The Marley Spoon AG (ASX: MMM) share price shot up 5.2% to $2.61 at open today before retreating slightly as the company announced its investment plans to support further growth in 2021.
Marley Spoon is a leading global subscription-based meal kit provider. The company services customers in Australia, the United States, and across Europe.
At the time of writing, the Marley Spoon share price is trading up 2.42% at $2.54.
Management team
Marley Spoon kicked off its update by touching on previous announcements that saw its CEO and founder, Fabian Siegel, re-commit to his role.
The company expanded its management team by adding Julie Marchant-Houle as CEO of its United States segment in January.
Similarly, Ebony Morczinek joined as CEO of Europe to support the team and head its expansion overseas.
Manufacturing centre progress
As COVID-19 has changed shopping dynamics, Marley Spoon believes the shift to online shopping is just the beginning. In order to capture the increasing volumes in customer's orders, the company has been building its production capacity.
During the second-quarter of FY21, Marley Spoon will take possession of its new custom-built Sydney manufacturing centre. This in effect, will triple its current capacity to 14,000sq m.
In addition, the company also recently took control of its third Australian manufactory facility in Perth, Western Australia. This month, Marley Spoon launched its Dinnerly brand throughout the region.
Across the Pacific, the company will seek to capitalise on the United States market by increasing production in California next year. Like its Sydney operations, Marley Spoon is planning to triple its manufacturing footprint to 12,000sq m.
Furthermore, the company will employ computer aided manufacturing technology in Europe and the United States during 2021. This will allow increased efficiency and picking quality.
This comes as Marley Spoon focuses to increase investments in the research and development space. Advances in technology platforms and scaling big data infrastructure is expected to bring prediction technology across its value chain.
Revenue guidance reaffirmed
After conducting a capital raise and conversion of bonds during the quarter, Marley Spoon used the proceeds to repay its senior loan facility. This in turn, significantly freed up the company's balance sheet, making its organic growth strategy more simplified.
As its products continued to be driven by demand, Marley Spoon reaffirmed its FY20 revenue guidance. European reported revenue is anticipated to fall in the middle of its guidance range, representing up to 100% of year-on-year growth.
What did the CEO say?
Welcoming the progress, Marley Spoon CEO Fabian Siegel said:
After an extraordinary growth year in 2020, we have a confident and positive outlook for 2021. With our strengthened balance sheet, we can self-fund investments in technology, capacity and capability to support ongoing solid growth.
With a stronger team than ever, we are well placed to execute on our clear infrastructure investment roadmap and take advantage of the growth opportunities presented to us. We believe we are still in the early days of consumer behaviour switching from offline to online shopping in our category, supporting growth at attractive unit economics in 2021 and the years beyond.
About the Marley Spoon share price
The Marley Spoon share price is up more than 1,000% in the last 12 months. The company reached an all-time high of $3.80 in August, and a 52-week low of 18 cents in December last year.
Marley Spoon has a market capitalisation of $634.9 million.
