Academy Sports Eyes Launches from Jordan and Converse After Mixed Q4
Academy Sports + Outdoors is expanding its Nike partnership and adding the Jordan brand into 145 stores as well as online.
The brand will begin to hit the sales floor at the end of April. But that isn’t the only newness that the retailer is bringing to the mix. The company also debuted the Converse brand in January. Also launching in stores shortly is the Osprey brand of backpacks.
“We’re expanding our partnerships with some other key brands that we’ve grown in the last few years, like Burlebo, Ariat in both boots and apparel, Birkenstock, Waggle golf polos and also Ninja,” Matt McCabe, Academy’s chief merchandising officer said in a telephone interview.
The executive said that the Jordan brand will include both apparel, footwear and sports equipment across men’s, women’s and kids. The Converse partnership will see footwear debut across men’s, women’s and kids.
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McCabe said the retailer is also working to increase its share of the hot running market, with Brooks, Asics and New Balance all key vendors — which appeal to its family audience.
According to the CMO, the retailer has two main customer cohorts, the outdoor enthusiasts and the active, young families. While the former tend to head to Academy to buy outdoor products, they also cross-shops throughout the store. The latter cohort is centered around moms and also team sports. “By the natural calendar of events that we have throughout the year, customers are coming in to buy baseball equipment and football equipment to build their soccer needs, and when they come in, they also tend to buy apparel and footwear as well,” McCabe said.
He said the company still intends to open between 160 to 180 new stores over the next five years. It opened 16 last year, but will increase that to between 20 to 25 new stores this year. “We’ll continue to see those numbers increase in subsequent years,” McCabe said. The CMO also said the plan is to open half of those stores in existing markets, with the other half in new markets close to or adjacent to existing locations.
This month, the retailer opened two doors in Pennsylvania, in York and East Harrisburg, and one in Hagerstown, Maryland. The York location represented the retailer’s 300th store.
Academy’s new store plan will also allow the company to grow its customer base—both the outdoor enthusiast and the active, young families—when its moves into new markets. A loyalty program—myAcademy Rewards—was launched in 2024, and the opening of new stores “opens us up to a whole new set of customers that many never have known about us before and are really interested in some of the loyalty benefits that we offer,” the CMO said.
For the three months ended Feb. 1, net income fell 20.5 percent to $133.6 million, or $1.89 a diluted share, from net income of $168.2 million, or $2.21, in the same year-ago quarter. Net sales were down 6.6 percent to $1.68 billion from $1.79 billion.
Wall Street was expecting adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.16 on revenue of $1.41 billion.
For the year, net income fell 19.4 percent to $418.4 million, or $5.73 a diluted share, from net income of $519.2 million, or $6.70, in 2023. Net sales were down 3.7 percent to $$5.93 billion from $6.16 billion.
Looking ahead, the company said the first quarter is expected to be the most challenging as it opens five stores and transition to the new Jordan floor set. Other initiatives are expected to positively impact earnings results beginning in the second quarter, with the back half stronger than the first half.
Adjusted EPS for the year ending Jan. 31, 2026, is projected in the range of $5.75 to $6.20, on a net sales forecast between $6.09 billion to $6.27 billion.
Telsey Advisory Group analyst Cristina Fernández noted that the EPS beat was due to a gain on a sale leaseback transaction and a lower tax rate, but added that the comp for the quarter at down 3 percent was better than the FactSet consensus of down 4.3 percent. The improved comp result was deemed a plus “given misses in recent quarters.”
Jefferies analyst Jonathan Matuszewski said 40 basis points of store traffic share gains were from households earnings more than $100,000 in December. He expects trade-down tailwinds to continue to build among value-conscious consumers.
In a company conference call on Thursday on earnings, Academy’s CFO and executive vice president Earl Carlton Ford IV cited to data points showing an uptick in traffic among customers in the top quintile of household income in December and January.
“We finished 2024 with the business trending in the right direction,” Academy CEO Steven Lawrence said on the same call.
For the fourth quarter, the CEO said the company saw a “strong rebound” in later in November when it hosted its largest Black Friday sales event in the company’s history following a soft first two week for the month. He said the momentum from Black Friday continued throughout the remainder of the holiday season and into the first half of January. There was a slight softening in the last two weeks of the quarter, which Lawrence attributed to winter storms moving across its store network that depressed sales.
The CEO said outdoor was the best performing category in the quarter, which also saw “solid increases across our hunting, fishing and camping business.”
National brands such as Yeti and Stanley drove the giftable business, while apparel was the second-best performing category, rebounding from the weak performance in the third quarter that was helped by sales across youth apparel, fleece and workwear. Lawrence said its footwear business also saw improvement in the quarter.
The business saw net sales down 2 percent for the quarter, with results driven by key categories such as men’s athletic and work footwear. “From a brand perspective, Asics, New Balance and Crocs all had strong performance for us during holiday,” Lawrence said.
The CEO also said the company rolled out a new warehouse management system at its Georgia distribution facility, which is expected to improve productivity across its supply chain and aid in its long-term expansion plans.
Other initiatives include leveraging RFID to improve inventory availability for buy online, pickup in store, and improvement in the customer experience, such as the introduction last year of same-day delivery that includes a DoorDash app.
