Burberry - reality check - FT.com Burberry has come a long way since it fretted a decade ago that the downmarket appeal of its check designs was dragging down its image. These days the Burberry story is all about growth in Asia (particularly China, which is now 11 per cent of sales) and a move upmarket (the top-end Prorsum and London ranges account for 45 per cent of sales). That has kept the share price and the rating going since the financial crisis - last September the shares hit 24 times forecast earnings. Tuesday's profit warning, which pushed the shares down more than a fifth, showed that the strategy is not without risks. Same-store sales growth, which was in the mid-teens through 2011 and early 2012, had already slowed to 6 per cent in the three months to June and has now hit zero. The next stop is contraction, although comparables get easier for the rest of the year. Burberry has not helped itself by being light on detail. All it would say on Tuesday was that the slowdown had been both recent and broad based, and that its statement had sacrificed colour for speed. Perhaps, but a company with annual revenues of £2bn should have a little more visibility about where things are going right and wrong, and should know better than to leave the market to dream up its own worst-case scenarios. Nevertheless, the market's conclusion was that Chinese consumers were to blame, so luxury goods companies across the board were hit. Even Hermès - whose super-rich clients brush off the sort of economic woes that afflict Burberry's merely rich customers - fell 3 per cent. Burberry's dramatic fall has left its shares trading on 16 times revised forecast earnings. That is closer than it was to the likes of Hugo Boss (17) and LVMH (15), but still looks frothy for a company whose organic sales growth is zero.