BALTIMORE, Dec. 12,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Under Armour, Inc. (NYSE: UAA,
UA) hosted an investor meeting in New
York City today. At the meeting, senior executives provided
an in-depth qualitative overview of the company's product, brand,
and commercial strategies and other key initiatives being executed
to strengthen its ability to deliver improved value creation to
shareholders over the long term. Additionally, the company
reiterated its full-year fiscal 2025 outlook, which
it provided in conjunction with its second-quarter fiscal
2025 earnings results in November.
"Today, we reviewed our plans to enhance and fortify the Under
Armour brand, highlighting our seasoned leadership team's
commitment to ensuring consistent execution with improved
alignment, clarity, and confidence about our future direction,"
shared Under Armour President and CEO Kevin
Plank. "As a global Sports House – capable of equipping
athletes head to toe on and off the field, pitch, or court – we are
hard at work putting in place the people, structures, and
strategies essential to realizing Under Armour's full potential
over the long-term."
Key elements of Under Armour's strategy centered on four
pillars:
Product
- Streamline our creation engine, assortment, and merchandising
approach to deliver a simplified, more deliberate presentation with
athletes and customers.
- Revolutionize products through redefined processes, including
transformative innovations steeped in performance and significantly
improved design language to increase consideration.
- Ensure an aligned category-centric, go-to-market process to
facilitate a holistic connection between athletes' needs and our
global and regional commercial strategies.
Story
- Evolve our operating model to be consumer-led through
collaborative alignment and clear accountability across our
product, marketing, and commercial functions to increase brand
affinity.
- Engage Under Armour's underdog positioning infused with
resilience and grit through our Sports House positioning in all
aspects of storytelling.
- Utilize our existing marketing investment more effectively to
launch the most significant and impactful activation in our history
to amplify awareness and consideration to win the hearts of young
team sports athletes.
Service
Execute market specific commercial strategies across our regions
focused on the following:
- Americas: reset and strengthen the brand through
disciplined marketplace management by optimizing promotional
levels, sharpening our segmentation strategies, and driving a more
premium representation of the brand; reinvigorate our focus on Team
Sports to connect with young athletes; and reprioritize our
marketing investments to drive brand-right, brand-building
activations that elevate consumer perception.
- Europe, Middle East, and Africa: protect our brand strength by
continuing to leverage our reputation as one of the
highest-performing athletic team sports brands with a
disciplined approach to premium distribution and brand-right
segmentation; focus on regionally relevant sports categories to
expand our addressable market opportunities; and build on success
in the United Kingdom to scale
into other key countries including France, Germany, and Spain.
- Asia-Pacific: protect
the brand while navigating the near-term dynamic environment;
elevate channel discipline to ensure premium revenue quality; and
leverage global marketing activation to increase awareness and
drive engagement across core categories.
Team
- Leverage our strengthened, experienced leadership team and
passionate teammates to improve our ability to execute our
strategies with increased alignment, efficiency, and
effectiveness.
- Prioritize key initiatives to optimize capacity utilization and
productivity and align with our strategies to strengthen the Under
Armour brand.
- Energize a culture of leadership, teamwork, and accountability
that is communicative, collaborative, and passionate.
"With a significantly strengthened product lineup coming in Fall
2025, a clear underdog brand positioning, and purposeful,
disciplined marketplace management, I am confident that our
actions are gaining traction," continued Plank. "We are
running a more agile and focused company, and our strategies are
fostering renewed brand strength, which we believe will ultimately
improve our ability to drive sustainable, profitable growth for our
shareholders."
Meeting Presenters
In addition to Under Armour President and CEO Kevin Plank, additional presenters from senior
management included Yassine Saidi,
Chief Product Officer; Kyle Blakely,
SVP, Innovation, Testing & Development; Yuron White, SVP,
Sportswear, Basketball/Curry, Run & Collabs; Eric Liedtke, EVP, Brand Strategy; Jason Archer, Managing Director, APAC;
Kara Trent, President, Americas; and
Kevin Ross, Managing Director,
EMEA.
Presentation
All presentations will be archived at
https://about.underarmour.com/en-us/investors/press-releases--events---presentations.html following
the conclusion of the event.
About Under Armour, Inc.
Under Armour, Inc., headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is a leading inventor,
marketer, and distributor of branded athletic performance apparel,
footwear, and accessories. Designed to empower human performance,
Under Armour's innovative products and experiences are engineered
to make athletes better. For more information, please visit
http://about.underarmour.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Some of the statements contained in this press release
constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements
relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and
strategies, anticipated events or trends, and similar expressions
concerning matters that are not historical facts, such as
statements regarding our future financial condition or results of
operations, our prospects and strategies for future growth and
improving our operations, the development and introduction of new
products and innovations, the implementation of our marketing and
branding strategies and the future benefits and opportunities from
significant investments. In many cases, you can identify
forward-looking statements by terms such as "may," "will," "could,"
"should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes,"
"estimates," "predicts," "outlook," "potential," or the negative of
these terms or other comparable terminology. The forward-looking
statements in this press release reflect our current views about
future events. They are subject to risks, uncertainties,
assumptions, and changes in circumstances that may cause events or
our actual activities or results to differ significantly from those
expressed in any forward-looking statement. Although we believe the
expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are
reasonable, they are inherently uncertain. We cannot guarantee
future events, results, actions, activity levels, performance, or
achievements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on
these forward-looking statements. Several important factors could
cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by
these forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to:
changes in general economic or market conditions, including
increasing inflation, that could affect overall consumer spending
or our industry; increased competition causing us to lose market
share or reduce the prices of our products or increase our
marketing efforts significantly; fluctuations in the costs of raw
materials and commodities we use in our products and our supply
chain (including labor); our ability to successfully execute our
long-term strategies; our ability to effectively drive operational
efficiency in our business; changes in the financial health of our
customers; our ability to effectively develop and launch new,
innovative, and updated products; our ability to accurately
forecast consumer shopping and engagement preferences and consumer
demand for our products and manage our inventory in response to
changing demands; our ability to successfully execute any potential
restructuring plans and realize their expected benefits; our
ability to comply with existing trade and other regulations, and
the potential impact of new trade, tariff, and tax regulations on
our profitability; loss of key customers, suppliers, or
manufacturers; our ability to further expand our business globally
and drive brand awareness and consumer acceptance of our products
in other countries; our ability to manage the increasingly complex
operations of our global business; the impact of global events
beyond our control, including military conflicts; the impact of
global or regional public health emergencies on our industry and
our business, financial condition, and results of operations,
including impacts on the global supply chain; our ability to
successfully manage or realize expected results from significant
transactions and investments; our ability to effectively market and
maintain a positive brand image; our ability to attract key talent
and retain the services of our senior management and other key
employees; our ability to effectively meet regulatory requirements
and stakeholder expectations with respect to sustainability and
social matters; the availability, integration, and effective
operation of information systems and other technology, as well as
any potential interruption of such systems or technology; any
disruptions, delays, or deficiencies in the design, implementation,
or application of our global operating and financial reporting
information technology system; our ability to access capital and
financing required to manage our business on terms acceptable to
us; our ability to accurately anticipate and respond to seasonal or
quarterly fluctuations in our operating results; risks related to
foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; risks related to data
security or privacy breaches; and our potential exposure to and the
financial impact of litigation and other proceedings. The
forward-looking statements contained in this press release reflect
our views and assumptions only as of the date of this press
release. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking
statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on
which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of
unanticipated events.
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SOURCE Under Armour, Inc.