Puma shares dropped on Wednesday after the athletic company reported a hit to its business in Q4 and warned that external challenges would likely continue through 2024.
“For 2024, we foresee the geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges as well as highly volatile currencies to persist,” said Puma CEO Arne Freundt in a statement. “This continues to weigh on consumer sentiment and demand, especially in the first half of 2024. While we cannot change these external factors, we continue to stay 100 percent focused on elevating the brand and bringing exciting product newness to the market.”
Puma said its 2023 results, which it reported preliminarily, were negatively impacted by a 54 percent drop of the Argentine peso in December. This contributed to a currency-adjusted sales decline in Q4 of about 4 percent to about 1.98 billion ($2.16 billion) and a net income of 800,000 euros ($870,000), both of which were below analysts’ expectations.
For the full year, currency-adjusted sales growth was 6.6 percent for sales of about 8.6 billion euros (or $9.4 billion at current exchange). This was in line with its outlook for high single-digit currency-adjusted growth. EBIT was 622 million euros, also as expected
“We are in a better position at the start of 2024 than we were at the start of 2023,” Freundt said. “We have cleared our inventories, we have a product pipeline with exciting product newness and innovations and we will launch our new brand campaign soon. We continue to stay hungry and have the ambition to continue to grab market shares.”
Looking ahead, Puma expects currency-adjusted sales growth in the mid-single-digits and EBIT between 620 million and 700 million euros in 2024.
The results come shortly after Nike in December outlined measures to save up to $2 billion in costs over the next three years by simplifying its product assortment, increasing automation and streamlining its organization, among other measures.
