By Elisa Anzolin
PARIS, April 28 (Reuters) – The head of EssilorLuxottica expressed confidence on Tuesday that shares in the Franco-Italian eyewear group can recover the ground lost due to U.S. tariffs, a weaker dollar, military conflicts and competition on smart eyeglasses.
Speaking at the company’s annual general meeting, CEO Francesco Milleri said the shares had also been suffering from an ongoing push into the medtech sector, which he described as a necessary transformation for the group.
“We were too big to remain framed in this small market,” he said, referring to traditional spectacle frames and lenses.
Once completed, the medtech transformation will bear fruit, supporting a recovery in the share price, he added.
Finance chief Stefano Grassi told the meeting that the impact from U.S. tariffs last year amounted to 300 million euros ($351 million).
EssilorLuxottica shares have lost over 40% of their value since hitting a record high in November on investor enthusiasm for its AI-powered Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
Since then, investors have been fretting about growing competition in the category limiting EssilorLuxottica’s first-mover advantage.
Milleri played down the concerns, saying “a few big players have made product announcements generating buzz, but we haven’t seen any real competing products on the market so far”.
EssilorLuxottica has been working with Meta Platforms since 2019 to develop smart eyewear, producing successive generations of Ray-Ban-branded glasses that integrate cameras, audio and artificial-intelligence features.
“We are really pushing to go back to the (price) position that we deserve … but, at the same time, it will take some time to achieve that”, Milleri said.
($1 = 0.8551 euros)
(Reporting by Elisa Anzolin. Editing by Valentina Za and Mark Potter)
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