Luxury investors are a spoilt bunch. Listen to the mood music ahead of first-quarter figures and you would be forgiven for thinking that the sector was facing some kind of Armageddon. True, the discerning investor needs to be mindful of divergent performances, as spending slows after the post-pandemic frenzy. But the surprising thing about this crop of luxury sales is just how resilient many brands are proving to be.
It is not hard to see why the market is minded to nitpick. A few names have posted ghastly results. Kering issued a double-whammy warning, flagging a 10 per cent decline in quarterly sales first, and then a 40 to 45 per cent fall in first-half operating income as its key Gucci brand stumbled in China. But Gucci is mired in a difficult turnaround, just as the market has become more selective. Those without homegrown problems have fared better.
Take Hermès. The group has more customers for its £10,000 handbags than it actually produces. It can therefore increase revenues virtually at will, as exemplified by its 17 per cent increase in first-quarter organic sales. Perfumes and silks — products bought by the less-wealthy Hermès customer — only posted mid-single-digit growth. But the 20 per cent revenue growth in high-margin leather goods shows why the group leads the luxury sector on valuation, trading at more than 50 times this year’s earnings.
Hermès’s strong performance underscores the fact that, in damped circumstances, super high-end customers feel the pinch less than so-called aspirational shoppers. That is borne out by the performance of Brunello Cucinelli, master of Italian understated luxury and of the $1,000 knit T-shirt, which posted an 18 per cent increase in quarterly sales.
The resilience of the megarich is not the only reason for the luxury sector’s strength. Prada and Moncler, which both managed sales growth in the high teens, suggest that consumers are still flocking to trendy brands which are having a moment in the sun. And even behemoth LVMH managed to eke out a modicum of growth.
None of this is meant to suggest that luxury can stretch out its post-pandemic boom — a period when many companies posted well beyond 20 per cent annual sales growth. But, in aggregate, the sector seems on track to return to long-term average growth rates of perhaps 6 to 8 per cent this year. Given how large luxury has become, that is a remarkable result in and of itself.