中国经济放缓让奢侈品行业阴影重重

刘颖

U.K. fashion group Burberry Plc BURBY saw its shares fall 12% Thursday after reporting a sharp sales slowdown in the three months to September in China and Hong Kong, which account for around a third of its global sales.
    The British firm said it would accelerate cost cuts and slash bonuses across the group in order to restore profits in what it warned was “an increasingly challenging environment for luxury consumers.”
    Revenue (on a like-for-like store basis) grew a meager 1%, down from 8% in the previous quarter and over 5% short of analysts’ forecasts, according to Reuters.
    The company now expects pretax profit in its fiscal year ending next March to be around 445 million British pounds ($689 million), down 2.4% from its 2015 fiscal year.
    Luxury goods producers have bet heavily on China as two decades of stellar growth produced a market of high-spending nouveaux riches, but the bet has turned sour in the last two years. At first, that was due largely to a clampdown by Beijing on conspicuous consumption by its elite as part of a high-profile anti-corruption campaign, but the problem has spread this year as the broader economy has slowed down. Spending power has been crimped as the central bank to allowed the Chinese currency to fall for the first time since the financial crisis.
    Earlier this week, French luxury goods group LVMH SA LVMHF had announced similarly disappointing results, at least in its fashion and leather goods business, where Chinese sales went from 10% growth in the second quarter to flat in the third.
    Both LVMH and Burberry were partially able to compensate for weakness in China with strong performances in the U.S. and, especially, Japan. Burberry said comparable store sales in Japan was up 50% on the year. The trouble is, it still only accounts for 2% of global revenue–a small fraction of what the Greater Chinese market generates.

刘颖

英国时尚产品集团博柏利10月15日公布，今年7-9月份大陆和香港销售额急剧下降，这两个地区约占该公司全球销售额的三分之一。消息一出，博柏利股价随即重挫12%。

    博柏利表示，该公司将加快削减成本，并降低整个公司的奖金水平，以提升利润；它还警告说，“奢侈品消费者所处环境越来越困难”。

    据路透社报道，按门店同比销售口径计算，博柏利的收入仅增长了1%，远低于前一季度的8%，和分析师预期相差5个百分点以上。

    该公司目前预计，在截至明年3月份的新财年中，将实现税前利润4.45亿英镑（6.89亿美元）左右，比2015财年减少2.4%。

    20年来，飞速发展的经济在中国造就了一个高消费新贵市场，奢侈品厂商为此对中国市场极度依赖。然而，近两年这种依赖变味了。起初，这主要是因为中国政府高调反腐，进而抑制了精英人士的炫富型消费；到了今年，随着整体经济增速放慢，问题开始蔓延开来。同时，由于中国央行在全球金融危机过后首次允许人民币贬值，中国消费者的购买力也受到了影响。

    上周早些时候，旗下拥有路易威登的法国奢侈品集团LVMH公布的业绩同样令人失望。至少，该公司的时装和皮具业务是这样。今年第二季度，这项业务在中国的销售额增长了10%，第三季度却原地踏步。

    不过，对LVMH和博柏利来说，美国和日本市场的强劲表现可以部分抵消中国业务低迷的影响，特别是日本市场。博柏利表示，日本可比店铺销售额同比上升了50%。但问题在于，日本只占该公司全球收入的2%，和大中华市场的收入贡献相差甚远。