Zalando revenue rises 5.1% as B2B business surges 28%

Zalando reported third-quarter revenue of €3.17 billion, up 5.1% year on year, in the three months ended 30 September. Gross merchandise volume rose faster, climbing 7.5% to €4.54 billion. The German fashion ecommerce company published the figures on Tuesday.

The sharpest growth came from B2B, whose revenue surged nearly 28% to €354.4 million. Adjusted EBIT for the division more than doubled, reaching €42.2 million from €19.6 million a year earlier. Its adjusted margin expanded to 11.9% from 7.1%.

Across the group, adjusted EBIT increased 10.6% to €106.5 million. The margin widened to 3.4% from 3.2%, helped by lower fulfilment costs, synergies from the About You integration and the B2B expansion. The company put synergies in the quarter at the mid-teens millions of euros.

Chief financial officer Anna Dimitrova said the About You integration is progressing well a year in and that momentum in delivering synergies has held. She added that the shift to a platform model is accelerating, with partner business and retail media both growing at double-digit rates.

The software unit Scayle added enterprise customers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Zeos Fulfilment, the logistics arm, secured clients including Champion, LC Waikiki and Lascana. Both feed the B2B number that grew faster than any other line Zalando reported.

In the consumer business, GMV grew across all three of Zalando's apps. The core app led, supported by scaling partner business and what the company called strong momentum in the Lounge app. Partner products reached 33.6% of business-to-consumer GMV, up 2.9 percentage points year on year.

Retail media revenue rose nearly 18%. Active customers climbed 2.9% to a record 63.2 million, and average spend per customer also rose by 2.9%, to €308. Each of those figures moved in the same direction, leaving no customer line flat.

The platform push

Zalando said more than 22 million unique users have visited its Zalando Assistant this year, a sign of how heavily the company is leaning on AI. The assistant answers shopping questions inside the app and is part of the platform shift Dimitrova described.

The company announced a new service called Zalando Extended, which will launch with German home and lifestyle goods retailer Westwing as its pilot partner. The AI agent will let shoppers discover items from other online retailers without leaving the Zalando app, beginning with categories such as bulky home goods.

Zalando says the service could let partner shops reach its customers without complex technical integration or changes to their own logistics. More online shops will be added gradually, the company said. It is a direct extension of the platform model the CFO flagged in her statement.

Guidance held

Zalando confirmed its full-year 2026 guidance unchanged. The company expects reported GMV and revenue growth in the lower half of its 12% to 17% range. Adjusted EBIT is guided at €680 million to €720 million, a band the third-quarter result keeps within reach.

The B2B margin is the part that has changed most sharply. A jump from 7.1% to 11.9% in a single year, on revenue nearing €354 million, moves the group's profit equation even as the consumer business carries the volume.

The quarter falls a year into the integration of About You, the German company Zalando took over. Synergies were again cited, with a specific range attached this quarter, and the company named them as one driver of the wider margin gain.

The platform push is the strategic centre of the results. By moving GMV through partner products, retail media and fulfilment, Zalando earns margin on goods it does not itself hold. The 33.6% partner share of consumer GMV measures how far that shift has gone.

The year-end question is whether the lower half of guidance is where the company lands. Growth in every reported line, a doubled B2B profit and a wider margin all argue for comfort with the target, though the guided range remains wide.

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Images: Lily Collins in Zalando's fall 2026 campaign Courtesy of Zalando; Zalando