LONDON - British online fashion retailer ASOS on Wednesday reported a quadrupling in full-year profit, benefiting from strong demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and forecast more improvement in the 2020-21 year.

ASOS, whose fast fashions are popular with shoppers in their twenties, made a pretax profit of 142.1 million pounds ($183.4 million) in the year to Aug. 31 - in line with guidance in August and up from 33.1 million pounds in the same period last year. Sales rose 19% to 3.26 billion pounds.

The group said it had made a "solid" start to the new financial year but was cautious on the outlook for consumer demand whilst economic prospects and lifestyles of 20-somethings remain disrupted.

($1 = 0.7747 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle) ((james.davey@thomsonreuters.com))