Industry News: BIC Figures Reflect Industry Sales Decline


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Industry News: BIC Figures Reflect Industry Sales Decline

Issue: 2009oct

BIC Group, the Europe-based parent company of Clearwater, Florida-based supplier BIC Graphic USA (UPIC: BIC), released its nine-month and third-quarter sales reports last week, which show growth in consumer markets but a decline in promotional products sales that reflects a trend seen throughout the industry.

“In decreasing markets, our consumer business shows good resilience, and we have maintained or grown our market share in most categories and geographies while advertising and promotional products sales continued to decline, in line with industry trends,” says Mario Guevara, BIC Group CEO.

The report shows BIC Graphic continued to be negatively affected by reduced advertising and promotional spending and by the decline of the domestic promotional writing instrument business, despite a slight improvement in the third quarter compared to the second quarter; nine-month net sales decreased 22.4 percent at constant currencies.

The 2009 nine-month report includes total consumer net sales at 938.7 million euros (up 1.8 percent at constant currencies), and total advertising and promotional products net sales at 189.4 million euros (up 25 percent at constant currencies and down 22.7 percent on a comparative basis).

“During the third quarter, we maintained the momentum initiated in the second quarter,” says Guevara. “This good performance confirms our capacity to reduce costs without compromising long-term value creation.”

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