Diamond News Archives

Members of the task force created to address the deadly coronavirus outbreak are expected to hold a press briefing Tuesday at the White House as state and local authorities take drastic measures to slow the spread of the disease.

(IDEX Online) - Russian mining giant Alrosa is allowing buyers to defer up to 60 per cent of their allocations at its regular contract sales.

The move, effective as of yesterday's sale, is a sign of market uncertainty.  In times of stability customers have been able to defer only 20 per cent of the stones offered.

Alrosa, which last week reported a 31 per cent slump in 2019 profits, says buyers will be allowed to "offtake 40 per cent of the initially contracted volume and carry the remaining part over to the end of May 2020."

The company's Alrosa Alliance program operates much like De Beers' sightholder system. It sells 70 per cent (by volume) of its rough diamonds, at one or two sales every month, to an approved list of 58 companies. 

Buyers are obliged to take most of the agreed volumes of rough, unless Alrosa relaxes the rules in times of difficulty, as it is now doing.

Until 2018, when the markets were stable market environment, buyers could defer only 20 per cent. By mid-2019, it was 30 per cent.  Earlier this month the figure was raised to 50 per cent, and now it's ben increased to 60 per cent.

"Obviously, amid such market uncertainty, it wouldn't be right to keep our customers tied to their original contracts," said Deputy CEO Evgeny Agureev.

"We hope that Alorosa's flexible sales policy and support measures will help market participants adapt to the new conditions, and pass them successfully through." ...

Silver has never been so unloved relative to gold. Get the latest from Mike Maloney on the gold/silver ratio, today’s market action, his case for 'deflation first', and whether Mike plans to buy more silver soon.

(IDEX Online) - Pandora, the affordable jewelry retailer, today withdrew its financial guidance for 2020 saying it was "no longer meaningful" in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

It also announced it had axed plans to buy back further shares.

The Denmark-based company has 7,400 outlets and 28,000 employees, half of them manufacturing its goods in Thailand.

Like-for-like sales in China had fallen between 70% and 80% since late January and in Italy they'd "now almost come to a complete halt," it said in a statement today.

"Australia is impacted due to a decline in tourism and most other markets are now indirectly impacted through a general dampening of consumer sentiment," it said.

Pandora said its financial guidance announced on 4 February 2020 excluded any impact from COVID-19.

At the time it expected growth performance to improve from -8 per cent like-for-like in 2019 to negative "mid-single-digit" like-for-like in 2020. It predicted organic growth of "-3 to -6 per cent".

It now says the guidance is no longer meaningful and has been withdrawn. ...