For those interested, I listened to the quarterly results update from a few days ago.
Here is a summary, from my notes :
B&O Q1 update
Revenue -8% (-10% local currency)
- Product sales actually -16% vs Q1 22 , partially offset by Brand Partnering +44%
China lockdowns dragged down sales in China quite a bit
Europe sales -2%
Americas +14%
Overall margins down quite a lot – 2 reasons
- component costs! Points to numerous further price rises (my interpretation)
- B&O did dump a huge amount of earphones / headphones to America (Amazon?), redirected from China (lockdowns)
Other notable points
Collaborations showing good signs of engagement (balenciaga, supreme etc)
Aim for 10 Cradle to Cradle products by 2024-5 – good reason why upgrading older existing products won’t be a priority (my interpretation)
Hiring freeze, with the exception of software development
Focus on key cities – Win London strategy worked very well, Paris / New York next
Adding US as a new Core market / reduce reliance on Europe & China
Renewed Origin Acoustics partnership – strengthen customer integration channel
Outlook
Maintaining overall years expectation of -4/-5%
China expected to normalise
5 ‘Product innovations’ – including return of Emerge
Will continue to run low inventories
Q&A
Origin Acoustics as system integrator – they have lots of access to High Net Worth individual.
Especially in US, target marketing at High Net Worth individuals
High order backlog, but normalising now, lead times coming down
Component costs coming down from extremes of 2021
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