HELSINKI (BRAIN) — Amer Sports is reporting that sales in its cycling division — which is entirely composed of its Mavic brand — declined 2 percent in its third quarter, to 32.4 million euros ($40.9M), down from 33.1 million euros ($41.8M) in the same period last year.
Cycling sales were a negative blip on the otherwise positive third quarter report from Amer, which also owns Salomon, Wilson, Atomic, Arc'teryx, Suunto and other brands. The company reports that its net sales for the period that ended Sept. 30 totaled 646 million euros ($816M), up 6 percent in local currencies from the same period last year. The company's overall year-to-date sales also were up 6 percent (Mavic YTD sales were down 5 percent).
"We continued to deliver solid growth and improvement in Q3," said Heikki Takala, Amer's president and CEO. "The growth was driven by our strategic focus areas, primarily Apparel and Footwear and Business to Consumer, as well as continuous momentum in Fitness and Sports Instruments. Winter Sports Equipment deliveries were stable vs. previous year due to improved agility in our supply chain. In Ball Sports, we are executing the new turnaround strategy with early positive impact on EBIT, driven by our Gross Margin intervention to re-set the base for profitable future growth.
"The trading conditions have continued to be challenging, with significant headwinds in Russia on top of the adverse impact of the previous mild winter. We continue to mitigate the challenges with good overall progress. We stay the course and continue executing with confidence.”
Mavic sales are lumped with Amer's "Winter and Outdoor" sales, which is Amer's biggest category and which saw an 8 percent increase in revenue in the quarter. Amer's Ball Sports business was down 3 percent and its Fitness business was up 13 percent.
Amer Sports is traded on NASDAQ's Helsinki exchange under the AMEAS symbol. Its stock performance is tracked on BRAIN's Industry Stocks page.
