After many years, taking the place of Puma, Le Coq Sportif will as of next month again become the sponsor of the national football team of Cameroon – commonly called the Indomitable Cameroon Lions – after reporting better results for the past financial year. The French brand, which also sponsors half a dozen individual football clubs in France, Italy, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina, was the sponsor of Cameroon in 1982, when it participated in the Fifa World Cup for the first time.
Airesis, the parent company of Le Coq Sportif, confirmed the positive evolution of the brand in its recently released annual report. The French brand's sales grew to €123.8 million last year from €117.5 million in 2017, and its gross margin jumped to nearly 50 percent from 47 percent. It posted positive Ebitda for the second year in a row, amounting to €5.4 million. Its net profit improved slightly to €863,000 from €623,000.
Higher sales of sports-inspired lifestyle apparel, which is produced for the most part at the company's own facilities in France, contributed to the progress in terms of sales as well as margins, thanks to the optimization of the supply chain. Many multi-brand stores have opened dedicated shop-in-shops for the brand.
As previously reported, a French fund, Mirabaud Patrimoine Vivant, took an unspecified stake in Le Coq for €10 million. Declining to go into details, an official of the company said that the financing consists of a mix of new equity and convertible bonds, and that Mirabaud is and will remain a minority shareholder.
The official confirmed earlier guidance which calls for an Ebitda margin of 4 percent or more for Le Coq this year on sales of at least €135 million.
In its annual report, Airesis also reported improved results for its Swiss ski brand, Movement, which generated Ebitda of 250,000 Swiss francs (€219,968-$247,113) in the past year, against a loss of CHF 589,000 in the previous year. Its sales increased to CHF 9.6 million (€8.4m-$9.5m) from CHF 9.2 million in 2017, and its gross margin rose to 56 percent from 48 percent, after renegotiating contracts with its suppliers.
About half of Le Coq's revenues come from the domestic French market, but the brand is becoming more active in other countries such as Italy and Spain, where it has its own subsidiary. It has re-entered the Swiss market, with Movement acting as the brand's distributor in the country since 2016. On the other hand, Movement is selling more in France through its own sales network.
Airesis' overall results for the year showed a decline in net earnings to CHF 891,000 (€783,966-$880,709) from CHF 2.8 million on higher total revenues of CHF 152.9 million (€134.5m-$151.1m).
