Business

LVMH sales soar as Dior owner boosted by travelling Americans

Louis Vuitton owner defies fears of global recession

LVMH sales rose in the third quarter. Photograph: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Wed Oct 12 2022 - 10:25

LVMH sales jumped as the owner of Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior benefited from wealthy American tourists splurging on luxury goods in Europe.

Defying fears of a global recession, sales of LVMH’s fashion and leather goods soared 22 per cent on an organic basis in the third quarter, the company reported Tuesday. Analysts had expected a gain of 16 per cent. Even so, the company said it will control spending as uncertainty persists.

The Louis Vuitton and Dior owner, founded by French billionaire Bernard Arnault, is the first high-end group to report revenue for the three months ending September, making its earnings a closely-watched event for investors.

The stock rose as much as 2 per cent in early Paris trading. Rivals Richemont and Hermes International also gained.

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LVMH’s results indicate that the industry has so far avoided the squeeze on spending that other retailers and consumer-goods companies have faced amid a growing cost-of-living crisis. Chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony said during a call with analysts that a recession expected by investors “hasn’t materialised in full swing yet. In past down cycles, luxury customers have tended to react more to stock-market shocks rather than GDP slowdowns,” he said.

Guiony warned against using the group’s results as a “proxy” for the general health of the economy. Unlike mass-market retailers, LVMH has the ability to pass cost increases to its well-heeled customers, he said.

While LVMH has been able to increase prices on its goods this year, Guiony stopped short of laying out the company’s plans for 2023 amid a wider price discrepancy between the US and Europe.

Europe saw LVMH’s strongest organic revenue growth in the third quarter, rising 36 per cent, helped by visiting Americans, who have splurged on trips to Europe in recent months.

Japan and the US followed Europe in organic sales growth, which strips out items such as the impact of exchange rates. Asia, excluding Japan, lagged the other regions, posting 6 per cent growth after seeing a drop in the previous three months amid lockdowns in China.

Despite the expansion of sales, LVMH said it’s not immune to the wider economic distress and pledged to keep a tight rein on costs and only invest selectively. That was a change of tone for the company — in past quarters, the outlook has tended to focus on growth prospects.

Tiffany, which LVMH bought in early 2021, grew at a slightly lower pace in the third quarter compared to the first half, according to Guiony. He attributed the slowdown to consumers’ preference for gold, whereas Tiffany’s is known for its silver jewellery. Citigroup estimates silver makes up around a quarter of Tiffany’s business. Guiony added that watches and the Rome-based jeweller Bulgari in particular led the growth of the unit.

High-end consumers have yet to suffer the impact of faster inflation and lower macroeconomic growth, said Bernstein analyst Luca Solca.

“The relief of getting out the pandemic alive has trumped any bad news, as consumers who can embrace a carpe diem’ attitude,” he said in a note to clients. “Nobody wants to be the richest person in the graveyard.”

Even though conditions improved in China, which has implemented strict pandemic lockdowns, the group’s brands aren’t yet operating normally there, Guiony said. Sales of Louis Vuitton were “more or less flat during the third quarter, he said.

Flavio Cereda, an analyst at Jefferies, said the results were positive, but there’s still uncertainty on the trajectory going forward.

“This is another beat from the post-pandemic winner,” Cereda wrote in a note to clients. But it’s still not clear “whether we are witnessing a last hurrah ahead of a prolonged period of sequential deceleration with China remaining far more volatile than expected,” he added. — Bloomberg

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