Allegro’s CEE power play 🚀

Welcome to the CEE ring, where Allegro is flexing its marketplace muscle and pushing an AI agenda that’s more Silicon Valley than Warsaw. This issue: how one regional giant is rewriting the rules, and what happens when AI stops being buzz and starts moving baskets.

Main Story

🌀 Allegro’s H1 2025 story in 6 charts
🤖 AI-first transformation

Insights🧠

🧠 AI is already in the funnel—one in three shoppers uses AI for research
🤝 Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment now powers Shein, Shopify, Walmart
🌍 Where workers fear AI most: Asia tops the list, Poland near the bottom

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Allegro has become the benchmark for online retail in Central and Eastern Europe. Its FY2024 equity story shows how the company grew from a Polish auction site into a $15B+ marketplace giant. The data, verified through company filings and Euromonitor, highlights Allegro’s dominance in Poland and its potential to scale across CEE.

Allegro leads Poland’s e-commerce with 20.8M active buyers in 2024. The platform serves a $350B+ addressable market, generating $15.6B GMV and $730M adjusted EBITDA with strong cash conversion. Its presence now spans six CEE countries, through both Allegro and Mall brands. Poland remains the core, but the map shows clear intent to broaden its regional influence.

Founded in 1999 as a C2C auction site, Allegro steadily pivoted to B2C and then scaled into a regional marketplace. GMV has risen at a 22% CAGR since 2017, reaching $14.8B in 2024. Milestones include Smart, Pay, IPO, Mall acquisition, and new launches in Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. Today, Allegro is a diversified ecosystem of shopping, payments, and ads.

CEE is home to ~140M online users, of which Allegro already reaches 69M—comparable to the entire digital population of France or the UK. Poland contributes 37M, with Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia adding another 32M. This leaves ~71M internet users in untapped CEE markets, giving Allegro expansion headroom. Its scale advantage makes it the natural leader in regional consolidation.

Allegro’s GMV of $15.6B dwarfs eMag at $2.4B, Alza at $2.0B, AliExpress at $1.4B, and Amazon at $0.7B in CEE. Operating across six countries, Allegro combines local scale with brand trust, far outpacing regional and global peers. The GMV gap illustrates why Allegro is positioned as the category-defining marketplace in CEE, able to defend share against both domestic and international competitors.

In 2024, the top three players controlled just 6.7% of Poland’s retail market, compared with 12.3% in the US, 11.2% in the UK, and 7.2% in Germany. Czechia’s share was 4.6% and other CEE markets just 2%. With penetration rates between 8% and 17% versus up to 29% in Western markets, Allegro has room to grow. This underlines CEE as one of Europe’s least consolidated e-commerce regions.

Allegro’s active buyers increased from 13.1M in 2020 to 20.8M in 2024. At the same time, Polish shoppers’ annual spend rose from $653 to $931. Mall and international buyers still spend less—below $150—but their numbers are rising fast. This dynamic lifted Allegro’s GMV to PLN 60.7B ($14.8B), proving its ability to both expand reach and deepen wallet share across segments.

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Allegro’s latest Q2 2025 report shows a company firing on multiple engines. The data highlight strong revenue growth, expanding ad sales, and improved GMV per buyer, but also rising costs and a mixed picture internationally. Based on management’s guidance, Allegro is leaning into AI, international expansion, and efficiency to fuel the next leg of growth.

Allegro’s active buyers hit 21.1m group-wide (+4.2% YoY), with Poland reaching 15.2m (+2.0%). GMV per active buyer rose to $820 for the group and $1,080 in Poland, reflecting stronger spend. Combined, these pushed Group GMV up 9.0% to $4.2B and Poland GMV up 9.8% to $4.1B. With a higher take rate of 13% and ad revenue up 30.6% YoY, Group revenue climbed 10.2% to $710M, while Poland surged 18.1% to $698M.

In Poland, H1 2025 revenue rose 16% to $1.3B, but operating costs jumped 21% to $0.8B. Logistics services and advertising were key growth drivers, while delivery and staff costs expanded sharply. Cost of delivery alone hit $406M (+25%), staff costs $156M (+23%), and IT expenses $31M (+36%). While topline expansion was healthy, Allegro faces pressure from rising cost bases, challenging its margin expansion ambitions.

International operations delivered a standout GMV gain of +61% YoY in Q2 2025, reaching PLN 572m, while Mall North was restructured into a lean 1P merchant. Allegro now runs unified marketplaces across Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary, cutting legacy Mall storefronts. The app continued to shine, with GMV share above 45% and more than 1m Smart! users abroad. Together, this transition supports asset-light growth and streamlined cost structures.

Allegro laid out 9 medium-term goals structured under four pillars. These range from making shopping safer and customer loyalty stronger, to fintech solutions and reliable delivery. International expansion remains central, with Mall turnaround and asset-light rollout critical milestones. Internally, Allegro also invests in software architecture, ESG, and people development to create a resilient and scalable growth platform.

Allegro is pushing an AI-first strategy built on three pillars: External AI, Internal Efficiency, and People & Culture. For customers, tools like AI-driven search, recommendations, and translation power personalization and expansion. Internally, Copilot & OpBox Studio speed up operations, while AI process mining cuts inefficiencies. Cultural change includes reskilling staff and embedding AI into every team’s DNA, targeting 40% of new projects AI-powered by 2026.

Following H1 2025, management raised revenue and EBITDA guidance while keeping GMV growth stable. Revenue growth was nudged up from 9% to 9.5%, while EBITDA expectations climbed from 13.5% to 15%. The stronger outlook reflects advertising momentum, fintech, and logistics upside, as well as disciplined capex. Allegro is signaling that despite rising costs, it expects profitability improvements through the second half of 2025.

Sources: 🔒 Available for MarketMaze+ subscribers

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One in three shoppers already uses AI agents to research, yet 47% of brands have no AI presence and only 7% run an optimized strategy. Millennials 33% and Gen Z 11% lead adoption; just 3% of brands can predict needs in real time. Translation: AI is moving from toy to traffic and conversion driver fast. 👉 AI Consumer Survey

Amazon expands Multi-Channel Fulfillment to power sellers on Shein, Shopify and Walmart, on top of Temu and TikTok Shop. Sellers get Prime-grade picking, packing, and delivery without being on Amazon, raising service bars and lowering patience for slow shipping. Coopetition is the new logistics moat. 👉 Lisa Goller Marketing

A 21-country survey shows 54% globally think AI may replace their job in 10 years: Indonesia 76%, India 75%, China 70% vs Germany 47%, UK 43%, Poland 39%, Canada 36%. Expect task substitution more than job deletion, with reskilling deciding winners. 👉 Visual Capitalist

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