adidas AG (ETR:ADS)

AGM 2026

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May 7, 2026

Good morning. Good morning. Shareholders. I hope everyone is doing fine. Ich wollte eigentlich heute, ich muss so anfangen. Ich habe eine schlechte Nachricht. I have bad news and good news. My German, by the way, is just as bad as it was last year. If I say stupid things, it's because of the language, not because of the content. The good news is that business has improved even further, and we're also going to bring up the share price. Give us a little time. Now, behind me on screen, you can see something that is making us proud. In the Champions League, in the finals, Lyon, also in Oslo, is now part of the Champions League, and the other finalist is Arsenal, Budapest. Leider- They're also an adidas team. Now, unfortunately, this team has not qualified Semifinale. [Foreign language] Halbfinale. Bayern was at least part of the semifinals, so give them a round of applause. They made it all the way through to the semifinals, and that's something. Dann ist etwas Historisches passiert. Something historic happened. This might not be important to everyone here, but it's incredibly important to us, the 2-hour threshold in marathon. People have been trying to break that for 20 years, and everyone thought this is never gonna happen. Sebastian did it in London. Eine das geschafft, sondern- Not only Sebastian, actually, there were 2 adidas runners. The other one was Yomif. He ran his first marathon, and he was only 11 seconds slower than Sebastian. Can you believe it? Not only that. Die Frauen- Tigist won in the women's marathon, and she also set a new world record. [Foreign language] Ich weiß, nein, das ist nicht nur wegen der Schuh. It's not only because the shoe, of course. There are many people in the hall who no longer work for adidas, but they were part of the program because you can't run under 2 hours in a marathon and set a new world record without a large team behind you. There are many people here who put in a lot of work into this record. This is making me feel proud. If you don't get goosebumps when you watch this video, I think you have a problem. Ich schätze, dass Adi Dassler ist nicht stolz von alles, was wir machen. I guess Adi Dassler is not proud of everything we do, but I'm sure he'd be proud of this. I know that. [Foreign language] There's a 12-minute documentary on YouTube. Please do make sure you watch this because this shows the work of the trainers, coaches, the runners, adidas people, everyone behind such a record. This involves a lot of work. The runners, they're so nice people, and they deserve our respect. Schnell die laufen. [Foreign language] If you want to know how fast they're running, go to a gym and set the speed to 22.2 km per hour and see how long you can survive. This is an unbelievable performance. Die Trainer und alle sind die Wichtigsten. Es gibt auch einen Schuh. The runners, the trainers, they're important, of course, but it's also this shoe. You can also see it outside in the foyer. It weighs 97 grams. It has a carbon plate. All 3 runners ran in this shoe. Yes, it is EUR 500. The resale value currently is EUR 5,000. If you've already ordered one, you are a lucky person. The idea is not to make money with this shoe, but to tell a story, to help the athletes and to sell more other stuff. Now, this is also something that made me proud, just how we activated the success because, you know, you can't be sure or program someone to run under 2 hours, sub-two. Actually, we didn't think it would happen in London. Actually, we were hoping that it would happen this year in September in Berlin. We realized, hey, this might happen. All of us, our countries, all adidas people activated this within hours after the record was set. In London, within a matter of only 2 hours, there was outdoor marketing visible in 400 different places. I think that also deserves a round of applause because this is an outstanding performance by our marketing people. We brought the athletes here to Herzo. We did a town hall on the campus. Very emotional, I have to say. Here you can see the teams, the ladies and gentlemen. That is the team that made this possible. Everyone who works and worked for adidas has been part of something historic. This means a lot more than you can imagine for us. Now, you own a good company. I'm not saying that we're doing everything right. What I'm saying is that if you look at us from the outside, what the brand does, what our athletes do, what our own employees say, you can see that we're winning lots of awards. Prizes or awards should not be overestimated. You can be proud. adidas is a good company. For us in the executive board, it's an honor to work for adidas. As this one particular dimension, we rank second. We're the second-best brand, company, whatever, in terms of reputation. This makes me super proud. We're behind Lego. That's fine. As long as Nike ranks 50th, I'm okay with that. 3.5, 4 years ago, we were here, and we said there's lots of negative news about adidas. Most of it is not true. Inside, everything, almost everything is positive. As we said at the time, 4 years from now, adidas will be a good company again. In 2025 already, we were able to say adidas is a good company. It's been a fantastic year, not just in terms of the financial performance, but also in terms of how the brands, our athletes, our partners, are seeing us in the world. The brand is visible, and I'm super proud of this visibility. Again, I'm not saying that we're doing everything right. I am very positive about this, but the world currently is a difficult place to be in terms of the economy, in terms of all the conflicts we're seeing. It's a difficult world. You know these figures. We're up 13% with the adidas brand. In the past, we had Yeezy. If you factor that in, it's 10%. The Yeezy business has been replaced, and we grew another 10%. The gross margin is what remains each time a product goes through sales. The higher it is, the fewer discussions there are. There are few discussions when you have the products in the right markets, in the right stores, so that consumers can buy them. When you're under a lot of pressure and you put goods into a market and you don't sell them, discounts are going to go up and the margin is going to go down. The margin has never been this high, and this means that our countries, our product people are doing an excellent job. If you deduct costs, what remains is EUR 2 billion 56 million, which is good profitability, 8.3%. If you look at the history of adidas, this is really a very strong performance. If you compare this to what we said at the beginning of the year, because we have to do that as a listed company, we said that we're going to grow in a double-digit range. We've delivered on that. We said we're going to make between EUR 1.7 billion and EUR 1.8 billion, and we even exceeded that figure. You might say, "Yes, well, your forecasts are always very conservative." I think it's in everyone's interest not to over-deliver on your promises, because when you do that, you'll have problems. My wife keeps telling me that, and this is also true for the stock market. Now, if you look at these growth figures, you can see that the world map is important. On the right-hand side, you can see large figures, you can see how adidas has grown across the various regions. As you can see, there's been double-digit growth across the world. This is not normal, because normally there are one or two markets that are doing just fine and one that's doing rather poorly. Here, our markets, they did it. We did it. There's double-digit growth across the board in a market where there's no growth for many other competitors. If you look at our distribution and sales channels, everything is well-balanced. Wholesale, we sell to Intersport, they sell to a customer. This is up 12%. Our own retail stores, brick-and-mortar stores, up 13%. eCom, that is the digital business, up 16%. This is actually a coincidence because you can't manage it that way or balance it that way. This goes to show that our sales activities have been extremely balanced. 60% of what we sell goes through wholesale and 40% is what we call D2C, direct to the consumers. For Q1 2026 and going forward, you're going to see a slight shift because when we have our own business, our margin is better than when we go through wholesalers. Retailers, wholesalers, they have become very careful. There are lots of debates going on on the market, and it's difficult for them to present a brand as well as we can do this in our own stores. If you travel around the world, if you look at our sales points, you will notice that we invest a lot in our stores, in the people who work there. The stores reflect the local cultures. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. It just doesn't work that way because architecture culture is different from country to country. You can see this right here. There's a storefront, and the store itself is part of the landscape, of the local landscape. This is how consumers there see us. If you have a one-size-fits-all solution, and it doesn't work and you get a new boss, you don't have to change everything. This happens time and again. Here you can actually measure that our stores in the big cities are really doing well. The same thing also applies to our digital activities. This is what we call eCom. The systems and the processes are managed globally. The content, what are people going to see on page 1, what will be sold to them? This is done locally, and this is super important because the world is not homogeneous. The consumers in China are different from our local consumers here, and the influences they are under differ from our local influences. Key is to use a local approach. Now looking at the divisions, the product groups, we've always said that the brand will be led by shoes, footwear. I believe over 15 quarters, footwear grew faster than apparel. Here you can see almost a balance. You're going to see that later on, apparel is really going through the roof, and this is what we want. There are lots of discounts in the footwear business currently. Our brand, our collection is good, this is why we have accelerated business in apparel. Accessories, this is everything that's not footwear or apparel, up only 6%, mainly because we had a sourcing problem in China for the U.S. market. We made some changes in Q1 2026, this really paid off. What this means is that our revenue is just under 6% footwear, 35% apparel, and 7 accessories. As long as footwear is higher than 50%, it's good. Should it fall below 50%, well, we'll have to make some corrections. Now, we have lifestyle and performance business. In simple terms, this is how we see it. Here we have performance. These are products to do sport, up 15%. Here you can see the categories. All of them are up with the exception of golf at minus 3%. Very important for us, there's double-digit growth in football, and we are the market leader around the world. Wasn't always the case. Then running. Running is experiencing a boom. For a long time, we didn't do a good job there, but we're up almost 30%. For the London Marathon next year, you have to register. So far 1.3 million people have already registered, and I think in the end there's gonna be 80,000 runners. Only 6%-7% of those who apply are actually going to run. You can see this running boom everywhere. I'm really super satisfied that we are growing across all categories, but you can't do that all the time. In mathematical terms, you can't always grow above the average. It just doesn't work that way, and you have to know that. Important categories around the world with a local focus, those four: football. This is our DNA. This is where the adidas heart is beating. Running, the biggest one. Training, because everyone has to train to be able to do sport. It's also a growing segment. Then for the culture and the future in the United States, basketball. We know that. Football first. The team has been doing an excellent job for a long time. Everything is going to come to a head with the World Cup. I'm extremely proud, and later on I'm going to talk about what we're going to see in the next few days. Running, we were lagging behind. The innovations that we had were not launched on the market, I think we tried to sell too much on a digital basis. We didn't talk to the running experts. We were not part of the community, all that has changed dramatically. Like I said, our running business is now almost EUR 3 billion. We are a major running brand. Next, training. There are different training approaches around the world. It used to be weightlifting with a focus on strength. Now it's what we call hybrid training, where you do Hyrox, for example, you need a shoe that you can use to run or to lift weights. Now, we are not the Hyrox sponsor, we have lots of athletes under contract. This activity is exploding, it's good for us. There's also a focus on women. You know, the Samba, Gazelle, et cetera. Instead of a collab, which is what Nike did with Skims, we decided to use Originals, the Trefoil, the three stripes also for her in the functional area. This collection is going to be launched over the next two months, and it's already very popular with the local retailers across the world. We expect this to be a huge success. Basketball, difficult. You know, there is this one brand, I don't have to mention its name, but you know who you're talking about. Actually, there are two brands. Their market share is 90%. You have to know that basketball performance is not trendy exactly. Everyone is experiencing problems here. It's important for us to walk towards the future step by step with new up-and-coming players with great activation, with great products to regain market share. Mainly in the United States, but not only in the U.S., therefore we also signed the German national team. You know, sometimes you forget that the Germans are actually the world champions in basketball and, we have a long-term contract with them. Last year we said, "Why don't we do motorsport?" First of all, with Mercedes. We created a business that's worth over EUR 100 million. This is not just sponsoring. We're talking about actual business, you know, about fan gear, motorsport items, et cetera. These things are selling well around the world. This is a profitable business. There's another automotive company just 100 kilometers away from here, and they're also in Formula One, and it made only sense for us to join forces with them. Audi is lagging behind just a little bit, but this business is also doing well, and we also run their eCom shop. We want to collaborate with these partners very closely indeed. Everywhere in the world, there are lots of sports which might not be that relevant for you, but they are for these local markets. Cricket is a case in point. I've talked about this a long time. It takes a long time. It's boring, if you ask me. In India, it is the number 1 sport. In Australia, the balls are not round. They play football and rugby and so on and so forth. If you want to be a genuine sports brand, you have to be in the locally relevant sports. This is what we're doing. We do lots of products for specific sports, things that we didn't do in the past. This brings me back to the history. Now I said Nike, Inc. Why is Nike, Inc.? Now I said the name. Why are they 3 times as big as we are? Because in the U.S., they are part of the culture. There's American football, baseball, also boring, if you ask me. Basketball, lacrosse, you know, all of these U.S. sports, they are important. We sponsor MLS and Nike, Inc. sponsors all the other leagues. Football is important in the United States. Talking about the typical American example, and John from the U.S. is going to join us later on stage. You have to understand, we have to think in different terms in other markets. We can't think in German or Norwegian terms around the world because this is going to get us nowhere. That was performance. Lifestyle. What people wear when they don't do sport. You know, there's no clear borderline, but at least, up 12, very balanced and adidas Originals, the Trefoil, or is adidas Originals and then sportswear, almost similar growth. Here, not only athletes are relevant, but also celebrities from the fashion world, from the world of music or celebrities in general. Look at the portfolio, Bad Bunny, Wales Bonner, Kendall Jenner. It's an incredible portfolio of partners. Again, some of them are global and others are local. It's important to know what customers expect from us. Then we have to ask ourselves, how can we create something with these partners that's relevant for consumers? For some people, especially women, celebrities are more important than athletes. This might change, but this is the current trend. You've seen this picture a lot of time. We had the hottest shoes for a long time, especially for her, the so-called Terrace. We stretched that with a large number of initiatives also in lifestyle. Again, if you look at people's shoes, what people wear around the world, you will see that our market share among young people has risen dramatically. I'm looking around the hall. I can see some room for improvement here. We'll talk about that later. For you, in America, there is award for the best- In the U.S., there's an award for the best shoe, the Shoe of the Year. Pharrell won with Jellyfish. Pharrell won with the Jellyfish. Our design team in L.A. did the right thing, and we just have to build on that. Do even more along these lines. In the world of fashion, if you look back three to four years, sports fashion was boring and cotton in different colors with three stripes. Everyone did the same thing, black hoodies with a logo, and everything had to be discounted. What our teams did, they said, "We have to do new things. We have to do trendy things." Here we see denim, knitwear, different silhouettes and materials. Especially for her, we can generate incredibly good figures, especially with ASOS, Zalando, Modivo in the digital area because they can offer more than a brick-and-mortar store, obviously. This is the trend, and we're doing extremely well here. Next, accessories. Same thing. They're selling well if you have a hot brand and the right products in the market. We have a super creative team here. Super successful over the past 18 months. Now, if I add up 25- Summing up the year 2025, not everything was great, and I'm sure there's gonna be criticism later on. The brand moved into the direction that we intended, as did the financial performance, and we improved our operating model. It's not yet perfect, but if you ask me, 2025 confirmed that we are on the right track. Harm is going to underlie this with figures. I'll be back with a little more blah for you. Thank you, Björn. Good morning all together here in Fürth. Good morning to all shareholders, also those who are joining us online. Well, first of all, I'd like to say I'm extremely proud to have been around for 28 years, and this has been a historic moment, S/4HANA. Chapeau. However, I'd also like to start off by thanking our 60,000 employees who've made this success possible. Everything I'm presenting now, including my work, well, they help us with it. This is a success which is reflected in our figures, so thank you very much to all of our employees. Let's get started. As Björn said, I'm going to start with net sales. As you can see, 13% currency neutral. The figures are a bit complex. 10% currency neutral without Yeezy. Nominally, at the end of the day, you have some 5% because the euro is now stronger than other currencies, for example, the US dollar or the Japanese yen or the won or the peso and so on and so forth. I thought I'm going to explain in more detail what we've actually done with the adidas brand. As you can see, over the different quarters, we've grown by 17%, 11%, so 13% overall. If you look at this in absolute terms, this is really a great success story. With EUR 900 million, EUR 600 million in the different quarters. From an operating view, we've grown by EUR 2.8 billion in 2025. This is a great figure. Some talk about other brands which are emerging and talk about the growth of other brands, which might be successful as well, but who are not seeing the same growth that we're seeing. These EUR 2.8 billion, if you look at it closer, we also have the EUR 700 million, which we had to compensate with Yeezy, which we had in the past and which weren't there in 2025 and which we won't see in 2026. FX, EUR 1 billion, which very often is downplayed. This is a headwind that we've experienced in 2025 and which we're also going to see in 2026 by EUR 1 billion. In the report, we only have the growth, which you can see here. As I said, from an operating viewpoint, this is EUR 2.8 billion for our teams. Gross margin, Björn said, very healthy, 51.6% or 80 basis points. This is very important because this is the most important KPI that we have as a company. First of all, this is only possible if you have a strong brand and simultaneously if you have strong inventory levels. I'm going to talk about this in more detail later on. This is only possible with strong markets and good products. What helps us with net sales is that we keep investing, be it, Bayern Munich or Olympique Lyonnais or Arsenal. We keep investing in the brand and as you can see, we keep investing in the brand Are not complacent with the result we're seeing, because not only the next quarter, but also the next years is going to see a strong result, strong growth. We keep investing in the brand. Discipline is also important because two difficult years lie behind us, and we want to keep growing so that we keep being profitable for you, our shareholders. Minus 4%, as you can see in the overhead expenses. These are infrastructure costs, personnel costs. This is depreciation. Here we are very disciplined and have made great strides over the course of 2025. This leads to a very good operating profit of EUR 2.056 billion, or if you look at the growth, +54%. This too shows it very clearly, black on white or blue on black. In this case, this is a very good result. Let's break it down further. We've more financial expenses, so these are net financial expenses, interest we pay or interest income of EUR 236 million, billion or more. We also have higher taxes we had to pay. Here we also saw some improvement with a 24%, and this led to the result we're seeing here. EUR 1.337 billion, which is also important for the proposed dividend, which I'm going to present to you later. This leads to a result per share of 4.9, and which is a growth of 67%. This is what our shareholders are going to see. This is a great development over the course of 2025. Now I'm going to talk you through the balance sheet. Inventories have increased 17%, nominally speaking. Why is that? We've seen that earlier. We have more products in our inventory for the World Cup. This is available for this important event. This is jerseys and balls which we have in the relevant countries, so we can sell them there. Our logistics processes have been managed in a way that the products arrived early on. This is also part of these results. If you look at this over the year, we started with EUR 6 billion, and with the figures I've just presented, with EUR 5.8 billion, this is a very good inventory level. If you break this down further, 28% of this are being shipped because primarily we produce in Asia or Latin America. This is why we ship a lot of products. These are products in transit, and this is 28%. We've got 65% of the products which are planned for coming seasons, for example, also for the World Cup. There are only 7% of products which are in the warehouses from previous seasons and which we sell, for example, with our factory sales. This is a great mix which enables us to reach a good gross margin. Of course, these inventory levels, you've seen the quarters we've grown by 14% over the first quarter. This wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't invested in order to enable growth. We've got our accounts receivables, so these are receivables vis-a-vis our customers. Here we've grown because our customers grow as well with accounts payable. These are first of all, payables vis-a-vis our, suppliers who produce our products. This has been pretty much neutral. This means that in the operating working capital, we've grown by 29% or 41%, currency neutral. This is because, as I just said, the increase in inventory levels, as you can see up here, if you look at the absolute figures, you can see that inventory levels have also led to an increase of the operating working capital. We've also invested less than in 2024. This shouldn't make you nervous. I'm going to explain this in greater detail. First of all, we've invested in our own retail. These are shops in shops, also in, wholesale and also renovating retail shops. If you look at the technology, we've also invested into our digital infrastructure, S/4HANA, for example. It's also about the consumer. This is not also about shop to shop, but also about eCom. We kept investing in that as well. As you can see, logistics doesn't really make up a large part because we've always said we have an infrastructure, not only technology. We've got a retail infrastructure, we've got a warehouse infrastructure, and all of that allows us to become a EUR 30 billion company over the next few years. We are not saving here, but we are acting in a very disciplined way, and this is why we keep investing. All of this leads to cash and cash equivalents, as you can see here. We've invested in inventories. The only thing that has gone down in cash and cash equivalents. This is a consequence of the operating activities which we have pursued and where we use our capital. This leads to the cash and cash equivalents going down. At the same time, our payables have been stable over the past few years, which is also important for our rating agencies. All of them, S&P Global and Moody's, have rated us with a strong rate, S&P with A and Moody's with A3. Both of them said the outlook is stable because they recognize that our turnaround, which we had announced a few years ago, is indeed working. We don't only have a strong P&L, but also a strong balance sheet. We're still in for very strong investment grades, and the outlook is stable as well. If you make great strides, you can also announce great dividends, and this is also what we're going to do today for the AGM. A dividend of EUR 2 is going to be increased to EUR 2.80. This means that about EUR 500 million are going to be paid out, which is a payout ratio of 36% or an increase of 40% year-over-year. I think this is only possible if you have a healthy company, and as I've just outlined, we are a healthy company. I hope that you are going to agree with this and that we're going to be able to pay out this dividend in due course. Also, a share buyback has been announced amounting to EUR 1 billion in Q1. We've already implemented half of it, so EUR 500 million worth of shares have been bought back. Of course, in due course, we will complete this in 2026 so that we reach EUR 1 billion. Looking back, we can say that in 2025, we've paid out EUR 357 million in dividend to you, our shareholders. In 2026, we want to pay out a dividend of EUR 500 million and a share buyback of EUR 1 billion, which amounts to EUR 1.5 billion, which we are going to pay out or which we are planning to pay out to you in 2026. I think this also goes to show that we are indeed on a good way when it comes to our turnaround. So much concerning financials. However, financial is only one part of the story. I'd also like to explain to you what we've done in the ESG area. 9% of carbon intensity has been reduced for our main suppliers, or 94% of our suppliers have moved away from coal and are using other energy sources. Sustainable materials is what we invested in. Sustainable polyester, 100% certified cotton. We've done a great deal with our teams. Also when it comes to human rights, we now have 100% tracking of high-risk issues with our main suppliers around the globe. Also, we've further digitalized. Our complaints management has been digitalized via apps, not only for the factories, but this also brings us closer to the workers so that we get the complaints seamlessly so that we can make sure that all employees around the world get our help, get our support, and that we are a good employer for them. Good financials. We're doing the right thing as a company, not only on a short-term, but also on a long-term basis. I would like to hand back to Björn, who is going to talk about the outlook and the midterm planning. Yeah. This is a rather long speech, but we only have a chance to talk to you once a year, please bear with us. Let's talk about the future. Like I said, we have this 4-year plan. We said we want to be a healthy but also a successful company. We need to go back. We saw 13% growth every year in an environment which wasn't all that easy. If you look at the growth rate, you will notice it was even larger because for the adidas brand, it was EUR 5.5 billion. There's some negative things. Yeezy, EUR 1.3 billion, we lost that business. Let's not forget that. Right? Because we are in the Euro area, we have currency translation effects of around EUR 2 billion. I know this is difficult or might be difficult to understand, but if you sell in different currencies and then translate that back into euros, you know, some currencies are weaker, some are stronger. There are currency translation effects. A profit is a profit, and we went from a break-even company to a healthy company with over 8% and over EUR 2 billion EBIT. Especially at this point in time and in this industry, this is a very good result. Also this, a little over EUR 2 billion, that has a negative impact. If you look at the base year, you will find that the actual improvement of adidas is EUR 2.3 billion. If you add everything together, you end up at EUR 3 billion. You have to deduct Yeezy. Currency effects with an impact on the margin, which is normally translated from USD in EUR. Last year, unfortunately, we lost EUR 100 million because of the tariffs imposed on us by the U.S. president. Actually, the performance of our people was even better, but there are some external factors. This might turn around at some point in time again, and this give us advantages. Next, this is really super important. This is a philosophy. I know that everyone agrees with this, but we want to be a global brand, a global adidas brand with a local mindset. What this means is that wherever consumers are, all of them are equally important. For me, as a Norwegian, this is difficult to say, but our sales in Germany is only 6% of our total sales. What do we have to do in Japan, Mexico, in China? Thinking about Germany only will not get us to where we want to be. When we talk about our business, we talk about performance, sport, and lifestyle. Actually, there are four areas. It's sport, where people buy our articles to do sport, and there's a new area which might be important for you. It is important for me, and that is comfort. Many people buy sporting goods articles because, you know, these shoes are the most comfortable shoes there are. If you go to Arizona or Florida, everyone is wearing sneakers, but none of them are actually runners or running. If you think about how uncomfortable normal shoes are and how comfortable our shoes are, that's important. Comfort is not sexy, it's not young, but that's a mistake. Lifestyle fashion, all of us want to wear lifestyle to be accepted, and fashion is what drives the brand forwards. There are some things that I could never wear, but this still important for our image. Actually, there are four segments. This is actually the most important slide that I can show you. Everything we do must hit our consumers and our athletes. If we do things that consumers and athletes are never going to see, that's gonna be a waste of time. That's important to bear in mind. No one in the world knows or has all the solutions. There are different markets, different sports, different cultures, and we have to talk to the retailers because there are retailers who are in touch with consumers on a daily basis. They actually might know more than we do. It's important to bear this in mind. Other people say, "No, no, we're going to take all the decisions. We know it all. We're doing the same thing around the world." This is bound to fail. If you look at the automotive industry, you know, there are different consumers. Not everyone wants to drive the same car around the world because the consumers in the United States, China, and Germany, they are different. In China, everyone is driving an electric car. How many of you are driving an electric car? There. Therefore, it's so important for the markets. John, who's responsible for the U.S. business or Flavia for Latin America, they have to be the ones making the decisions in the local markets because I can't sit in my ivory tower and tell them what to do. I can help them. We can develop innovations, products. How many products are going to be sold in those markets? How are they going to be activated? Those decisions need to be taken locally. Headquarters will always remain in Herzogenaurach. There are rumors that we're going to relocate the headquarters. That is nonsense. Our job is to support those in the local markets. We provide concepts, systems, innovations, we help the local people to win in their markets. Our job is not to tell them what to do because if you ask me, the world no longer works this way. We need the best people, not just in headquarters, but also in the local markets. That is so important because irrespective of what technology you have or artificial intelligence, we still depend on people. Our business is a people business. A good salesperson can sell a lot more than a bad salesperson. A good person in a sales point can double sales. A good sports marketing person who's in close touch with athletes will get a much better price than an arrogant marketing person. Let's never forget that. We cannot design and create all the products here in Herzogenaurach. We just don't know what kind of cricket shoe the Indians want, or the culture of basketball in L.A. or fashion in China. We don't know about these things, therefore, we created a network of creative designers and product people, and they make their own collections. You will see such maps not just in our industry. You will also see that in the automotive industry. Other global brands are doing the same thing. They all want to win globally, and this is the approach to do that. Yes, of course, there are concepts that can be sold globally. In football, especially shoes, the collections are the same basically around the world. When it comes to replicas, not every country is selling the same things. The biggest World Cup country is not Germany, it's Mexico, and the largest market for replicas is also Mexico. They are crazy about this because they are now the home of the World Cup. Even in the United States, we sell more Mexican jerseys than American ones. That much on the U.S. market. This might be repetitive, but it's important to bear this in mind. We also have to invest in sports that are not necessarily commercial here, but they're important if you want to win in these local markets. We also make products for sports that are not even commercial. Take rowing, for example. You don't even see the shoes of the rowers because they're hidden in the boats, right? We're offering these products nevertheless because we worked with these athletes, and they also run, and they train, and I think, working with them as well would very much be in the interest of adidas. In the world of fashion, there are different people who are important for different consumers. Later on, we'll be going to hear from the boss of China. You can see a Chinese jacket in the top right-hand corner. This is Chinese culture, but now Chinese culture is spreading around the world. If we are creative around the world and we're making things transparent, you can see and you will see what works in which market, and the same goes for activations. It's not true that global campaigns are always better. Yes, we do global campaigns, and some of them are sensational. Local activations in the Middle East, in Japan, Korea, or even Oslo, those activations must be local. This is our philosophy. adidas has a 76-year history. We have the ambition to be the number 1 sports brand everywhere. We're not going to achieve that goal. That would be a utopia. The local people should at least say, "I want to be the number 1 in the market, and to do that, I have to do this or that." There's only 1 market where we can say we're not gonna be the number 1. That's the U.S., because Nike is three and a half times as large as we are. In a minute, John is going to tell us what we do in the U.S. You can see an overview of the markets, in 4 out of 6, we rank number 2. We're winning market share in those markets, in Latin America, we are the number 1 in emerging markets. That's 72 countries. We're also number 1. You can also see this in the financials for 2026. 2026 didn't get off to a good start if you think about what's happening around the world. The conflict in the Middle East, no solution in Ukraine, tariffs, et cetera. In Q1, we grew by 14%, so the momentum we saw in 2025 continues, as does profitability. In Q1, our operating profit was EUR 705 million, up EUR 100 million on a year earlier. This is a result of 10%. The gross margin, however, dropped by 100 basis points, not because we grant larger discounts. Organically, it was even 150 basis points up. There were currency effects and those freaking tariffs. That means that we have to give up some of our gross margin. It makes us work in a disciplined way. We were able to deliver this result. Where is this growth happening in 2026? Double-digit growth across the board, except Europe. Why is that so? Two reasons. Europe is not necessarily a growth market. The sentiment among retailers is not necessarily good. Our market share is very high anyway. Therefore, we have to be careful in Europe. We mustn't sell too many products because at the end of the day, we might have to grant discounts. Similar position in the U.S., our market share is very low there, so we expect to grow there. In the other regions, no problem. I'm standing here, I'm talking, probably you don't believe what I say, therefore I decided. Normally you don't do that at an AGM. Here you have pictures of John from the U.S., Flavia from Latin America, and Adrian from China. Please give them a huge round of applause because all three of them are doing an excellent job, and now they're joining us here on stage. Now this might be a little difficult. You don't have to be able to speak German to work for us at adidas, so we're going to switch into English. Hopefully, you're going to get the translation. If not, we'll find a solution. Good. It's an honor to be here. Honor to be here. Great. Flavia? Excited. Yeah. Adrian? My pleasure to be here. I'll start with John because you are, what should I say? The big veteran. You've worked for all the brands that I can mention, huh? Pretty much. Adidas- I'm out of places. Where did you work? I was at Nike, adidas, and then we were together at Puma. Shit happens. Tell me, if I look at your numbers, America, we know Nike is huge. You're growing double digit and your competitor, we call it, is not growing anymore. Explain me a little bit why? Yeah, I mean, there's really 3 key focus areas that we've put our emphasis on, you know, and you've spoke a little bit about it today. Running from a performance and lifestyle perspective is incredibly important. Basketball, which you have to win in North America, the U.S. in particular, if you're gonna win. Last but certainly not least, what we call field sports or U.S. sports, and that's baseball, your favorite sport, softball, soccer, and then probably most importantly, American football. We've really focused on those 3 areas as we work to continue to accelerate the business. Nike still being 3.5 bigger than you must be very frustrating. No, it's not frustrating. It's motivating. Whoa. Good. That was not scripted because he contradicted me, and normally he's not allowed to do that. I mean, both equally important. I mean, soccer with the World Cup coming this year. You know, if we're gonna be competitive with Nike in North America, the battleground is American football. I mean, soccer, you know, will still play a role, and we are partners with the MLS, but the battleground is American football. Nike controls the NFL license, so we've invested in colleges and, you know, this past January, we had both Indiana and the University of Miami play in the national championship game, which is like a four-hour adidas commercial. We were excited about that. Inside of that game, Fernando Mendoza, who was the Heisman Trophy winner and also an adidas NIL athlete, was a participant, and he won the Heisman Trophy, and this is the second year in a row that the adidas brand has had an athlete win the Heisman Trophy. I don't know if you know that, but in the U.S., you sponsor an entire league, so all the teams in the NFL play with Nike. You don't do contracts with individual teams, but with all of them as if the entire Bundesliga would play with adidas, that's difficult because when Nike has the league, it's difficult for us to get the foot in the door because you can only give shoes to individual players. Confusing. Confusing. Correct. Tell me, you've been with us again now for 2 years. Do you feel that you now have the resources to do what is right for your business? No, 100%. The board has supported us wholeheartedly, you know, as we continue to invest in those areas that I spoke about. I think it's important to talk about the investment in collegiate sports. You know, this past year, we were able to go and bring the University of Tennessee back to the adidas brand. They were with us in the 1990s, they left, we've brought them back. Adding Penn State. Both of those universities are top 10 revenue-generating licensees from a North American perspective. We're incredibly excited to have both of those teams in the fold. The collegiate area is an area that we're continuing to invest in, the brand has continued to support this investment. You know, when I graduated, I didn't want to go back to university. The Americans are very loyal to the universities. The entire sport is organized by high schools and colleges. The college players in the U.S. are 100,000 spectators, and you can sell merchandising. It's not only American football. No, no, it's not only football. I mean, it volleyball, you know, which is a huge collegiate activity for her. We also sponsor the Women's Professional League. Love volleyball. Soccer, obviously we have MLS, and we're incredibly excited to host the World Cup this year. Basketball, I spoke about the importance of that. Anthony Edwards. We just recently signed Kelsey Plum, a star from the WNBA. And then up on the screen, you can see NiJaree Canady from softball. She just won Pitcher of the Year and Player of the Year from Texas Tech University. We're excited to have access across sport in a very diverse portfolio, not just football, but many other sports that are important to us to win from a North American perspective. It's not only sports, it's also how do you connect to the American culture? Yeah. I mean, each of these areas, you know, you look at whether it's Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, or you think about what we had an interesting activation around the USA 94 jersey. I think it's in the middle of the page there. Yeah. Where we, the U.S. national team, which wears the other brand, had their first friendly. We took over the stadium in Atlanta. We had the American Outlaws, which is the official supporter of the U.S. national team, outfitted in USA 94 kits. We continue to focus on that. You know, our friend Timothée Chalamet, hopefully you had a chance to see the trailer that we just dropped, around the World Cup. You know, he's a avid basketball fan showing up courtside at the Knicks game in Sambas, and then obviously our friend, Miss Jenner. Again, I have to ask so they believe me, do you feel you have the resources to do what you need to be a cool sports brand in America? Yeah, 100%. This space moves fast, so we've continued to be agile, and again, the brand has supported that agility. You know, Timothée Chalamet is a great example of that. He's a recent, you know, member of the brand family. We'll continue to be agile and find new opportunities as people come and go. Great. China. Yes. We can see where you're from. Thank you. Look at your development. Everybody says China is difficult. Everybody says it's not growth. I watch your numbers. First of all, thank you very much for giving me a chance to share with all of you how adidas China is doing. I think, first of all, I need to say today, you cannot compete in China without being local, and the Chinese consumer are fundamentally different. They are very well informed, digital native, and they do not just want to buy what is popular in other market like Europe or America. They have their own preference and desire. As an international brand, we have to have a local mindset, and we need to be structurally local. With the full empowerment and autonomy from Bjørn and the board, we build up a end-to-end China for China operating model. What does it mean? We design and create in China. Today, 65% of our products designed locally for the Chinese, and 95% sourced locally. It give us speed, cultural relevance, and also the cost advantage, and this critical important, particularly in a market with the consumer needs fast-changing and highly competitive, because we don't have just the international players, but also a lot of local brands. It's cool to see that a competitor, which I won't say the name, has probably not changed their model. I think the difference is, we are a global brand but with a local mindset and local operating model. It really makes us the difference. We listen to the consumers to understand what they need. We have a creation center in Shanghai, with local Chinese for the designer. They follow and study what the consumer posts in the social media like Xiaohongshu or the TikTok, Douyin, they pick up the trend before they explore, right? This becomes the consumer insight and the idea for us to create a product to fulfill their need. Behind us now, this is a social feed that I have on my phone, and there is quite some people around the world, that is looking to China and saying that you look fresher, and better than other parts of the world. This Chinese jacket is originally designed for Chinese to wear during the Chinese New Year. It has a Mandarin collar with the frog button to connect the past and the presence, the east and the west, and also with some heritage feel. It sold out immediately. Thanks for our very agile supply chain network, we can read and react in weeks, not months, to maximize our demand. Also, it start to show up on the social media globally. It viral globally. I see the influencers in Paris, New York, London, or even Tokyo, all of them are wearing it. It become a global phenomenon. Didn't you buy some? You bought 12,000 jackets. Yeah, we had 12,000 sell out in matter of, you know, 30 minutes over the, on Friday. 27 minutes, he sold out 12,000 jackets from China. I hope you ordered some more. We do have. Thank you, Adrian. We appreciate it. First time I hear American thank you China. The creativity doesn't stop there. You're very creative with your team. Yes, I can share another example, the pet collections. Our team found, noticed the young Chinese consumer treat their pets like their family members. They're dressing them out, taking them out, and also sharing photos in their social. We try to design some matching outfits for the pet and the owner. It's a consumer insight, but it became a product. Again, it sold out immediately and then go viral globally. Before you get angry, this is done with pet doctors, right? Yes. All the dogs you see in our advertising are dogs from our own employees. We haven't done anything wrong. Yes. It's not only fashion, it's also sports. I mean, when adidas was very successful some years ago, it was very lifestyle driven and commodity driven, but now the sports is booming in your country. As you know, sport is the growth engine in China. It's in the agenda of the China government. The health awareness and also the sport participation are rising. If in China we want to be a leading sport brand, right, we need to anchor in sport. We support a lot of the national athletes like Su Yiming, Pan Zhanle, and Wu Yanni. Of course, we also extend to the entire sport system. We work with the national associations. For example, the volleyball, the tennis, and the Chinese martial art, the Wushu. Also, we participate in a lot of sport events like the Beijing Marathon to the Jiangsu City Football League, which is the most popular, most influential grassroot football league in China with 22 billion viewerships online and more than 2.5 billion live spectator in the last season over 80 matches. I think this is important for you. We're not trying short term to milk the Chinese market, but we're going the hard way of also investing in all the sports, and we're building both international, of course line, but you also adopt to local price points because competition in China, when it gets to performance and lower price points is very, very heavy. It also, because of our current operating model, 95% of our products source locally. It give us not only speed, but also the cost advantage through the local production so that we can have the pricing power, but at the same time the protecting the margin. Again, just to explain it, since they can produce in China, that means they have a factory next door that saves them 6 to 8 weeks in transportation. Of course, the whole market in China are mono-branded. That means there's no Intersport or Foot Locker, but there are adidas stores that either belongs to us or franchise or to wholesalers, that mean that the whole space is filled by adidas product. It is an easier business model that needs different system and different tools. You're also using AI in a way that we cannot do because you're using AI both for forecasting and for designing, right? Nowadays, we apply AI tools in almost the entire business value chains. First of all, to grab the consumer insights to help us for the product design. We cut the production life cycle into weeks rather than months. Second, it also help us to do our sales planning and forecasting to improve our accuracy, which product will have a higher potential than what we order so that we can prepare to capture the potential demand. Also we leverage the AI tools with the local China company to support us for the internal selling tools like our product image for the trade meeting. It really help us to save a lot of cost, more than 50%. I think, again, not to say something negative about Europe, but the speed of using AI as a tool is much easier in China because all the data is available. You know regulation in Europe is a little bit more complicated. Great job. Then we come to the queen. Flavia is probably the most energetic person in the company, Brazilian. How do you explain your success? I love what I do. That's easy, right? Okay. In 2022, we decided to win the continent. We were brand number 1 in Peru and in Colombia, but not in the other markets. Nike was 7 points market share bigger than us, and they were increasing the gap. We needed to do something different. We just said to everyone, "Let's win the continent." We didn't say when. We just decided that we needed to grow faster than competition. We needed to do better. We needed to understand better the consumers. Basically, that's what we did. In 4 years we tripled the net sales in euros, not in pesos or reales, right? In euros. Now we are 9 points ahead of Nike. There are rumors that Nike's trying to sign you. I hope they're not right. It's not going to happen. Good. If you look at your region, I mean, there is many interesting, what should I say? Markets. How do you even approach this in the markets? Because they're different, and many of the markets have huge inflation. There are import restrictions. How do you manage this? It's a very complicated market, and I think that's what was holding us in the past. Every time I ask my team, they say, "Yes, but we have inflation. Yes, because we have devaluation. Yes, but economy, but politics." Actually, what hits us, hits everyone. You just need to do better than competition. Focus on what you can control, not on what you can't control. Sorry, I can't control the politicians and the economy, but I can control what we do. That's what we did. We focused on the consumers of each one of the markets. In 2022, we turned to be brand number 1 in Chile. 2023, after Argentina won the World Cup, we turned to be brand number 1 in Argentina, and now we have almost 40% of market share there. Probably right now we have 40. End of 2024, we ended Mexico as number one, and right now we're head-to-head with Nike in Brazil. Sometimes we're number one, sometimes they are. I think that right now we are. That's what we do. We look to every market, what needs to be done in each one of those countries. We empower the GMs, we empower the local team. to get things done, because global allows us to do it. That's quite important. We have been turning the things around. Right now, we have 29% of market share. You've done it the hard way too, although your speed is phenomenal. You haven't only sold lifestyle and commodities, you really invested in sports. Lifestyle is 50% of the market, okay? Lifestyles, trend comes and goes. Lifestyles, you will compete with Zara, you will compete with H&M. We are a sports brand. Sports needs to be the foundation of everything we do. We decide to focus first and foremost in football. Why? Latin America is all about football. We love football, and adidas is all about football, so let's begin on there. We have all the federations except the Brazilian ones. We have the best clubs in Latin America. We have more than 50% of market share in football. The thing on football is you don't really play football all the time, right? You need 22 people to play football. We wanted to go for a sport that you can do every day, that anyone can do. If you walk, you can run. We went after running. We went sponsoring the marathons, the most important marathons. We began talking to the communities. We created hubs for the communities in the best park in Mexico City. We now are sponsoring the best park, the best spot in São Paulo, Ibirapuera Park, to be where the runners are. We really listen to them, now we have 30% of market share in running. We went after training. Why did we go after training? Because she wasn't training, and we needed her. A man, they can do whatever with 1 shorts and 2 tees. The girl is not, right? We need the shorts, we need the tees, we need the tops, we need the tights, we need the jackets, and we need it in every single color, right? We mix and match. When we bring her in, she buys for herself, but she buys for him, and she buys for the kids. We needed to get women's in our stores then, and we went for training, and now we have 25% of market share in training. Unbelievable. When you see these people and you listen to being global with a local mindset, I hope you understand what we're saying. They're very, very different, all very difficult to manage, but they're very good in their markets. I think this is what we're trying to tell you, that when you see the energy and you see the knowledge, we need to have the best people in the market, not only in headquarter. It's not like we always do different things. The way you have worked together on World Cup, using the World Cup as a global event, that's where you all come together, right? Yeah. No, I mean, Flavia and I have been connected on this, you know, for the last couple of years, and I think how we show up in Mexico or how we show up in Los Angeles or how we show up in New York or even Kansas City, the opportunity for us to put the brand front and center at this moment is gonna be really epic for us. I mean, like I said, to be redundant, but if you haven't watched that trailer and you don't get goosebumps when you watch that, shame on you. It's coming later. Believe it or not, Mexico jersey is the most sold jersey that we have. The reason is because we sell it in Mexico, but we also sell it in North America. Who- There's a lot of Latinos in North America Who gets the sale of you in the U.S., you or him? Me. I pay for the contract but he gets the sales, right? Just to make it very clear, I'm paying for the contract. We arm wrestle over that. That's good. China is never qualifying. How important is it? I feel sorry about that. China still hasn't got a chance to go to the World Cup, even when they extend to 48 teams, right? Still, football is our brand DNA and our passions is there. Through the World Cup, we also have a very big mega brand activations on our jersey launch, and we will have more to come in the next 2 months before we kick off the World Cup. Final question, who will win? I'm gonna go with Spain. Oh. I hope it's Argentina. You're Brazilian. Yeah, I like more adidas than the Brazilian federation. Okay. I support Argentina, but I believe Spain have a higher chance. Okay. Germany? Uh- Maybe. Okay. With that comment, great applause. Thanks for having you. Well done. Great. I hope you see the energy and the quality because this is key for us. That's why we also say we feel You Got This. When we try to describe why we feel good, it's basically these six things. If you go around it again, the most important thing is actually our people. It is the same thing again, is that with all technologies and all the history, if we don't have the right people, it's not going to work. You have to remember, as an organization, we have 65,000 employees, and indirectly, we have more than 1 million people that only works for our product in production, retail, and with all of our partners. Huh? Oh, shit. You understood that, didn't you? We have 180 nationalities globally, and I believe 120 in Herzog, approximately. This is a melting pot of cultures, of languages, you name it, and it's great to have, but it's also difficult because, you know, there are so many differences. What's really super is that we have more women than men. There are some people sitting down there. 25 years ago, there were only men in Herzo, and 99% of them were Germans, right? There's been a development in this industry in the last 30 years, and that's incredible. Not just because people say you have to do that. It's the right thing to do. Our customers are important. Creativity, talents among females, they are even more talented than men, and you can see that here. In leadership, we don't stand at 50%, but at approximately 40%. 50-50 cannot be a target. Maybe there will be 52% women leaders and only 48% men. It's important that we have equal opportunities for everyone. In some functions, it takes a little longer because we started rather late. In many other functions, however, women are in the majority. If you see this super picture here, this is Herzo. This is the best place to work with the best infrastructure that I've ever seen. Here you can see the age structure and the distribution between women and men. This is cool. I'm this 1% on the right-hand side here, along with Harm. The industry is young, but you need some old hands, right? To make sure that you don't lose the basis. Harm and I, we're doing quite well with all these young people. Through sport, we can change lives. This is more than just a motto. It's a fact. How boring would life be without sports, without the Bundesliga on the weekend, without the targets that we set ourselves in sport? We are a good company, and we can do a lot of things. 2 years ago, we said that we created a foundation to support projects. The foundation spends around EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million per year to support projects, sports projects around the world with and for people who have difficult lives. The foundation is something that our own people did. Here we can see how our own people think. This is not because the board says, "This is what we're going to do." This was an initiative taken by our people. This is not something you market and try to make money. This is something that we did because the athletes that we just saw need special products. They are very proud. We are proud, and there's gonna be more of that going forward. Last week on campus, we had the Paralympic team from Milano, Cortina. Almost every month, Special Olympics athletes come to us, it's great to see what you can do for people who have certain problems, different problems than you might have. It's a super innovation. Products are, of course, important, I'm coming to the first quarter. Lifestyle grew by only 6%. There's a balance between Originals and sportswear, more or less, give or take. Same picture here. Lifestyle products, especially for women, lots of innovations doing extremely well. Also lots of discounts on the market, you have to be very careful what novelties you bring onto the market through retailers and what you do in your own channels. There are more and more innovations, models such as the Samba are going to be available with new silhouettes, new materials. For instance, the Samba Jane up there, like a ballerina or other silhouettes and materials that we didn't do before. We're talking about great speed here. Apparel is going through the roof. Like I said, our brand is hot. The collections are fresh, and we are different from our competitors. Another thing is important: collaborations. The people we work with, like celebrities, designers, they're extremely important for our consumers. This could be ASOS or a singer or a social media celebrity. Some of these things are global, but lots of other things are extremely local. There's this old history. You can't see 100 trends in footwear all the time. Maybe there are five or six, and then you need takedowns. When you go to Deichmann, you will see that for 50, 60 EUR, you can buy the same trends as for 120 EUR in Foot Locker. Different shoes, different price points. The trends are the same. I know that some people say, "Well, this is dangerous. You're commercializing," but you can't always sell at the top of the range. It just doesn't work that way. The same is true for textiles, apparel. Denim, for instance, is a material that only used to be at the top of the range, very small niche, and we opened that. Same with originals and classics, the three stripes, straight down because consumers, no matter how much money they have, they want to have the same thing, and we're offering it in different distribution channels and also in advertising. What did Uli Hoeneß says? Thomas Müller, he talks more than he's actually playing. This is part of the football campaign in the top right-hand corner. He also does a campaign for Deichmann, the shoe retailer. This is exactly what you need to do. You have to talk to consumers where they are with what you have. Now 6% growth in lifestyle, 29% growth in performance. We're selling more and more sports items, and some people said, "Well, this is only lifestyle." Others are going to criticize us because we're selling not enough lifestyle. It's always that way. Super growth across all sports with the exception of basketball. This is the first quarter, mind you, that's not really dangerous, it's not good enough either. Football, running and training, the most important categories, incredible growth there. You have to go back to the products. People used to say adidas doesn't have any innovations, the products are not good enough. Look at this. In each and every category, we've got leading products. Not because we did this overnight. The innovation pipeline, our pipeline was always strong. We just have to bring them on the markets. Sometimes it doesn't work, but innovation means that you have to take risk. Same is true for sports apparel. Like Sebastian Vettel, when he did the sub-two, he ran this in a Climacool. The structure of this apparel is completely different. Yomif ran in a track suit. Textiles apparel is more difficult in terms of innovations, but in each sport, we are the leading brand when it comes to innovations. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here, footwear. Be it the lightest football shoe or the lightest running shoe with carbon or printed shoes. You can buy a printed football shoe from adidas. It's not better than the others, but it's cooler. We have to launch those technologies and develop them further because this is the future. Same is true for textile. I don't know if you know Kimi or George from Formula One. They use Climacool for the races because, you know, in a Formula One car, the temperature can go up to 60 degrees, 80 degrees, these textiles bring down the temperature, no one is going to buy that. People say, "You're not going to make any money on that." Yes, that might be true, but this is the innovation foundation for the future. This brings me on to the somewhat boring comfort segment. I am 100% certain that the entire world will be looking for comfortable products. Look at HOKA, On, also Skechers. Their business is built on comfort. We used to have Boost, the best midsole, the best foam, but it was too heavy. The brief was create a lighter Boost, and this is where Hyperboost comes in. Many people are wearing these shoes during the haul. This is the softest, lightest midsole you can imagine. We're using that in running, and then we're going to move it over to lifestyle. Don't forget, Yeezy shoes that look like running shoes used Boost material. This was fashionable and comfortable. Most people don't run, they walk. No one is talking about this, but this is a huge market because, you know, people don't run. It hurts. It's strenuous. Yes, they do walk. We're going to create a category for young and older people around the world named walking for functional, rather expensive, and low price products because we believe that this is a huge market. This brings me on to the athletes. In terms of personalities and performance, if you look at this, we've got the best people on board. I wouldn't want to swap with anyone. Take these teams and federations. We've got more than enough. Yes, we did lose the DFB, the German Football Association, but we didn't want to pay the price. Let's see how happy they're going to be with a U.S. partner. Look at the Premier League. We've got 4 of the 5 top teams. Champions League, unfortunately, Bayern is not there, but there's Arsenal in the men's final and Olympique Lyonnais in the women's final. 14 teams in the World Cup and in the Bundesliga, probably 6 teams next year. There was a time when we only had Bayern Munich not too long ago. Why am I saying that? Because people say we're not investing. That's not true. Visibility is extremely important for us, we signed the Bundesliga, so as of next year they're going to play with an adidas ball. We've also signed the league to market Bundesliga matches and also to provide media support. This brings me on to the topic of infrastructure. I believe we've got the best workplace. Around the world, no matter where you are, we want to offer safe and good workplaces for everyone. Here our global and local teams are doing an excellent job. Same is true for our stores. We open 150-200 stores per year. They must be good for our employees, but of course also good for our clients. Very important for us. Our stores are modern and up-to-date around the world. Distribution center, same thing. You can't move 1 billion pairs if you don't have the best distribution centers. We're going to switch from manual to automated processes, a huge task for our logistics team. At the very end, Scheinfeld, our local factory there. Let me say this, I'm sure this is going to cause trouble. A couple years ago, Peter was here because of kangaroos where we stopped using kangaroo leather. The volume of Copa Mundial and World Cup is only one-third now, so actually it would be sensible to close this factory. In Australia, more kangaroos are killed than before. There is no relationship here. Please bear this in mind. Our partners, great collaboration with our retailers. We have a super relationship with our digital partners. If you look for adidas around the world, you will see that results are very good, and we've got the best suppliers. This is from Vietnam two weeks ago. All our suppliers from Vietnam met for three days. This is incredibly important. Yes, sometimes there are problems. Yes, I know there are discussions. We have super partnerships. For most brands, contracts are going down, so many suppliers are afraid of adidas. The attitude, the mindset. Do we want to be on the winning side again? We used to say, "Impossible is Nothing." Now we say, "You Got This." This was a deliberate decision. It's important for us to believe in ourselves, not with stress and pressure. Our brand is 76 years old. We have an incredible history. We've got everything we need to win. We just have to do it. When it comes to winning, the World Cup is obviously incredibly important. It's an incredible sports event, and it's also a cultural event that will be watched around the world. Like I said, we're going to have 14 teams with excellent jerseys. We'll have 1/3 of the players are going to wear our shoes. Of course, each and every match will be played with an adidas ball. Look at the fans and the collections, be it lifestyle or fan gear or whatever. We are going to be very, very visible at the World Cup. I'm very proud of the brand campaign for the World Cup. Later on, you're going to see it in social media. It's five to six minutes, this is a teaser that went live yesterday. More to come. You can imagine that our marketing spend in Q2 is going to be quite high. We're going to be very visible. I, for one, do get goosebumps when I see this. Now, just to wind up, and this is not gonna be an excuse, but the environment is not easy, yeah. Our largest competitor is making less money than we do, even though they sell more. The world is a rather volatile place. We have to be fast and agile. If you see the development from 25 to 26, we want to grow by EUR 2 billion. We can do that. That's organic growth. We are based in Europe, so currency effects are going to take away about 50%. Please bear this in mind. If you look at the operating margin, same thing. Actually, we have EUR 650 million in profit, there are tariffs from our friends across the Atlantic, currency effects. This is pure mathematics. These are the facts of life. This is going to change at some point in time. You probably know that some of the tariffs are no longer legal. That's actually a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Our tariffs account for around EUR 300 million, we have the right to an investment. This is not yet set in stone. I'm checking with Harm. It's rather likely that this is what's going to happen. Harm is nodding, this is a rather strong statement for Harm. The guidance for the year remains unchanged. We still believe that we can achieve high single-digit growth, approximately EUR 2.3 billion in operating profits. Last year, there were three issues that might be relevant. The tax thing that happened in December of 2024, nothing has happened so far. We're not sending the goods through Germany anymore. We send them via the Netherlands because there are different interpretations of tax law. Germany and the Czech Republic have one interpretation, and 25 other countries have a different interpretation. We've made the necessary provisions, so we're not worried about the financials here, but there's nothing to write home about here. There's the local railway crane. We've come to an agreement. The train is not going to run through the campus. The Bavarian prime minister was actually very helpful here, and we have found a solution that everyone is happy with. There are the Herzo changes. Our voluntary leaver program, we've eliminated 500 roles, and voluntary means that people left on a voluntary basis with a nice financial package. I know this is not always a nice thing, but it's important for us to make enough money so that we can treat our people fairly. We didn't cut these 500 roles as a cost-cutting exercise, but because there were too many layers. I'm not talking about individual people here. It's not about them as individuals. It's about the whole thing, the big picture. Our friend Michelle has extended her contract. She's a strong woman with a big heart. She's been extremely influential for the company, instrumental in the company over the past few years. I'm also still there. Now this is going to be a bit difficult. Mathias, he was the Chairman of the Supervisory Board since 2019. If you look at the period between 2019 and now and the things that have happened, I think you started and then you were hit by COVID, right? There was this war, when the U.S. tariffs and another war. I can only say I pay my respects. People often talk about overboarding, but the important thing for us to have these people on board when we need them. I pay my respects. Harm, I think you have even more respect because you've known Mathias, you've known him even longer than I do. Well, thank you very much, Thomas. I'm the person who has worked with you for the longest period of time. Both of us are runners. We've had some good years and some, let's call them exciting years. I'd like to say thank you by giving you the original Sub2 marathon shoes. No pressure. We are not spring chickens anymore, but we can make Sub3, right? Well, thank you, Björn and Harm, for those kind words. I've been a member of the supervisory board since 2019. Since 2020, I've been its chairman, it's been an interesting time. It started good in 2019, good year. 2020, we were hit by COVID. We all know what COVID did to companies in general. To all of us, big challenges. This challenge was followed by other challenges. Think of Russia, think of Kanye West, think of the U.S. tariffs, the many management changes, luckily, also the CEO change. This was probably the best thing I could do for adidas, for, you know, to find you just around the corner here in Herzogenaurach. You are doing an excellent job. Have been doing that over the next few years. If you look at the past few years, the company is now almost no longer recognizable in a positive sense anymore. I'm grateful that I could be a small part of this history. I did the best that I could. I supported you. I had your back along with the Supervisory Board. I think this is my job. I was always there in a crisis, I believe. Now I'm going to hand over to the Designated Chairman, Nassef Sawiris. I'm going to comment on that in a minute. The company is well-positioned, and I'm leaving it with a good feeling. Thank you also to you, our shareholders, for your support and your interest in the company and the activities of the supervisory board. One last point. Those shoes, over the past 3 years, I ran 8 marathons, even mountain marathons. I can't do Sub2 here, not even with those shoes, but I'm sure that they're going to make me a lot faster. I'm excited about these. This is a great souvenir of my time at adidas, and I'm certainly going to use them to run my next stretches. If you don't want to keep them, you can sell them. People are going to give you as much as EUR 5,000. Nassef is going to be the next chairman. He's a great personality, a major shareholder, a super personality. He's always available when we need him. If I may say so, it might not always look that way, but collaboration with the supervisory board, be it the independent members or from the trade union or our own employee representatives, they're always there when we need them. I don't know if you understand it, but you know, in my role as CEO, I'm not the important person, but, you know, what we need is that everyone is available when we're hit by a crisis, this is what's happening. I'm very grateful for that. Everyone who is sitting here on stage has an adidas heart. Thanks to everyone on behalf of the executive board. Ian Gallienne is up for re-election. Hopefully, you're going to vote for him. Same also applies to Mathias Döpfner, the new member. He's a very experienced personality, and I am sure he's going to add a lot to the supervisory board. Just to wind up, I have talked about 2026, we also have to talk about 2027, 2028. There shouldn't be any surprises. We want to do what we're already doing. There are processes, systems, organizations. We want to develop them further because we're not there yet. We have the right attitude, there's still room for improvement. AI is just around the corner, I am sure next year we're going to talk about AI even more. People are the most important thing, yes, AI is going to be part of our lives. That means we believe that we can grow by EUR 2 billion every year. This is a huge amount, but we believe that we can do this given our market share growth. This is also what Mathias' people are telling me. Part of this growth will be part of the margin. Of course, we hope that tariffs, currencies, and conflicts are going to boil down. At the very end, you know, I have to apologize here. Over the past, let's say, 12 months, the share price was not really what we expected. It didn't really reflect our performance. There are several reasons for that. We know that profitability in the entire industry is not really that high. Our sector is not really sexy. Many people believe that adidas cannot keep this up in this difficult environment, and then Nike is going to come back, and then adidas is going to have problems. Please, I hope that you believe that this is not what's going to happen. Some sectors are going up, investors are also coming back. Depending on how you see this, if you look at the entire phase, the picture doesn't look all this bad. Share price performance is also always dependent on what timeframe you look at. I apologize for speaking for such a long time, but we have this opportunity only once a year. Hopefully, you believe what we say. This gentleman behind us has given us an incredible gift. We can work for this brand. We're proud that we can do this. With that, thank you very much, and stay healthy. Thank you.