Princess Yachts, a luxury yacht maker based in Plymouth, U.K., said its retail sales rate had increased 25 percent over the past year, thanks largely to the decline in the British pound after the U.K. voted to leave the EU.
“Brexit has given many of our customers to buy at a more favorable price in their local currency,” Antony Sheriff, executive chairman of Princess Yachts told CNBC while at the Singapore Yacht Show. “But we don’t count on that. We assume exchange rates at some point will even out.”
Princess Yachts says its production is entirely conducted in and around Plymouth, while competitors use a variety of global suppliers. The domestic production, coupled with the majority of its buyers being outside the U.K., has made for a beneficial combination. The pound is down about 17 percent against the dollar since the U.K. voted to leave the E.U.
The majority of buyers of Princess Yachts come from Europe and the U.S., meaning the prices are now very attractive.
According to the company, its yachts are now sold out through 2018, with some orders confirmed for 2019.
Sheriff said the surge in sales actually began a few months prior to Brexit as a result of newly designed offerings, but it was then reinforced by currency moves.
Recently, Article 50 was triggered in the U.K., which is the formal two-year process governing Britain’s departure from the E.U.
Still, a lot of uncertainty remains, which Sheriff said makes it challenging to navigate the business.
“Nobody really knows how to plan for the future,” he said. “If there’s one thing that would be useful for the government is to give us some degree of certainty as to what the plan is on the Brexit side and some degree of certainty that border taxes will not distort the market.”
