H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB

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H&M Plunges Most in 16 Years After Trouncing by Rival Zara

By Thomas Mulier
December 15, 2017, 3:15 PM GMT+8 Updated on December 15, 2017, 5:05 PM GMT+8

Hennes & Mauritz AB shares plummeted after the Swedish clothing retailer lost more ground to Inditex SA’s Zara as the crisis in brick-and-mortar retail threatens to undermine retailers with underdeveloped online businesses.

H&M reported the biggest drop in quarterly sales in at least a decade Friday as fewer customers visited H&M stores, leading the company to pare expansion plans and consider closures. The stock fell as much as 13 percent, the steepest intraday decline in 16 years.

A crisis that’s shuttered shopping malls in the U.S. is spreading to other parts of the world, hitting H&M’s earnings amid markdowns to clear out inventory. Rival Inditex has been outpacing the Swedish company as it expands more aggressively in e-commerce. The Spanish giant this week reported a double-digit rebound in revenue growth for November and early December.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...-customers

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H&M's Pile of Unsold Garments Grows as Earnings Plunge

By Anna Molin
March 27, 2018, 2:08 PM GMT+8 Updated on March 27, 2018, 3:02 PM GMT+8

Hennes & Mauritz AB reported its lowest first-quarter profit in 16 years as the Swedish fashion retailer accumulated a record pile of unsold garments worth more than $4 billion.

Operating profit fell 62 percent in the three months through February, missing analysts’ estimates, as inventory rose to 17.6 percent of annual sales. The stock dropped as much as 3.8 percent after the company warned that markdowns will be higher this quarter because of the backlog.

“The worrying sign again comes from unabating piling-up of inventory," said Chris Chaviaras, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

H&M’s already-downbeat forecast for the start of 2018 was exacerbated by unseasonably warm European weather in January followed by February’s cold snap, whipsawing the clothing retail industry. That forced the company to slash prices even more to try to clear inventory.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...ses-allure

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One Man May Be Propping Up Shares in H&M

By Niklas Magnusson , Hanna Hoikkala , and Anna Molin
May 2, 2018, 10:00 PM GMT+8 Updated on May 3, 2018, 4:52 PM GMT+8

Hennes & Mauritz AB Chairman Stefan Persson may be single-handedly propping up shares in the Swedish fashion retailer.

In April alone, the billionaire acquired about 18.2 million shares in Stockholm-based H&M for 2.46 billion kronor ($278 million), bringing the value of purchases since the beginning of last year to 13.4 billion kronor.

The transactions mean that Persson and his family now hold 42.8 percent of H&M, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the latest regulatory filings. As the buying has intensified, H&M’s share price has recovered. Since the end of March, H&M is up over 20 percent, after slumping more than 40 percent in the preceding 12 months.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...k-reversal