Anta Group's revenue reaches 80 billion yuan: Descente surpasses 10 billion, main brand growth stabilizes

Ask AI · How Did Descartes Become Anta’s New Growth Engine?

Reporter Ye Xinran

On March 25, Anta Sports Products Co., Ltd. (02020.HK, “Anta Group” for short) released its 2025 annual report. The financial report shows that in 2025, Anta Group’s total revenue was RMB 80.22 billion, up 13.3% year over year; attributable net profit was RMB 13.59 billion, down 12.9% year over year. The financial report explains that the decline in net profit was because in 2024, the publicly listed Amersport Sports, in which Anta Group held controlling interests, recognized a large one-time gain, thereby raising the comparison base. If this factor is excluded, Anta Group’s attributable net profit would have increased 13.9% year over year.

Based on Anta Group’s 2024 revenue scale of RMB 70.83 billion, the 2025 revenue growth for Anta Group is close to RMB 10 billion. This includes “other brands,” such as Descent and Kelon, clearly becoming the main driver of growth. Other brands, FILA, and the Anta brand saw increases of RMB 6.32 billion, RMB 1.84 billion, and RMB 1.23 billion year over year, respectively, with growth rates of 59.2%, 6.9%, and 3.7%.

FILA has shown some positive signals. In 2025, FILA achieved revenue of RMB 28.47 billion, up 6.9% year over year. This growth rate is basically in line with 2024, while operating profit turned around from the negative growth in 2024, rising 10.1% to RMB 7.418 billion.

In 2025, FILA made significant adjustments. With leadership changes and under the leadership of Jiang Yan, the newly appointed CEO for Greater China, FILA proposed the “ONE FILA strategy”: on the basis of consolidating its high-end sports fashion positioning, it focuses on two elite sports categories—tennis and golf—and drives brand upgrading by working together across three dimensions: brand, products, and retail.

In terms of “other brands,” Descent began to carry the heavy load. At Anta Group’s performance briefing, Anta Group executive director and co-CEO Lai Shixian disclosed that in 2025, Descent’s sales revenue increased 35% year over year, surpassing RMB 10 billion, becoming the third brand within Anta Group, after the Anta brand and FILA, to exceed RMB 10 billion in sales revenue. In 2025, Descent’s store efficiency reached more than RMB 2.70 million. Kelon’s sales revenue surpassed RMB 6 billion, up nearly 70% year over year, with store efficiency exceeding RMB 2 million. Lai Shixian said that Kelon achieved breakthroughs in its core product categories; supported by best-selling products such as hiking shoes and trail running shoes, sales revenue for shoes grew by more than 140% year over year, beyond apparel.

By comparison, growth for the Anta main brand was relatively steady. In 2025, the Anta brand achieved revenue of RMB 34.754 billion, still the group’s largest revenue pillar, with operating profit of RMB 7.211 billion, up 2.5% year over year.

Market sentiment toward Anta Group’s performance this time is complex. After the results were released, Anta Group’s stock price fell by 1.05% and 0.33% on March 25 and 26, respectively. On the one hand, Anta Group still delivered nearly RMB 10 billion of revenue increment on a high base and maintained double-digit growth, with “other brands” performing especially well. On the other hand, the Anta brand’s growth momentum was somewhat weaker, raising market concerns about this segment.

At the performance briefing, Ding Shizhong, chairman of Anta Group’s board, said: “With a big base, we may need to look at it across all dimensions: whether market share has increased. According to third-party data, Anta Group (excluding the Amersport Group) increased its market share by one percentage point to 21.8% in the Chinese market last year, further expanding market share.” He also emphasized that “single-minded focus, multi-brand, and globalization” are Anta Group’s firm strategy. In the past, many people wanted to emulate Anta Group’s multi-brand model, but fundamentally very few succeeded. And in the process of building multiple brands, Anta Group has gradually accumulated its own multi-brand operating capabilities, and also understands how to operate many brands well.

Regarding the slowdown in the main brand’s growth rate, Anta Group’s management explained at the meeting that, on the one hand, the Anta brand itself is a super-large brand with a scale of over RMB 30 billion and has entered a stage of steady development; on the other hand, the Anta brand targets mass sports and the price bands it positions for—including in the sinking markets and online channels—face even more intense market competition.

According to the introduction, in 2025, the Anta brand carried out in-depth reforms in channels. Currently, to match the consumption needs and consumption habits of different regions and more finely segmented customer groups, Anta has rolled out a variety of store formats offline. These include the “Super Anta” store, which is characterized by being “big and comprehensive”; the Arena flagship store, representing professional sports images for representative brands; the Anta Hall store located in high-end commercial districts; the Lighthouse store for the mass market; and the Anta Champion store for elite professional sports customers.

It was disclosed that as of the end of 2025, the Anta brand had 3 Arena flagship stores, and the PLAZA stores had increased to 65. Approximately 300 Lighthouse stores were newly opened and renovated for the mass market, and after renovation, store efficiency improved by 25% year over year.

Anta Group’s management said that going forward, Anta will continue to increase brand investment and further strengthen its image in professional technology. At the same time, it will step up its running track efforts, strengthen its matrix of blockbuster products, and optimize the layout of its channel store formats. In overseas markets, for Southeast Asia, Anta currently has about 500 brand outlets, and it plans to increase that to 1,000 within three years.

Due to product-structure adjustments across multiple brands, Anta Group’s overall gross margin declined slightly. In 2025, Anta Group’s overall gross margin was 62%, down 0.2 percentage points year over year. Anta Group’s chief financial officer, Bi Mingwei, explained that because the Anta brand increased R&D investment in professional products such as running and basketball, while the share of online business also rose; for FILA, it increased investment in core products, fabrics, and design R&D, and improved product functionality. “Other brands” gross margin was 71.8%, down 0.4 percentage points year over year, mainly because the newly acquired Loup brand is mainly driven by wholesale business and has a lower gross margin level. If excluding the impact of consolidating Loup, the gross margin of other brands would have risen by 1.1 percentage points year over year.

While continuing to expand the multi-brand matrix, Anta Group is also推进 the integration of newly acquired brands. In 2025, Anta Group fully acquired the German outdoor brand Loup for USD 290 million. Anta Group’s management disclosed at the performance briefing that Loup has already formulated a five-year plan for 2030 and is currently promoting it comprehensively according to the plan. It is expected that in the second half of this year through next year, the market will see clear changes in Loup’s financial performance and terminal stores.