Julie, who will report directly to PUMA’s Vice President Brand & Marketing Richard Teyssier, has 20 years of experience in marketing and brand management. Most recently, she worked as H&M’s Global Brand Director. She also held senior positions in marketing and brand at Procter & Gamble.

“With Julie, we have found an experienced leader to head up PUMA’s global brand strategy,” said Richard Teyssier. “She will define and execute our strategy to drive higher brand visibility and strengthen the PUMA brand and its perception around the world.”

The appointment of Julie follows the company’s decision taken in June to reorganize its global brand management and marketing operations and relocate them from Boston to PUMA’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany.

At the start of 2023, PUMA sharpened its strategic priorities and defined brand elevation as one of its three top strategic priorities for the company’s future growth.

„PUMA is one of the most recognized names in the sports industry with a fantastic brand heritage. I am very proud to be in charge of further sharpening the brand’s positioning and preference with consumers,” said Julie Legrand. “I look forward to working with the team in Herzogenaurach to further elevate the PUMA brand.”

Based on data reported through CDP’s 2023 Climate Change questionnaire, PUMA is one of a small number of companies that achieved an ‘A’ - out of 23,000 companies which responded. PUMA made the ‘A List’ for the second year in a row. 

“Reducing our CO2 emissions is a priority for PUMA, both in the supply chain and in our own offices, stores and warehouses,” said Anne Laure Descours Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “Being placed on the CDP ‘A List’ is a great recognition of our efforts, but we will not be complacent and continue to sharpen our decarbonization goals.”

PUMA aims to reduce CO2 emissions along its entire value chain. This includes the sourcing of raw materials, the production of fabrics and finished goods, logistics, the energy supply of PUMA’s warehouses, stores and offices and the even its corporate car fleet.

“For signatories of the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, disclosing data to CDP is a fundamental requirement, as transparency is essential to the analysis and understanding of climate action and progress,” said Lindita Xhaferi-Salihu, Sector Engagement Lead with UN Climate Change. “We congratulate PUMA on making CDP’s A-List for the second year in a row and thank the company for its continued leadership in this space.”

In 2023, PUMA’s core Tier 1 Suppliers, which produce finished goods, increased their use of renewable energy to 23.1%, while the share of renewable energy among PUMA’s core Tier 2 Suppliers, which make materials, rose to 21.7%. PUMA sources 100% renewable energy, including renewable energy attribute certificates, for its own entities. 

Last year, PUMA only shipped 0.3% of its products by air and switched to low-emissions shipping with its logistics partner Maersk. PUMA’s corporate car fleet now consists of 35% zero or low-emission vehicles.

PUMA has a successful history in Egypt with long-term partnerships, including those with the Egyptian Football Association, the Egyptian Handball Federation and other teams and athletes. Most recently, PUMA team Egypt won the African Men's Handball Championship for the ninth time and qualified for the Olympic tournament.

“For PUMA, the agreement represents a great opportunity to further invest in sports in Egypt and to strengthen our presence in the country. Egypt has a deeply rooted passion for sports and great economic potential. As a sports company, we are excited to invest in both," said Johan Kuhlo, Managing Director EEMEA Distribution.

As part of the agreement, the Egyptian delegation will wear PUMA products including apparel, footwear and accessories during the Games. The most recent Olympic Games in Tokyo were the most successful in the Egypt’s history with six medals.

“In PUMA we have found a perfect partner who is as passionate about sports in Egypt as we are. PUMA is already well known to Egyptians as a reliable partner for our national football and handball teams and I am proud the company will now also outfit our Olympic delegation for the upcoming Games in Paris,” said Prof. Dr. Ashraf Sobhy, the Egyptian Minister of Youth and Sports.

Financial performance 2023 impacted by extraordinary Argentine peso devaluation

Following the extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso by 54% in December 2023 and the application of hyperinflationary accounting*, PUMA achieved full-year currency-adjusted sales growth of around 6.6% and 1.6% reported, with preliminary 2023 sales of approx. € 8,602 million (outlook: high single-digit currency-adjusted growth). The operating result (EBIT) amounted to approx. € 622 million (outlook: € 590 to 670 million). Sales were therefore broadly in line with the outlook and EBIT, despite the significant devaluation, was fully in line with the outlook. The devaluation mainly affected the financial result. Consequently, net income was approx. € 305 million (outlook: change corresponding to EBIT).

Excluding the extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso, PUMA delivered currency-adjusted sales growth above 8% and an EBIT above last year (2022: € 641 million).

Although PUMA achieved an underlying operating sales growth, the application of hyperinflationary accounting led to a sales decline in the fourth quarter. On a currency-adjusted basis sales declined by around 4.0% (reported sales declined by around 9.8%) to approx. € 1,982 million (Q4 2022: € 2,197 million). EBIT came in strongly at 
approx. € 94 million (Q4 2022: € 41 million). The devaluation of the Argentine peso especially impacted the fourth quarter financial result, resulting in a net income of approx. € 0.8 million (Q4 2022: € 1.4 million). 
Both sales and net income are below the analysts’ consensus. However, the consensus does not take negative effects from the extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso into account.

Supported by PUMA's continued brand momentum and despite continued global geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds, PUMA expects a mid-single-digit currency-adjusted sales growth and an EBIT in the range of € 620 million to € 700 million (2023: approx. € 622 million) in the financial year 2024. The outlook assumes that the future devaluation of the Argentine peso will be fully compensated by corresponding price increases in Argentina.

* Hyperinflation accounting requires according to IAS 29 an adjustment for inflation and the currency translation with the year-end currency rate instead of using the average currency rate of the full-year and the impact needs to be fully recognized in the respective quarter.

Excluding extraordinary impact, PUMA delivered full-year outlook

Excluding the extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso, PUMA delivered currency-adjusted sales growth above 8%, driven by the continued brand momentum and robust demand for its products. The operating result (EBIT) for the same period would have been above last year (2022: € 641 million). In a globally challenging geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, this represents a strong underlying operating performance and strict cost discipline.

“Our underlying operating performance was strong in 2023 and showed that we were well on track to meet all expectations. The accounting treatment of the hyperinflationary economy Argentina and its significant devaluation of the Argentine peso mid of December resulted in an extraordinary impact on fourth quarter and financial year results for 2023. Due to the magnitude and timing of this currency effect, we could not fully compensate the entire impact at the year-end. With a strong fourth quarter operating result we achieved a full-year EBIT absolutely in line with expectations as well as a significant improvement in the Free Cash Flow. This great achievement is thanks to the outstanding job of our entire PUMA family.” said Arne Freundt, CEO of PUMA.

Devaluation leads to significant gap between underlying operating performance and recorded financial performance

The extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso and its hyperinflationary accounting treatment led to a significant gap between the underlying operating performance - currency-adjusted sales growth of above 8% and EBIT above last year of € 641 million - and the recorded financial performance -currency-adjusted sales growth of around 6.6% and EBIT of approx. 
€ 622 million.

Fourth-quarter EBIT strong and fully in line with expectations

Despite the extraordinary devaluation of the Argentine peso, fourth-quarter EBIT was strong with approx. € 94 million (Q4 2022: € 41 million) and fully in line with expectations, driven by an improved gross profit margin and strict cost discipline. 
Although PUMA achieved an underlying operating sales growth, the application of hyperinflationary accounting led to a sales decline in the fourth quarter. On a currency-adjusted basis, sales declined by around 4.0% (reported sales declined by around 9.8%) to approx. € 1,982 million (Q4 2022: € 2,197 million). The devaluation of the Argentine peso especially impacted the fourth quarter financial result, resulting in a net income of approx. 
€ 0.8 million (Q4 2022: € 1.4 million).

In an ongoing volatile environment PUMA expects to grow mid single-digit in 2024

“For 2024, we foresee the geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges as well as highly volatile currencies to persist. This continues to weigh on consumer sentiment and demand, especially in the first half of 2024. While we cannot change these external factors, we continue to stay 100% focused on elevating the brand and bringing exciting product newness to the market.

We are in a better position at the start of 2024 than we were at the start of 2023: we have cleared our inventories, we have a product pipeline with exciting product newness and innovations and we will launch our new brand campaign soon.” said Arne Freundt. 
“We continue to stay hungry and have the ambition to continue to grab market shares.”

Supported by PUMA's continued brand momentum and despite continued global geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds, PUMA expects in the financial year 2024 a mid-single-digit currency-adjusted sales growth and an EBIT in the range of € 620 million to € 700 million (2023: approx. € 622 million). The outlook assumes that the future devaluation of the Argentine peso will be fully compensated by corresponding price increases in Argentina.

* Hyperinflation accounting requires according to IAS 29 an adjustment for inflation and the currency translation with the year-end currency rate instead of using the average currency rate of the full-year and the impact needs to be fully recognized in the respective quarter.
 

The award, which is based on a comprehensive survey of the Top Employers Institute, was given to PUMA in Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and Latin America and for the first time in Poland and Ukraine. It is the second time PUMA has received this award globally and the fifth time the company has received the award in Europe.

“We are very proud that our efforts were once again recognized and that we became one of only 17 companies to receive the global Top Employer award,” said Dietmar Knoess, Vice President of People and Organization at PUMA. “We will take this result as an inspiration to work even harder to make PUMA a fantastic place to work.”

The Top Employers Institute certifies companies based on a survey, which covers six HR domains and 20 topics including People Strategy, Work Environment, Talent Acquisition, Learning, Diversity & Inclusion, Wellbeing and more.

To be an attractive employer, PUMA offers several services and benefits to its employees such as access to a large variety of courses and trainings, free access to a gym and sports courses.

PUMA also helps its employees balance their jobs and private lives with flexible working hours, mobile office, and the option to take up part-time employment or sabbaticals in different stages of their careers. Employees with children have access to special parent-child offices, nursing rooms, daycare spots and summer camps during school holidays.
 

In Sweden, PUMA was named a “Universal Fair Pay Developer”, which shows an adjusted gender pay gap of between +1 and -1%. PUMA Middle East, which is headquartered in Dubai, received the “Universal Fair Pay Leader” certificate, which shows that in addition to the adjusted gender pay gap of between +1 and -1%, it has also an unadjusted pay gap limited to between +10 and -10%.

Last year, PUMA was already named a “Universal Fair Pay Developer” in Germany, becoming only the second company in the country to receive this certification.

“We are very proud that our efforts to create a gender-neutral remuneration policy were once again recognized by FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab,” said Dietmar Knoess, Vice President People & Organization at PUMA. “We will not stop here, however, and continue to improve our payment structures to offer equal pay everywhere.”

The adjusted pay gap takes into account pay differences that can be explained on the basis of managerial responsibility, age, job role, employment status, and evaluation.

To achieve equality in compensation, PUMA assesses pay for each position in a gender-neutral manner, focusing solely on job characteristics rather than individual employee traits. This approach enables a standardized and transparent process for wage increases.

FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab is a German NGO, which helps companies analyse and improve remuneration strategies to ensure fair and equal pay for all employees.

"It is a great pleasure for me to award PUMA Middle East as the first Fair Pay Leader in the Middle East and also PUMA Sweden as Fair Pay Developer. Continuing on this journey, I am sure PUMA is only a few steps away from global certification. And it is a wonderful signal to all other companies," said Henrike von Platen, CEO & Founder FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab.
 

Under the guidance of Johan Adamsson, the Global Director of Sports Marketing & Sports Licensing for PUMA, and Andrew Pragnell, CEO of New Zealand Football, the collaboration marks the beginning of an exciting chapter in international sports.

Johan Adamsson, Global Director of Sports Marketing & Licensed, PUMA, said: “We are delighted to partner with New Zealand Football. Football is one of the fastest growing sports in New Zealand and we are thrilled to be able to continue the growth of the beautiful game in the Oceania region. We are excited by the ambition of NZF and look forward to pursuing success on the international stage together.”

Andrew Pragnell, CEO, New Zealand Football, said: “This is an exciting new partnership that will take our national teams and New Zealand Football to the next level. PUMA’s commitment to excellence aligns with our ambition as a football association to continually raise the bar for the game in New Zealand. Football is the biggest participation sport in the country and this partnership will give it the support it deserves to continue that amazing growth.” 

Key Highlights of the Partnership:

The first international window featuring PUMA apparel is scheduled for February 2024, setting the stage for a year of sporting excellence.

PUMA will proudly equip all 10 New Zealand Football national teams, including the Men’s and Women’s teams from U-17 to the senior teams, as well as the futsal teams and eFootball team.

Boasting an illustrious history, the Men’s team, known as the All Whites after their iconic white shirt, has participated in the World Cup twice (1982 and 2010) and secured victory in the OFC Nations Cup five times. The Women’s team, the Ford Football Ferns, has showcased their prowess in the Women’s World Cup six times and clinched the OFC Nations Cup six times.

2024 will see New Zealand represented at the Paris Olympic Games as well as the Men’s futsal side, the Futsal Whites, playing in their first ever Futsal World Cup. 

New Zealand is witnessing a surge in football talent, with more players participating internationally and in Europe than ever before. As one of the fastest-growing sports in the country, football’s popularity is reaching new heights, further accelerated by the successful co-hosting of the Women’s World Cup with Australia in July and August 2023.
 

Since the launch of the pilot in 2022, which saw PUMA produce recycled training jerseys for their sponsored football clubs, RE:FIBRE technology has been used to create Switzerland and Morocco replica kits for the Women’s World Cup as well as Girona’s 2023/24 season Third kit. In 2024, official PUMA football replica jerseys* including those for the Euro and Copa América tournaments will be manufactured using RE:FIBRE recycled materials that were made of old garments and factory waste rather than only recycled plastic bottles. 

Through the RE:FIBRE program, PUMA is keen to address the challenge of textile waste via a long-term solution for recycling. The technology also looks to diversify the fashion industry’s main source of recycled polyester in garments from being less reliant on clear plastic bottles.

The RE:FIBRE process uses any polyester material – from factory offcuts, faulty goods to pre-loved clothes which allows new garments to be recycled from any colour textile to any colour desired. 

The four-step process of RE:FIBRE sees:

•          Collect and Sort: Collecting and sorting textile waste and other previously wasteful materials.

•          Shred and Mix: Shredding and mixing the collected materials down to the minimum.

•          Dissolve, Filter and Polymerize: Melting down the shredded polyester and ridding them of previous dyes through a chemical recycling process.

•          Melt, Spin, Knit and Sew: The melting allows the newly produced polymers to become ready to be spun and sewn into shape to create good as new RE:FIBRE fabric which can be recycled again and again. 

Managing waste has today become a necessity, which is why PUMA is ramping up its investment into resource-efficient manufacturing processes in a move to reduce textile waste. 

“Our wish is to have 100% of product polyester coming from textile waste,” said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “Textile waste build-up in landfills is an environmental risk. Rethinking the way we produce and moving towards a more circular business model is one of the main priorities of our sustainability strategy.”

To help make the technical process of RE:FIBRE more digestible for the everyday consumer who wants to know more, PUMA has harnessed the storytelling power of Computer Generated Imagery to take viewers through the RE:FIBRE process, right down to the molecular chemistry at work. View the video here.

The video builds on the brand’s ongoing commitment to ensure PUMA’s sustainability initiatives are simplified for everyone to engage with. This comes after research conducted by PUMA found that 71% of young people felt their voices were not being heard when it comes to the environment and would like to see brands making more commitments (49%), communicating their goals better (40%) and being more transparent (34%). 

As part of this commitment to communicate better, PUMA released The RE:GEN REPORTS podcast in June 2023. Making dense information in their Sustainability Report more accessible and tailored to a Gen Z audience.

PUMA’s ongoing efforts in sustainability has shown the brand improving its rankings on Corporate Knight’s Global 100 Sustainability Index from 77th to 47th, and the journey is not over. You can read further on PUMA’s sustainability targets and RE:FIBRE on foreverbetter.com.

*excluding locally replicas for Fenerbahçe SK, Shakhtar Donetsk and locally sourced kits. 

In 2021, PUMA created 500 pairs of the experimental RE:SUEDE, using Zeology tanned suede, a TPE outsole and hemp fibres. The RE:SUEDEs were worn for half a year by volunteers in Germany to test the comfort and durability of the shoes before PUMA sent them to a specially equipped industrial composting area operated by its partner Ortessa Group in the Netherlands.

A special procedure had to be established to turn the shoes into compost. First, they were shredded and mixed with other green household waste and placed into a composting tunnel. They were then sprayed with leaching-water from earlier composting that contains nutrients and naturally heated due to the biological activity and controlled air circulation in the tunnel. After approximately 3.5 months, the materials that were small enough (<10mm) to pass through a sieve were sold as Grade A compost for agricultural use (within the standards of the Netherlands), while the remaining materials were returned to the composting tunnel until they too had broken down to the desired level (<10mm). Ortessa Group adhered to all legal requirements for compost applicable at their facilities in the Netherlands during this process.

“While the RE:SUEDE could not be processed under the standard operating procedures for industrial composting, the shoes did eventually turn into compost,” said Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA. “We will continue to innovate with our partners to determine the infrastructure and technologies needed to make the process viable for a commercial version of the RE:SUEDE, including a takeback scheme, in 2024.”

Transparency is another important pillar of the RE:SUEDE experiment, as PUMA will share its insights in a detailed report, so its peers and other interested stakeholders can learn from the experiment and apply the learnings to their own initiatives.

“We learned a lot during the RE:SUEDE trial and how to streamline our industrial composting process to include items that need longer to turn into compost,” said Marthien van Eersel Manager Materials & Innovations at Ortessa. “While all RE:SUEDE materials can decompose, the sole of the RE:SUEDE required more pre-processing and additional time in the composting tunnel to completely break down.”

As a result of the feedback received from the people who wore the RE:SUEDE for half a year, PUMA will improve the comfort of future versions of the shoes by enhancing the overall fit by using a new material pattern for the upper and the sock liner.

The RE:SUEDE experiment was the first programme, together with the novel polyester recycling programme RE:FIBRE, to launch as part of PUMA’s “Circular Lab”, an innovation hub led by PUMA’s innovation and design experts with the aim to create the future of the company’s circularity programmes. 
 

Ryokusai first joined PUMA in 2015 as Director of Retail. In this position, he shaped the success of PUMA’s Japanese business by building a solid commercial foundation through the company’s owned and operated channels. He also set up the strong retail teams which laid the groundwork for PUMA’s solid growth in the country. He returns to PUMA after working for a year as Country Manager of Tesla Japan.

“I’m glad that Ryokusai is returning to PUMA to lead this important market,” said PUMA CEO Arne Freundt. “I am very confident that with his vast experience in retail and his understanding of PUMA’s culture, products and sales, Ryokusai is the right candidate to take PUMA Japan to the next level.“

Ryokusai replaces Kohei Hagio - who had been in charge of PUMA Japan since 2021.