Retail stocks fall after Lunar New Year sales dip
Chow Tai Fook Jewellery shares down 4.22 per cent
Shares of retailers selling jewellery and cosmetics fell on Thursday after reports of disappointing sales during the Lunar New Year, with an analyst’s report saying larger neighbourhood malls saw more shoppers than small ones during the holiday.
Chow Tai Fook Jewellery shares lost 4.22 per cent to close at HK$4.53 on Thursday after it reported a 29 per cent drop in sales during the holiday week and luxury watch retailer Hengdeli fell 3.84 per cent to close at 75 HK cents after it issued a profit warning.
Hengdeli said in a filing to the stock exchange on Wednesday it expected profit attributable to its equity shareholders for the financial year to the end of December last year would be down 70 per cent year on year.
Sa Sa International shares dropped 0.43 per cent at one stage before bouncing back to HK$2.31, their closing level on Wednesday, when it announced a 20 per cent decline in sales during the Lunar New Year due to a 26 per cent drop in sales to mainland tourists.
It said the number of transactions attributed to mainland tourists decreased 18 per cent, while their average bill per transaction fell by 9 per cent.
The era of easy money in the retail industry has come to end
“This showed a further deterioration from the third quarter [for Sa Sa] as the Chinese tourist arrivals widened to a double digit decline during the period,” Bocom International said.