Le Saunda Holdings Limited – a company primarily engaged in the manufacture and retail of Le Saunda ladies and men’s shoes, CNE footwear (an O2O brand) and Linea Rosa high-fashion footwear brand – announced a consolidated profit of RMB122.1 million (MOP149.42 million) for the fiscal year ending February 2016, in a filing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This represents a 35.5 per cent year-on-year drop for the fiscal year compared to 2014/2015’s RMB189.3 million. The group has a total of 896 stores, located mostly in Mainland China, with 12 operating in Hong Kong and Macau. Sales in Hong Kong and Macau plunged 29.2 per cent year-on-year, at RMB110.7 million as compared to the RMB156.4 million seen in the previous fiscal year, causing a change in the Hong Kong and Macau business units ‘from profitable to making loss’ – a loss of RMB10.596 million – notes the filing. Over the fiscal year eight stores in the two SARs were phased out, noting that ‘after the shop rental in Hong Kong adjusts back to a normal level, the opportunities of opening new stores would appear again.’ The group note opines that it is ‘the pattern of consumers’ behaviour that has been changing,’ despite the fact that ‘urban disposable income is actually on the rise […] ongoing weakness is noted in consumer spending.’ For the fiscal year in question the group’s total revenue decreased by 3.7 per cent year-on-year to RMB1.621 billion. For the Macau segment total revenue amounted to MOP16.52 million, a 47.4 per cent drop compared to the MOP31.41 million registered in the previous fiscal year. A total drop of 0.9 per cent was seen in the group’s retail sales in Mainland China, amounting to RMB1.51 billion, which was noted as ‘better than the overall decline in the Group’s revenue,’ in the filing, attributable to a ‘stable loyal customer base brought by the Group’s reputation of products with “sophisticated styles with top quality”,’ as well as ‘consistent moves to close underperforming stores and open new ones to drive sales,’ complimented by the ‘launch of popular casual designs with elements favoured by young people to meet the market demands . . . [and] . . . a higher ratio of repeat purchases benefiting from innovative marketing approaches on both online and offline channels to facilitate close interaction with VIP customers.’ Future predictions note that ‘the Group anticipates the lacklustre sentiments prevailing in the retail market will last for one to two years’ and that ‘retailers will still face enormous challenges ahead.’ To conquer this, the group will focus on: ‘formal footwear for the medium to high-end market’ as well as focusing on the product mix to ‘explore the young-line products with unique functional and fashionable items’. La Saunda also seeks to transform itself from a vertically integrated offline retailer to ‘an omni-channel operator which is highly data-oriented,’ as well as to ‘introduce a new retail model with swift O2O deployment,’ notes the filing. The group employs 5,286 people, of whom 150 are based in Hong Kong and Macau.
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