The Japanese sporting goods supplier Asics Corporation closed the first half of the 2022 financial year with solid figures. As the company announced on Friday, group sales in the months from January to June amounted to 225.1 billion Japanese yen (1.65 billion euros). It thus exceeded the corresponding prior-year level by 7.4 percent.
The engine of growth was the running shoe division Performance Running, which achieved a sales increase of 13.5 percent to 123.3 billion Japanese yen. In the Core Performance Sports segment, revenues increased by 0.4 percent to 23.5 billion Japanese yen, while the Sports Style segment increased by 8.2 percent to 18.5 billion Japanese yen. Sales of apparel and equipment grew 2.7 percent to 17.2 billion Japanese yen, while the Onitsuka Tiger label suffered a 6.5 percent drop in sales to 19.6 billion Japanese yen, which the company said was mainly due to the effects of the temporary lockdowns in China.
Due to higher costs, the operating result missed the level of the same period last year: it fell by 20.1 percent to 19.2 billion Japanese yen. The bottom line, however, was a higher surplus: the net profit attributable to the shareholders was 13.6 billion Japanese yen (99.3 million euros) and thus 9.8 percent above the corresponding figure for the previous year. The company justified the increase by saying that the special charges caused by the pandemic were lower than in the first six months of the previous year.