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Jewellery retailer Lovisa (ASX: LOV) has now closed the majority of its 400 stores worldwide in response to the government's containment measures against Covid-19.
The company announced today it had temporarily closed all its stores in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The move follows decisions in France, Spain, Malaysia, the USA and UK, where Lovisa stores have been closed over the past week.
Singapore is the only company-owned market where stores continue to trade.
"Whilst some governments have provided timing for the current containment measures to end, we are not currently in a position to know when our stores will be able to re-open," the group said.
"As a result, the company has taken a number of important actions to manage the cost structure of the business, including the stand-down of store teams in all markets where our stores are closed, and reduction of headcount in our support teams across the world, with a combination of temporary stand-downs and redundancies to ensure teams are appropriately sized to support the temporarily much smaller business during this period."
Due to the disruption of business, Lovisa has also opted to defer 15 cents per share dividend for a period of six months.
The company is estimated to have 1,360 employees worldwide.
LOV shares were up 9.64 per cent at $4.21 at 10:35am AEDT, however they are still substantially below their $11.17 price level on 24 February.
Updated at 10:38am AEDT on 26 March 2020.
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