H&M will temporarily close hundreds of stores across Europe in a bid to battle the spread of coronavirus as its quarterly sales in China were hit by the pandemic.

The Swedish fashion titan has temporarily shut all stores in Italy, Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic. Bulgaria, Belgium, France and partly in Greece, and also moved to shut Austria, Luxembourg, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia and Kazakhstan alongside its quarterly update.

The fashion retailer reported an 8% uplift in net sales to SEK54,948m (£5bn) for the three months to 29 February, but sales in China during the latter half of that period plummeted due to coronavirus and subsequent store closures.

H&M’s group sales in China fell 24% overall during the period, despite the fact that sales in the period from December 1 to January 23 jumped 27%.

The retailer was forced to close 334 of its 518 stores in China in February.

H&M has said sales in March across Europe have been negatively impacted by the spread of coronavirus, but that sales across China have begun to recover.

A statement from the retailer said: “While the H&M group’s transformation work continues at full speed, all activities in the company are now being carefully evaluated – including from a cost and risk perspective – so as to be able to mitigate the negative effects associated with the virus as far as possible.”

Topics