Richemont sales rise as heritage luxury keeps winning

The message from Richemont is blunt: heritage still sells, and it sells at scale. When the Cartier owner can post €22.4 billion in annual sales for the year ended 31 March 2026, up 11% at constant exchange rates, it is not because fashion got louder. It is because affluent shoppers kept putting money into the kinds of objects that signal permanence, not trend, with jewelry, watches and lineage-heavy maisons still carrying real authority.

The fourth quarter made that case even cleaner. Richemont reported €5.40 billion in revenue, ahead of the €5.30 billion analyst consensus, and said sales momentum held at 13% in the period. A softer Middle East was offset by stronger demand in Japan and the United States, a familiar map for luxury right now: when some regions cool, the market’s most established maisons are finding cash in the places where status still means a Tank, a high-jewelry necklace or a Swiss watch with a century of credibility behind it.

Jewellery Maisons were the standout, delivering sustained double-digit performance through the year. That matters because it tells you where the money is moving. The client spending on Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Richemont’s jewelry stable is not chasing the season’s loudest trend story; it is buying the polished, permanent pieces that read as quiet wealth in every room. Specialist Watchmakers were weaker, with sales down 4% at actual exchange rates, but up 1% at constant rates, and Richemont said that business returned to growth in the second half. For a category that had to work harder than jewelry, that is still a signal of resilience, not retreat.

The company’s profit picture was equally sturdy. Operating profit reached €4.5 billion, including €164 million of non-recurring costs, while profit for the year rose to €3.5 billion from €2.8 billion, helped by the absence of the prior year’s YOOX NET-A-PORTER write-down. Richemont also ended the year with €8.5 billion in net cash and €4.9 billion in cash flow from operating activities, the kind of balance-sheet strength that lets a luxury house keep investing while the market whips around it.

Johann Rupert has kept the group pointed at craftsmanship, heritage preservation and distribution and manufacturing expansion, and the strategy is reading well in an uneven market. In FY2025, Richemont had already seen group sales rise to €21.4 billion, led by the Americas, Japan and the Middle East and Africa, with direct-to-client sales making up 76% of the business. The latest numbers say the old formula still wins: when the room gets volatile, clients reach for houses that already own the code.