The listing in New York, in December 2020, was a turning point for the Zegna group. But many other things happened in the following sixteen months, no less important on closer inspection, and which explain the excellent 2022 results announced yesterday.
Revenues rose by 15.5% to 1.49 billion, but the percentage would almost triple (+42%) excluding Greater China, which suffered between March and May 2022 and then in the October-December period from restrictions related to the Covid, restrictions that every other Zegna and high-end market had shelved since the beginning of the year. «I am optimistic for the Greater China area and I expect it to make an important contribution to the results of the first quarter of 2023, which we already see in double-digit growth», explains Gildo Zegna, president and CEO of the group, one of the global leaders of the top range and first ever for the men’s section. The profitability ratios are also good: net profit was 65.3 million, the EBIT was 157.7 million (+6% on 2021 and in line with the indications provided by the group at the end of January). «We have always been a very disciplined, transparent, rigorous company, but the listing has given us even stricter rules and we are aware of the importance of announcements and of the words used to make them – underlines Gildo Zegna -. This is why we communicate forecasts and projects only when they are in fact certainties. In the light of the 2022 results, we confirm the goal of reaching 2 billion in revenues by 2025, bringing EBIT to 15% of turnover from the current 10.6%». The proposed dividend for 2022 is €0.1, up 11% on 2021.
Cautious optimism, but less whispered ambitions than usual: «On the big issue of recent years, the ESG criteria and in particular social and environmental sustainability, we have always chosen to invest and commit ourselves because we believed in it, not because it is a question of marketing levers and communication – specifies the CEO of Zegna -. The Stock Exchange and the Americans have made us understand that there must be no shame in telling what is done for the environment, for the people who work in the company and for our territory». Hence the announcement of the birth, in 2022, of the Accademia dei mestieri, to train the architects of Zegna’s artisanal and manufacturing quality of the future: «Over the next three years, also in the light of the growth rates of global demand that we expect, we will hire at least 300 people – adds Gildo Zegna -. Of course, we are a luxury brand, but perhaps more importantly, we are a luxury “production machine”.
A source of pride for Gildo Zegna and the family is the listing in New York and, no less important, the American brands that the group has in its portfolio, Thom Browne, which turns 20 in 2023, and Tom Ford: «At the end of 2022, after the purchase of the brand by Estée Lauder, we signed a twenty-year licensing agreement for the production of the Tom Ford collections. In the coming months all the details of the operation will be finalized, but we are already working on the project. And we are very satisfied with Thom Browne: in 2022 we opened 11 additional single-brand stores worldwide and the brand’s EBIT was 48.1 million, 26% more than in 2021».