China sportswear: Sequentially weakening momentum in 2Q26 Operational improvement a key to defend market share amid sluggish sales and fierce competition

Research evidence excerpt

China sportswear: Sequentially weakening momentum in 2Q26 Operational improvement a key to defend market share amid sluggish sales and fierce competition

Global Markets Research

China sportswear 23 July 2026

EQUITY: CONSUMER RELATED

Sequentially weakening momentum in 2Q26 Research Analysts

China Consumer Related

Operational improvement a key to defend market share Jizhou Dong, CFA - NIHK

amid sluggish sales and fierce competition jizhou.dong@nomura.com

+852 2252 1554

2Q26 sector’s sales losing momentum Summer Qian - NIHK

Major domestic sportswear companies have lost sales momentum in 2Q26 after summer.qian@nomura.com

experiencing solid sales growth in 1Q26 (Fig. 1 ); brands such as Li Ning (2331 HK, +852 2252 6220

Neutral) and Xtep (1368 HK, Neutral) started to see y-y sales declines in 2Q26, while

brands such as ANTA core and FILA (both owned by ANTA, 2020 HK, Buy) remained on

positive sales growth tracks (sales growing by a low-single-digit percentage, or LSD%, for

both brands, but also slowed down meaningfully from the brands’ 1Q26 sales numbers).

We believe major headwinds on sportswear companies’ 2Q26 sales momentum included

increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers (thus higher demand for both value and

functions of the products), lack of significant product innovation/differentiation, fierce

competition, as well as unfavorable weather conditions in 2Q26 (mainly impacting offline

sales). Also in 2Q26, major domestic players have seen relatively deeper discount levels

with their efforts to accelerate sales, while their inventory levels have been maintained at

more or less healthy levels (Fig. 2 ), except for Xtep (inventory as of end-2Q26 at 4.5-5.0

months, worsening from 4.5 months as of end-1Q26).

Operational improvement a key to defend market share