Retail Therapy: EU Consumer Sector Specialist Commentary

Research evidence excerpt

Retail Therapy: EU Consumer Sector Specialist Commentary

you see Neill Keaney (JPM Consumer Credit Research) upgraded Richemont credit to OW? After

mgmt offered an update on its cash liquidity position at €9.1bn (10% of its market cap!!), he comments “We have long viewed the

Richemont balance sheet as the strongest within our luxury coverage - if not the entirety of our Consumer / Retail universe [...].

With the curve trading on top of LVMH’s, we see value in increasing exposure to CFRVX - particularly at the longer end”. See his

note here

#3. ESSITY. An ok result; a cautious conf call; a new active investor. Net-net, sentiment feels weaker coming out of this week. A

stock that caught investors’ attention in recent weeks given a very resilient performance despite negative dynamics for both

COGS and pricing. While the Q2 print in itself was a headline EBIT beat, it came with many points of concern: 1) org growth

missed cons with below expected pricing, which begs the question: how much room is there for further price hikes into Q3/H2?;

2) the call brought even more caution, with key takeaways being a) a harsher COGS outlook into H2; b) SG&A should be higher

given investments in IT and R&D as well as inflation; and c) limited visibility on the magnitude of pricing ahead. 3) while

headlines today on a new activist investor with a 5.6% stake resulted in some strenght, the initial impressions are a) comments on

alignment with the strategy and mgmt suggest there should be limited structural interventions to the business; and b) the build-up

of such stake may, at least partially, explain the share strength in recent weeks. Overall, looking at H2 trends and fundamentals,

we leave this week with weaker sentiment on the name, and potentially more downside ST.