Sotheby’s Hong Kong Scores Third Straight Gain

Sotheby’s sales in Hong Kong continued to improve on the HENI Auction Index. Its modern and contemporary auctions at the end of March totaled $89m, a B- performance, up from C+.

Highlights of its latest sales, held over three sessions on March 29-30, included a late Joan Mitchell abstract canvas, which sold for $16.5m with fees and so became the most expensive work by a female artist to sell at auction in Asia.

Another record was set by Kim Lim's abstract sculpture Relief Sculpture (1995). The Singaporean-British artist’s auction record jumped by 86% when it sold for $229,000 with fees.

The HENI Auction Index is a benchmark of performance based on more than ten metrics. Among them is the total number of lots on offer. The 178 lots was a nearly 15% improvement on the auction house’s most recent comparable sales in the city.

Sales surged to nearly $90m with fees—a notable 55.5% jump from its last sale.

That said, in real terms, total sales still trailed comparable averages by nearly 50%. And the total number of lots on offer was also down, this time by 34% on the average.

The percentage of works selling above their low estimate was 77.8%, in line with the average while the percentage of works selling above the high estimate at 31.1% was 4.4 percentage points lower than the average.

The average hammer to mid-estimate ratio was 1.2 a slight dip on the norm.

There were fewer lots bought-in, at 11.3 percentage points below average but the percentage of withdrawn lots crept up by 1.3 percentage points.

Among the positive metrics that helped lift Sotheby’s index score was the percentage of works with strong guarantees. This was up 2.3 percentage points while the weak guarantees were down by 1 percentage point.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here.