In golden autumn October, ANTA Sports Products Limited (02020), China's largest and the world's third-largest multi-brand sportswear group, has taken another key step in its global expansion. According to Zhitong Finance APP, on October 7, ANTA Group officially announced that it had completed the acquisition of a 29.06% stake in PUMA SE, the company behind the globally iconic sports brand Puma, from Artémis SAS, an investment company under the Pinault family, for a cash consideration of 1.5055 billion euros. All relevant regulatory approvals have been obtained and customary closing conditions satisfied. ANTA Group has officially become Puma's largest shareholder.
This strategic acquisition of a Puma equity stake marks a new milestone in ANTA Group's "single focus, multi-brand, globalization" strategy. The two parties will achieve complementary advantages across core dimensions including category layout, regional channels, and operational capabilities: Puma can leverage ANTA Group's multi-brand operational experience, DTC capabilities, supply chain and other middle and back-office support to unlock growth potential and embrace significant opportunities in the Chinese market; ANTA Group will rely on Puma's channel foundation in mature European and American markets, top-tier competitive sports resources, and trend brand influence to accelerate the pace of globalization.
ANTA Group Chairman of the Board Ding Shizhong specifically emphasized that ANTA Group is a multi-brand empowering enterprise, and the value of the multi-brand strategy lies in activating the value and potential of these outstanding brands through group empowerment. Puma's brand heritage and value are extremely attractive, and ANTA Group is full of confidence in Puma's management team and supports its ongoing strategic transformation plan. As a long-term investor, ANTA Group will empower the Puma brand with retail and operational expertise, fully unlocking its brand value and development potential to create long-term value for global consumers.
Globalization "Trilogy" Advances Step by Step, Consolidating the Foundation for Multi-Brand Empowerment
As a multi-brand sports group with a top-three global market capitalization and more than ten international brands, ANTA Group's confidence in expanding its globalization footprint is rooted in continuously improving operating results. For the first half of 2026, ANTA Group and Amer Sports Group's multi-brand matrix (excluding Puma), ANTA Group achieved revenue of 43.51 billion yuan (RMB, same below), a year-on-year increase of 12.9%. Despite its massive scale, its revenue growth rate still leads the industry, with revenue scale approximately 2.2 times that of Nike China and 2.7 times that of Adidas China. During the same period, the group's operating profit margin increased by 0.7 percentage points to 27%, a new high in nearly seven years; free cash inflow exceeded 11.63 billion yuan, and net cash reached 39.1 billion yuan. It is worth noting that in the first half of 2026, ANTA Group and Amer Sports Group combined revenue reached approximately 67.98 billion yuan.
Zhitong Finance APP noted that ANTA Group's operating performance continues to lead the industry, and the traction of its globalization strategy is growing stronger. This systematic layout, repeatedly tested by the market, follows a three-step path of "doing well with international brands in China, going out to operate global brands, and letting Chinese brands go global," gradually completing the transformation from a local brand operator to a global industrial resource integrator.
The first step is to do well with international brands in China and hone global operational capabilities. In 2009, ANTA Group acquired the FILA Greater China trademark rights and operating rights for 332 million yuan when the brand was on the verge of marginalization, opening the prelude to its multi-brand strategy. In the first half of 2026, FILA revenue exceeded 15 billion yuan, accounting for more than 30% of the group's revenue. At the same time, overseas brands such as Descente and Kolon entered a strong growth cycle in the Chinese market, driving the other brands segment to achieve revenue of 10.69 billion yuan in the first half, a year-on-year increase of 44.2%, exceeding the full-year revenue of 2024.
The second step is to go out and operate global brands, marking globalization entering deep waters. In 2019, ANTA Group led a consortium to acquire Finland's Amer Sports for 4.66 billion euros, bringing multiple top international brands including Arc'teryx, Salomon, and Wilson under its umbrella, becoming Amer Sports' largest global shareholder. Facing the complex challenges of cross-cultural management and multi-brand synergy, ANTA Group adopted an integration strategy of "consensus over control," fully empowering Amer Sports' original management team while injecting Chinese enterprises' efficiency advantages and strategic planning capabilities. Through formulating a "five billion-euro brands" global strategy, focusing on three core markets and main brands, Amer Sports went from low single-digit growth before the acquisition to revenue of 6.566 billion US dollars in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 27%, with Greater China full-year revenue growing as high as 43.4%, completing its strategic goals two years ahead of schedule.
The third step is to let China's Anta brand go global and become a world Anta, which is the ultimate vision of the globalization strategy. After the new decade strategy was released in 2021, the Anta main brand accelerated overseas expansion. The Southeast Asian market launched a "thousand-store plan" in 2025, with plans to open 1,000 retail outlets within the next three years, opening up growth curves through dual layouts of physical stores and e-commerce platforms; the first North American flagship store settled in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, entering mature markets with a premium positioning; in the Middle East, it successfully entered countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, completing multi-point breakthroughs in emerging markets. Unlike traditional brand product exports, the Anta main brand going overseas carries a proven business model and operational capabilities.
Multi-Brand Collaborative Evolution Experience Brings Imaginative Space for Puma Partnership
Brand is the core key to ANTA Group's steady and far-reaching globalization. As Group Chairman of the Board Ding Shizhong said in the "Chairman's Message" of the 2026 semi-annual report: "Brand is ANTA Sports' most important asset." In Ding Shizhong's business philosophy, having only a high-quality brand foundation is far from enough. Global strategic M&A must not only "buy well" but also "manage well" and "synergize well" to enhance market competitiveness.
To manage a complex multi-brand system, ANTA Group has built three core pillars: "multi-brand collaborative management capability," "multi-brand retail operational capability," and "global resource integration capability," achieving acquisition results of "success with every acquisition." The multi-brand collaborative management capability helps ANTA Group break free from the path dependence of traditional sports giants' "single brand, multiple categories" approach and build a clearly differentiated brand matrix. The Anta main brand focuses on mass professional sports, FILA focuses on high-end fashion sports, Descente specializes in high-quality professional sports, Kolon deeply cultivates outdoor scenarios, MAIA ACTIVE focuses on women's sports, and Jack Wolfskin covers the mass outdoor market. Puma is positioned in professional sports and fashion crossover, focusing on Gen Z youth and street culture enthusiasts, with a German street mix-and-match tone and deep heritage in professional categories including football, basketball, running, and motorsport.
The multi-brand operating model allows each brand to operate independently and maintain cultural tension while sharing the group's innovation, digitalization, supply chain, logistics and other middle and back-office resources, forming an ecosystem of independent positioning and shared infrastructure, avoiding internal competition while achieving economies of scale. Starting with FILA, the group established a "brand + retail" direct-operated model, achieving deep brand control by controlling terminals. The advantages of this model have become increasingly prominent in the digital era. The DTC model allows brands to directly reach consumers, with accumulated user data feeding back into product development and marketing decisions; fully direct-operated management enables brands such as FILA to respond quickly to the market, with inventory turnover efficiency leading the industry. Puma's DTC business has already been quite effective, with fiscal year 2024 sales growing 16.6% on a currency-adjusted basis to 2.425 billion euros, accounting for 27.5% of total sales. In the future, both parties can learn from each other in direct operations and digital transformation. ANTA Group can share its mature DTC experience with Puma to help it unlock potential in the Chinese and Asian markets, while absorbing Puma's retail experience in mature global markets to feed back into its own brands' overseas expansion.
The global resource integration capability achieves deep integration of global resources. Puma's distinctive brand DNA and value, its global sports resources, technological heritage, and brand influence will further enrich the group's global resource pool. Puma complements ANTA's brands in professional sports fields including football, basketball, athletics, and motorsport. ANTA Group can benefit from Puma's enormous brand influence in North American and European markets, and is also expected to share its mature European and American channels to accelerate globalization, while exporting China's flexible supply chain and localized operational capabilities to help Puma optimize efficiency. The capital market generally believes that this equity acquisition brings tremendous imaginative space for future cooperation between the two parties.
"Ecosystem Going Global" Defines a New Paradigm of Globalization
The deep value of ANTA Group's globalization lies in pioneering a new paradigm of "ecosystem going global," achieving comprehensive export of business models, management experience, and cultural concepts, providing new inspiration for Chinese enterprises' globalization. Ecosystem going global is reflected in transferable capability output. ANTA Group will systematically replicate the brand reshaping, DTC operations, and middle-platform empowerment closed-loop capabilities proven successful in the domestic market to overseas brand operations. This cooperation with Puma is a higher-order form of capability output. ANTA Group will share its growth experience in Asian markets to help Puma expand in China and other emerging markets, while Puma's global brand operational experience and mature channels will also provide reference for ANTA Group's other brands' overseas expansion. Through the model of capability transfer and local adaptation, ANTA's globalization is not simple copy-paste but value creation tailored to local conditions, forming a virtuous cycle of "cooperation-empowerment-growth-feedback."
The core of ecosystem going global is a cross-cultural management philosophy that values both respect and empowerment. ANTA Group consistently practices the integration approach of "consensus over control," adhering to empowerment without control and delegation without absence. In global M&A and cooperation, the group respects each brand's independent cultural DNA and governance system, retains the original core management team, and coordinates the overall situation through strategic consensus. This result-focused, relaxed "loose-tie management" model fully unleashes each brand's innovative vitality while ensuring overall strategic synergy, forming a mature governance paradigm suitable for global multi-brand operations.
The far-reaching impact of ecosystem going global is reflected in reshaping the global sports industry landscape. ANTA Group's rise has challenged the duopoly of Nike and Adidas that has long dominated the global sporting goods industry, and this partnership with Puma is expected to further change the industry's competitive landscape. This also confirms Chinese enterprises' global value creation capabilities. Beyond traditional manufacturing advantages, Chinese enterprises have built core capabilities in high-value-added areas such as brand operations, cross-border M&A, and cross-cultural management. "Chinese operations" are gradually gaining recognition from international brands, reversing the stereotype that Chinese brands are only good at manufacturing.
Conclusion
From FILA's phoenix-like rebirth to Amer Sports' magnificent transformation, from Anta brand's thousand-store layout in Southeast Asia to its premium breakthrough in the North American market, and now to joining hands with Puma to achieve global resource integration, ANTA Group's globalization journey is an evolutionary history of Chinese enterprises from "integrating into the globe" to "empowering the globe." With globalization deepening step by step, ANTA Group's long-term investment logic is gradually transitioning from the growth dividend of a local brand to the ecological compound interest of a multi-brand matrix. Each acquisition by the group is not simply scale stacking but value amplification through capability reuse, using a set of market-tested middle-platform capabilities, retail experience, and governance philosophy to activate the growth potential of different brands and different regional markets, weathering industry cycles and giving back to the capital market.
Viewed from a broader global industrial coordinate system, ANTA Group joining hands with Puma is more like a dividing point of an era. For decades past, the global sporting goods industry was dominated by European and American giants, following a one-way logic of brand value export from West to East. ANTA Group, through "ecosystem going global," brings operational efficiency, digital capabilities, and Eastern management wisdom tempered in the Chinese market, integrating into global core markets as an equal industrial integrator, driving the industry toward a new pattern of multipolar symbiosis and opening a new round of value growth cycles.