Zara owner Inditex sees good holiday season after weak third quarter

MADRID (Reuters) -Zara owner Inditex (BME:) said the start of the holiday season had got off to a good start after it reported weaker than expected quarterly results as rainy weather hit some key European markets.

The company behind Zara and other brands said its sales rose a slower than expected 7% to 27.4 billion euros ($28.84 billion) during the period, below the 8% expected by analysts.

Its net profit of 4.44 billion euros for the first nine months of 2024, up 8.5% from a year earlier, was below analysts’ average expectation of 4.52 billion euros.

The company however reported a better start of the holiday season, with revenues rising 9% during the six weeks to Dec. 9 as the world’s biggest fast-fashion retailer kept drawing in shoppers even as rivals struggled.

Revenue growth in the period, which includes the key Black Friday sales, was slower than the 14% increase reported a year ago, though.

“We had a strong start to the last quarter against a demanding comparable in the same period of 2023,” Inditex’s capital market director, Marcos Lopez, told Reuters.

He stressed that in constant currency sales growth was 10.5% in the first nine months of the fiscal year and the growth in constant currency during the third quarter was the faster of the year.

($1 = 0.9500 euros)