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Adidas said third-quarter revenues were up 12% year-on-year to €6.6 billion on Wednesday, marking a record-breaking quarter, according to the company. Adidas also confirmed the preliminary earnings released last week, increasing its outlook for the year.
“We are very proud and happy about what happened last night where two of our teams — Germany and Spain — won each of the semi-finals in the [Uefa] Nations League. It’s always cool to have two teams wearing the three stripes playing each other in the final,” Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden told investors on Wednesday’s earnings call. “We’re also happy actually about what we did achieve in Q3. The momentum that we have seen globally strengthened, and we feel that our teams in the different markets have been very active.”
In the third quarter, direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenues grew 14%, while wholesale revenues rose 10% on a constant currency basis. Footwear revenues were up 11% year-on-year, including double-digit growth in sports categories such as running, football and training. Apparel sales were up 16%, fueled by double-digit uplifts in the Originals and sportswear categories. Accessories were up 1%, which Gulden put down to production changes aimed at minimizing China exposure (due to US tariffs).
Both the performance and lifestyle performance categories saw double-digit growth, at 17% and 10%, respectively. Adidas made an effort to enhance its visibility in sports, Gulden said, noting particular success in football off of last year’s Euros, as well as plans to increase efforts ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Running is also seeing improvements. When it comes to lifestyle, Gulden said that the Samba sneaker isn’t going anywhere. He anticipates that low-profile styles will grow into spring 2026, and that Adidas will be pushing the Superstar in Q4 and into the new year. There are also plans to revive the Stan Smith.
“This was always the strategy: you build the heat through marketing and lifestyle, you sell shoes, you hope it will also go into performance, and then you start to commercialize apparel,” Gulden said. “That has actually happened.”
Gulden offered congratulations to Grace Wales Bonner for her recent Hermès menswear appointment. “Grace has helped us a lot,” he said. “She had a huge impact on the success of the Samba. I’m happy to report she will not leave us. She will continue to work with us because we have a fantastic relationship with her, and this will of course help us.”
Moving forward, localization is key. “If you’re consumer-focused and also athlete-focused, you need to be close to the consumer — and unfortunately, there is no global average consumer the way many consultants and agencies are trying to sell you,” Gulden added. “The consumers in different parts of the world have their own tastes and willingness, and are influenced by different things, which is why it becomes more and more important to be more local. There are big, big differences not only in consumer taste in sports and activities, but also now in the supply chain, given all the political tensions we have.”
By region, Europe revenues were up 12% to €2.3 billion in Q3, driven by both DTC and wholesale growth. China revenues rose 10% to €947 million. Earlier this month, Adidas took to Shanghai Fashion Week for a hyper-localised fashion show. “We showed up in China in a way that we’d never done before,” Gulden said. The CEO credits the company’s positive performance in the country to Adidas’s hyper-local approach (much of the product sold is designed and developed in China, and is different from the brand’s European product). In Latin America, third-quarter sales rose 21% to €720 million; “still on fire”, Gulden said simply. Japan and South Korea sales rose 11% to €358 million, while emerging markets (including Southeast Asia and the Pacific region) rose 13% to €935 million.
Where the Americas were a bright spot for many luxury brands this quarter, Adidas’s North America revenues dragged, relative to other regions, due to tariff impact. Still, sales were up 8% to €1.3 billion, with double-digit growth in both apparel and footwear.
“The negative thing, which again we have to address — I know you don’t like us to talk about it — is of course there’s a direct impact from the tariffs,” Gulden said. Adidas has mitigated for almost half of the over-$200 million impact the company expected, the CEO estimated. Strategies included working with suppliers to get better prices, and increasing prices on some more expensive models (as these consumers are less sensitive to uplifts). Gulden flagged that no one can understand the full indirect impact of tariffs. “The price increases normally mean the consumer buys less, and that is not only in our sector but in all sectors. That’s why we don’t know and are flagging it. I assume that everybody will flag it after a while.”
The company expects revenues for the fiscal year to increase by around 9%, on its previous estimate of a high-single-digit increase. Adidas also expects operating profits to reach approximately €2 billion, up from its previous estimate of €1.7 to €1.8 billion.
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