London (Reuters) -Burberry stated that its prognosis for the coming year will depend on how soon China, its largest market, recovers from COVID-19 lockdowns, after surpassing sales and operating profit expectations for its fiscal year of 2022.
After being hampered by lockdowns in mainland China in March, the company reported a 23% increase in revenue to 2.83 billion pounds ($3.52 billion) and a 38% increase in adjusted operating profit to 523 million pounds. Comparable store sales increased by 7% in the fourth quarter.
In January, Burberry, noted for its camel, red and black check, and TB monogram lost CEO Marco Gobbetti to Ferragamo. Jonathan Akeroyd replaced him in March, a few weeks before the end of the company’s fiscal year.
Under a multi-year transformation plan for the 166-year-old group, Gobbetti sought to push Burberry’s brand into the luxury market.
Akeroyd will talk about his goals to build on Gobbetti’s roots and drive growth at the midterm results in November.
Burberry said that its medium-term guidance of high single-digit revenue growth and strong margin expansion at constant exchange rates remained the same.
The report said, “Our outlook depends on how COVID-19 goes and how quickly consumer spending on the Chinese mainland picks up.”
Even though the current state of the economy creates some uncertainty in the short term, we are working hard to keep inflation from getting out of hand.
$1 equals 0.8021 pounds
