(Recasts, adds CEO comment, details on China relaunch, analyst
comment, share reaction)
COPENHAGEN, May 3 (Reuters) - Danish jewellery maker
Pandora will slow down a planned country-wide
relaunch of its brand in China as customer demand has yet to
recover to pre-pandemic levels, the company's CEO said on
Wednesday.
Pandora sees China as a potential driver of future growth,
but the world's largest jewellery market is recovering slowly
from strict COVID-19 curbs, which were dropped at the end of
last year.
"The middle-income earner in China is much more careful as
they are coming back to the market versus what we saw in Europa
and in the U.S.," Chief Executive Alexander Lacik told Reuters
on Wednesday.
"If I look at the traffic volume vs pre-pandemic levels, we
still have a long way to go," he said after Pandora raised the
lower end of its full-year growth outlook when it reported
first-quarter results slightly above analysts' forecasts.
While China only accounts for 3% of Pandora's revenue, the
company hopes to grow its business through a brand relaunch in
the third quarter of this year.
It had originally planned to do a country-wide marketing
campaign, but during the pandemic that was scaled down to a
simultaneous launch in major cities. Now Pandora aims to go for
one city at a time.
"Given that the traffic volume still is way below where it
needs to be for us, we're probably going to do a sequential
launch," Lacik said.
Shares in Pandora traded down 2.5% at 0821 GMT.
The group now expects to generate organic sales growth
between -2% and 3% this year, better than its earlier estimate
of between -3% and 3%. Analysts expect 2% sales growth this
year, according to a poll provided by the company.
"There are no signs of any noticeable slowdown in sales
despite increased macroeconomic headwinds," Jyske Bank analyst
Janne Vincent Kjaer said in a note, calling the quarterly
results a "solid start to the year."
($1 = 6.7616 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard, editing by Terje Solsvik and
Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
