H&M Group sales rise 12% in latest quarter

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 15, 2023

H&M Group delivered its provisional Q1 sales report on Wednesday and said sales in the three months to February rose a healthy 12% to SEK54.9 billion (€4.3bn/£4.9bn/$5.2bn).

That was a good inflation-beating figure for the world’s second-largest fashion retailer. 

Admittedly, in local currencies the rise was only 3%, but excluding Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, the increase was 16% in total and 7% in local currencies.

Coming on the same day as the world’s biggest fashion retailer — Inditex — said current-quarter sales are up 13.5% so far and last year’s sales rose 17.5%, the group’s good figures didn’t look that impressive.

But given that analysts had expected an 11% rise rather than the 12% it managed, and that H&M has faced major challenges in recent periods, its numbers did show clear signs of progress.

Its challenges have included rises in shipping costs that have hit it harder than Inditex as the latter sources more of its products closer to home. And the company has absorbed some of these costs rather than passing them all on to consumers.

As is usual with H&M — which also owns the Cos, Arket, Monki and Weekday chains — the company provided no detail along with the headline figures so we’ll have to wait until the end of this month to hopefully hear more, along with its full three-month report.