LVMH Surpassed by Hermès as Most Valuable Luxury Brand as Sales Decline

Shares of French luxury conglomerate LVMH sank Tuesday after the company reported a decline in sales, and the Louis Vuitton parent lost its title as the world’s most valuable luxury brand.

With the stock’s nearly 8% decline in Europe Tuesday, while luxury rival Hermès’ ticked 0.2% higher, Hermès surpassed LVMH as the world’s most valuable luxury brand by market capitalization.

Hermès has a market cap of around 246.4 billion euros ($280 billion), while LVMH’s market cap is now just below that at 244.1 billion euros, according to CNBC, based on a calculation using FactSet data. LVMH shares have lost nearly a quarter of their value since the start of the year, while Hermès shares are up just over 1%.

The parent company of Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, and dozens of other high-end brands said Monday that its first-quarter revenue declined by about 2% year-over-year.

CFO Says Company Continues To Face ‘Macro Uncertainties’

LVMH CFO Cécile Cabanis said in a Monday call with analysts that the company “continued to face macro uncertainties and lack of visibility on external factors” in the latest quarter, and suggested that while the company “didn’t see a major change in trend” yet from tariffs, that it could.

“[I]t’s true that aspirational clientele is always more vulnerable in less positive economic cycles and uncertainties, and it might have had some impact in the recent weeks,” Cabanis said, according to an AlphaSense transcript.

She said the current 90-day pause may provide space for negotiations to improve the tariffs, and that each of LVMH’s brands would likely handle the cost of tariffs in a different way.