Amer Sports, Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Amer Sports first quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Omar Saad, SVP of Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Omar, please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining Armour Sports Earnings Call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Earlier this morning, we announced our financial results for the quarter ended March 31st, 2026, and the release can be found on our IR website, investors.armoursports.com. A quick reminder to everyone that today's call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect our current expectations and beliefs only. They are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please see the safe harbor statement in our earnings release and SEC filings. We will also discuss certain non-IFRS financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release for important information regarding such non-IFRS financial measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable IFRS financial measures. We will begin with prepared marks from our CEO, James Zhang, and CFO, Andrew Page, followed by a Q&A session until 9 a.m. Eastern. James will cover key operational and brand highlights, then Andrew will provide a financial review at both the group and segment level, and we'll also walk through our updated guidance. Arc'teryx CEO Stuart Hazelden and Salomon CEO Guillaume Mazank will join for the Q&A session. With that, I'll turn the call over to James.

Thanks, Omar. Our excellent momentum continuing in Q1 as our unique portfolio of technical sports and outdoor brands are creating white space and taking share globally. All segments, geographies, and channels performed extremely well in the quarter, led by exceptional Solomon Softcoats growth, a strong Octelix Omnicar, and a solid Werson Tennis 360 growth. And we delivered strong results across the P&L, including 32% sales growth and 160 base points of adjusted operation margin expansion. All four regions achieved solid double-digit revenue growth, and that strong momentum has continued in Q2. Looking forward, given the continued broad-based momentum across our portfolio and the talent and ambitious teams we have in place around the world, we are very confident in the future outlook for Amherst Sports Group. Several factors give me that confidence. First, we own and operate a unique portfolio of premium innovation-driven sports and outdoor brands. These brands are still only small to medium size with significant room to grow globally. Second, Akerix is a breakout outdoor brand with leading growth and profitability for the industry driven by its disruptive direct-to-consumer model. Third, demand for Salomon's unique outdoor sneaker offering is inflecting globally. but the brand still only has a small share of the very large global sneaker market. Fourth, our Wilson and Wintersport equipment franchises have leading market positions, which we believe will deliver slower long-term growth, except for Wilson soft goods, which we believe is unique in the marketplace and has significant potential. And fifth, we believe we have a strong and differentiated platform in Great China and APAC, where we continue to deliver best-in-class performance across our portfolio. Before I turn over to Andrew, I will briefly recap key highlights from our three segments, starting with technical apparel. Acterix delivered another great quarter with broad-based strengths across regions, channels, and categories, including another exceptional performance from women's Strong momentum in the direct-to-consumer channel continued, driven by our 90% Omnicom. We continue to envision Octavius as a truly global brand with significant runway in all major markets. And we are encouraged that the brand is generating strong double-digit growth across all four regions, including a notable acceleration in North America. Women's momentum continue in Q1, growing faster than any other category for Acerix. Our confidence in the women's opportunity is rising as we are both, one, attracting new female consumers to the brand, and two, driving higher engagement and spend with existing female consumers. We really see brand affinity with women rising as we improve fit, style, and function while building expanded assortments, leveraging our unique design advantages. Our decision to redesign core ABCG models for her while also expanding feminine capabilities is working well. We also believe that success in bottoms with franchises like the Clark Hill, Luthier, and the Neopens is also helping us unlock the female consumers. On the men's side, we are excited to welcome a new Arc'teryx men's designer. Paxton Madison joined us most recently from Mountain Hardware in the North Space prior to that. His leadership will be instrumental as we continue to push the boundaries of our men's offering when it comes to solving problems for the mountain athletes with technical performance and a beautiful design. Footwear had another great quarter with strong clothes across region led by both existing styles and the new launch. Popular existing styles included Northern LD4 trail shoes, which has strong consumer affinity and is our biggest volume driver, followed by the Copic hiking shoe. And we launched the Silent 2 in Q1, which is a technical children's racing shoe. Looking forward, we are confident Octavius has an exciting pipeline of shoe release for the upcoming years. We are investing in our design capabilities and the commercial teams on the ground in the U.S., and building a strong infrastructure for both direct-to-consumer and wholesale channels. Our Valence sub-brand also had a strong double-digit growth in Q1. We expect 2026 to be a year of impact for the brand as we invest in units, further develop our collections, and expand distribution, all of which is creating excitement and engagement in the marketplace. Secularity and rebirth continue to be at the heart of Arcturus. In Q4, we increased the credit guests receive when they trade in-use Arcturus products, and this continues to drive strong triple-digit growth in trade in activities in North America, albeit of a small base. Our unmounted activities remain a critical role in community engagement. And the Mammoth Mountain Academy we hosted in February was again a great success with 22,000 attendees over the weekend and the 42 clinics hosted by Arcturus athletes. Academies are becoming a key platform for REBR, generating consumer awareness, interest, and the REBR sales. Peak Performance, our other technical apparel brand, delivered solid clothes in Q1. After the brand returned to clothes in 2025, the turnaround remains on track so far in 2026, with sales increased across key channels and regions. The brand also continued to improve profitability driven by concentrated efforts to reduce promotion and increase full price selling, especially in the Nordic market. Moving to the outdoor performance segment, which was led by another outstanding quarter from Salomon Softgoose. The investment we are making to grow Salomon brand awareness and the distribution footprint are paying off. As Salomon footwear momentum is expanding across regions, channels, and in both sport style and performance. We are also excited to share that we are seeing a clear acceleration in North America. as we leveraged rising brand awareness to expand distribution with both new and existing wholesale partners. We also saw solid performance from our winter sports equipment franchise, which continued taking share despite challenging market conditions. As you know, Salomon Footwear has become a very important growth engine, not just for Salomon, but for Amos Sports Group. We are excited to see a demand inflection for Salomon unique outdoor sneaker offering, especially since the brand still only has a small share of the global sneaker market. I'd like to highlight a few factors that give us the confidence that Salomon is well positioned to achieve its growth potential and do it in the right way. Number one, global sports style momentum continues. We believe Salomon is connecting with younger consumers and female consumers in a way traditional outdoor brands haven't. Sport style is critical to developing Salomon's position as the modern outdoor sneaker brand, including franchises such as XD6 and XD Whisper. Second, our performance and the running lines are also working well. We continue to believe our new Grindbox franchise is helping to unlock the run category for Salomon like never before. Salomon is gaining traction in the run specialty channel in North America and the email. Recent running launches include the S-Lab Phantom 3, which is an ultra lightweight racing shoe engineered for elite performance, as well as the AeroGlide 4 with Optic Form 2. Third, is Salomon's amazing brand in Guizhou, China, Asia, where we believe we operate the most productive and profitable sneaker shops in this industry. Guizhou, China, was Salomon's fastest growing region in Q1, driven by both sports style and performance, as well as strong growth in apparel. Salomon is also experiencing surging demand in Korea and Japan, both large sneaker markets. Fourth, Our epicenter strategy is working. Our strategy to open a handful of brand stores alongside strategic elevated wholesale distribution in key metro markets around the world is critical to elevating Salomon's presence and awareness. Our tier one global epicenter cities include Paris, London, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, New York, LA. We have seen both rising brand awareness and accelerating revenue in our epicenter cities. Fifth, is the strong pull demand we are seeing from consumer in Europe, Salomon's home market, driving strong reorder, pre-orders, and the sales flow. Sport style continue to be the growth driver, but we have also seen a real inflection in gravel in Europe, supported by marketing campaigns, in-store events, and the running event activations. Also, we are seeing high e-commerce demand growth in Europe, even as we expand our retail and wholesale footprint. Sixth is North America, which is the largest sneak market in the world, but it is still a small business for us. In the US, we are seeing a clear growth inflection driven by sports style and performance. Not only are we expanding our shelf space and sales through existing wholesale partner doors, but we are also now starting to move Salomon footwear into key wholesale partners in the US. As you know, there's a strong demand for Salomon sneakers in the US, but still very limited distribution for consumers to find our products. Moving to ball and the rackets highlights. Ball and the rackets close 13% in Q1 driven by continued strength in soft goods and the racket sports. Our tennis 360 products continue to resonate very well with consumers, from performance rackets to tennis pair and footwear. And the Wilson soft goods continue its exceptional trajectory with very strong clothes across all three major regions. The Wilson brand is unique in its ability to outfit tennis athletes from head to toe, including rackets and accessories. We are pleased to see an increasing number of the world's top tennis players wearing head-to-toe version kits at key events, including Marta Koster, winning the Major Open, and the men's top 10 player, Alex Damina, at the India World. In Q1, we launched the version 10 of our iconic Braid racket. The launch of Braid has been well received in the markets across all channels. with reorders from key customers coming in already. We are also seeing strong validation of the break B10 on tour, with world number one Arena Sabalenka, who won in the awards, and the Miami Open playing with a breakout version of the new break before it was launched publicly.