(Reuters) -Indian clothing retailer Trent’s second-quarter standalone revenue rose by 17%, the company said on Monday, marking its slowest rise since the March 2021 quarter and well short of its near-term target of 25%.
Shares of the Westside and Zudio brands owner fell as much as 2% after the update, before closing 0.8% lower.
Trent’s revenue growth in recent quarters has slowed, fuelling concerns among analysts that the company’s operating performance is on the decline amid muted sales growth as middle-class shoppers feel the pinch of higher living costs.
The Mumbai-based company’s Zudio-led focus on young adults who regularly open their wallets for trendy but affordable styles yielded a compounded annual revenue growth rate of more than 35% in the past five years.
It led to a more-than five-fold rise in Trent’s stock value from 2023 to 2024 and drove its inclusion in the benchmark Nifty 50 index last year.
At its peak, Trent was trading at 8,345 rupees, valuing the company at about 3 trillion rupees ($33.79 billion).
($1 = 88.7880 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Ananta Agarwal and Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)
