Online fashion company Boohoo.com raises sales forecast

June 7 (Reuters) - Online fashion retailer Boohoo.com Plc on Wednesday nudged its full-year sales forecast upwards after a doubling in first-quarter sales on the back of strong demand across all its businesses.

The British company, which sells own-brand clothing, shoes and accessories online to a core market of 16-24-year-olds, said it expected group revenue for the year to Feb. 2018 to grow by 60 percent, compared with an earlier forecast of 50 percent growth.

Boohoo also said it would raise 50 million pounds via a share placing to pay for expanding its warehouse capacity and maintain a strong cash balance.

Boohoo and online rivals such as ASOS (LSE: ASC.L - news) are winning market share from traditional retailers, benefiting from the increasing popularity of smartphone e-commerce and their extensive use of social media.

The company, whose brands include PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal, said first-quarter revenue rose 106 percent to 120.1 million pounds ($155.54 million).

Boohoo made a pretax profit of 30.9 million pounds in the year to Feb. 28. The company's shares are up nearly threefold over the past year, according to Thomson Reuters (Dusseldorf: TOC.DU - news) data.

($1 = 0.7721 pounds) (Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru. Editing by Jane Merriman)