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Sports retail giant Adidas has reported double-digit growth across all of its key regions over the last year, with sales in Western Europe rising 12.6% to £5.23bn.
Overall net sales increased 14.8% to £18.8bn while gross profits rose 17.6% to £8.96bn.
Adidas attributed the figures to growth in “key strategic areas” including a 27.4% rise in North America and a 29.5% rise in China.
Another key area of growth for the brand was online sales, which increased by 57% over the year.
The group’s staple Adidas brand was unsurprisingly the main source of revenue increasing 18.1% to £16.9bn in sales, while its sister brand attributed £1.6bn.
As such the company has also upgraded its 2020 profitability target. While Adidas continues to forecast currency-neutral revenues to grow between 10% and 12% on average per year between 2015 and 2020, the company now projects net income from continuing operations to grow by an average of 22% to 24% per year (previously: 20% to 22%) between 2015 and 2020.
The company now expects to reach an operating margin of up to 11.5% by 2020, previously,11%.
CEO Kasper Rorsted said: “2017 was a strong year – financially and operationally. We made great progress toward achieving our mission to be the best sports company in the world. Our strategic growth areas – North America, greater China and digital commerce – were the main drivers of our performance.”
“2018 is a key milestone on the road to achieving our long-term targets for 2020. We expect quality growth, with over proportionate bottom-line improvements. This will enable an even stronger increase in profitability by 2020 and allows us to upgrade our long-term target yet again.”
