Ferragamo faces 'perfect storm' as coronavirus spreads

Italian luxury group Salvatore Ferragamo said first-quarter revenues could fall by up to one third due to the spreading coronavirus outbreak, and said it was impossible at this stage to evaluate the full impact of the health crisis.

Ferragamo said it was postponing some product launches, limiting investments to essential projects, cancelling some orders from suppliers and keeping a lid on costs to deal with what its executives called an “unbelievable” situation.

“This is a perfect storm, it’s very hard to make any kind of predictions in terms of duration, magnitude and impact,” Chief Executive Micaela Le Divelec Lemmi told analysts after the group reported a 4.3% drop in core profits for 2019.

She said that the virus emergency was affecting “all markets, all geographies, all sectors,” adding that all luxury groups were grappling with the uncertainty.

Chief Financial Officer Alessandro Corsi said that as things stood the company expected sales in the first three months of 2020 to have fallen by between one fourth and one third when compared with last year’s revenues.