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Personal goods
The luxury goods sector received a second fillip in a week as Swatch Group, the world's leading premium watchmaker, reported "phenomenal" sales over Christmas and said revenues for 2009 had exceeded market expectations.
The group, best known for upmarket brands such as Breguet and Blancpain as well as the ubiquitous Swatch, said business had picked up sharply in the second half .
Full figures, including profits, will not be released until mid-March, but the group indicated margins had risen compared with the depressed first half of 2009, with the biggest gains in the core watch and jewellery business.
The numbers followed encouraging news on Monday from Richemont , the world's second-biggest luxury goods group, whose sales in the three months including Christmas comfortably exceeded analysts' forecasts.
The announcements from the two groups, both based in Switzerland, point to a recovery in the luxury goods business - expensive watches in particular - with the biggest improvements coming from Asia.
"As already visible in other numbers, such as Richemont and Tiffany, the watch and jewellery industry reached a turning point in the fourth quarter of 2009 and the outlook for 2010 is significantly better," said Rene Weber, an analyst at Vontobel in Zurich.
Swatch, which has been consistently more upbeat than Richemont, struck a typically optimistic note for 2010, saying it was "very confident" about achieving further "solid" organic sales growth.
Sales, adjusted for disposals, fell 8.1 per cent last year to SFr5.42bn ($5.2bn), with currency factors accounting for about a quarter of the decline. In the fourth quarter, sales, expressed in euros, rose more than 7 per cent.
Sales of watches and jewellery dropped 7.7 per cent to SFr4.43bn. The decline was significantly better than the 24 per cent fall in Swiss watch exports in the first 11 months of 2009 reported by the country's watch federation. The performance reinforces Swatch's claims that it has gained market share.
Many analysts have suggested that the steep fall in demand for top timepieces would prompt a shake-out, with the biggest groups, such as Swatch and Richemont, benefiting at the cost of more upstart independent brands.
