Kering sales supported by Europe and the United States in Q1

PARIS, April 21 (Reuters) – Kering posted solid first-quarter revenue growth on Thursday as consumer appeal in Europe and the United States for its high-end brands helped offset headwinds from to health restrictions in China.

The luxury industry giant saw like-for-like sales jump 21% to 4.96 billion euros, doing slightly better than Citi’s estimate of 4.89 billion, the forecast for analysts judged the fairest according to the Refinitiv ranking.

Gucci’s sales, whose activity was impacted by the containment measures against COVID-19 in China, rose 13.4% in the first quarter on a like-for-like basis thanks to the dynamism of the group’s flagship brand in the United States, Western Europe and Japan.

The Citi analyst expected Gucci’s less marked sales growth to slow to 23% after rising 31.6% in the fourth quarter of 2021 on a like-for-like basis.

“The quarter was 5.6% better than expected overall,” Bernstein analyst Luca Solca said, noting that Gucci’s results were “a notch below” consensus, however, and smaller brands’ performance was down. “impressive”.

Sales of the Yves Saint Laurent brand increased by 37.2% like-for-like over the first three months of the year and those of Bottega Veneta by 16.3%.

“The fundamentals of the luxury market in China remain intact,” said Jean-Marc Duplaix, Kering’s chief financial officer during a conference call, highlighting the solidity of consumption in the country after periods of crisis, the growth of the middle class and customer appeal to luxury brands. (Mimosa Spencer report, French version Laetitia Volga, edited by Matthieu Protard)