By Anna Pruchnicka

(Reuters) – Poland’s biggest e-commerce platform Allegro said on Thursday it expects earnings to rise 20%-23% year-on-year at home in the crucial holiday quarter, after its third-quarter core profit topped expectations.

Allegro’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 32.4% to 778 million zlotys ($191.7 million) in the Polish market, compared to 760 million zlotys expected in a company-compiled consensus.

“While Polish consumers are clearly spending less on big-ticket items, they are spending more overall on Allegro than a year ago,” CEO Roy Perticucci said in a press release.

Perticucci added Allegro was working on launches in Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia for next year, after launching its marketplace in Czech Republic this year.

Gross merchandise value (GMV), an industry metric used to measure transaction volumes, rose in Poland by 10.5% to 13.3 billion zlotys in the reporting quarter.

The company said it expects GMV to grow 9%-11% in the fourth quarter.

The number of active buyers in Poland grew for a sixth consecutive quarter to 14.5 million, it added.

Allegro, considered the go-to online shopping platform in Poland, said its home operations returned to low double digit growth in the first weeks of the fourth quarter, after a dip at the end of the previous quarter.

It added that its Black Week campaign has got off to a “solid start”.

($1 = 4.0587 zlotys)