The Breitling Watch Source Forums

The COSC has released its numbers for 2010, and some of them are a little surprising to me.

2009 saw some major drops for the big three in the number of certificates issues from the highs of 2008 – Rolex down 21%, Omega down 50% and Breitling down 55%. We have heard a lot about how quickly the market has recovered, so I was expecting to see that reflected in the 2010 numbers, but it really isn’t.

Rolex, Omega and Breitling continue to be the top three, but Rolex and Breitling haven’t bounced as much as you might think:

Rolex – 611,424 (2009 – 607,512)
Omega – 342,798 (2009 – 187,558)
Breitling – 122,649 (2009 – 108,220)

These are all mechanical only numbers.

Clearly Omega has made a big recovery, almost back to 2009 numbers, although that may be slightly false – it may indicate an expansion of the models that are certified rather than pure production growth. Rolex and Breitling numbers are more indicative of total production as all of their models are certified.

There may be a lag in the numbers as companies sold off inventory before committing to production increases, but clearly Breitling’s numbers, while up 13% from 2009 are still a long way below the over 200,000 pieces that we saw in 2008. Rolex is essentially flat – a less than 1% increase, although they obviously have a much better ability to stave off problems with such high volumes.

To me at least, this indicates that the recovery has been slower to materialize than we have been led to believe – if it is ‘just’ a lag in production volumes picking up to meet demand then it implies that 2009 was even worse than we thought – despite the 55% drop in production there were significant inventory levels. If it isn’t that then clearly Breitling and Rolex haven’t recovered that quickly.

In some ways the Rolex number is reassuring for Breitling – they aren’t falling behind, although as an independent brand they are less able to survive a prolonged revenue drop than companies like Omega who have the support of a big corporation to mitigate risk. While Rolex is independent they have the volume to be better able to survive. Of course we don’t know what the balance sheets really look like because they aren’t made available, but in house movement R&D, infrastructure and production costs over the last decade won’t have come cheap!

These three manufacturers still dominate the numbers, there were 1,256,915 mechanical certificates issued in 2010 so the rest of the industry accounts for less than 20%. Of the other big movers, Tag dropped from 4th to 7th with a 65% drop (although that may again be due to decisions about which models to certify) and while Panerai remained 5th their numbers dropped 35%.

9 manufacturers achieved totals above 10,000 and 29 above 1,000. Zenith appeared for the first time and Chopard started to appear near the top of the list. Full list is below (only those above 1,000 released):

1. Rolex – 611,424
2. Omega – 342,798
3. Breitling – 122,649
4. Chopard – 34,254
5. Panerai – 26,291
6. Mido – 25,384
7. Tag Heuer – 24,541
8. Titoni – 13,335
9. Enicar – 11,180
10. Ball – 7,396
11. Ernest Borel – 6,341
12. Zenith – 5,194
13. Corum – 5,092
14. Ulysse Nardin – 5,035
15. Chanel – 4,345
16. Ebel – 2,236
17. Rado – 1,998
18. Dolce & Gabbana – 1,914
19. Normana – 1,870
20. Carl F. Bucherer – 1,821
21. Montblanc – 1,623
22. Concord – 1,524
23. Ciribelli – 1,510
24. Bremont – 1,499
25. Certina – 1,459
26. Desco von Schultess – 1,408
27. Tissot – 1,265
28. S. T. Dupont – 1,056
29. Roger Dubuis – 1,022

On the quartz side, Breitling continue to dominate with 14,740 certificates out of a total of 19,799. However, it’s worth noting that until this year Breitling has had more than 90% of the quartz certificates. Not sure who is coming into that space, but Breitling’s percentage drop is a reflection of the growth elsewhere rather than a significant reduction by them.

Interesting numbers. The Omega figures are quite amazing, although as you say it may be indicative of just certifying more models as opposed to actually selling more watches.

Given the on-going state of the world economy I'm not remotely surprised that numbers are still down on previously. I can't help but feel that all the industry talk of "bouncing back" was at least in part an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Create an image of market confidence to breed actual market confidence.

The Chronometer quartz numbers are also interesting as I can't personally think of any manufacturer other than Sinn who use any chronometer quartz movements. I wonder who's taking up the other 5000?

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Certina recently launched COSC quartz pieces. Not sure if that's enough to account for the difference - numbers are relatively low so it could be, but I can't find any official releases that break out the quartz numbers.

Thanks for the great info Roff. Very interesting to read to say the least. I am a little surprised that the numbers don't support the apparent recovery in demand however considering the state of the rest of the world, why would luxury watches be any different.

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Happines is Good Health and a Bad Memory.
"Ingrid Bergman"

Interesing and thanks for the analysis. Ealier this year I was speaking to a co-owner of a high end AD. He was lamenting the industry wide price increases. In fact he was disgusted. His main gripe was the brands were telling the ADs that sales were up and this would support a price increase. His take was they were killing the ADs and while his shop sold a bit more in 2010 than 2009, the difference was negligible. Yet the brands were insisting sales were up substantially. These numbers suggest the brands were fudging "the recovery" for whatever reason. But my friend Paul already new that!

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SHARKMAN

These are last years numbers,I didn't hear ADs saying last year that inventory was impossible to get. I only started hearing that towards the end of Q1 2011.

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"I don't own any watches, I just lease them"

Inventory is only part of the story though. Higher sales were definitely being reported for 2010 - Richemont reported half year sales (to end of September 2010) up 47% and Swatch reported full year sales (to end of December 2010) at their highest level ever. Obviously we can't know about Rolex and Breitling because they don't publish, but the 2010 bounce was real based on published results.

2011 COSC numbers won't be available for almost a year so we'll have to wait on that.

What's shocking is the difference between Omega and Breitling. I always thought they had similar volumes. This latest report shows omega dominating. I guess it was a misconception on my part, but I thought Breitling was more popular than Omega.

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Regards,

Peter

BREITLING for Bentley Motors T & Mark VI, Aerospace
ROLEX Submariner Ceramic116610LN
OMEGA Plantet Ocean 8500 42mm Orange arabics
OCEAN7 LM-3

maybe in the us market, but not world wide, and omega is HUGE in asia.

Lots of inventory that was registered for COSC in 2009 most likely went unsold until 2010.

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"I don't own any watches, I just lease them"

yeah... I hear they're number 1 in china!

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Regards,

Peter

BREITLING for Bentley Motors T & Mark VI, Aerospace
ROLEX Submariner Ceramic116610LN
OMEGA Plantet Ocean 8500 42mm Orange arabics
OCEAN7 LM-3

Might that explain Breitling's design direction changes; to tap into some of Omega's market share in Asia?

Very interesting report Roff. Thank you for your time. Those numbers say a lot.

@RXPete The US market is so much different than the rest of the world. No wonder these numbers prove it, if need be.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

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- This is Ghost Rider requesting a fly-by. - Negative Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.

To give you a idea: Patek Philippe sells about +- 40.000 units each year.