Academy Sports + Outdoors is seeing greater strength in footwear.
“The best part of our business has been performance running,” said Matt McCabe, the outdoor retailer’s executive vice president and chief merchant, in a telephone interview Tuesday after the firm posted third quarter earnings results. “So really Nike‘s Vomero, Brooks’ Glycerin, Asics’ Gel-Nimbus and New Balance’s FuelCell Rebel has been good for us.”
McCabe also noted Adidas’ new Adizero EVO SL Running shoe that also did well for the retailer. “All those are exciting too because they’re on the better parts of our business,” he said.
The chief merchandising officer also cited the athletic slide business as a category that has seen a “nice comeback in [its] resurgence [and] that business is up double-digits for us.” He said leading the charge has been the ultra comfort slide, such as the Nike Reactx Rejuven8 shoe and the Adidas Adilette Comfort Slide.
“I think a lot of that has to do with comfort. And I think probably the second part of that is that if a customer is stretched for funds, a $30 slide is less expensive than some of the alternatives,” McCabe said.
He also spoke about the K-shaped economy where different economic groups experience different outcomes, and how Academy Sports is in that “sweet spot where we can manage both angles of the K — we have a new affulent customer that we’re picking up in those to two income quintiles but we also have a lot of great gifts for someone that’s trying to stretch out what they can spend.”
Earlier in the year, Jefferies analyst Jonathan Matuszewski said he expected Academy to become the sporting goods destination retailer for value-oriented consumers, particularly as rising tariffs and inflationary headwinds lead consumers to adjust their spending by trading down to make their budgets stretch farther.
But even with that more affluent consumer trading down, McCabe said they’re still gravitating more toward the retailer’s promotions in their purchasing patterns. “We see a lot of our sales aggregating around those promos when we run them,” he said.
Looking ahead, McCabe said next year’s World Cup is expected to grow certain business categories, such as jerseys and balls. “Where we really get a lot of benefit on the footwear side is after the event because that’s when we see a crisp increase in participation. We expect a boost in our soccer cleated sales as we move into the back half of next year,” McCabe said.
“Our footwear business grew 2 percent,” helped by strong comps fueled by the performance running brands, Academy’s CEO Steve Lawrence told investors during a company conference call Tuesday morning.
Lawrence said that retailer has been focused on traffic data points. “As prices continue to rise across retail and discretionary budgets get squeezed, we continue to see strong growth in foot traffic and share gains from customers in the top two income quintiles, which are households making more than $100,000 a year. These top quintiles now represent roughly 40 percent of our sales,” he said, adding that traffic from these two quintiles grew in the high single digits.
The middle income quintile — consumers making $50,000 to $100,000 a year — represents roughly 30 percent of Academy’s customers and is holding steady. Where the retailer has seen some traffic erosion in the lower income group that make less than $50,000 a year, although the CEO noted that the “pace of these declines was less than what we saw in the first half of the year.”
“We continue to be pleased by the growth we’re getting out of our increased investment in partnership with both Nike and the Jordan brand. At this point, we’ve expanded elements of the Jordan brand out to all stores such as fleece, socks, slides and backpacks, and expect to further roll out footwear and apparel in more stores in 2026,” Lawrence said. “We believe that our improved access to basketball game shoes from Jordan and performance running shoes from Nike, such as the Vomero, when coupled with the expansion of fashion apparel across both these brands, is helping us attract many of these new $100,000-plus households.”
For the third quarter ended Nov. 1, Academy posted an 8.8 percent increase in net income to $71.6 million, or $1.05 a diluted share, from $65.8 million, or 92 cents, in the year-ago quarter. On an adjusted basis, diluted earnings per share (EPS) was 98 cents. Net sales rose 3 percent to $1.38 billion from $1.34 billion, while comparable sales dipped 0.9 percent. The company said e-commerce sales in the quarter rose 22.2 percent.
Wall Street was expecting adjusted diluted EPS of $1.06 on revenue of $1.41 billion.
For the nine months, net income fell 14.6 percent to $242.1 million, or $3.57 a diluted share, from $300.7 million, or $3.86, in the same year-ago period. Net sales were up 1.8 percent to $4.33 billion from $4.26 billion.
The retailer opened 11 new stores in the quarter, bringing its total door count to 317 locations across 21 states. It opened thus far 24 new stores for fiscal 2025. Academy said it plans to open an additional 20 to 25 stores in fiscal 2026.
Academy revised sales guidance again — it did the same in the second quarter — for fiscal 2025, this time expecting net sales in the range of $6.03 billion to $6.20 billion from $6.00 billion to $6.27 billion. Comparable sales were guided to the range of flat to down 2 percent. GAAP net income was forecasted in the range of $365 million to $400 million, versus the prior guidance of $360 million to $410 million.
Lawrence said the retailer’s investment in delivering new technology to stores, such as the rollout of RFID scanners and new handheld devices, has provided benefits such as improvements in inventory accuracy and in-stocks. Moreover, brands can update inventory on a weekly basis. “One of the biggest benefits to date has been the impact on our associates ability to service the customer, and in many cases, save the sale that would have gone somewhere else,” he said, explaining that store associates can both help customers more rapidly find the items in their sizes and also immediately place an order for anything that’s not in stock.
