Shares of Gucci owner Kering
jumped over 9% on Thursday after the company’s sales decline narrowed and quarterly earnings beat estimates.
The French luxury giant – whose brands include Gucci, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga – reported sales of 3.42 billion euros ($3.97 billion) for the third quarter, a 5% decline on a comparable basis from the same period a year earlier. It marked an improvement from the second quarter, when comparable sales fell 15% year-on-year.
Sales at Gucci, the firm’s biggest brand, fell 14% year-on-year on a comparable basis to 1.34 billion euros, with improvements at some of its smaller houses cushioning the blow for Kering.
The company noted that the decline at Gucci still represented sharp sequential improvement from the previous quarter, when the brand’s sales plunged 25%. Group sales had been expected to hit 3.31 billion euros in the quarter, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet, with Gucci sales — which typically make up close to half of Kering’s total revenues — forecast to come in at 1.32 billion euros.
