PARIS — Pandora’s gears have clicking into place and it is regaining speed.
On Wednesday, the Danish jewelry giant reported 6 percent organic growth in the third quarter, with like-for-like sales up 4 percent and a 2 percent boost from network expansion and other factors.
During the quarter, sales reached 6.69 billion Danish kronor, or $1 billion at current exchange rates.
The company also sharped its guidance toward the upper end of the range it announced in August, now expecting 2026 figures to fall in a 2 percent to 3 percent bracket for organic growth, up from the previous 0-to-3 percent target, and an EBIT margin coming in between 22.5 percent and 23 percent.
“We are seeing that we are gaining momentum. Our strategic initiatives are clicking into gear,” president and chief executive officer Berta de Pablos-Barbier told WWD, noting that consumers were responding to new designs and culturally relevant activations.
In the three months to Sep. 30, the jeweler saw positive like-for-like growth in every region, a development she deemed “an encouraging step in a challenging consumer environment.”
Sales in North America grew 3 percent in the quarter, while Europe rose by 1 percent, marking its return to growth after five quarters of contraction. The Middle East and Africa zone’s business also grew by 1 percent.
The Asia-Pacific region saw the biggest increase, with a 20 percent leap, and Latin America rose 6 percent.
It made for “plenty of things to be positive about,” the CEO said, although “we have to [be] a little bit humble,” given half of the overall growth of the quarter came from Japan alone.
While that was proof for a new model de Pablos-Barbier described as “maximizing the bridge but being very locally relevant,” she cautioned that growth at such a pace – the country doubled in one year and has triple-digit growth in the quarter – “cannot last forever.”
Meanwhile, on the product side, the Core category that contains Pandora’s charm business and the Talisman range launched last year, grew 1 percent. The Fuel for More segment, which spans newer developments such as lab-grown diamond designs, jumped 9 percent.
Overall, de Pablos-Barbier said that “whenever [Pandora is] offering new designs with compelling activations and culturally relevant activation, the consumer is responding well.”
The Danish jewelry company will forge ahead with the likes of Pandora Wonders, launched in July with stylist Harry Lambert and slated for a second chapter next year; and Pandora Voices, launched in October with Dame Pat McGrath. On the latter, de Pablos-Barbier said the jeweler was “open to working with someone who can offer a fresh take on its icons,” but had no new collaborator to announce to date.
Pandora’s gross margin in the quarter was also up, bolstered by a partial refund of U.S. tariff claims. The quarter’s results overall beat consensus estimates, bar for the EBIT margin, which came in at 15.9 percent, underlined by RBC Capital Markets analyst Piral Dadhania as coming 5 percent below consensus estimates.
Asked about this perceived miss, de Pablos-Barbier said she had made “a deliberate decision to take one point of EBIT and invest it back into the brand” to address a gap identified in its retail.
“Our stores could be warmer, could be more immersive, could be more inspiring discovery, better at helping people choose their style, understand our collections, so we are bringing some investment next year on making sure that that happens,” she continued. Tests in Italy and New York, where conversion increased, backed this decision.
De Pablos-Barbier added there would be no major retail concept change. The company will continue to focus on its strategy of flagship openings, such as the ones in Barcelona and Milan earlier in the year that she called “beautiful expressions of the brand but most importantly, commercially viable.”
Looking ahead, the Danish jewelry giant said like-for-like growth in October had risen 1 percent, negatively impacted by lower promotional activity, but that “underlying trends remain healthy” at around 3 percent.
Pandora noted that it remains on track to begin its planned transition to platinum-plated jewelry in 2027, after a test was launched in the Netherlands in July and expanded to the U.S., U.K. and Australia.
