This story was updated at 10:45 am EST
BERLIN – Having ended a challenging year with what was Puma‘s worst net loss ever in absolute terms, executives at the German sportswear brand were keen to emphasize plans for a reset and talk about the transitional nature of the coming year.
In 2025, the brand’s annual sales fell 8.1 percent in currency adjusted terms to 7.29 billion euros, down from 8.39 billion euros in 2024, but slightly better than market consensus.
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Puma ended last year with a particularly disheartening fourth quarter — sales in the final three months of the year dropped 20.1 percent, currency adjusted, to 1.56 billion euros.
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The company’s earnings before interests and taxes, or EBIT, also fell in the fourth quarter. Earlier in 2025, it had still been in the black but by the end of 2025, EBIT had fallen to a loss of 357.2 million euros. Net loss was 645.5 million euros. Although the outcomes were slightly better than analysts expected, it was still one of the biggest net losses Puma has ever had.
Given the losses, Puma plans to propose that no dividends are paid out to shareholders this year.
Perhaps no wonder then that, at the beginning of the online press conference unveiling the 2025 results, Puma executives played all those attending a rousing video clip, especially to address their new strategy.
Over a montage of sports and a stirring soundtrack, a female narrator told viewers, “we’ve been in this game for over 75 years, it’s fair to say we have what it takes … but the truth is we’ve also learned that victory never ever comes easy. Right now we’re facing our biggest challenge yet.”
“I trust the video shows what a powerful brand Puma is, what a powerful asset we have,” Puma’s new chief executive officer Arthur Hoeld enthused after the screening.
Hoeld, who was with Puma’s much larger, local competitor Adidas for 26 years, only took on the top job in July and then started what he described as “cleaning up.”
The company blamed “strategic reset initiatives,” taking place from the third quarter onward, for the collapse in sales numbers. Earlier in the year, the sportswear maker had been hovering around 1 or 2 percent growth each quarter.
Over the last two quarters of 2025, the company has drawn back from what it calls “undesirable” wholesale business and reduced discounts in its own direct-to-consumer channels. It has brought back inventory, which it will sell at factory outlets and with selected retailers. This process was proceeding ahead of schedule, it said. Puma had reduced promotional activity and was also in the process of cutting around 1,400 corporate roles. Around 800 jobs have already gone and a further 600 will be by the end of this year.
“The largest impacts [on sales] came from cancellations of undesirable business with wholesale partners in the mass merchant space,” chief financial officer Markus Neubrand said, “followed by inventory take-backs and lower [direct-to-consumer] promotions.”
“We have also decreased our product range by double digits,” Hoeld continued. “That means by the season, spring-summer of 2027, the offer from Puma will be much more pointed and much more desirable.”
Internally, the way Puma operates has also changed and the company is no longer as decentralized. In Europe, regional offices have been reduced from seven to three. Puma’s brand marketing, product creation and go-to-market teams now all report to one boss, Maria Valdes, who was promoted to chief brand officer in October last year. The impact of all this likely won’t be visible until 2027, though, Hoeld added.
“2025 was for sure a year where we took severe measures,” Hoeld explained Thursday morning. “But it was also inevitable that we took those drastic measures [in order] to provide a platform for us to become a better and healthier company. Yes, we’re on a good track,” he said, “but we’ll be busy with that until the end of the year.”
In the fourth quarter, the reset resulted in double-digit drops in all of Puma’s sales territories. Over the full year, this led to a decrease of 6.9 percent, in currency adjusted terms, in Puma’s home market of Europe, the Middle East and Africa and a 7.4 percent fall in the Asia-Pacific region.
The decline in Asia-Pacific was mainly due to a fall in sales in greater China — almost 20 percent in the fourth quarter — Puma said, and executives expressed some concern that this might not improve in the near future.
In January, Chinese sportswear brand Anta struck a deal to become Puma’s biggest shareholder and is promising to help the German sportswear maker improve sales in China. Both Hoeld and Neubrand expressed themselves “extremely excited” about their new shareholder but added that there were also some uncertainties.
Anta is the third-largest sportswear company in China behind Nike and Adidas; in early 2025, it became even bigger when it took majority shares in Amer Sports, which holds the Salomon, Arc’teryx, Peak Performance and Atomic brands. In China, Anta sells mainly through its own direct-to-consumer channels and doesn’t do a lot of wholesaling.
“That might lead to a negative impact on our business in China in the short term,” Hoeld conceded. “Some of [our] customers might get nervous about what the future of Puma’s operating model is going to be there. But,” he cautioned, “it’s way too premature to speculate about that. The transaction was only announced four weeks ago.”
The Americas was where Puma’s 2025 sales fell furthest, sliding 10 percent. North America has been seen as a problematic market, with too much discounting and “undesirable” wholesale, and Puma has been trying to streamline sales there, it said. The result was a sales slump of more than 33.3 percent in the fourth quarter and 18.7 percent for the full year, Neubrand confirmed.
Sales in all of Puma’s product categories fell by high-single digits. Footwear sales decreased by 7.1 percent, apparel by 9.7 percent and accessories by 8.5 percent, in currency adjusted terms.
Puma executives reiterated again that the company is unlikely to return to growth until 2027. The guidance for the coming year reflected this.
Puma now expects sales to continue to decline in the low to midsingle digits over this year and for EBIT to remain in the red, somewhere between minus 50 million and 150 million euros.
Market analysts from the likes of Deutsche Bank, Citi, Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Canada all agreed with that prognosis, saying the results and outlook were as expected.