For what it’s worth, they claim the loss was intentional:
After being profitable for three years in a row, 2023 was consciously a loss making year. We raised ~€17m of growth capital in ‘23, which has been invested in marketing (+€6m compared to 2022) and in building up a stock position to avoid out of stock occurrences we faced in the past. Our funding round enabled us to increase marketing investments significantly to increase brand awareness especially in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Fairphone has a high brand appeal, however simply not enough people know the brand. In 2022, Fairphone’s brand awareness in France was between 4 and 5%. Increasing brand awareness does take time, and it will increase the number of customers visiting our website, and visiting the websites and shops of our partners, thereby increasing sales.
As for the rest, yeah. Two CEOs leaving and the customer support essentially going AWOL strike me as red flags for the company’s future.
The announcements of the two latest CEOs leaving:
Interestingly enough the interim CEO left the company entirely at the same time Reinier was chosen.
I’m personally dying to know whether or not the Fairphone 4 is ever receiving another feature update. It’s been awfully quiet now and “early 2025” has basically passed at this point so…
I guess time will tell when the 2024 report drops whether or not the company is slowly sinking or not.