Foot Locker Scores On Earnings

A little healthy competition among other sports apparel retailers appears to have given Foot Locker the opening it needed to gain ground.

That’s the theory that Fox Business puts forth in reporting on Foot Locker’s better-than-expected 5 percent revenue increase (for a total of $2.007 billion) in Q4 and a 3.6 increase in sales for 2015 overall, reaching a company record $7.412 billion.

Foot Locker’s relationships with sports apparel brands, such as Nike, Under Armour and Adidas, in selling products that hit the sweet-spot trend of “athleisure” (formal athletic apparel), posits Fox Business, were, and continue to be, a driving factor in the retailer’s sales growth.

The outlet shares remarks made in a recent conference call by Foot Locker CEO Richard A. Johnson, who stated: “We’ve got a small group of very good partners, right? There’s not a ton of people that we can do business with that have the authentic athletic heritage that our consumer wants to see drive the business. So, certainly, Nike is the leader in the marketplace, but we’ve had great success with Adidas. We’ve got some success starting with Under Armour on the footwear side of things. They’ve created — they’ve leveraged a great asset, and they’ve got a good portfolio of assets that they’ll leverage going into 2016.”

Meanwhile, Sterne Agee CRT Analyst Samuel Poser wrote of Foot Locker’s prospects (in a note shared by Fox Business): “Based on our checks and conversations with our industry contacts, we are confident that athletic trends will remain strong at least through the balance of 2016 … We expect Foot Locker’s domestic business to benefit from the pending closing of 150 Finish Line stores over the next few years and the likely bankruptcy of The Sports Authority.”