Adidas Beats Q1 Expectations With Revenues Up 12.7%

Despite reiterating forecasts for growth this year, Adidas also warned of more difficult times ahead.

The "Blue Silk Gazelle," part of Adidas' latest collaboration with Canadian-born, Hong Kong-based fashion entrepreneur Edison Chen. Courtesy: Adidas

Despite market uncertainty and global tariff turmoil, Adidas managed to rack up organic growth of 12.7 percent in the first quarter to 6.15 billion euros.

“Double-digit growth across all markets and channels in today’s volatile environment shows the strength of our brand and underlines the great job our people are doing,” Adidas chief executive officer Bjørn Gulden said in a statement.

Adidas competitors Nike and Puma are having a much more difficult time, with Nike seeing growth slide recently and Puma only just hanging onto growth.

Adidas’ operating profit also grew significantly, rising 81.7 percent to 610 million euros.

Analysts noted that first-quarter tallies no longer included any of the previously very profitable Yeezy products, the result of a now-canceled collaboration with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. This emphasized the current strength of the brand, they said. In the first quarter last year, Yeezy goods brought in around 150 million euros.

Adidas’ footwear sales grew 17 percent, followed by apparel, which rose 8 percent, and accessories, which grew 10 percent. The company has profited from a trend for its retro “terrace”-style shoes.

European revenues grew 14 percent in the first quarter.

In the German brand’s second-biggest market, North America, sales grew 2.8 percent. But as the company explained, when Yeezy sales were excluded from that calculation, sales would actually have increased 13 percent between January and March.

In Greater China and in Japan and South Korea — Adidas now tallies the two latter countries together — the brand saw growth of 12.7 perce t and 12.8 percent respectively. Emerging Markets and Latin America rose 23.4 percent and 26.2 percent respectively.

A still from Adidas’ latest campaign for it’s “Originals” line.

Despite the good news, Gulden went on to warn about darker and more uncertain days ahead.

“Although we had already reduced the China exports to the U.S. to a minimum, we are somewhat exposed to those currently very high tariffs,” he explained. “What is even worse for us is the general increase in U.S. tariffs from all other countries of origin. Since we currently cannot produce almost any of our products in the U.S., these higher tariffs will eventually cause higher costs for all our products for the U.S. market. Given the uncertainty around the negotiations between the U.S. and the different exporting countries, we do not know what the final tariffs will be.”

Over the past seven years or so, both Adidas and competitor Nike have been steadily moving production out of China and into countries like Vietnam. Adidas now makes around 40 percent of its footwear there. However the U.S. government has also recently targeted Vietnam with higher tariffs.

This makes it very difficult to plan ahead, Gulden added.

Nonetheless Adidas reiterated its guidance for the full year, first issued earlier in March. Because of “external volatility and macroeconomic risks,” the range of possible outcomes had to be widened though, Adidas said in a statement. This took into account the better-than-expected progress in the first quarter of this year as well as possible risks due to the threat of U.S. tariffs, it explained.

Adidas expects sales to grow at a high-single-digit level in 2025 and for its operating profit to fall somewhere between 1.7 billion and 1.8 billion euros.

https://wwd.com/business-news/financial/adidas-q1-2025-revenues-1237106358/