Herbert Hainer, Adidas’ chief executive, said in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung earlier this month that the company may be able to achieve its targets in terms of financial leverage earlier than planned. While it was hoping to reach a debt/equity ratio of 50 percent by 2010, compared with 71.1 percent at the end of the third quarter in 2007, Hainer predicted that this balance will likely be obtained already in 2008.
The group would then either buy back some of its shares, increase dividends or look out for acquisitions. The outdoor business has often been cited as a target for Adidas, although the company beefed up its own division in this business last November by appointing Rolf Reinschmidt, former head of the company’s sports performance unit, as global manager for the outdoor unit. This position didn’t previously exist with the same autonomy. Reinschmidt, who was succeeded at the helm of Adidas Sports Performance by Bernd Wahler, who had been on a 6-month sabbatical leave.
Hainer says the Reebok brand will grow in Europe, Asia and Latin America in 2008, but growth for the brand in the USA will have to wait until 2009.
