China Sportswear: Nike‘s 4QFY26 narratives: Positive for Topsports, neutral to positive for Anta and Li Ning

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China Sportswear: Nike‘s 4QFY26 narratives: Positive for Topsports, neutral to positive for Anta and Li Ning

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01 Jul 2026 10:20:05 ET │ 12 pages

China Sportswear

Nike’s 4QFY26 narratives: Positive for Topsports, neutral to positive for

Anta and Li Ning

CITI’S TAKE

Per mgmt on the 4QFY26 call, Nike highlighted its commitment to its

China retail partners (e.g., Topsports) in “resetting” its China business.

Despite a lack of detail on its future distribution strategy, Nike mgmt

indicated no plans to fully terminate China retailers’ online distributorship Xiaopo Wei, CFAAC

(which is a combination of Scenarios 2 and 3 in Citi’s Jun 28 note, China +852-2501-2472

Sportswear – Stock implications on three scenarios of Nike China’s online xiaopo.wei@citi.com

strategy). Apart from the possible negative fallout (from aggressively Vincent Young

pushing online DTC in China), in our view Nike also needs retail partners’ +852-2501-2738

help in offline channels amid China’s challenging retail environment (see vincent.young@citi.com

Citi’s Anta and Li Ning 2Q26E preview below). We see positive implications

for Topsports (Buy) and neutral to positive implications for Anta (Buy) and

Li Ning (Buy).

Implication on China sportswear stocks — Emphasizing commitment to China retail

partners, Nike seems to rule out the possibility of fully terminating Topsports’ online

distributorship (which the market has bearishly priced in). We see positive

implications for Topsports given a better-than-expected business outlook. As Nike

plans to enhance its premium position in China (rather than trading down to the

middle-upper and mid-end segments), Chinese brands of Anta and Li Ning should

benefit from reduced competition from Nike in the future. Nevertheless, given no