Adidas reported it started releasing additional Yeezy inventory on February 26, with a range of existing products available in phases over the coming weeks worldwide.
As the company previously announced, it will release its remaining Yeezy inventory, featuring products from 2022 through this year, including some of its most popular designs, beginning with the 350 V2 in Steel Grey.
The Yeezy products will be available exclusively through Adidas’ digital platforms, including the Confirmed app, Adidas app and adidas.com. The phased release will “ensure a fair and premium experience for consumers,” said Adidas. Availability and timing of the releases will vary depending on location.
When pre-announcing results for 2023 at the end of January 2024, Adidas said sales results for 2023 were significantly impacted by reduced sell-in to the wholesale channel as part of its successful initiatives to reduce high inventory levels, as well as the discontinuation of the Yeezy business that hurt top-line revenues during the year, representing a drag of around €500 million on the year-over-year comparison.
The two Yeezy drops positively impacted net sales of around €750 million in 2023, compared to more than €1,200 million of Yeezy revenues in 2022. Excluding the Yeezy revenues in both years, currency-neutral revenues were up 2 percent in 2023.
Adidas said it generated an operating profit of €268 million in 2023, compared to €669 million in 2022. According to its recent guidance, the company had expected an operating loss of €100 million.
A better-than-expected operational business drove the outperformance for 2023 in Q4 and the company’s decision not to write off the vast majority of its existing Yeezy inventory. The company’s latest outlook still includes a potential write-off of its remaining Yeezy inventory of around €300 million.
Following the latest decision, the 2023 operating profit only includes a low-double-digit million of Yeezy-related inventory write-offs. Instead, the company plans to sell the remaining Yeezy products at least at cost in 2024.
In its underlying operating profit reported at the end of January, Adidas excluded the Yeezy profits generated in 2023 (around €300 million) and adjusted its bottom line for the one-off costs related to the strategic review the company conducted in 2023 (around €200 million) as well as the Yeezy-related write-offs (low-double-digit million euro amount).
Since terminating the Yeezy partnership in October 2022, Adidas said it has donated products to select organizations to combat discrimination and hate, including racism and antisemitism, but has not provided those figures.
Image courtesy Adidas
