Chinese Buyers Will Become The New Owners Of Puma.

If someone bought it ten years ago

The stock may have a sense of isolation in the past week.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, ten years ago, Puma was French.

After the acquisition of the giant cloud group, the price of the 341 dollar dollar reached the highest point at that time, but then it fell down because of its unsatisfactory results (the annual sales of Puma remained around 3 billion euros in 2011).

Until April 12th, Puma announced that the "Fran" ois-Henri Pinault, "Pinot Noir", officially withdrew from the board of directors.

After the announcement, Puma's stock rose 5%, breaking through the figure that was acquired ten years ago.

Little Pinot's name is unknown in France. He is the controlling shareholder of Puma, the chairman and chief executive officer of the French luxury giant, Kai Yun group, and the son of the founder of cloud, founder of Pinot Noir, in charge of the fate of a large number of luxury brands including Gucci, YSL, and Paris.

His withdrawal has once again led to discussion. In fact, since Kai Yun group bought Puma for $7 billion in 2007, a conjecture has been constantly on the lips: will Puma sell?

Together with the news, Puma announced its initial financial results in the first quarter of 2017, with sales rising 15% to 1 billion euros. Due to outstanding performance, the company also raised its annual revenue forecast of 2017.

The rumors of Kai Yun group's selling Puma have been going on for many years.

In 2015, 11 months ago, citing sources familiar with the matter, the deal "at least had to wait until next year". Last year, Pinot Noir said in an interview that the company would retain a majority stake in Puma at least until 2018.

In other words, the work of selling Puma may have been carried out, especially when the market value was restored to ten years ago.

So the question is coming. Who will buy Puma?

Before attempting to answer this question, let's look back at the 2016 witnessed the revival of the Puma market.

The 2016 year sports market is a big test for most of the old sports companies. The downturn in physical retailing and the fierce competition in sports and fashion have brought great resistance to the breakout in the market.

Against this background, Puma has gained a lot of popularity in the past half year, thanks to the powerful influence of pop Rihanna and its leading series of explosions. The stock market has risen steadily over the past six months.

Rihanna has been the spokesperson and creative director of Puma since the end of 2014. After a year of running in, Rihanna took the Fenty X Puma by Rihanna series with Puma to New York fashion week in February 2016. In the second half of the year, she used a full set of pink SS17 series to fight Paris.

In the Puma earnings report, the two appearances have created "a lot of word of mouth discussions and media exposure" on social media.

This year, Puma has signed Kylie Jenner and The Weeknd as spokesmen in the United States. The former is a member of the famous Kardashian family. She was named one of the most influential 25 teenagers in 2014 years. The latter is the best R&B singer winner The Weeknd, who has just released the third hot album personal Starboy.

If the time is slightly extended to January 2017, Puma will announce 5 spokesmen in the Chinese market at the same time: Liu Wen, Zhang Yuqi, Yang Yang, Liu Haoran and Li Xian.

It is easy to see from these list of speakers who can be converted into fans. The Puma market focuses on women.

In 2016, the most important and almost unique annual marketing activity of Puma was the "Do You" which was completely targeted at the female market in September. It has been synced to the market recently, and the Chinese version of advertising slogans is "you are like that".

Over the past year, the list of sports shoes has been flooded with Adidas's NMD and Yeezy, plus Air Jordan and Reebok Pump that occupy a large score. Rihanna x Puma Fenty Creeper is one of the few styles that can break through in these shoes.

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More retro sneakers are still on the way, and the improved Puma classic shoe Mostro has recently announced its return.

"Puma has never been regarded as a performance sport brand in the US market, so when we enter a stage where professional sports products are not as fashionable as fashion, they benefit very much," said Matt Powell, a sports industry analyst at NPD group.

Spokesperson, fashion operation, the influence of the female market, and the same history as Adidas, these advantages make Puma become one of the most popular sports brands nowadays, and may also be a reason to attract buyers.

It's easy to compare the Puma's fire with Adidas - the two brands are close to big stars (Rihanna and Kanye West) to create their own personal series, and they all seem to be exploded because of the influence of the stars.

But compared to the past two years of Adidas's performance revival, Puma is still lacking a long-term effective mechanism.

In the new marketing chain of the sports brand, we should not only have a full name of the stars, but also have accelerated production links to support new and limited styles.

According to our previous reports, Adidas and Nike are spending heavily on upgrading factories to make delivery time faster, and the Logistics Department of the company is still a relatively traditional rhythm from the speed at which Puma sells new products.

If Puma needs to expand its size and satisfy more consumers with more new products, there are still many areas to be strengthened.

What's more, Puma lacks the foundation of the chain's energy supply: competitive sports technology, which is the motor that keeps the short term heat of sports shoes going on.

But it's still a good time to sell when the performance goes up.

For the industry's biggest Nike, if you want to buy Puma, the only reason may be to supplement your two short boards: on the one hand, Nike's popularity on the social network has been overshadowed by Adidas last year because of its failure in celebrity endorsements. On the other hand, Nike's women's sports products account for only 23% of the total revenue of Nike, and there is still much room for improvement. Puma's good part just fills the two weaknesses simultaneously.

From the recent spring women's sports advertisement on Nike, they invited the British singer songwriter FKA Twigs to shoot the advertisement, so as to learn the opponent's meaning.

In March, Air Max company also invited a star platform including Quan Zhilong, Li Yuchun and so on, but these have not reached the level of influence and cooperation between Rihanna and Puma.

The more likely candidates are from Anta, China.

In 2014, Kai Yun group had heard about buyers in the Middle East and Asia. In March of this year, Anta announced that it had raised 37.9 HK $100 million for potential acquisition of "international sporting goods brand".

Since 2015, CEO Ding Shizhong of Anta group has mentioned acquisition many times. At that time, Puma's performance was not ideal, its market value was about 21 billion euros, and Anta's market value was about 47 billion Hong Kong dollars.

However, Puma is much more valuable now, and the difficulty of acquisition is greatly increased. But it is not possible to exclude Anta's cooperation with them.

The brand strength that can provide premium has been lacking in domestic sports companies. In the past year, domestic sports companies began to focus on buying and buying.

Now, the international brands that Anta owns in China include the Italy sports brand FILA and the Korean outdoor brand Kolon. In October 2016, the introduction of the American sports brand AND1, and the introduction of an American Dance brand Danskin by Lining last year.

As for Adidas, Puma now has a large overlap with its consumer groups. The two sides are also entangled in the law about patent plagiarism.

About this once again selling rumors, Kai Yun group spokesman stressed that Pino's withdrawal from Puma's board is to simplify the decision-making process, continue to increase investment to improve the profitability of Puma, and general manager of Kai Yun group will remain the chairman of Puma's board of directors.

Under the surface of the performance boom, Puma actually has a profit margin of only 3.5%, and Bj CEO RN Gulden Gulden, the company's chief executive, has been pointing to this level "surprisingly low". Their goal is to raise to around 8%-10%, which compares Nike's profit margin in the last fiscal year to 14.3%.

According to the Puma financial report, over the past year, the company has renovated 70 retail stores worldwide, such as the addition of a special area to display Rihanna products. Sales of these stores have increased by 10%-20%, and more high margin products have been sold.

Of course, all of these investments may be aimed at selling a good price in the future.

Luca Solca, director of luxury banking at Paris Bank Securities Department in 2016, wrote in a column in 12 column: "there is no expected synergy between the Puma luxury investment portfolio and Kai Yun group's luxury investment portfolio. Instead, it dilutes the value of opening the cloud to focus on luxury goods and away from the mass retail market."

Another point is that it hints at the decision of Puma to support the sports company. In the final analysis, it is the core of sports technology innovation, but Puma has put money on the stars.

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