ZURICH, Jan 19 — Swiss luxury group Richemont said today that a splurge on jewellery, including its Cartier brand, over the holiday period helped boost sales by a third in the final quarter of the year.
The group said sales rose by 35 per cent to €5.6 billion (RM26 billion) during the October through December period, easily beating the consensus forecast of €5 billion calculated by Swiss financial news agency AWP.
Sales were up by 36 per cent from the same pre-pandemic period in 2019.
Sales of jewellery, which rose by 41 per cent to €3.3 billion, helped drive the gains at the end of last year.
Fashion and accessories, which includes the Chloe, Montblanc and Delvaux brands, were close behind at 40 per cent growth.
The watches division, which includes Piaget and Vacheron Constantin among other brands, saw 29 per cent growth.
The group saw the biggest quarterly sales gains in the Americas, which were up by 55 per cent when exchange rate changes were stripped out.
Sales in Europe rose by 42 per cent, even though tourists — key luxury spenders in the region — haven’t returned in numbers.
“Europe is being driven by local demand but a pick up in tourist spending is encouraging and you would expect more tourists to arrive as we go through the year and we get more normalisation of travel trends,” said analyst Jon Cox at financial services firm Kepler Cheuvreux.
Richemont’s fiscal year runs through March 31, and for the first three quarters of the year sales were up 51 per cent from last year. — AFP