Kontoor Brands Portfolio At An Inflection Point; Initiate Overweight w/ $90 Price Target

Research evidence excerpt

Kontoor Brands Portfolio At An Inflection Point; Initiate Overweight w/ $90 Price Target

Matthew R. Boss, CPA AC North America Equity Research

(1-212) 622-2630 08 June 2026 J P M O R G A N

matthew.boss@jpmorgan.com

Risks to Rating & Price Target

Discretionary Consumer Spending Risk

Kontoor’s merchandise mix is primarily discretionary goods, which reach a variety of

household income and age demographics. Therefore, Kontoor’s portfolio is susceptible

to macroeconomic risk such as a slowdown in consumer spending, decline in consumer

confidence, and high levels of unemployment, which could pressure consumers’ ability

to spend on discretionary merchandise and therefore weigh on revenue growth and

margins.

Category Expansion

The company sees Women’s as a meaningful category expansion opportunity for the

Wrangler brand, which could bring increased “fashion” risk to the brand should product

expansion extend beyond the core functional/western nature of the existing assortment.

This could introduce greater markdown risk & negatively impact our gross margin

forecasts.

Low Brand Awareness

With brand awareness in the low-single-digits in the US across Helly Hansen, revenues

for the brand are dependent in part on the success of investments to top of funnel

marketing and an expansion into new categories outside of core Ski/Sail. If new

category expansion and top of funnel marketing investments underperform expectations,

this could render our estimates too high.

Wholesale Partners

Sales from KTB’s ten largest customers accounted for 53% of total revenues in FY25,

with the #1 customer, Walmart, accounting for ~30% of revenues in FY25/24/23. If

large wholesale partners choose to reduce or discontinue inventory purchases, our sales

growth forecasts could prove too aggressive.

Sourcing