RE: Financial Statements I have invested in Coastal for years and attend the quarterly conference calls. Long story short, they are buying customers by giving away free product. They believe they will obtain profitability in the future by investing heavily in customer acquisition today and relying on a reported 70% re-order rate to exponentially grow first time freebie holders into people that by full price glasses in the future.
Their contact lense sales have been growing and I suspect it is from people that are now being introduced to the company by free glasses giveaways.
I guess if you buy that this is an effective strategy then you believe that profitability is on the horizon. I think they may be a takeover target before that day ever comes, either by an Amazon (who dont offer these services at present) or by a large US Healthcare insurer (Wellpoint purchased 1800Contacts last year for 900 million)