Swatch chair aims for double digit sales growth this year
THE chair of watchmaker Swatch said yesterday she hopes to see double-digit sales growth this year.
“We have become used to recording double-digit growth rates so that eventually single-digit growth figures are almost seen as negative,” Nayla Hayek told the Blick am Sonntag newspaper in an interview.
“But if everything goes well — all indications speak in favour of that — we will grow that way again in 2012.”
The group said this month it had seen double-digit growth in January and February.
In January the firm said its sales rose to SFr7.1bn (£4.9bn) in 2011, adding that sales growth of between five per cent and 10 per cent should be achievable in 2012.
Hayek reiterated hopes the Swiss franc would weaken towards 1.30 or 1.40 per euro to help exporters like Swatch, but was not very hopeful it would move in that direction soon.
The Swiss National Bank capped the soaring franc at 1.20 per euro on 6 September, but the safe-haven currency is still about 30 per cent stronger than before the financial crisis in 2008.
The Swatch group owns Omega and Tiffany & Co.