Philips last year sales dropped down 15 percent compared to 2022, when the auction house earned just above one billion. The previous year, the sales institution earned $840.7 million. There are three huge auction institutions, and this company in Russian ownership is the smallest of them all. The institution has headquarters in three worlds-important cities: New York, London, and Hong Kong.
Phillips Didn’t Provide Info on Private Sales Totals
It committed its resources to rearranging its strategic positions in 2023. Also, the auction house declared that it hired more experts in Asia. Declaring in December that it had hired more experts in Asia. Following the elimination of two regional posts on the West Coast, Phillips centralised the business in Los Angeles in July. The top five pieces that Phillips sold in 2023 included pieces by painters involving Fernand Léger and Gerhard Richter.
This brought in a cumulative $87.6 million. That represents a 50% decrease from the $173 million that the house’s best five works brought in in 2022. In 2022, two pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Yves Klein alone brought in $126 million. Considering its 2023 results, a Phillips spokesman declined to offer more commentary. Additionally, the house withheld the totals of its private sales.
Phillips released sales numbers for its private sales in the past. The house’s private sales total for 2022 exceeded by that for 2022. The houses estimate was $250 million, while the institution shifted its emphasis to the sale of modern art shows. That amounted to 20% more than the boutique house’s private sales revenue of $208.2 million in 2021.
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Lower Sales for the Biggest Rival Too
Christie’s, one of Phillips’s primary rivals, likewise reported lower sales totals in 2023 than it did in 2022. Midway through December, Christie’s revealed a thirty percent drop in auction sales, from $7.2 billion in 2022 to slightly over $5 billion in 2023. Another rival of Phillips, Sotheby’s, has not yet disclosed its 2023 sales data.
A recent study by the London-based data business ArtTactic claims that auction sales in 2023 decreased by $2.3 billion from 2022 levels. Phillips, formerly known as Phillips the Auctioneers and briefly as Phillips de Pury, is a British auction house. It was founded in London in 1796, and has head offices in London and in New York City. In 2022 it was owned by the Mercury Group, a Russian luxury goods company.
On 6 October 2008, the company was purchased by the Russian Mercury Group, which paid approximately $60 million for it. De Pury sold his remaining shares to Mercury in late 2012, and left the company. The name was changed back to Phillips. In December 2018 the company signed a contract for retail space at 432 Park Avenue including the Park Avenue Cube beside the tower, with approximately 5000 m2 at the base of the tower and a further 3000 m2 underground.