Puma off profits pace

The Euro 2012 football tournament and the prospect of star sprinter Usain Bolt striking gold at the Olympics have not been able to prevent Puma from issuing a profit warning.

The German footwear and sportswear company blamed a “slowdown of Puma’s business particularly in Europe” for sounding an alert that its net earnings for the first half of this year will be 13% below the same period in 2011. This is despite Puma boasting the Spanish football star Cesc Fabregas and Bolt as poster boys for its footwear.

While its sales increased by 8.8% in the first half, Puma said it had “decided to speed up, as well as significantly expand, the scope of the company’s transformation programme in order to streamline the cost bases and increase efficiencies in terms of organisation, processes and systems”.

Puma, which has a higher exposure to western Europe than Adidas and Nike, now believes full-year sales will be up between 3% and 7%, having earlier predicted a rise of nearly 10%.