LVMH Shares Slip 7.8% After Q1 Sales Miss
Updated 1:32 p.m. ET April 15
PARIS — Shares in LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton closed down 7.8 percent Tuesday on the Paris bourse as investors reacted to disappointing first-quarter results.
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On Monday evening, the French group fell short of consensus estimates by 4 percent and reported a 2 percent dip in revenues to 20.31 billion euros, a 3 percent decline stripping out the impact of currency.
By division, organic revenues fell 9 percent in wines and spirits, 5 percent in fashion and leather goods, 1 percent in selective retailing and 1 percent in perfumes and cosmetics. Sales were flat at the watches and jewelry unit, as reported.
The lackluster numbers had a dampening effect on other luxury stocks, with Kering shedding 5.2 percent, Swatch Group 1.1 percent and Compagnie Financière Richemont 1 percent. Hermès International ended up 0.2 percent on a day when it briefly eclipsed LVMH in market capitalization.
Luxury analysts were expecting a share-price drop, and a drag on other European players.
In a research note after LVMH’s conference call, Bernstein’s Luca Solca wrote: “Today, LVMH is a stock for the optimists: LVMH’s difficulties are visible to all but also being addressed by management. Meanwhile, the path to recovery is in question, as the odds for a global recession have only increased.”
On Monday, LVMH trumpeted its resilience “despite a disrupted geopolitical and economic environment” and noted that tariff talk had not dented demand for its fashions and leather goods in the U.S. in the last weeks of March.
The company blamed a 3 percent organic dip in U.S. sales on weaker demand for wines and spirits — cognac in particular — and perfumes and cosmetics as Amazon’s aggressive approach to pricing crimped Sephora’s momentum on e-commerce.
The slowdown in fashion and leather goods is largely due to the slowdown in the Chinese cluster, “with lower tourist flows to Japan the big change,” Deutsche Bank noted.
LVMH is the first big European luxury player to report first-quarter results, with Hermès International scheduled for Thursday and Kering, parent of Gucci and Saint Laurent, on April 23. The annual results presentation of Swiss group Richemont is expected on May 16.
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