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# Louis Vuitton's owner had a bad quarter in China, and Richemont's shares paid for it in Johannesburg
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/lvmh-china-slowdown-richemont-jse-luxury-shares/
- Published: 2026-10-15T03:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-15T02:59:59.000Z
- Description: LVMH's fashion sales fell further than analysts expected, and luxury shares dropped together, Richemont among them, on a day it had published nothing of its own.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Markets, Business Bagel News

Luxury shares tend to move as a pack, and on Tuesday the pack followed Louis Vuitton down. LVMH, the group that owns it, had told the market on Monday that sales at its fashion and leather goods arm fell 5% in the third quarter. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha had braced for 1.8%. On the JSE, Richemont traded more than 1% lower at R3,362.39 a share, with no news of its own to blame.

That is how a read-through works: when one company reports first, investors use its numbers to guess everyone else's. LVMH was the first major luxury group to report on the quarter, and four sell-side analysts cut their price targets on it by an average of 9%, expecting the miss to show up at competitors too. JPMorgan's analysts told clients the Chinese cluster seemed "to have taken a material (and bigger than feared) step down". Across Europe on Tuesday morning, Hermès, Kering, Moncler and Dior fell too.

## China slowed while America kept buying

LVMH laid the blame on a "less buoyant environment in China", while the United States, Europe and Japan saw good growth. Fashion and leather goods is not a side business: it brings in nearly half of the group's revenue, which is why a miss there moved the whole sector.

LVMH titled its update "Continued growth in the third quarter of 2026", and the group as a whole did grow, by 1% on its own comparable measure. Watches and jewellery, home of Bulgari and Tiffany, did more of the lifting, but its growth slowed to 6% in the quarter from 9% in the first half, which takes some of the shine off one of luxury's few bright spots.

## A luxury slowdown in its third year

None of this is new for the sector. Europe's big luxury groups are three years into a slowdown and have lost around €330 billion in market value since the start of the year, with LVMH alone shedding roughly 40%.

Nobody at LVMH is promising a quick turn. Asked on the analyst call about Louis Vuitton's recovery, finance chief Cecile Cabanis said: "It takes a bit of time, but I don't think there are a lot of shortcuts here". For Richemont's shareholders on the JSE, that means Louis Vuitton's China problem is, for now, partly theirs too.