LVMH briefly overtaken by Hermes in market capitalization as sales disappoint

Mimosa Spencer

Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 12:11 AM 2 min read

By Mimosa Spencer

PARIS (Reuters) -LVMH concisely mislaid its presumption connected Tuesday arsenic Europe's largest luxury institution successful presumption of marketplace capitalization aft being overtaken by rival Hermes connected capitalist pessimism aft disappointing first-quarter gross from the assemblage bellwether.

LVMH, whose high-end brands see Louis Vuitton and Dior, jewellery marque Tiffany & Co. and quality concatenation Sephora, missed expectations for first-quarter income arsenic U.S. shoppers curbed purchases of quality products and cognac portion income successful China remained weak.

LVMH shares dropped implicit 8% successful greeting trading, bringing its marketplace capitalization down to 243.9 cardinal euros, compared to 244.4 cardinal euros for Hermes, earlier LVMH recovered to 247 cardinal euros.

Shares crossed the assemblage traded lower, with Gucci-owner Kering and Hermes down 2.6% and 1.5% respectively, Swiss-based Richemont, which owns Cartier, was down 2.5% portion Italian cashmere marque Brunello Cucinelli was down 2.6%.

A 3% diminution successful LVMH's first-quarter income - good beneath expert expectations for 2% growth, pointed to different hard twelvemonth for luxury companies pursuing President Donald Trump's caller tariff announcements, which person sparked fears of a recession.

The show pointed to "a much hard trading situation for the broader luxury sector," said RBC expert Piral Dadhania, who lowered his integrated income forecast for LVMH this twelvemonth to level from maturation of 3% expected previously, citing the 4% first-quarter income miss.

Investors had been hoping the luxury assemblage would propulsion retired of its slump this year, but commercialized tensions person raised concerns of a planetary recession.

Improvement seen astatine the extremity of 2024 present seems an anomaly arsenic LVMH's cardinal manner and leather goods business, location to the Louis Vuitton and Dior brands, reverted to 5% income declines, noted Deutsche Bank.

Shares of luxury companies person traded little since the extremity of March, with LVMH, Kering and Burberry each down 14%, Richemont down 13% and Hermes down 5%.

Bernstein analysts precocious lowered their income forecast for the assemblage this twelvemonth to a diminution of 2%, against a erstwhile forecast for 5% growth, a driblet that would people the industry's longest downturn successful implicit 2 decades.

(Reporting by Mimosa Spencer and Tassilo Hummel, further reporting by Alun John successful London; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Bernadette Baum)