Anta Sports, the largest Chinese sporting goods player, shed light on challenges in the China market on Tuesday.
As the company continues to diversify with its pending acquisition of Puma’s largest stake and its position as Amer Sports’ largest shareholder, Anta said that retail sales of flagship brand Anta products recorded “high-single digit positive growth” versus year-ago levels. First-quarter results reflect sequential improvement from the fourth quarter when retail sales for Anta fell by low single digits.
Over the same time period, Fila brand retail sales were up in the low teens, and retail sales for other branded products — Descente, Kolon Sport and Maia Active — posted 40 percent to 45 percent positive growth for the period when compared with the first quarter of 2025. (Anta owns Fila in China, while Misto Holdings remains its parent company.)
Anta said retail sales are defined as revenue, inclusive of value added tax, if applicable, from sales to consumers in brick-and-mortar stores and from its online channels, part of which is owned and operated by Anta and the rest by Anta’s distributors and franchisees.
BNP Paribas Equity Research analyst Laurent Vasilescu said in a report that March trends “meaningfully decelerated” following a better January and February led by a “good Chinese New Year.” This year’s Lunar New Year began Feb. 17 and lasted 16 days through to the Lantern Festival on March 3. The outperformance for the brands in the first quarter was “concentrated in January and February,” Vasilescu said, adding that the timing of the Chinese New Year was the primary driver.
Vasilescu noted: “March demand normalized meaningfully following the festival, and notably, the March deceleration was industry-wide with Pou Sheng recently [reporting a] 6 percent year-over-year revenue decline in March.” (Pou Sheng, which has a presence in the Greater China region, is the retail business of Taiwanese footwear manufacturer Yue Yuen.)
Per an earnings conference call Tuesday, Anta’s management said that Chinese consumers are gravitating back to brick-and-mortar after a multi-year digital trend, and that the company is responding to store reformats to elevate the consumer experiences, the BNP analyst said. He also said that Anta’s management framed first quarter strength as seasonally elevated and that is not necessarily an indicator of trends for the rest of the year.
In general, outdoor trends remain favorable for Descente and Kolon, which are high-end, functional luxury sports brands — a point that Vasilescu said bodes well for Amer Sports. That’s not the case for the sporting goods category in China.
“China sporting goods market remains structurally challenged with prolonged recovery in consumer confidence and rising competition,” Vasilescu concluded.
The BNP analyst said that Anta management was asked about their view on Nike‘s China guide during Swoosh’s earnings call last month. According to Vasilescu, Anta management validated Nike’s strategic rationale of reducing sell-in and noted that confidence recovery in China, particularly among mass-market consumers, will be a prolonged process.
Vasilescu also said that Nike China could become a possible negative earnings contributor in coming years and the company faces a multi-year rightsizing of its regional footprint. “Additionally, this could create a demand vacuum that domestic and emerging internal brands are positioned to capture over time,” he said.
In January, Anta Sports scooped up a 29 percent stake in Puma in a deal valued at $1.8 billion. The transaction for the German sportswear firm is expected to close by the end of 2026.
