Slight Decline in H&M’s Quarterly Revenue

The Swedish clothing retail chain Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) preliminarily reported on Wednesday a slight decline in revenue for the first fiscal quarter.

In the period from December to February, revenues of the second largest clothing retail chain in the world fell by 1.5 percent, to 53.6 billion Swedish kronor (5.3 billion euros).

Expressed in local currencies and including VAT, they remained at the level of the same period last year.

>>>H&M is facing backlash after the announcement of the ‘coolest monkey in the jungle’

The company recorded a decline in revenue in the previous fiscal quarter as well, after several decades of growth, citing a lower number of customers in physical stores and “imbalance in certain parts of the H&M brand structure” as reasons.

They announced that they would make greater efforts to integrate physical and online stores, and in some markets, they have also enabled returns of clothing purchased online.

>>>Zara’s owner sees solid profit growth from online sales

Their competitor, the Spanish Inditex, invested 1.8 billion euros last year in connecting online and physical stores and announced the continuation of this process through services such as online clothing orders and in-store pickups, which are carried out at fully automated points in several stores.

H&M had a total of 4,743 stores worldwide at the end of February, 400 more than at the end of the same month last year.

The complete report for the first fiscal quarter will be published on March 27.