Latest Headlines – Page 170
-
Article
Luxottica Aims At €5 Billion In Sales This Year, Predicting Slightly Slower Growth
Luxottica expects its revenues to increase to €4.9-5.0 billion in 2007 from the €4,676 million booked last year as the company continues to expand its international reach. However, the chance of reaching such a milestone is overshadowed by the fact that the group will experience a certain slowdown in ...
-
Article
Ten-fold Profit Boost For Safilo
Safilo booked a 10-fold increase in its net profit to a more normal level of €37.5 million in 2006. It can be considered as an exceptional year for the Italian eyewear company, which underwent a thorough overhaul. Group revenues rose by ...
-
Article
Luxottica Enters South Africa, While Boosting Its Other Chains
Luxottica will invest €225 million this year to expand and refurbish part of its global network of 5,700 stores. Under this program the group will open or refurbish nearly 1,000 stores, equally divided between optical and sunglass outlet. New stores will result from openings or small acquisitions outside Europe, ...
-
Article
Big Campaign For Ray-ban
Luxottica has announced a massive global campaign for Ray-Ban's 70-year anniversary. It kicked off on March 7 with a New York celebrity party, attended by the likes of Spike Lee, the well-known film director, and was followed up with the projection, from March 8 to March 13, of images of ...
-
Article
Essilor Is A Good Investment For Its Shareholders
Essilor International improved its operating margin (EBIT) to 17.9 percent in 2006 from 17.3 percent in the previous year, thanks to a variety of factors including the previously reported 11.0 percent increase in consolidated sales to €2,690 million for the year (details in EWI # 8-1 of Jan. 25). Deducting ...
-
Article
Essilor Explores New Territories
Xavier Fontanet, chairman and chief executive of Essilor International, gave a flat ?no? to questions about the group's interest in acquiring CooperVision at the annual conference in Paris where the management comments on its results. However he indicated that Essilor is exploring possible areas of diversification from its core business ...
-
Article
Stylemark Acquires Polaroid Eyewear
StyleMark is a large U.S. firm that sells sunglasses and other products under some 20 brand names like Nine West, Disney, Speedo, Ocean Pacific and Revlon, but mostly in the USA. The company has bought Polaroid Eyewear International, the eyewear division of Polaroid Corporation, positioned in a higher segment of ...
-
Article
Cooper Claims That Dark Times Are Past
Shareholders are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel for their investment in Cooper Companies, parent company of CooperVision. However its recent performance seems to have scared off at least one big potential investor, Essilor International, which gave a flat ?no? earlier this month to rumors ...
-
Article
Another Recall At Bausch & Lomb
But this one is not so bad ? people are not at risk of going blind this time. And this one will not have nearly the same impact on the company's financial performance as did the nightmarish recall of the ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution last year. Bausch & ...
-
Article
1-800 Contacts Delays Sale Of Clearlab While It Consolidates
1-800 Contacts will endure about $7.1-8.7 million in costs when it folds Clearlab's contact lens plant in the UK into its operations in Singapore. Both the UK and Singapore operations were operating at half capacity, the company said, and ClearLab has been losing money. The operation in the UK should ...
-
Article
Fielmann Raises Profit By 21%
The supervisory and management boards propose to raise the annual dividend by 26 percent to €1.20 a share after a strong year in which Fielmann's pre-tax profit increased by 21 percent to €105 million, with operating income up by 23 percent to €71 million. External sales, including VAT and ...
-
Article
Grandvision Ditches The Visual Banner, Investing On Grandoptical
In a bold move intended to raise the market share of its GrandOptical retail banner in France from 5 to 15 percent, GrandVision has decided to propose its adoption by the 280 retail members of Visual, a French buying and franchising group that it acquired a few years ago. It ...
-
Article
Optic 2000 And Other Majors Win Market Shares In A France
France's opticians made a turnover of €3.82 billion in 2006, up by 2.1 percent from 2005, according to the GfK market research institute, showing a decline in the annual growth rate from 3.5 percent in 2004 and 2.7 percent in 2005. Sunglasses and contact lenses were the two ...
-
Article
Specsavers Grows By 16.0%
The Guernsey-based Specsavers Optical Group has announced a sales increase to £879 million (€1,312m-$1,732m) in calendar 2006, as compared to £758 million the previous year. The figure comprises all its operations in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Spain. No breakdown has been given yet for the ...
-
Article
Wholesale, Advertising And Store Openings Boosts De Rigo's 2006 Sales
De Rigo enjoyed a 10.5 percent increase in sales in 2006 to €627.8 million, including those of franchised stores, thanks to new store openings and successful advertising campaigns and store openings. Consolidated net sales rose at a still strong 10.4 percent rate to €558.4 million, with wholesale and manufacturing soaring ...
-
Article
Safilo Grows By 9.6%, Absorbing The Loss Of Polo Ralph Lauren In Usa
The non-renewal of the Ralph Lauren Polo license, which expired at the end of 2006, was compensated by the group's other brands in the USA and other parts of the American continent. Despite the loss of the juicy Lauren contract, the group's turnover in the Americas fell by only 0.8 ...
-
Article
Improving Salmoiraghi Plans To Open 150-200 More Stores
Salmoiraghi e Viganò, the leading Italian eyewear retailer, intends to open 150-200 more stores in Italy by the end of 2009 after obtaining €50 million in credit facilities from Intesa Sanpaolo, the country's largest bank. The loan will enable Salmoiraghi to expand its network to a total of around 500 ...
-
Article
Gatto Astucci Seeks Acquisitions Under New Ownership
The family of Fabrizio De Silvestro has sold 61 percent of Gatto Astucci to a private equity bank, Centrobanca Sviluppo Impresa. Of the remaining 39 percent, 20 percent will remain in the hands of the former owners while a 19 percent stake has been acquired by a pool of financial ...
-
Article
Oakley Predicts 45% Better Results
Oakley predicts that its sales will increase this year by 18-22 percent to $900-930 million and that net income will go up by about 45 percent to an indicated $65.9 million. Most of the sales growth will be organic, and most of it will come from increased sales of optical ...
-
Article
Indo Launches One-stop Shopping
INDO has changed its management structure by creating a new ?World Sales Unit,? which will be responsible for sales of all groups of products and services. This will enable eyewear professionals to place all their orders in one step only. Previously, each business unit was responsible for marketing its products ...
