00:00Bloomberg has learned that Chanel's sales rose strongly in the first half of the year,
00:04outperforming rivals including LVMH, helped by strong demand for Matthew Blasi's new collections.
00:09And we're told that comparable revenue at the private company climbed about 16%,
00:13with similar growth at the company's fashion division as well.
00:17Let's get to Angelina Rascouet, our Bloomberg luxury reporter in Paris,
00:21who's been diving through those numbers for us.
00:24It's rare, isn't it, that we should get these numbers at this time of year from Chanel, Angelina.
00:28So what is it that's driving sales growth for Chanel?
00:33Yes, indeed. Hi, Lizzie.
00:35Normally, Chanel reports annual results once a year, typically in May for the previous year.
00:42But we managed to guess those numbers for the first half performance.
00:46And as you said, Chanel outperformed its peers, including LVMH, the fashion unit,
00:55which is Chanel's biggest, it generates about 60% of revenue, rose about 16%.
01:02And that was helped, as you say, by the new collections from Mathieu Blasi.
01:06So this designer was appointed over a year ago, but his first collection started being commercialized
01:12in March this year, and they found, they have proven to be very popular in an otherwise relatively morose market.
01:24But it's not, actually, it's not just the fashion unit, because if you look at watches and fine jewelry unit,
01:31that division soared 35%.
01:34It was helped by, you know, jewelry lines like Cocoa Crush.
01:37And even the watch segment, which had been struggling for a while across all the major groups, rose in the
01:46first half.
01:46So that was very positive.
01:48And all the regions grew, but obviously it was led by the U.S., jumping more than 25%.
01:53But even China and the Middle East in the first half rose.
01:58The outlook for the rest of the year, according to what we hear, is that the second half will probably
02:04not be as strong as the first half
02:06because the comparison basis will become tougher.
02:09So overall, the full year growth will not be probably as high as the first half growth.
02:16But overall, a pretty impressive set of results.
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