Sportinspirerade clothes to lift the H&M – Västerbottens-kuriren (the Courier)

Economy. H&M shares went like a rocket on the stock exchange, then klädjätten reported an improved profit. But as a whole lived to 2016, not up to the company’s own expectations. Ceo Karl-Johan Persson believe in a better 2017.

Facts

Quarter 4 covers the period september-november in the company’s broken fiscal year. Sums in millions of Swedish kronor unless otherwise indicated.

Source: H&M

in 2016, H&M group 427 new stores and eleven new online markets. This means that the H&M were online in 35 countries at the end of the year and that the number of stores amounted to 4 351.

For the recently started fiscal year counts the H&M with the opening 430 new stores net. New planned butiksmarknader is Kazakhstan, Colombia, Iceland, Vietnam and Georgia.

e-commerce to expand to six new markets: Turkey, Taiwan, Hong kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia.

Source: H&M

Clothes inspired by the boxing and ballet, with comfortable elastics and worked the details. And as much stripes. So we are going to dress us in the spring, according to H&M. Klädjätten gave some taste of spring at the same time, as the company reported a vinstlyft for the fourth quarter and a new growth target, which was the share to rise over five percent on the stockholm stock exchange.

in 2016, the increased H&M group’s sales by seven per cent, a level that ceo Karl-Johan Persson is not happy with.

— We did not reach the targets we set ourselves for 2016, ” he says.

the Company was forced to massive sales, and together with a strong dollar, which increased costs squeezed the profit. But according to Persson, it’s not about the failures of the collections that customers rejected. That sales has been good and has increased more than the market in some countries, including Sweden, is proof of it, he thinks.

” we would not have done if it was a sortimentsproblem.

Online important

But some large and for the company in key markets such as the USA, Germany, Switzerland and China performed worse than the company had hoped.

— It is a challenging market in some countries. The major explanation is a shift to online, and in some markets a link to the boring geopolitical events, ” says Karl-Johan Persson.

Towards the end of the year, however, overall, the brighter for the group. The profit before tax was sek 7.4 billion for the period from september to november, the fourth quarter of the company’s broken fiscal year. An increase from 7.1 billion a year earlier, better than analysts had expected.

Optimistic ceo

Started the improvements of, in particular, e-commerce, but also in store operations and the supply chain, to ensure that 2017 will be a better year than the previous one.

— I believe that we will reach our goal of 10-15 percent in sales growth by 2017, ” says Karl-Johan Persson.

the Goal is new. Previously it was about the number of new stores, but it is becoming less relevant as online sales are growing in importance.

H&M plans to launch one or two new brands in 2017. The first to be presented in conjunction with the next interim report. The group also plans to develop the brand H&M Home with the stand-alone stores.

the Board of directors proposes an unchanged dividend to the shareholders at 9:sek 75 per share. It gives a total dividend of 16.1 billion, of which 6.2 billion accruing to the principal owner Stefan Persson and his family.