Luxury group Richemont reports slowdown in Q4 sales, appoints new CEO

ZURICH (Reuters) - Richemont confirmed the slowdown in the luxury sector when the Cartier jewellery owner reported a 1% drop in its fourth quarter sales on Friday.

The company, which also owns high-end Swiss watch brands like Piaget and Jaeger-LeCoultre, said sales fell to 4.80 billion euros ($5.21 billion) in the three months to the end of March.

In constant currencies, sales increased by 2%, a slowdown from the 8% growth rate in the previous quarter, which covered the three months to the end of December.

Still, the Q4 figure was slightly ahead of the consensus forecast for 4.78 billion euros cited by RBC.

For the full year to the end of March, Richemont's sales rose 3% to 20.62 billion euros, while shareholder's full year net profit of 2.36 billion euros missed the 3.09 billion euros in the consensus compiled by Visible Alpha.

"Richemont delivered a solid underlying performance...whilst successfully facing unfavourable foreign exchange movements, demanding comparatives, and ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty," said Chairman Johann Rupert in a statement.

In a separate statement, the company announced the promotion of Van Cleef & Arpels Chief Executive Nicolas Bos to become CEO of the group.

($1 = 0.9211 euros)

(Reporting by John Revill, editing by Andrey Sychev)