Dear shareholders,
2024 was a remarkable year for Amer Sports, Inc. and our teammates, partners, and shareholders. It gives me great pleasure to share with you some winning moments from
the last 12 months, which began with an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and culminated in record revenues and profits.
Amer Sports’ revenue grew 18% in 2024, with broad-based strength across segments, regions, channels, and categories. Arc’teryx and Salomon footwear continued their strong trajectories, and Wilson returned to positive growth. We continue to prioritize high-quality growth, which allowed us
to also expand our adjusted gross margin by nearly 300 basis points and our adjusted operating margin by 130 basis points.
We also meaningfully reduced our leverage, effective tax rate, and annual interest expense, enabling us to generate adjusted earnings per share of $0.47—a significant improvement compared to a $0.27 adjusted loss per share in 2023.
2024 highlights
- Improved capital structure: We generated approximately $1.5 billion proceeds through our initial public offering on February 1 and another approximately $1 billion through a follow-on offering on December 4. These proceeds combined with solid cash generation allowed us to deleverage from >5x net-debtto-adjusted EBITDA pre-IPO to 0.7x at year end.
- Retail excellence: On a consolidated basis, direct-toconsumer (DTC) reached 44% of total revenues, up from 36% in 2023. We believe we have a unique opportunity to continue shifting our business model from wholesale to DTC, while driving higher operating profitability.
- Greater China advantage: We again achieved over 50% growth in Greater China and remain confident for our future in this important consumer market for three reasons: 1) strong sector tailwinds; 2) our authentic brands have strong appeal but are still small players; and 3) we have an expert local management team and a scalable operating platform.
- Arc’teryx: Arc’teryx remains our flagship brand in terms of size, growth, and profitability, and surpassed $2 billion of revenues in 2024 with strong growth across regions, channels, and categories. Arc’teryx opened more stores than ever in 2024, with 33 net new openings, nearly half in North America. Our expanding store network plus very strong omni-comp growth drove 36% revenue growth for the Technical Apparel segment led by Arc’teryx. Key new retail locations include a 14,000 square foot, two-story flagship in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, a 7,400 square foot, fourlevel Alpha store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and our first-ever European mountain-town shop in Chamonix, France. From a category perspective, we were pleased to see very strong results from our key growth categories of footwear and women’s.
- Salomon: Salomon’s brand transformation continues to be led by strong growth in footwear and apparel as compared to its heritage ski equipment franchise. The higher-margin Softgoods category now represents two-thirds of the Outdoor Performance segment, up from 54% in 2022. Salomon footwear surpassed $1 billion in 2024, but is still very small relative to the $180 billion global sneaker market. Footwear growth was led by Greater China and Asia Pacific, and we are also
pleased to see early positive growth signals in Europe and North America. The Sportstyle category, which resonates strongly with younger and female consumers, continues to lead the way. Other brand highlights include opening approximately 100 new Salomon shops in Greater China, our first U.S. standalone Salomon shop in NYC, and becoming Premium Partner of Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. We were also pleased to announce 28-year Salomon veteran Guillaume Meyzenq as the next CEO of the brand. - Wilson: Ball & Racquet growth trends improved throughout 2024, accelerating to over 22% in the fourth quarter driven by strong trends in racquet sports. Our Tennis 360 strategy continues to resonate strongly with consumers, from performance racquets to our newer apparel and footwear offerings. Performance racquets were led by the recent Blade and Roger Federer launches, while Wilson Softgoods continued its excellent growth in 2024, doubling to nearly 10% of Ball & Racquet segment sales.
- Winter Sports Equipment: Given our great brands and scale advantages, we believe our winter sports equipment franchises gained share in a challenging overall market in 2024, especially Atomic. Our star Atomic athlete Mikaela Shiffrin achieved her 100th World Cup victory, the most by anyone ever. Looking forward, as retailer inventory levels improve, we expect the broader winter sports equipment market to be relatively flat in 2025. Longer term, we believe the winter sports industry will remain healthy and expect this business to grow low-single digits annually.
- Sustainability: In 2024, Amer Sports established a Group-wide climate program targeting net-zero
emissions, and achieved the Leadership level and an A-rating for Climate in the 2024 CDP Corporate Questionnaire. Arc’teryx also took a leap in commitment to circularity by opening 11 new ReBIRD™ service centers in stores, including two Alpha store locations that offer complex repairs on-site.
The year was not without any challenges, including soft winter sports equipment market conditions due to slower trends in North America, where ski equipment sales are rebasing after a strong run through and beyond COVID and cautious retailer orders in EMEA after two tough snow seasons.
Looking Forward
Looking forward, we believe Amer Sports is a uniquely positioned company within the global sports and outdoor space, and several factors give me confidence for 2025 and beyond:
- We own and operate a unique portfolio of premium outdoor and sports brands. Each one is fueled by
technical innovation and is positioned at the pinnacle of its segment. Our brands have high conversion and satisfaction, but are still small players with room to grow. - Arc’teryx is a breakout growth story with great growth and profitability for the outdoor industry driven by its disruptive DTC model and unique competitive position. The brand is still under-penetrated globally with a tremendous, long-term growth potential.
- We believe that Salomon sneakers have a unique performance position and design within the global sneaker market, but still has very low market share and high growth potential ahead—especially at this time when consumers are open to trying new sneaker brands.
- Wilson and our Winter Sports Equipment brands have authentic heritage, premium positioning, high performance products, and leading market positions. These high-market-share franchises will deliver slower long-term growth in their core equipment businesses, but they still have large Softgoods potential, especially with Wilson Tennis 360.
- We believe we have a very strong, differentiated platform in Greater China, where we continue to deliver best-in-class performance with strong momentum across all three big brands.
Thank You
In closing, I would like to express my gratitude to our dedicated teammates around the world. Your hard work, creativity, and passion are instrumental in shaping Amer Sports and driving our vision to become the global leader in the premium sports and outdoor brands. Our success is a
testament to your collective effort, and I am confident that our shared commitment to excellence will allow us to continue fulfilling our purpose of elevating the world through sport.
Sincerly,
James Zheng
Executive Director and CEO
