Coronavirus: Pandora 2020 Financial Guidance "No Longer Meaningful"
March 16, 20
(IDEX Online) - Pandora, the affordable jewelry retailer, today withdrew its financial guidance for 2020 saying it was "no longer meaningful" in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
It also announced it had axed plans to buy back further shares.
The Denmark-based company has 7,400 outlets and 28,000 employees, half of them manufacturing its goods in Thailand.
Like-for-like sales in China had fallen between 70% and 80% since late January and in Italy they'd "now almost come to a complete halt," it said in a statement today.
"Australia is impacted due to a decline in tourism and most other markets are now indirectly impacted through a general dampening of consumer sentiment," it said.
Pandora said its financial guidance announced on 4 February 2020 excluded any impact from COVID-19.
At the time it expected growth performance to improve from -8 per cent like-for-like in 2019 to negative "mid-single-digit" like-for-like in 2020. It predicted organic growth of "-3 to -6 per cent".
It now says the guidance is no longer meaningful and has been withdrawn.