Sweaty Betty’s results for 2023, which have just been filed at Companies House, show the activewear specialist enduring a declining performance during the year, although the figures were heavily affected by parent company Wolverine Worldwide reorganising the business.

It removed its North American wholesale ops from Sweaty Betty Limited, which means that while the year’s performance was still negative when this move was factored out, the underlying performance was only “slightly lower” than 2022.

So with that big caveat in mind, let’s look at the numbers the company has filed.

It said that its turnover this time was £144.258 million compared to £167.725 million a year earlier. Gross profit was actually higher at £71.322 million (up from £66.08 million). But EBITDA dropped to a loss of £6.376 million from one of just under £131,000.

The operating loss widened to £11.039 million from £4.644 million and the pre-tax loss jumped to £13.444 million from £5.15 million. The net loss for the period was £10.554 million, worse than the £4.3 million loss of a year earlier.

While it’s clear that there were challenges and the company said that its underlying performance continue to reflect the broader economic and sociopolitical environment, it’s also clear that it will be difficult to get a true picture of how it’s doing until this time next year when we can make a more meaningful like-for-like comparison.

But there’s no denying that the company is working very hard at building its business and has plenty of growth potential in a fitness-focused world. With a large-multinational parent company, it has been launching new stores, new campaigns and products, and reshaping its leadership team as it gears up to grow faster outside of its original UK market. The US has been a particular focus and it opened several new stores there late last year.