How Pandora turned a silver crisis into a resilience story

When silver was trading in the low twenties, Pandora’s treasury team was already fielding questions from the company’s CFO. Today, silver trades around $65 an ounce, having briefly spiked to $120 earlier this year. For a company where commodities account for more than one third of cost of goods sold, that is a significant exposure. 

Speaking at a recent Nordea event, Kasper Christensen, Senior Director of Global Treasury at Pandora, shared how the world’s largest jewellery company has navigated that pressure, and what treasury resilience looks like when the stakes are high.

A business built on accessibility

Pandora's promise is accessible luxury: precious metals jewelry at a price point that works for everyday consumers and gift-buyers. That means it does not simply pass cost increases on to consumers the way some luxury peers do. 

Silver, Pandora’s most used metal, also happens to be one of the most volatile commodities in financial markets. The exposure is significant, and when prices shift upward, the business feels it.
 

Hedging: buying time, not immunity

Pandora runs an active hedging programme, anchored in a financial policy approved annually by the board. In practice, this means the company is effectively fully hedged for the next 12 months of earnings at any given time. When silver spiked sharply following US President Trump’s Liberation Day announcement, the treasury team was able to execute additional trades at more favourable levels, buying critical time for the broader business to respond.

But Christensen was clear about the limits. "Hedging creates time," he said, "but it doesn't change fundamentals." If prices rise and stay high, the underlying economics will eventually catch up.

A multi-layer response

With silver showing signs of a permanent shift, Pandora’s response went well beyond hedging. A group-wide cost program was launched. A carefully calibrated price increase proved broadly revenue-neutral.

The most consequential response, however, was structural. Pandora is introducing platinum-plated jewellery as part of a broader strategy to diversify materials and reduce reliance on silver, coating a core with a thin layer of platinum. The result is a significantly smaller precious metal exposure per piece. The transition is being phased in carefully, with consumer acceptance tested in selected markets, and early results have been encouraging. 

The broader lesson from Pandora’s experience is that treasury resilience is not a single tool. It is a sequence: Hedge to protect the near term, use that time to address costs and pricing, and ultimately tackle the structural root of the problem.

As Christensen put it: “You protect today, and you adapt tomorrow.”