LVMHWide moat

LVMH sells desire, organized as a conglomerate. Its 75 maisons — Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany, Bulgari, Moët, Hennessy, Sephora, and seventy shades less famous — each guard a heritage measured in generations, and the group's business model is the disciplined rental of that heritage: buy houses no one can recreate, fund them lavishly, elevate their prices, and never, ever discount. The holding company provides capital, real estate, talent and negotiating muscle; the maisons provide the only thing that cannot be manufactured — time.

The money map for 2025: €80.8 billion of revenue and €10.9 billion of net profit, both down from the 2023 peaks as the China-led luxury slowdown wore on¹. Fashion & Leather Goods — the handbag empire of Vuitton and Dior — billed €38.2 billion, nearly half the group and well more than half its profit; Louis Vuitton alone is estimated near €20 billion². Selective Retailing (Sephora and DFS) added €18.5 billion, Watches & Jewelry €10.4 billion, Perfumes & Cosmetics €8.1 billion, and Wines & Spirits about €5.6 billion. One brand of leather goods, in other words, out-earns entire industries the group also happens to own.

The economics follow from a single discipline: price is never used to sell. A maison's margin expands with its mystique — Vuitton's operating margins are the envy of consumer business — and when demand softens, LVMH cuts production, not prices, accepting lost revenue to protect the one asset that matters. That is why the current downturn reads as it does: sales fell, margins compressed, and desirability — the thing the model actually compounds — stayed intact. The first half of 2026 hints the winter is thawing: €38.6 billion of revenue with organic growth back to positive and the second quarter accelerating³.

The market, which paid over fifty times earnings for this machine in the euphoric years, now grades it at about eighteen times⁴ — a fortress multiple, not a growth one. Whether that is the bargain of the decade or the new normal is the question the rest of these pages work through: The Moat weighs the brands, the pricing power, the portfolio machine and the distribution grip; the Future Bets follow Vuitton into beauty, the group into Formula 1, Tiffany through its rebuild, and the maisons into hotels — the rooms where the next decade of desire is being furnished. Each of the five business groups is taken in turn in The Revenue Lines.