International Beat
Nip/Tuck Analysis: Will women choose Botox or boob jobs over gold?
By: Dorothy Kosich
Posted: '25-JAN-07 08:00' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2006
RENO, NV (Mineweb.com) --Prudential Equities suggested this week that Botox and breast augmentation may be competing for consumer dollars against gold jewelry.
Prudential Medical Device Analyst Larry Biegelsen recently suggested to his colleagues that “technological advances in beauty products offer new competition within discretionary income for gold jewelry, much like consumer electronics, prescription drugs and other healthcare.”
Apparently, his analysis was compelling enough to alarm Prudential’s metals analysts, who wrote Tuesday, “Simply put, we worry that Botox, cosmetic surgery, skin treatments and other advances rapidly penetrating the third world could displace more jewelry purchases than flat screen TVs, cell phones, PCs, or legal drugs already do.”
Biegelsen asserted that the company Allergan can basically provide a bundling of “services” and “cross-selling opportunities” from Botox, to facial fillers, to breast implants, that might convince the Americans who spent $12.4 billion on 11.5 million in cosmetic procedures in 2005 to increase their spending. Prudential metal analysts John Tumazos, Paretoch Misra, and Andrew Teng wondered that “if in years to come, Botox and breast enhancements will spill over into the emerging markets of India, China, and the Middle East, current hot spots for gold jewelry consumption.”
As proof of the validity of their hypothesis, the analysts cited The Hindu newspaper which published an interview with Allergan’s Vice President of Global Marketing, who claimed that India is critical to the company’s plans of making Botox a $2 billion product in a few years. Trials are currently being conducted in other emerging market in headache and other urological conditions.
Meanwhile, gold jewelry demand experienced its worst year in 2006 since records were set in 1997. Both Indian and Middle East demand fell with losses of 18% and 22%, respectively. Jewelry demand also declined in the U.S. and Europe, the analysts asserted, “where beauty, technology, healthcare and gold all complete for disposable income. …The decline, which could represent a structural change if the market has been demand by new product introduction (which concurs with our growing thesis), most likely represents a price elastic response, seeing as gold in the U.S. and Europe is a product of adornment rather than investment.”
