Marimekko - Uncertainty ahead of Q1

New collaborations incoming
In early 2022, Marimekko announced of few collaborations with global lifestyle brands to enhance its brand awareness in its growing markets. Adidas collaboration got a sequel with new spring/summer collection that dropped during April 2022. In addition, Marimekko collaborates with a luxury brand Mansur Gavriel. The bag collection will be available starting from June 2022. Moreover, Marimekko announced its collaboration with global furniture and décor company IKEA. The collection will be released in spring 2023. Collaborations bring Marimekko highly scalable licensing revenue but, more importantly, by cooperating with popular lifestyle companies Marimekko’s brand awareness improves abroad significantly.

Consumer trust in decline in Marimekko’s main markets
Driven by increased inflation and interest rate pressures as well as geopolitical tenses due to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, consumer trust has been in a trend of decline in the western markets. Also, in Marimekko’s second-largest market, Japan, the inflation has picked up driven by material and energy costs. We expect the declined consumer activity to have a slight impact on Marimekko’s Q1 sales development and thus we have revised our quite optimistic near-term estimates. From what we earlier expected, we have downgraded our 22E topline estimate by 2% while our 22E EBIT estimate faced a decrease of 5% (see report page 2).

HOLD with a target price of EUR 12.8 (15.8)
In recent months, Marimekko’s valuation has melted alongside its peer group’s valuation. With our revised estimates, the company trades with 22E EV/EBIT and P/E multiples of 15x and 19x respectively. Considering our acceptable 22E EV/EBIT and P/E multiples of 17x and 21x respectively, we see slight upside potential in Marimekko’s stock price but, at the same time, remind about the uncertainty concerning the demand for Marimekko’s products. We retain our HOLD rating and adjust TP to EUR 12.8 (15.8).