At the end of a strong year, Puma’s business lost less momentum than feared. Demand for sports fashion and other sporting goods remains high. The Adidas rival was able to defy the global supply chain problems due to the consequences of corona-related factory closures to a large extent. Puma achieved record sales and operating results in 2021. The share price rose significantly on Thursday.
Based on preliminary figures, the sports goods manufacturer increased currency-adjusted sales in the final quarter of 2021 by around 14 percent year-on-year to just under 1.8 billion euros. Before interest and taxes (EBIT), 65 million euros remained and thus 2 million euros more than a year ago, as the company announced on Thursday in Herzogenaurach.
Revenue growth despite supply chain issues
Despite the ongoing problems in the supply chains, things went much better than expected. In view of the Puma annual outlook from the end of October, an operating loss was also conceivable in the final quarter. Factories in southern Vietnam were closed for several weeks in the summer due to the corona pandemic. However, the associated production losses continued to have an effect. In addition, there is a difficult delivery situation with high freight rates, insufficient capacities and overloaded ports, which is still affecting many sectors.
In addition, Puma was confronted with a difficult situation in China over the course of the year: Calls for a boycott against Western brands in the spring, which had been triggered by political tensions between Western countries and China, had had an impact in the summer. However, momentum came around in the third quarter from strong growth in the Americas region.
In 2021 as a whole, according to the preliminary figures, consolidated sales increased by almost a third to 6.8 billion euros after currency adjustments. Before interest and taxes, 557 million euros remained, almost 170 percent more than a year earlier. The operating result significantly exceeded the company forecast and the average expectation of analysts. Detailed figures and an outlook for 2022 are to be published on February 23.
Share asked
The key figures were well received on the stock exchange. The Puma share rose to 98.44 euros at the start of trading. Most recently, the plus crumbled down to 1.55 percent, which means that the papers still cost 95.82 euros. However, they were well ahead of the leading German index Dax, which hardly changed.
However, a good fifth is missing from the record high of 115.40 euros from November. However, the shares have had a good run for years, which only got a notch due to the corona shock in spring with a jump to 40 euros. Despite the setback from the record, they are still almost four times as high as at the end of 2016. (dpa)