{"id":44056,"date":"2026-06-30T21:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T21:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/44056\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T21:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T21:44:10","slug":"victorias-secret-hermes-stock-trends-and-brand-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/44056\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria’s Secret & Herm\u00e8s: Stock Trends and Brand Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFiguring out why a stock is up or down in the brutal calculus<\/a> of Wall Street requires two basic pieces of information \u2014 how a company is performing and how that compares with what investors were expecting.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen investors have been disappointed repeatedly and then the business perks back up and looks set to continue headed higher, the result can be a big run up in the stock price.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo it was for Victoria\u2019s Secret<\/a> & Co., which was one of the best-performing stocks in the first half with a gain of 54.1 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat puts the retailer way ahead of the market overall, which has been supercharged by AI everything and is up 9.6 percent so far this year, according to the S&P 500.<\/p>\n

\n\tVictoria\u2019s Secret has been rapidly evolving under chief executive officer Hillary Super, who\u2019s unapologetically brought the sexy back<\/a> \u2014 the stock ticker symbol was changed to \u201cVSXY.\u201d She has also worked to give Pink more of its own identity and to tighten up operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were so transactional and value driven and now we are so emotional, tapping into how [the customer] feels about herself, being a place where she can be confident or feel great,\u201d Super told WWD after the company reported a 15 percent increase in first-quarter sales. \u201cIt\u2019s just a very different tone and a very different positioning and we\u2019re driving this fun and brand heat through all of the activations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe vibe shift is being felt by analysts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJonna Kim, at TD Cowen, said the company\u2019s \u201cunderlying momentum remains compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe believe Victoria\u2019s Secret and Pink are gaining share from value and off-price players,\u201d Kim said. \u201cHigher cultural relevancy combined with newness is driving share gains. Beauty remains a bright spot, which management expects to grow [by a percentage in the double digits] for the year, driven by fragrance and mists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are impressed Victoria\u2019s Secret has not seen any slowdown despite a softer macro backdrop and execution remains encouraging,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGrowth at the company has been supported by \u201ca strategic shift away from promotions toward brand-led storytelling\u00a0\u2014 \u2018promo detox\u2019 \u2014 which drove higher average unit retail prices and stronger full-price selling, indicating healthier brand equity,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrand equity will, sooner or later, translate into stock market equity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut brand by itself is not enough to keep a stock rising.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIf investors are looking for a great business to go on and become amazing, anything less can be a disappointment.<\/p>\n

\n\tWitness Herm\u00e8s<\/a> International, where sales growth in constant currencies slowed to 6 percent<\/a> in the first quarter, slightly below expectations and down from a 9.8 percent expansion in the fourth quarter. In the market, that translated into a 23.9 percent stock decline for Herm\u00e8s in the first half.<\/p>\n

\n\tInvestors have been closely watching the big luxury brands, wondering if the affluent will be willing to keep paying more and, if so, how much. The sales rise at Herm\u00e8s was driven by price increases at the brand, which like the rest of the industry also suffered through disruptions in the Middle East and in oil prices since the U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\tNobody doubts the power of Herm\u00e8s; the doubts seem to be on the expectations side of the equation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Herm\u00e8s<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHerm\u00e8s men\u2019s spring 2027<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Herm\u00e8s<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHerm\u00e8s\u2019 brand equity is second to none,\u201d Luca Solca, an analyst at Bernstein, wrote in a recent analysis. \u201cHerm\u00e8s may be facing a momentary soft patch in brand momentum, but it remains one of the largest luxury brands by revenue, despite a significantly smaller presence on social media, while its iconic bags consistently command a premium on the resale market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSolca described Herm\u00e8s, which has revenues of 16 billion euros, as a \u201cmegabrand\u201d that has room to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA focus on costume jewelry, silk and more accessible handbags has opened the brand to a larger consumer audience, reaching down well into the aspirational middle class,\u201d the analyst said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDirect competitors like Chanel now seem better equipped to take care of top-end consumers,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen compared to Herm\u00e8s, Chanel is more expensive in apparel, in shoes, in jewelry and \u2014 since post-COVID-19 \u2014 as expensive in leather handbags. Herm\u00e8s is stretching its assortment upward to better serve rich consumers. It has invested in high jewelry and high-end watches, with price points stretching into the hundreds of thousands. The upcoming launches of couture will offer another case in point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trick for the C-suite at Herm\u00e8s and Victoria\u2019s Secret is to focus on their brands and their companies and to let the stock take care of itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trick for investors is to remember that their expectations aren\u2019t the end all, be all.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Figuring out why a stock is up or down in the brutal calculus of Wall Street requires two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12919],"tags":[4953,13393,14407,2515,29873],"class_list":["post-44056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hermes","tag-hermes","tag-hermu00e8s","tag-lvmh-mou00ebt-hennessy-louis-vuitton","tag-sourcing-journal","tag-victoriau2019s-secret"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}