CODE 11.59 Production Analysis 2019-2024

[Gandor]

The CODE 11.59 launched in 2019 with an initial production run of 2000 watches with the plan for the code to comprise 20-25% of Audemars Piguet's total output. I was curious and wanted to figure out how many CODEs AP has made and how many are available on the open market to get a rough estimate of turnover.

First let us consider total AP production by year as some years code production is listed as a percent of total production.

From 2019-2024 AP produced:

40,000 Watches 2019

https://luxurysociety.com/en/how-aud...models-retail/

~40,000 Watches 2020 (Likely a bit more as they began ramping up here)

45,000 Watches 2021

50,000 watches 2022

~52,250 watches in 2023
https://www.watchpro.com/audemars-pi...ches-per-year/

~55000 watches in 2024




Now let us consider how CODE production falls into the total production. In 2020 AP planned to produce 4000 CODE 11.59s but was only able to produce 3000.

https://watchesbysjx.com/2019/01/aud...code-1159.html


https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/watche...guet-code-1159

We do not have data for CODE 11.59 production between 2021-2022 but we can assume production continued to grow over this period and we can interpolate 2021-2022 production.

In 2023 ~5000 CODE 11.59 watches were produced.

https://swisswatches-magazine.com/au...ovelties-2024/

In 2024 the CODE 11.59 plans to account for 12% of production and AP plans on producing ~55000 watches in 2024 resulting in ~6600 Code 11.59 watches produced.

https://www.businessoffashion.com/ne...-record-sales/

Plotting the known and extrapolated values we can estimate the total number of CODE 11.59 watches produced between 2019 and the end of 2024.


Rolex makes more daytonas in any give year than AP has ever made CODEs

We can see that production has significantly ramped up after 2022 and will continue to ramp up as AP plans to have CODES account for 25% of production capacity.

For analysis of market, we will only consider chrono24 listings as they represent the largest aggregated marketplace.

Currently, as of this posting, there are 654 CODE 11.59s across all references and years available on CHRONO24 representing a meager 2.69% of all codes. Even if we assume there is a distinct liquid market of equal size to chrono24 in the hands of unlisted private dealers that would only account for around 5% of the total code production.

So roughly 95% of codes produced today in the hands of owners and aren't actively being circulated. To me that represents an extremely strong ownership/trade ratio given the rapid growth in production of the line. What's also interesting is how tangibly small the CODE market is for a non-limited watch. From a speculative asset standpoint it really only requires a small hype event to bring the floating supply of codes to zero and beyond that there isn't a great total supply to refill that demand. It gets even more interesting when you consider limited lines within the CODE collection, tourbillons and openworks for example are extremely undervalued imo. While I don't believe there is a hype event coming soon, unless AP starts forcing collaborations and sponsors to wear and promote them, it is still interesting to consider where the CODE market is with respect to its supply.