Adidas Q4 Earnings 2024]: 12 Percent Growth

German sportswear giant Adidas did much better than it had expected to in 2024, reporting growth of 12 percent, on a currency neutral basis, and 23.68 billion euros in sales. This went beyond the company’s own forecast of 10 percent growth.

The positive numbers for 2024 came on the back of a particularly successful fourth quarter, with revenues rising 19 percent to 5.97 billion euros.  

“I am very pleased the way the fourth quarter and the full year developed for us at Adidas,” chief executive officer Bjorn Gulden said in a statement. “Although we are not yet where we want to be long term, it was a very successful year that confirmed the strength of the Adidas brand, the potential of our company and what a fantastic job our teams are doing.”

The company saw 2024 sales rise 18.9 percent in Europe, 10.3 percent in Greater China, 10.1 percent in Japan and South Korea. and 19.4 percent in its emerging markets category.

However, in North America, Adidas’ second-largest market, sales fell 1.6 percent in the full year.

The brand blamed the sales decline on the end of Yeezy sales there, as well as on its conservative sell-in approach to wholesale. However, it also reported that by the end of the year, sales in North America had started to move into double-digits. Between October and December last year, Adidas notched up 15 percent growth in North America, the company reported.

Last year, Adidas finally closed the chapter on its troubled Yeezy line. The brand had struggled after ending its particularly profitable collaboration with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, in late 2022. By the end of last year, it had finally sold off all remaining Yeezy stock and reported that the sale of this left-over inventory brought in revenues of around 650 million euros over the year, with 50 million of that coming in the last quarter.

Last year, footwear sales rose 17 percent, while apparel and accessories went up 6 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

Operating profits zoomed from 268 million euros in 2023 to 1.34 billion euros in 2024. Around 200 million of the latter sum came from Yeezy sales last year, the company explained.  

“Despite persisting macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges, Adidas expects to gain further market share and grow the company’s currency-neutral sales at a high-single-digit rate in 2025,” the company said in a statement. It also expects operating profit to grow further, to somewhere between 1.7 and 1.8 billion euros.