Amer Sports 4Q25 Immediate Call Postmortem
Women's and footwear up roughly 40% or more. They had strong double-digit growth in Veilance – I certainly hope so given Arc’teryx store count is up approximately 30%. That’s why it’s always hard to drill down into what is driving core growth in these categories because there will always be growth when you open a store – its what happens afterwards that matters most, and they never seem to talk about these initiatives in terms of how they drive comp sales.
Speaking of comps, Salomon doing well in Paris and London with strong double digit omnicomp. That’s an important KPI as was always a little unclear how successful growth will be outside of the China market. Brand awareness up 15 points in Paris and 10 points in London since 2023. EMEA growth is high quality sales. The business in North America is accelerating with “strong growth” in the order book.
Intentionally pulled back from promotions around key events in technical apparel. Feel like people wanted more than a 16% comp here so suppose that’s the explanation.
Seeing very strong order books for Salomon in the US including retailers like REI, Nordstrom, JD Sports, run specialty shops and other specialty retailers. Keep in mind we are talking a small base here but still encouraging. We recently noticed a nice little display of Salomon at the Nordstrom NYC Flagship but its still a small fraction of the space dedicated to more established niche brands like Brooks.
Reasons for heightened inventory were the same as last quarter and not overly concerning. Inventory should begin to normalize in 2H26.
People not going to like initial 2026 EBIT margin guide to the low end of long-term guidance algo. They blame Salomon investment and are opting for long term profitable growth as opposed to near-term flow though. I suspect there are increasingly going be questions about the underlying profitability of the massive number of Salomon stores they opened past few years.
Binetti and Ike were all over these investments in Q&A. Salomon’s margin will return to moderate growth in 1Q. Tried to make the point that in past only Arc’teryx was hot but now they have multiple high return opportunities to invest in. Andrew stopped Q&A to make the explicit point there is nothing structurally different about their algo – they started 2025 only guiding to 30 basis points as well.
Boss got Stuart (Arc’teryx) to say the 18%-20% revenue guide is consistent with prior practices. “Nothing structural would prevent us from capturing higher sales”. Strong momentum in North America over last few weeks.
I liked Lejuez’s question because have noticed a severe lack of Arc’teryx at various important wholesale accounts. Stuart said wholesale emerging as an important channel across footwear, Veilance, and women’s. Need to have a stronger strategy for footwear in this channel and building a team in Portland. The channel opens up more opportunity with women as that’s where she shops.
I really like Andrew. He knows when its important to step in and make or reinforce explicit points that the investment community needs to be pounded in the head on.
*These are our unabridged quick thoughts and notes from the call. We get them out as soon as possible after the call ends. Management has given some topics to dig deeper into and will circle back afterwards with much more in depth work on what was mentioned. You can find that work (and more on Amer Sports and other retail/consumer research) at our website here: M Squared Capital
Originally posted on X and Substack.