H&M to close stores as sales fall and customers move to online shopping
Stockholm — On Friday, Swedish clothing giant Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) said sales fell below expectations in the fourth quarter and it would close more stores as customers increasingly prefer to shop online. H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson said in a statement that the company’s "online sales and sales of the group’s other brands continued to develop well" but that physical stores "were negatively affected by a continued challenging market situation with reduced footfall to stores due to the ongoing shift in the industry". Sales between September and November dropped by 4% compared to the same period last year to 50.4-billion kronor. In local currencies, sales fell by 2%. "The numbers are really, really bad," Joakim Bornold, an economist at the investment bank Nordnet, told the daily Svenska Dagbladet. "I can’t remember when H&M had a quarter in which the sales fell."
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