Positioned at the forefront of the new Olympic cycle, LI NING (02331) is accelerating its strategic layout under its "single brand, multiple categories, multiple channels" framework, indicating a potential entry into a period of value realization. On March 19, the company released its full-year 2025 financial results. The report revealed that LI NING achieved a record high revenue of 296 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%. Net profit reached 2.94 billion yuan, with a net profit margin of 9.9%. The operating profit margin rose by 0.4 percentage points to 13.2%, with overall profitability exceeding expectations. Following the earnings release, LI NING's stock price surged by up to 13%.
Beyond the core financial metrics highlighting operational stability, healthy inventory levels and robust cash flow further demonstrated the company's resilience. During the period, net cash increased by 1.81 billion yuan year-on-year to 19.97 billion yuan, providing ample resources for future development. The all-channel inventory turnover stood at 4 months, with inventory days of 64 days, remaining stable in a challenging market environment. This indicates that years of refined inventory management have translated into tangible risk mitigation advantages.
The solid 2025 performance also underscored the strategic resolve and future growth potential inherent in LI NING's "single brand, multiple categories, multiple channels" approach. Throughout the year, the company focused on its core professional sports business, efficiently leveraging resources to refine its brand, products, and channels, maintaining a clear direction amidst market fluctuations. This strategic discipline is expected to translate into predictable earnings and high-quality growth. With the combined effects of technological empowerment, Olympic partnership benefits, and consumer base expansion, the market is likely to witness LI NING accelerating its transition from stability to strength, which aligns with the company's strategic intent.
The Group's Executive Director and Co-CEO stated during the earnings communication: "We aim for the company to maintain a challenging posture, not a risky one. Therefore, strengthening our foundation remains LI NING's top priority. However, we will adopt a more proactive mindset and take action to explore business opportunities across different categories and niche segments. Seizing these opportunities will form the core of LI NING Group's operational strategy. 'Strengthening foundations and proactively expanding' is our future direction."
**Synergistic Multi-Category Matrix Unlocks New Business Opportunities** A key strategic theme for LI NING throughout 2025 was the upgrade of its multi-category operational capabilities. Building on its single-brand foundation, the company continued to use multi-category operations to open new growth avenues, mitigate cyclical volatility, and strengthen its professional moat, aiming for more stable and high-quality long-term development.
Specific strategic initiatives to deepen multi-category operations included several major actions. First, the company continued to deepen its focus on core categories such as running, basketball, integrated training, badminton, and table tennis, building barriers for its professional sports brand. In 2025, LI NING further solidified its competitive advantage in the running category, laying a solid foundation for overall growth. The running category's gross merchandise value (GMV) grew by 10%, accounting for 31% of total GMV and increasing for the fifth consecutive year, making it LI NING's largest category. Sales of professional running shoes exceeded 26 million pairs for the year, with sales of new products under the three core running shoe IPs surpassing 11 million pairs. By enhancing engagement with serious runners, the Feidian series achieved the top wear rate among runners breaking the three-hour mark at the Shanghai Marathon, with a significant year-on-year increase.
Additionally, the badminton category delivered outstanding performance, with revenue growing 30%, leading the industry in growth rate. The integrated training category saw GMV growth of 5%, gaining greater market recognition through enhanced resource integration and functional upgrades. The basketball category maintained its industry leadership through continuous product innovation and investment in sports resources. As LI NING strengthens its multi-category operations and reinforces its core categories, its growth structure is becoming more diversified, driving continuous revenue expansion.
Second, the company focused on developing incremental segments such as outdoor, sports lifestyle, tennis, and pickleball, creating new growth engines. Beyond core categories in 2025, LI NING leveraged its category-building expertise to actively explore new categories, consumer groups, and channels. For instance, the company accelerated its outdoor segment布局. Following the launch of its first standalone outdoor concept store, "COUNTERFLOW溯," the outdoor product matrix was gradually enhanced. Apparel, represented by the "万龙甲" series featuring anti-torrential rain nano-technology, gained widespread market acceptance. The footwear lines "行," "林," and "浔" achieved initial success, with annual sales exceeding 500,000 pairs. Management revealed that the outdoor category's GMV doubled in 2025. Although starting from a small base, the company is optimistic about the segment's potential.
Besides targeting the broad outdoor market, LI NING also expanded into lifestyle and business scenarios. Capitalizing on the Olympic opportunity, it launched the "荣耀金标" series, precisely targeting commuting and business occasions to reach new urban middle-class customers. The company actively expanded its matrix of women's exclusive product series, enhancing brand awareness and appeal among female consumers through increased marketing efforts. It also continued to invest in youth sports resources, building brand recognition among younger audiences. The number of LI NING YOUNG stores reached 1,518, a net increase of 50. Furthermore, the company proactively entered high-growth niche segments like tennis and pickleball, further activating new growth markets.
Based on this, it is evident that through continuous deepening of multi-category operations, LI NING, as a comprehensive professional sports brand, now covers diverse sports and scenarios. This represents the profound implementation of its "single brand, multiple categories, multiple channels" strategy, which not only opens new growth spaces but also establishes its long-term strategic advantage in the industry.
**Expanding Diverse Top-Tier Resources to Enhance Brand Momentum** As competition in the sportswear industry intensifies, contention for core marketing resources has become a key battleground for domestic and international brands. Building a diverse and multi-layered matrix of top-tier resources is crucial for LI NING to strengthen its brand momentum and build competitive advantages. This approach is well-founded. Previous analysis highlighted product strength, marketing strength, and channel strength as the three key elements for sportswear brand competition. Among these, sports marketing resources are particularly important, scarce, and highly valued by brands. Historically, the growth of leading sportswear brands has benefited from top-tier sports marketing resources.
Consequently, in the new Olympic cycle, LI NING has continued to intensify its布局 of diversified, multi-level top-tier resources to comprehensively enhance brand momentum. It is understood that between 2025 and 2028, spanning over ten international events including the LA 2028 Olympics, Milan 2026 Winter Olympics, and Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games, the LI NING brand will provide professional sportswear support for the Chinese sports delegation. Additionally, in 2025, LI NING added a partnership with the Chinese National Fencing Team, now providing equipment support for four national teams, having previously maintained long-term collaborations with China's shooting, diving, and table tennis teams.
Beyond securing these key strategic positions through diverse resource布局, LI NING also actively leveraged its sports resources during the period, continually releasing the long-term market value of its heavyweight partnership with the Chinese Olympic Committee. During the Milan 2026 Winter Olympics, the company executed an integrated marketing campaign covering the launch of podium wear, the delegation's send-off, and the entire event duration. This marketing approach received positive market feedback, further strengthening the brand's value. According to a third-party analysis report, LI NING ranked first in overall social media buzz among sportswear brands and third across all categories during the Milan 2026 Winter Games.
Such marketing initiatives not only enhance brand value but also accelerate product market conversion. Analysis indicated that product series launched in 2025, which featured the co-branding of the Chinese Olympic Committee emblem with the LI NING logo, received favorable early consumer feedback at the retail level, further validating their product strength.
Notably, besides leveraging top resources like the Chinese Olympic Committee, LI NING also secured collaborations with two other top-tier IPs representing technology and Chinese culture, implementing them across product categories. One initiative involved the "Aerospace Technology Innovation Application Lab," co-creating a dynamic warmth technology platform. This platform applied "Aerospace Lock-Temperature Cotton" and "Basalt Far-Infrared" technologies, first used on the Chinese delegation's podium suits for the Winter Olympics, allowing professional sports technology to be proven in top-tier competition. On another front, the company deepened its strategic partnership with the Palace Museum, launching co-branded products that blend cultural heritage with sport functionality, such as introducing Palace Museum-inspired colorways for core running and basketball IP products.
Through these powerful synergistic partnerships, LI NING has successfully built a formidable and difficult-to-replicate brand moat. This lies at the core of its long-term competitiveness: precisely securing top-tier resources, deeply integrating sports spirit, technological innovation, and cultural heritage into brand expression and product application for multi-dimensional value creation. With a long-term, disciplined strategy, the company continuously transforms external resource potential into intrinsic brand strength, laying a solid foundation for enduring success through industry cycles.
**Conclusion** By upgrading its multi-category operational capabilities, LI NING is broadening consumption scenarios and unlocking new growth avenues across its ecosystem. Through its diversified, multi-level strategy for top-tier resources, it is fortifying its competitive barriers and constructing a unique brand moat. Driven by these dual engines, LI NING is proactively开拓 a broader growth space. This not only represents a deepening of its "single brand, multiple categories, multiple channels" strategy but also has the potential to be the starting point for a simultaneous improvement in earnings predictability and valuation prospects. Analysis suggests that over the medium to long term, as the company's Olympic marketing strategy and product optimization efforts continue, the effects on performance improvement are expected to gradually materialize.