Amer Sports (NYSE:AS) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Amer Sports Inc reported a strong Q1 2026 with 32% sales growth and a 160 basis point expansion in adjusted operating margin.
The company saw double-digit revenue growth across all regions, driven by strong performances from brands like Salomon, Arc’teryx, and Wilson.
Future outlook is positive with raised guidance for 2026 revenue growth to 20-22% and increased EPS guidance, reflecting confidence in ongoing momentum.
Significant investments are being made in expanding retail presence, especially in Asia, and enhancing brand awareness and distribution for Salomon and Arc’teryx.
Management highlighted the strength of the women’s segment for Arc’teryx and the growing demand for Salomon’s outdoor sneakers, particularly in North America and Asia.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Amer Sports first quarter 2026 earnings call. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press Star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Omar Saad, SVP of Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Omar, please go ahead.
Omar Saad (Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Capital Markets)
Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining Amer Sports Earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Earlier this morning we announced our financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 and the release can be found on our IR website, investors.amersports.com A quick reminder to everyone that today’s call will contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward looking statements reflect our current expectations and beliefs only. They are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please see the Safe harbor statement in our earnings release and SEC filings. We will also discuss certain non IFRS financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release for important information regarding such non IFRS financial measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable IFRS financial measures. We will begin with prepared remarks from our CEO James Zhang and CFO Andrew Page followed by a Q&A session until 9am Eastern. James will cover key operational and brand highlights. Then Andrew will provide a financial review at both the group and segment level and will also walk through our updated guidance. Arc’ Teryx CEO Stuart Hazelden and Salomon CEO Guillaume Mazank will join for the Q and A session. With that, I’ll turn the call over to James.
James Zhang (Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Omar. Our excellent Momentum continued in Q1 as our unique portfolio of technical sports and outdoor brands are creating white space and taking share globally. All segments, geographies and channels performed extremely well in the quarter led by exceptional Solomon Softgate Growth, a strong Arc’teryx omnicon and solid Wilson 10360 growth and we delivered strong results across the PNL including 32% sales growth and 160 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion. All four regions achieved solid double digit revenue growth and that strong momentum has continued in Q2. Looking forward. Given the continued broad based momentum across our portfolio and the talented and ambitious teams we have in place around the world, we are very confident in the future outlook for Amer Sports Group. Several factors give me that confidence. First, we own and operate a unique portfolio of premium innovation driven sports and outdoor brands. These brands are still only small to medium size with significant room to grow globally. Second, Arc’teryx is a breakout outdoor brand with leading growth and profitability for the industry driven by its disruptive direct to consumer model. Third, demand for Salomon’s unique outdoor sneak offering is infracting globally, but the brand still only has a small share of the very large global sneak market. Fourth, our Wilson and Winter Sport Equipment franchises have leading market positions which we believe will deliver slower long term growth except for Wilson Soft Goods which we believe is unique in the marketplace and has significant potential. And fifth, we believe we have a strong and differentiated platform in Great China and APAC where we continue to deliver best in class performance across across our portfolio. Before I turn over to Andrew, I will briefly recap key highlights from our three segments starting with technical apparel. Acteryx delivered another great quarter with broad based strength across regions, channels and categories including another exceptional performance from women’s strong momentum in the direct to consumer channel continued driven by a 19% omnichannel. We continue to envision Arc’teryx as a truly global brand with significant Runway in all major markets and we are encouraged that the brand is generating strong double digit growth across all four regions including notable acceleration in North America. Women’s momentum continued in Q1, growing faster than any other category for acalics. Our confidence in the women’s opportunity is rising as we are both 1 attracting new female consumers to the brand and 2 driving higher engagement and spend with existing female consumers. We really see brand affinity with women rising as we improve fit, style and function while building expanded assortments, leveraging our unique design advantage. Our decision to redesign core ABCG models for her while also expanding feminine club politics is working well. We also believe that success in bottoms with franchises like the Clarke, Lutea and the Nio Pant is also helping us unlock the female consumers. On the men’s side, we are excited to welcome a new Arcteric Men’s designer. Paxton Medicine joined us most recently from Mountain Hardware and North Face. Prior to that his leadership will be instrumental as we continue to push the boundaries of our men’s offering when it comes to solving problems for the mountain athletes with technical performance and the beautiful design. Footwear had another great quarter with strong growth across region led by both existing styles and the new launch. Popular existing styles included Norvan LD 4 Trail Shoe which has strong consumer affinity and is our biggest volume driver followed by the Cocoon hiking shoe and we launched the Silens 2 in Q1 which is a technical trail run racing shoe. Looking forward, we are confident Actaris has an exciting pipeline of shoe release for the upcoming years we are investing in our design capabilities and the commercial teams on the ground in the US and building a strong infrastructure for both direct to consumer and wholesale channels. Our Veilance sub brand also had a strong double digit growth in Q1. We expect 2026 to be a year of impact for the brand as we invest in units, further develop our collections and expand distribution, all of which is creating excitement and engagement in the marketplace. Security and rebirth continue to be at the heart of Acterys. In Q4 we increased the credit guests receive when they trade in use and terrace products and this continue to drive strong triple digit growth in trade in activities in North America. All bit off a small base. Our on mountain Academies remained a critical role in community engagement and the Mammoth Mountain Academy we hosted in February was again a great Success With With 22,000 attendees over the weekend and the 42 clinics hosted by Acteryx athletes, academies are becoming a key platform for ReBird, generating consumer awareness, interest and the ReBird sales peak performance. Our other technical apparel brand delivered solid growth in Q1. After the brand returned to growth in 2025, the turnaround remains on track so far in 2026 with sales increase across key channels and regions. The brand also continued to improve profitability driven by our concentrated efforts to reduce promotionals and increase food price setting, especially in the Nordic market. Moving to the outdoor performance segment which was led by another outstanding quarter from Solomon Sophkus, the investment we are making to grow Salomon brand awareness and the distribution footprint are paying off as Salomon footwear momentum is expanding across regions, channels and in both sports style and performance. We are also excited to share that we are seeing a clear acceleration in North America as we leverage rising brand awareness to expand distribution with both new and existing wholesale partners. We also saw solid performance from our winter sports equipment franchise which continue taking share despite challenging market conditions. As you know, Salomon footwear has become a very important growth engine not just for Salomon but for Amer Sports Group. We are excited to see a demand infraction for Salomon unique outdoor sneak offering, especially since the brand still only has a small share of the global sneaker market. I’d like to highlight a few factors that give us the confidence that Salomon is well positioned to achieve its growth potential and do it in the right way. Number one, global sports dive momentum continues. We believe Salomon is connecting with younger consumers and the female consumers in a way traditional outdoor brands haven’t. Sports style is critical to developing Salomon’s position as the modern outdoor snake brand including franchises such as XT-6 and XT-Whisper. Second, our performance and running lines are also working well. We continue to believe our new Grind Rolls franchise is helping to unlock the run category for Salomon like never before. Salomon is gaining traction in the Run Specialty Channel in North America and EMEA. Recent running launches include the slab Phantom 3, which is an ultra lightweight racing shoe engineered for elite performance as well as the Aero Glide 4 with Optivibe foam 2. Third is Salomon amazing Brank Kit in Great China, Asia where we believe we operate the most productive and profitable snake shops in this industry. Great China was Salomon’s fastest growing region in Q1 driven by both sports style and performance as well as strong growth in apparel. Saruman is also experiencing surging demand in Korea and Japan, both large sneak markets. Fourth, our epicenter strategy is working. Our strategy to open a handful of brand stores alongside strategically elevated wholesale distribution and in key metro markets around the world is critical to elevating Solomon’s presence and awareness. Our tier one global epicenter cities include Paris, London, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, New York, LA. We have seen both rising brand awareness and accelerating revenue in our epicenter cities. Fifth is the strong pull demand we are seeing from consumers in Europe. Salomon’s home market driving strong reorder pre orders and sell through sports style continue to be the growth driver but we have also seen a real inflection in gravel in Europe supported by marketing campaigns in store events and running event activations. Also we are seeing high E com demand growth in Europe even as we expand our retail and wholesale footprint. Sixth is North America which is the largest sneak market in the world but is still a small business for us. In the US we are seeing a clear growth inflection driven by sports style and performance. Not only are we expanding our shelf space and sell through in existing wholesale partner doors but we are also now starting to move Salomon Footwear into key wholesale partner in the us. As you know there’s a strong demand for Salomon sneakers in the US but still very limited distribution for consumers to find our products moving to BO and the rackets highlights boy and the rackets closed 13% in Q1 driven by continued strength in soccers and racket sports. Our 10,360 products continue to resonate very well with consumers from performance rackets to tennis pearl and footwear. And the Wilson Soft Goods continued its exceptional trajectory with very strong growth across all three major regions. The Wilson brand is unique in its ability to outfit tennis athletes from head to toe including rackets and accessories. We are pleased to see an increasing number of the world’s top planet players wearing head to toe wears and kits at key events including Marta Kostier winning the Major Open and The Men’s Top 10 Player Alex de Mina at India awares in Q1 we launched version 10 of our iconic Braid racket. The launch of Braid has been well received in the markets across all channels with reorders from key customers coming in already. We are also seeing strong validation of the Braid B10 on tour with world number one Arena Sabrina who won India Wheels and the Miami Open playing with a bracket hour version of the new Braid before it was launched publicly. With that I will turn over to
Andrew Page (Chief Financial Officer)
Andrew Thanks James Q1 was a great start to the year with strong sales margin expansion and EPS growth. The investments we’ve been making behind our biggest opportunities are paying off in terms of both sales growth and margin expansion. Today we’re experiencing exceptional trends across each of our three biggest growth engines, Arc’teryx, Solomon Soft Goods and and Wilson Tennis 360, which are all still relatively small franchises with significant room to expand. Turning to our Q1 results, Amherst Sports grew sales 32% in Q1 on a reported basis or 26% ex currency. The strong group sales performance was led by Outdoor Performance and technical apparel. Ball and Racket also had impressive double digit sales growth by channel. The group continues to be driven by D2C which grew 45%, led by Salomon and Arc’. Teryx. At the group level, D2C represented approximately 50% of revenue in Q1. Wholesale grew 21%, led by Salomon. Growth was also very strong across all geographies. Regional growth was led by Asia Pacific which increased 53% and China which grew 45%. EMEA accelerated to 27% and the Americas grew 18% in Q1. As it relates to our EMEA region, I wanted to touch on the Middle east conflict which thus far has had relatively low impact on our business. The region represents less than 1% of our global sales and the impact on both consumer demand as well as our supply chain and logistics operation has been immaterial thus far. We recently renegotiated our annual shipping contracts and this has also been incorporated in our latest guidance. That said, we continue to closely monitor this rapidly evolving situation which could create some logistical and cost headwinds should the price of oil remain elevated longer term. Turning to profitability, adjusted Gross margin increased 200 basis points to 60% in Q1, primarily driven by favorable channel, geographic product and brand mix. Adjusted SG and A expenses as a Percentage of revenue increased 60 basis points and represented 43.2% of revenue in Q1. This is a better SGA rate than what was implied in our previous guidance as we were able to leverage the higher sales growth against fixed costs. SGA leverage in both technical apparel and outdoor performance was offset by deleverage in ball and racket due to ongoing investments in Wilson Tennis360 and higher corporate expenses led by strong gross margin expansion. We generated a 160 basis point increase in our adjusted operating margin from 15.8% last year to 17.4 in Q1. Corporate expenses was $52 million, up from $27 million in Q1 of last year, mostly related to higher IT personnel and deferred compensation expenses. D&A was $103 million, which includes $50 million of rou depreciation. Adjusted net finance cost in the quarter was $30 million, which comprised primarily of $25 million from interest expense, with the remaining $5 million driven mostly by FX losses associated with the revaluation and settlement of monetary balances in the quarter. Our adjusted income tax expense was $86 million, which equates to an adjusted effective tax rate of 28%. Adjusted net income in Q1 was $218 million compared to $148 million in the prior year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was 38 cents compared to adjusted diluted earnings per share of 27 cents last year. Now turning to segment results, technical Apparel revenues increased 33% to $885 million led by Arc’ Teryx. Growth was fueled by 41% DTC expansion, including a 19% omnichannel. Technical apparel wholesale revenues grew 16% regionally. The technical apparel growth rate was led by Asia Pacific and Greater China, followed by accelerating growth in the Americas and emea. It gives us high confidence in the arc’ Teryx global growth trajectory that all regions continue to grow strong double digits stores continue to be …
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