Despite all the challenges that we have seen for the outdoor cooking industry, Gozney keeps on growing. On the revenue side, they’ve done it through innovative products that are differentiated from the rest of the market and expanded distribution.

That’s only part of the story though, as they’ve also managed to grow their gross margin. For their fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2024, they’ve grown revenue by 37% year-over-year and posted a 21.7% improvement in margin.

According to their latest financial filing, their revenue is up to $74.6 million for 2024, which marked only their second year in global wholesale channels. They partnered with retailers like Home Depot, who not only sold their products online, but also floored their pizza ovens. This added exposure for Gozney to consumers that wouldn’t have previously seen them through the DTC route.

In 2023, Gozney invested in their global supply chain and logistics infrastructure, which paid dividends in 2024. They increased their gross profit to $25.1 million, which is a margin of 33.6%, a significant increase over the previous year.

Their income statement shows a continued investment in marketing and people. They grew headcount to 101 from 70 in 2023 at a cost of around $3 million dollars in additional payroll.

Gozney released multiple new innovations in the year, which was evident in revenue growth. They released the Dome S1 in October 2023, followed by the Arc pizza oven in January of 2024. You can see their innovation in the income statement too because research and development more than doubled in 2024 to $417k.

They had a before tax loss of $1.9 million due to $2.0 million in interest payments, but basically broke even on an operating basis. Once you add back depreciation and amortization, their operations are generating cash, which is a big win for a company that’s growing like they are. They also expect to be profitable on a pre-tax basis for fiscal year 2025.

You can see from the three-year look above that Gozney’s financials have dramatically improved this year. There is some additional bank debt on their books for 2024 that was used to grow operations, but they brought on a new investment partner a few months after 2024 close, so there will be changes to their debt and equity structure for 2025.

Gozney’s Performance Versus Ooni’s

It’s hard not to compare Gozney against Ooni when it comes to pizza ovens, and the same is true when it comes to business performance. Ooni is further in their life cycle than Gozney, and is much larger.

We have an article about Ooni’s financial performance, but above is their summary income statement against Gozney’s. We’re assuming that distribution costs are in cost of sales for Gozney, while Ooni reports them below gross profit, so we pulled them above for a more fair comparison. Another structural difference is Gozney’s year ends in March, while Ooni’s is with the end of the calendar year.

With being the more mature brand, Ooni’s margin is almost two points better than Gozney’s. To keep up with rising costs, Ooni and Gozney both increased prices since their earnings release. That should be helpful for increasing margin, in addition to having more stability around shipping.

Ooni’s admin expenses were significantly higher than Gozney’s for the year. Ooni had staffer up pretty quickly, without having revenue follow, which led them to right size their staff in 2024.

I think Ooni will show much better profitability in their 2024 financials, but they’ll struggle to find the same levels of growth as Gozney. Beyond being the more established brand, they came to market with a different product strategy.

Ooni built their business on small (12″ to 16″) backyard ovens, while the product that put Gozney on the map is larger ovens, like their original Dome. I would guess that Ooni’s revenue make-up of small ovens is significantly higher than Gozney, who only has the Gozney Roccbox.

The small pizza oven category has gotten much more saturated in the past three years, making it harder to achieve growth beyond the growth of the overall category. Ooni has better quality and technology than other ovens in that space, but it’s difficult to stand out now.

Conversely, all of Gozney’s recent releases have been larger pizza ovens, which is a mostly untapped category. Ooni just joined it last year with their Koda 2 Max, so we’ll see if they can make up ground.