Following the release of preliminary results at the end of January, German sportswear maker PUMA announced its complete 2023 full-year results on February 27. Group sales increased by 6.6% (ca) to € 8,601.7 million (+1.6% reported). This was driven by the brand’s continued momentum and robust demand for its products. Regionally, the Asia/Pacific region led the growth with a 13.6% (ca) increase in sales.
Arne Freundt, Chief Executive Officer of PUMA SE, said: “In a volatile environment that impacted the whole industry, PUMA delivered strong growth and profitability fully in line with the outlook. Without the extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso, which had a significant one-off accounting impact, our results would have been even stronger. This outcome reflects the strong underlying performance of PUMA and we were only able to achieve this because of our amazing PUMA Family and all of its fantastic partners.
2023 was also an important milestone year for PUMA as we started to lay the foundation for future growth based on strengthening our brand and improving our distribution quality. We are today in a better position than we were at the start of 2023: We established a new marketing organization and started to execute our new marketing strategy to elevate the brand. We also built new management teams in the US and China to execute our local must-win strategies and cleared our inventories to healthy levels.”
The day after the financial report, as of the close of trading on February 28, PUMA shares were up 4.92% from the previous trading day, with a current market capitalization of approximately €6.412 billion.
In 2023, PUMA implemented a new China-for-China strategy to increase relevancy and brand heat for the local consumer and rebuilt the entire China organization.
In June, the company appointed Shirley Li as the new General Manager. Shirley is a native Chinese and has more than 20 years of industry experience with a deep understanding of the Chinese market and consumer.
In order to meet the needs of local consumers, PUMA further enhanced the local-for-local design and production capabilities. In 2024, around 40% of the products will be designed locally, while around 80% will be produced in China. With the new store format “Field of Play”, the company are able to create an authentic brand experience and introduced a compelling new store environment to the Chinese consumers.
As of December 31, 2023, the key financial data for the fourth quarter of PUMA’s fiscal year 2023 are as follows:
| Source: Official financial report
| Image Credit: Group official website
丨Reporter：Zhang Yang
| Editor: Jun Liu
