Luxury jewellery brand Pandora’s UK division has seen profits fall as sales retreated from record highs.
The London-based arm recorded a pre-tax profit of £14.9m for 2024, according to fresh accounts lodged with Companies House. This figure marks a sharp drop from the £61.1m pre-tax profit Pandora achieved in 2023.
The company’s turnover decreased from £448m to £441.3m over the same timeframe, as reported by City AM.
A board statement declared: “The business has maintained a solid platform during 2024 with good sales given the wider market context and continues to focus on maintaining the brand image through the sale of high quality and fashionable jewellery.”
Regarding future prospects, Pandora noted: “The directors expect that UK consumers’ discretionary spending and general rates of consumption will continue to come under pressure over the short to medium term which cold have a negative impact on future growth.
“The directors aim to counter this impact and drive growth within the company based on four key pillars, namely brand, design, personalisation and distribution.
“These growth pillars will be delivered throughs strong foundational capabilities covering people, digitalisation, scale, sustainability and operational excellence.”
Throughout the year, Pandora UK’s workforce expanded from 2,500 to 2,630 employees.
These figures emerge following City AM’s August report that Pandora had joined the growing list of retailers hit by cyber criminals.
The firm confirmed that “some customer information was accessed through a third-party platform that we use”. It clarified at the time: “Only very common types of data were copied by the attacker – specifically name, birthdate, and email address.
“We’d like to stress that no passwords, credit card details or similar confidential data were involved in this incident.”
Looking at the broader Pandora group’s performance for the same financial year, organic growth hit 13 per cent, surpassing the previously upgraded guidance of 11 per cent to 12 per cent.
This figure breaks down into seven per cent like-for-like sales growth and five per cent network expansion, with 236 net new stores launched in 2024, Pandora revealed.
Both revenue and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) climbed by 13 per cent to DKK 31.7bn (£3.54bn) and DKK 8bn (0.89bn), respectively.
The US market, representing just over 30 per cent of Pandora’s total sales, posted nine per cent growth in the fourth quarter. Europe, accounting for another third of sales, remained flat, whilst combined sales from other regions achieved 11 per cent growth.
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