of travel is not hard to read.
Watch B2B, because it is where the company is going. A group whose fastest-improving margin comes from selling infrastructure to other retailers is a group whose interests are diverging from those of the brands selling on its consumer platform. That is not sinister, it is strategy, and it is worth knowing which business you are a customer of.
When a marketplace’s terms tighten, the sellers who notice first are the ones already tracking net margin by channel. Sellerboard lands fees, returns, storage and ad spend on each SKU, so a commission change shows up in your numbers the week it lands rather than in a quarterly review.
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The transferable lesson
This is a European story with a European platform and a European seller base, which makes it rarer than it should be in a news cycle dominated by American marketplaces. But the durable part is a habit rather than a fact.
When any platform reports growth after an acquisition, find the pro forma figure before you react to the headline. It is usually published, it is usually further down, and it is usually the one that describes the business you actually deal with. In this case the gap between the two was sixteen percentage points on GMV and nearly twenty on revenue. A seller who read only the press release would have concluded that Zalando is growing four times faster than it is.
The company’s own release leads with more than 20 percent growth, profitable growth, B2B expansion and AI innovation. Every one of those statements is defensible. Together they describe a quarter that the market marked down by as much as 18 percent, which is the largest single-day fall in the company’s history and enough to erase its gains for the year. Both accounts come from the same set of numbers. Only one of them tells you what to plan against.
Sources
- Zalando SE, Q2 2026 results, published 4 August 2026
- WWD, Zalando Q2 Earnings 2026: About You Revenue Bump Masks Slower Growth
- Reuters via AOL, Retailer Zalando set for record daily share price fall as growth outlook weighs