Christie’s was still calling itself “the world’s leading art business,” in its July 21 press release announcing its $3.2 billion total sales (public and private) for the first half of 2011.
But, in fact, Sotheby’s, which issued its first-half results today, nosed ahead of its archrival, with total sales of $3.4 billion. Its press release stated that this was Sotheby’s “highest ever” first-half result. But later, the company’s spokesperson, Diana Phillips, told me that “2008 was slightly higher, at $3.44 billion.”
(When I get this confusion straightened out, I’ll clarify here.)
[UPDATE: Phillips now says: “Consolidated sales for first half 2008 were $3.2 billion,” making it Sotheby’s second-highest first half result. I myself had reported back in August 2008 that the total sales figure then reported by Sotheby’s for its first half was $3.44 billion (the figure given to me yesterday by Phillips). But I noted in my 2008 post that Sotheby’s had then “fudged its figure a little bit: It included its contemporary
art sales, occurring in London on July 1 and 2, which fell just outside
this year’s first half,” but had been in the first half the previous year).” My guess is that Sotheby’s has now “de-fudged” its 2008 figures, making this year’s first half its highest.]
Sotheby’s net income increased 54% to $129.7 million over the same period in 2010; Christie’s, a private company, does not release income figures. Auction sales for the first half totaled $2.96 billion at Sotheby’s; $2.74 billion at Christie’s.
As this chart compiled by Sotheby’s shows, Christie’s has bested or equaled Sotheby’s in auction-market share for 13 of the last 15 years. (You can click on the chart for a larger, clearer pop-up image):
Sotheby’s total sales were up 44% over the same period last year; Christie’s were up 25% by dollar (15% by British pound, the company’s home currency). Christies laid claim to selling eight of the top 10 lots auctioned during this period, “each selling for in excess of $20 million.”
In his conference call yesterday afternoon with security analysts, Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby’s president and CEO, barely mentioned the turnabout in market share. He alluded to it, in passing, during the question-and-answer part of the call, but not as part of his opening remarks. Focusing on profitability (which Christie’s doesn’t divulge), he has habitually downplayed the significance of the total-sales comparison, which particularly made sense when Sotheby’s was Number Two.
So ebullient was Ruprecht over the recent results that he seemed almost to forget (or to want his listeners to forget) the very recent history of a precipitous, economy-driven market slump after the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008:
As people have great uncertainty, whether it’s debt ceilings, or whether it’s about inflation in some part of the world, or about deficits in another part of the world, you see an awful lot of people migrating a certain portion of their assets to hard assets, particularly apart from real estate….
For the very wealthy, continuing to be able to own works of art that are currency-indifferent and likely to be valuable in almost any economic moment [emphasis added], with any set of economic thunderclouds on the horizon, seems to be pretty compelling….A lot of the volatility and the uncertainties about the economy seem to be drawing people to our world and making people feel more confident with this group of works as a way for them to deploy significant capital…
…that is, at least until the next major economic crash occurs. As you can see on the above chart, the Big Two’s total auction sales plummeted in 2009 to $5.2 billion from a high of $11 billion in 2007.
But even the bullish Ruprecht acknowledges that although “we’re in the middle of a situation where overall market is growing very quickly,” the volume “cannot continue to grow at [this] velocity…ad infinitum.”