Ralph Lauren takes corona tumble

Ralph Lauren is the next in line to take a corona hit: in the last quarter (January to March), turnover took a worldwide double-figure drop. For the full year (April to March) results went down as well.

22 % turnover drop

The current pandemic set Ralph Lauren’s turnover back 15 % to 1.3 billion dollars (1.2 billion euros). As expected, Asia suffered the worst drop (- 22 %) as the coronavirus hit there first. Still, the European (- 19 %) en North-American (- 11 %) markets suffered huge drops as well.

The chain’s stores in Asia and Europe have reopened (except for a few exceptions), as have almost half the stores in North-America. Still, the company expects to suffer from the pandemic throughout the recently started financial year 2021. Afterwards, however, the company thinks its designs are timeless enough to enable it to get through this “unprecedented challenge”.

Third of value gone

The results were not well met by investors, pushing the share value 2.5 % lower. Since January, Ralph Lauren’s shares have already lost a third of their value. A major factor in this were the losses Ralph Lauren recorded in the past quarter: a net loss of 249 million dollars (230 million euros) was a lot worse than both analysts’ expectations and last year’s result (a profit of 32 million dollars).

For the full financial year, turnover went down 2 .% to 6.2 billion dollars (5.6 billion euros), a drop the luxury company attributes to the riots in Hong Kong and the Covid-19 crisis. However, the drop was felt on all markets. Net profits also went down, from 431 million dollars in the previous year to 384 million dollars (350 million euros).