Titan Ltd says no major impact on sales due to coronavirus, high gold prices

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Feb 27, 2020

​Jewellery and watchmaker Titan Ltd has said that its business has not been majorly affected by the coronavirus outbreak and high jewellery prices hitting the industry.

Jewellery, which is sold under the Tanishq brand by Titan Ltd, contributes about 80 percent to its topline. Even though gold prices have shot up, resulting in a consumption slowdown, Titan is unperturbed and expects strong sales this quarter.
 
The company’s jewellery business fell 2 percent in the quarter, ended September 30, due to a rise in gold prices, however, Titan expects to finish the year strongly, as demand picks up due to the ongoing wedding season.

"Clearly, on gold consumption in India, we have not seen any issue of coronavirus on any of our things. Prices have shot up in the last few weeks maybe but luckily we haven't seen any major impact of that on our sales. This could be because of two reasons, one is that people are now looking at gold as something which will be going up over a period of time and secondly, there is the wedding season which is on,” S Subramaniam, chief financial officer of Titan told CNBC TV-18 in an interview.
 
On its eyewear and watch business, he said: “January has not been bad. This quarter, overall, we may be reasonably decent in terms of both these divisions. I don’t think consumption has been hit so badly there. It is low but not as bad as in December.”
 
Titan Ltd currently has 1,709 retail chains across India for all its brands. For the financial year 2018-19, Titan had posted a net profit of Rs 1,389 crore ($193.6 million), while its revenue was Rs 19,961 crore.