by John Revill and Mimosa Spencer
ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss luxury group Richemont’s shares rose more than 10% on Friday after the owner of Cartier posted strong growth and high profit in the first half, boosted in particular by its jewelry business.
The owner of IWC and Piaget watches has announced sales and operating profit from continuing operations up 25% in the six months to the end of September. Jewelry sales increased by 24% during this period.
China’s announcement Friday of a relaxation of some of the health restrictions related to COVID-19, which could favor a heavily affected by these measures for more than two years, also contributes to the optimism of the market.
“A series of much better than expected figures, which are the result of the improving environment in Asia during the quarter,” said Jon Cox, analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux.
The results also illustrate the quality of the group’s brands, “in particular its jewelry activity, the best in its category”, he added.
Richemont nevertheless posted a net half-year loss of 760 million euros, the result of an exceptional charge of 2.7 billion linked to its partial withdrawal from the online fashion distributor YOOX Net-A-Porter (YNAP).
Profit from continuing operations, which does not take into account the impact of depreciation and the contribution of YNAP, on the other hand increased by 40% to 2.1 billion euros over the April-September period.
The group’s turnover for its part increased by 24% to reach 9.67 billion euros.
The group, however, warned that the situation in China remains highly volatile and unpredictable, with outbreaks continuing to disrupt business.
“Next year is very difficult to predict,” said Cyrille Vigneron, CEO of Cartier.
“China should improve, but when, we don’t know,” he added. “In the United States there are signs of a recession but it’s not here yet, so we don’t know. Will there be an impact on Europe, probably, but we don’t know” , he detailed.
(French version Diana Mandiá, edited by Marc Angrand)