CaratTiffany and Bulgari carry LVMH as the group slips 3%
LVMH's Watches & Jewellery arm posted €5.23 billion in first-half sales, up 9% organically and 11% in the second quarter, while overall group revenue fell 3%. It was the group's best-performing division.
At the world's largest luxury group, the jewelry vault is doing the heavy lifting. LVMH said its Watches & Jewellery division booked €5.23 billion in first-half sales, up about nine percent organically, with second-quarter growth accelerating to eleven percent and recurring operating profit rising nine percent to €831 million.
When the biggest group in luxury leans on Tiffany and Bulgari to offset everything else, it confirms what Kering's numbers said the same morning — hard jewelry is the sturdiest floor in the category right now. The question for the second half is whether that floor is demand or comparison math, and only a soft Christmas would tell them apart.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| Watches & Jewellery | +9% |
| Lvmh Group | -3% |
IThe vault does the lifting
Against a group whose overall revenue fell three percent to €38.6 billion, the division was, in the company's own words, the best performer of all its activities so far this year.
The engines were the two names a consumer would recognize. Tiffany & Co. reinforced its signature lines and finished a run of store renovations; Bulgari leaned into a new high-jewelry direction that the company said produced record revenue.
Both drew strength from the United States, Asia and Japan — the same three markets that dragged in the first quarter on Middle East tension and then snapped back hard enough in the second to erase the slip.
IIWatches stop being the drag
The watch side of the ampersand is quieter but no longer a drag.
LVMH did not break out TAG Heuer, Hublot or Zenith, but the division's double-digit second quarter tells you the watch brands are at least not bleeding into the jewelry line's numbers, a change from the stretches when soft demand for steel sports watches pulled the whole segment down.
IIIA necklace is not a handbag
What makes the result striking is the contrast inside the same building. Fashion and leather goods, perfumes and cosmetics, wines and spirits all sagged, and group profit fell four percent.
The one division selling the highest-ticket, most discretionary objects in the house is the one growing — a reminder that at the very top of the market, a diamond necklace and a handbag are not the same trade at all.
01Method · the desk’s arithmetic+
H1 2026, LVMH. Division organic growth vs reported group revenue.
Boucheron hits a record as Kering's jewelry runs 14% ahead
Kering's jewelry houses run 14% ahead as the group slips.
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