After a turnover decrease in 2017, Danish toy manufacturer Lego saw its turnover and its profit improve once more in 2018, thanks to a double-digit growth in China.
Market share on the rise everywhere
The family enterprise, known around the world for its colourful building bricks, generated a turnover of 36.4 billion Danish crowns or 4.9 billion euros in 2018 (a 4 % increase). Net profits reached 8.1 billion crowns (+ 3.5 %, well over a billion euros). “We set out with one aim in 2018, to stabilise the business. We are pleased to have achieved this, and to have delivered modest top and bottom-line growth,” says CEO Niels Christiansen, “We are especially encouraged by our progress given the challenges facing the toy industry and the departure of specialist retailers such as Toys R Us.”
Christiansen became Lego’s CEO at the end of 2017, right after the first drop in turnover and profit in thirteen years. For a little while, there was some fear at the head office in Billund that children might have moved on from Lego, but apparently nothing is further from the truth: sixty years on, Lego is still alive and kicking.
Lego even experienced an increase in its market share: slight growth in Europe and the United States was achieved in the shadow of double-digit growth in China, where the little bricks are now hotter than ever. There are over 270 million children in that country, already generating a tenth of the company’s total turnover. That amount will only grow once Lego opens its eighty new planned stores. In late 2018, there were still only thirty stores in eighteen cities, including one with a spectacular opening in Shanghai (photo). The Danish company also won a patent dispute in China against Chinese company ‘Lepin’.
