The stock market, like a capricious lover, has turned cold toward Adidas (ADDYY). Its shares shuffle listlessly, down 21% this year-a decline as persistent as a nagging heel blister. The culprit? A perfect storm of tariffs, waning consumer appetite, and the quiet erosion of investor confidence. Yet the German shoemaker insists it can still sprint toward recovery, though one wonders if its running shoes are laced with optimism or denial.
Tariff impacts being felt
CEO Bjørn Gulden delivered his quarterly report like a man tallying losses at a rainy-day fair. Tariffs, he explained, had bitten deep-a €200 million wound, to be precise. One imagines him staring out a Berlin window, watching the currency exchange rates flutter like autumn leaves. “We shall lead in all markets,” he declared, excepting North America-a caveat as telling as a skipped heartbeat.
The tariffs, of course, are no fleeting drizzle. With Trump’s proposed 46% duty on Vietnamese imports looming, Adidas finds itself in a familiar tragedy: fleeing one manufacturing crisis only to stumble into another. Vietnam, once a sanctuary from China’s rising costs, now threatens to become another albatross. One might call it a strategic dance, if the music hadn’t turned into a dirge.
Investors, ever the nervous spectators, watched shares stumble to $95.35 in August-a low since 2023’s autumnal slide. The stock chart reads like a EKG monitor in a hospital corridor: flat, uncertain, waiting for a defibrillator.
Will running shoes save Adidas’ stock?
Analyst Adam Cochrane calls running shoes the “exciting category” of footwear, as if describing a sunrise in a land perpetually overcast. Comfort and style, he insists, shall save them all. Adidas has dutifully unveiled two new models-the Adizero Adios Pro 4 and Boston 13-each a technical marvel, each a question mark. Will consumers pay premium prices for engineered foam and rubber soles while tariffs inflate costs? The answer, like a well-arched running shoe, remains cushioned in ambiguity.
Puma, its smaller, ailing cousin, offers little comfort. A 2% sales decline and a 50% stock plunge this year paint a portrait of shared misery. Both brands are trapped in a relay race where every baton exchange risks collapse.
Waiting to see
Adidas now tiptoes through a minefield of pricing decisions. Raise prices, and consumers may bolt; absorb costs, and margins shrink like wool in hot water. Investors linger at the finish line, binoculars raised, waiting for clarity that may never come. The next earnings report will be dissected like a frog in a biology lab-organs exposed, conclusions tentative.
Perhaps this is the essence of modern capitalism: grand declarations of leadership, whispered over spreadsheets stained with red ink. Adidas marches forward, a soldier without a war, a company without a compass. One suspects Anton Chekhov would have chuckled softly at the irony-a tragedy dressed in the garb of hope.
For now, the curtain falls on a stage littered with unsold inventory and unanswered quarterly reports. 🏃♂️
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2025-09-03 20:59