VANCOUVER, Canada—Kits Eyecare Ltd. (TSX: KITS / OTCQX: KTYCF), a digital eyecare platform that went public earlier this year, said its first-half sales increased 21 percent to $42.1 million. On a constant currency basis, Kits said the first-half revenue increase was 28 percent compared with the year-ago period. For the second quarter, revenue hit a record $21.7 million, an increase of 7 percent compared with the second quarter of 2020, the company said in its earnings announcement.

On the bottom line, Kits reported a loss of $4.9 million in the second quarter (ended June 30), which compares with net income of $221,000 in the year-ago quarter. For the first half of 2021, Kits had a loss of $8.4 million, which compares with a loss of $235,000 in the year-ago period.
(VMAIL reported on the initial public offering of Kits Eyecare, which is backed by investor and Coastal.com founder Roger Hardy, in January.)
 
In its recent earnings announcement, Kits said the second quarter this year was “a key strategic investment period as we completed the build out of our new state-of-the-art optical lab, with the ability to produce both single vision and progressive lenses and glasses.”
 
The statement added, “Our strong second-quarter revenue and exceptional order growth reflects our continued investment to acquire first-time glasses patients and moves our contact lens patients from transactional to recurring subscription revenue. We believe our best use of capital is to acquire new glasses and subscription customers now as consumers are changing their traditional buying behaviors. These are long-term investments to drive financial performance and growth.”
 
The “strong order volume” in the second quarter reflects the success of this investment strategy, Kits said. “We organically grew orders by 27 percent compared with Q2-2020. We delivered a record 43,000 pairs of eyeglasses to patients in Q2 as compared to 5,000 in Q2-2020.”
 
Looking ahead, Kits said the positive momentum it’s seeing in new customer growth and the expansion of [lifetime value of customers] through its subscription program should deliver “sustained growth of our core contact lens customers and substantial growth in our newly launched glasses business” through 2022 and beyond.
 
The company added, “Having invested heavily in the first half of 2021 in our infrastructure and customers, we expect revenue of $115 million to $125 million in 2022 and to return to positive EBITDA in early 2022. This will enable us to return to funding our growth from internally generated cash flow.”