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** Financial gossip
Author of Financial Gossip
As the parent company of popular brands such as Arc'teryx, the strong debut of Amalfen can be described as huge. What's even more remarkable is that this century-old company is now under the umbrella of Anta, and this outstanding performance is the result of Anta's acquisition to turn losses into profits. For Anta Group, the successful listing of Amalfen is also an important step in its globalization journey.
At a time when Chinese companies are going global, ANTA's success is another proof that through continuous acquisitions and integration, Chinese companies are moving towards the mainstay of the world stage.
At the beginning of 2023, the global capital market ushered in a blockbuster - on January 31, Amalfen Sports was officially listed on the New York ** Stock Exchange!
The century-old store, headquartered in Finland, successfully raised $1.3 billion, and it is reported that the market value of the offering is as high as $6.3 billion, and it has soared all the way to the top of the global IPO list in 2023. Based on this calculation,China's well-known sporting goods company Anta Group made a profit of about 2.7 billion US dollars overnight through this IPO, which can be described as a fight to fame.
In fact, the strong listing of Amalfen is also a testament to the emergence of an industry that seems to be unattended – yes, the outdoor sportswear brands we wear every day.
You know, today, Amalfen Sports has 13 brands, covering almost every field of sporting goods, constituting a huge industrial empire.
Among them, there are three brands at the coreThey are the outdoor sports brand Salomon, the ball sports brand Wilson, and the outdoor trend brand Arc'teryx, which has become popular in the past two years.
In addition, Amalfen also owns the tennis equipment brand Songtuo, the high-end ski equipment brand atomic, and the famous American baseball bat equipment brand Louisville Slugger.
What's even more interesting is that this century-old store is now firmly in the hands of Chinese companies. As early as 2019, Anta Group acquired Amalfen Sports, and now it has finally ushered in the listing to reap profits. For ANTA, the successful listing of Amalfen also marks another key step in its globalization strategy to go global.
Amalfen is not the only listing platform for ANTA. As early as June 2020, ANTA Group spun off ANTA Sports and listed it on the Shenzhen ** Stock ExchangeNow the two generals of Anta Group have been listed, and they are unstoppable.
Faced with the opportunity for Chinese enterprises to go global in the new era, ANTA has chosen to actively go overseas and choose mergers and acquisitions as the main path. After all, it is much faster to directly acquire the resources and channels of mature brands, and it is easier to gain consumer recognition.
Why was a world-class brand like Amalfen acquired by Anta? Under Anta's leadership, what about its profits?
The successful listing of Amalfen is actually due to Anta's exquisite merger and acquisition a few years ago.
Back at the end of 2018, Anta, together with FountainEst Capital and Tencent, formed a consortium and spent 37.1 billion yuan to acquire Amalfen Sports. At that time, the outside world was not optimistic about the acquisition, thinking that Anta was buying a money-losing product.
However, Ding Shizhong, chairman of the board of directors of Anta, described the acquisition in an internal letter: ".The most important decision I've made since I started my business to this day. It seems that in Ding Shizhong's heart, the merger and acquisition of Amalfen has another deep meaning.
Careful analysis shows that this acquisition is actually a classic case of Anta's acquisition of FILA in the past. In 2009, Anta won only 3200 million yuan acquired the operating rights of FILA in China, and after taking over, it realized the localization transformation of FILA, enabling it to achieve blowout growth in the Chinese market. Today, FILA's revenue in the Chinese market has reached billions of yuan.
In the view of the brand official, the acquisition of Amalfen is to recreate the legend of FILA and find a new growth point. After all, it is difficult to rely on a single main business for long-term development, and there must always be new breakthroughs at critical moments.
The results also proved that ANTA has a unique vision. After it took over, the performance of Amalfen Sports has experienced a blowout growth, with revenue growth of 20%+ from 2020 to 2022, and a number of core brands such as Arc'teryx have grown rapidly.
More importantly, through this acquisition, Anta has gained the ability to integrate Amalfen's global resources, which is of great benefit to its global layout. Originally, Amalfen had the largest market share in Europe and the United States, and Anta could use its influence in these markets to open up the situation.
At the same time, ANTA can also imitate the localization experience of FILA in the past, and localize the brand and products of Amalfen to meet the needs of Chinese consumers.
This merger and acquisition, no matter how you look at it, is a win-win situation. ANTA has gained a new growth momentum, and Amalfen has also been reborn. Behind the "Classic Buyer Show" is actually a microcosm of Chinese local enterprises going overseas and facing the world.
Looking back at Anta's decision to acquire Amalfen, we will find that this is just a typical example of Chinese companies "going global". Over the years, driven by policies and capital, Chinese enterprises have started overseas mergers and acquisitions to seize the global market.
This wave began around 2010. As early as 2009, CNOOC Limited spent $4.1 billion to acquire the Canadian oil sands company. In 2010, Fosun Group acquired a Portuguese bank for US$1.8 billion. It indicates that the prelude to the "going out" of Chinese enterprises has begun.
After 2014, Chinese enterprises' overseas mergers and acquisitions entered a frenzied period. This year, the total amount of outbound mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises reached an astonishing 102.6 billion US dollars, which not only hit a record high, but also grew by as much as 30%. In 2016, it reached a historical peak, with the scale of China's outbound mergers and acquisitions reaching US$221 billion.
From 2015 to 2016, Wanda Group successively acquired a number of well-known enterprises, including the cinema chain AMC and the world's No. 1 luxury hotel operator Sanansi Blue, becoming a model for China's overseas mergers and acquisitions.
Although the overseas M&A of Chinese enterprises has declined in recent years under the influence of tightened regulatory policies, the overall scale still exceeds the level of 100 billion US dollars. Whether it is Huawei's acquisition of American enterprise source code providers, or Ali's acquisition of Southeast Asian e-commerce Chenya,All of them demonstrate the spirit of Chinese enterprises that are not afraid of risks and dare to open up.
In contrast,Although China's sports companies started the pace of acquisition relatively late, they have been full of ambition in recent years.
In 2019, Li Ning Company spent 700 million yuan to acquire Clarks, a well-known British clothing brand, which was the first merger and acquisition of Li Ning Company in the European market. 361 degrees also in 2021 at 5The acquisition of backcountry, an American outdoor clothing retailer, for 500 million yuan, opened the door to 361 degrees of entry into the North American market; Peak also spent 1US$500 million acquisition of icebreaker, a New Zealand outdoor sports brand.
Under the leadership of these companies, China's sports brands are accelerating their transformation to world-class, and Made in China will also show more impressive strength.
The last link of mergers and acquisitions, integration, is the most difficult hurdle for Chinese enterprises in overseas mergers and acquisitions.
There is such a saying in investment circles: ".M&A is like getting married, the difficult thing is the integration after "marrying" backThis means that compared with mergers and acquisitions, it is more difficult to digest and absorb the acquired enterprises and exert synergies.
Specific to the case of Anta's acquisition of Amalfen, the integration difficulties can be described as endless. In terms of business, how to open up the product lines of the two sides and form complementarity? In terms of brand, how to give full play to the advantages of both parties and maintain a certain degree of independence? In terms of personnel, how to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees and prevent the loss of the core team? Culturally, what are the differences brought about by the integration of Eastern and Western enterprises?
It is not difficult to imagine that the degree of hardship in this is by no means simple as what can be seen by the outside world. As Ding Shizhong, CEO of Anta Group, said: ".M&A is easy, integration is not easy, integration is the real skill.
In fact, from Wanda's acquisition of AMC Cinema to Geely's acquisition of Volvo Cars, many cases show that after the completion of overseas acquisitions, the integration effect of Chinese enterprises is not satisfactory, and even sales have declined. In our view, the root cause of these challenges lies in the fact that Chinese companies are still in the early stages of accumulating experience in overseas M&A. Compared with Western capital, there is still a gap between Chinese enterprises in talent training and system construction.
And that's not all,Behind the successful M&A, it is inseparable from the support of entrepreneurs' vision and pioneering spirit. Taking Ding Shizhong, the founder of ANTA, as an example, as a native of Jinjiang, Fujian Province, he was born with the pioneering and enterprising spirit of the people in the southeast coast to "dare to be the first in the world". It is the entrepreneurial spirit of being hands-on and keeping pace with the times that has supported ANTA to grow from a small factory to a world-class company spanning five continents.
Different entrepreneurs will also present different characteristics in M&A integration due to their different geographical backgrounds and growth experiences. The combination of Ding Shizhong's courage and courage and the rich experience accumulated by the founder of Amalfen from Canada in the field of outdoor sports will also produce a strong chemical reaction in the merger and acquisition.
In any case, this wave of overseas mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises is reshaping the connotation of "Made in China". Today, we must not only establish the courage of mergers and acquisitions, but also accumulate the wisdom of integration. Only by strengthening these two wings can Chinese companies gain a long-term foothold in the global market.
Whether it is the successful listing of Amalfen or the classic acquisition of Anta, they all show us the same truth: mergers and acquisitions are easy, but integration is difficult. The acquisition is only the first step in the M&A journey, and the real challenge is how to bring the two companies together and achieve synergies.
From business integration to financial integration, from human integration to culture building, this is undoubtedly a long-term battle. Only with the ability to operate for a long time can we stand out in the torrent of mergers and acquisitions.
Under the wave of global grabbing, Chinese companies are carrying double pressures - not only to face the difficulties of the acquisition itself, but also to deal with the endless challenges of subsequent integration. However, every success gives us hope that as long as we can endure loneliness and accumulate enough experience, our company will eventually shine on the world stage!
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