Prime Highlights:
- EssilorLuxottica’s growth in Q3 is largely driven by its partnership with Meta on smart glasses.
- The company expects smart glasses to play a major role in the future, combining eyewear with smartphone-like functionality.
Key Facts:
- Q3 sales rose 11.7% year-over-year to €6.9 billion ($8 billion), with over 4 percentage points of growth coming from wearables.
- New products include the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses ($799), Oakley Meta Vanguard ($499), and Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 ($379).
Key Background:
EssilorLuxottica, the European eyewear company behind Ray-Ban and Oakley, reported strong growth in the third quarter, driven by its partnership with Meta on smart glasses.
The company announced that its sales rose 11.7% year-over-year to €6.9 billion ($8 billion) in Q3, up from €6.44 billion in the same period last year. A significant portion of this growth, over 4 percentage points came from wearable products, including the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
CFO Stefano Grassi highlighted the potential of connected eyewear during the company’s earnings call, saying, “Glasses will materially replace most of the functionality that today we have embedded into our phones.” He added that the wearables segment is already profitable and is expected to contribute not only through hardware sales but also via lenses and AI-powered services in the future.
The collaboration between Meta and EssilorLuxottica, first announced in 2019, has expanded beyond Ray-Ban to include Oakley, with the Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses debuting in June. Plans are also underway to release a version under the Prada brand. These smart glasses let users play music, take photos, and perform other functions, combining the features of eyewear and smartphones.
At Meta’s Connect developer event in September, the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses were unveiled, featuring a small digital display operated with a neural-powered wristband. Other products include the $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard and $379 Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) glasses.
Grassi noted that North American sales growth was largely driven by the Ray-Ban Meta glasses rather than tariff-related price increases, and expressed optimism for the fourth quarter thanks to the rollout of new products from the Meta Connect event. He also projected that EssilorLuxottica will reach its 10 million-unit production capacity earlier than anticipated.
The news has been well-received by investors, with EssilorLuxottica shares climbing 2.4% following the announcement. The company’s smart glasses success highlights the growing interest in wearable technology as a major future segment of consumer electronics, alongside moves by tech giants like Google, Apple, Alibaba, and OpenAI in the same market.
