De Beers’ Sales Take a Dive Due to Coronavirus

The company reported Wednesday that in the second sales cycle of the year, it sold $355 million in rough diamonds to sightholders and via its auction platform compared with $496 million in the same period last year, a 28 percent drop.

Sales are down 36 percent from the first sales cycle of the year, when a relatively strong holiday season had suppliers restocking and the COVID-19 coronavirus wasn’t on the verge of becoming a global pandemic.

According to the World Health Organization, as of Tuesday, there were confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 73 countries including China, where the disease originated in December, with 90,870 people infected worldwide and 3,112 deaths.   

De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver said the company let sightholders push purchases of certain goods to later in the year due to the impact of the virus.

Cleaver said: “Following an improvement in demand for rough diamonds during the first sales cycle of 2020, we recognized the impact of COVID-19 coronavirus on customers focused on supplying the Chinese market and put in place additional targeted flexibility to enable customers to defer allocations of the relevant rough diamonds.”  

Here’s a look at De Beers’ rough diamond sales so far this year.

*Provisional figure