Retail · Deep dive

Under Armour

The 1996 Georgetown-basement HeatGear T-shirt company that peaked at $5.27B and $53 a share in 2015 has now shrunk five straight years to a ~$5.0B FY26 (-4%) with FY27 guided lower again — and Kevin Plank, back as CEO since April 2024 with 65% super-voting control, is trying to premium-price his way out while On and Hoka each cross him going in the other direction.

at risk

Five straight years of revenue decline to a FY26 ~$5.0B (-4%), FY27 guidance cut from slight-decline to mid-single-digit decline in August 2026, North America -8% and Steph Curry exiting a 13-year deal in November 2025 — while On (CHF 3.0B, +30%) and Hoka ($2.2B, +24%) each cross Under Armour going in the other direction and Nike's revival takes back the shelf space UA can no longer defend.

My take ★★ Very interesting ★ Interesting − Maybe ✗ Not interesting

Snapshot

Under Armour is a Baltimore-founded athletic apparel and footwear brand: FY26 (year ended March 31, 2026) revenue of ~$5.0B, down 4% year-over-year and the fifth straight year of flat-to-declining sales since a $5.27B FY19 peak. Apparel is ~68% of mix, footwear ~24%, accessories ~7%. North America — still 58% of revenue — dropped 8% in FY26, and the whole international leg ($2.1B) is not big enough to offset. Founder Kevin Plank returned as CEO on April 1, 2024 after 13 months of Stephanie Linnartz. Q2 FY26 (announced November 6, 2025) posted revenue of $1.34B (-5%), with North America -8% to $792M. In the Q1 FY27 print on August 7, 2026, management cut the FY27 outlook from a slight decline to a mid-single-digit decline, flipping EMEA and APAC from growth to decline and North America from low- to mid-single-digit down. Market cap sits at ~$2.1-2.3B, off ~90% from the September 2015 peak.

Founding story

Kevin Plank was a walk-on special-teams captain at the University of Maryland who spent two-a-days in cotton T-shirts so soaked he changed them multiple times per practice. In 1996, after graduating, he took ~$20,000 of savings and ~$40,000 of credit-card debt and set up in his grandmother’s basement in Washington DC’s Georgetown neighborhood. He sourced moisture-wicking synthetic fabric from a New York textile mill, made prototype tees, and drove up and down I-95 selling them out of the trunk of his Ford Explorer to equipment managers at Georgia Tech, Arizona State and half a dozen NFL practice squads. The first team sale came in late 1996. First-year revenue: $17,000.

By 2000 Under Armour had HeatGear (hot-weather), ColdGear (cold-weather), and AllSeasonGear on the Dick’s Sporting Goods wall in a differentiated pro-team-issue silver package that made $30 tees feel elite. The turning point came in 2003 with a “Protect This House” ad campaign that ran on college-football broadcasts and made UA a locker-room mandate at the FBS level. By the 2005 IPO — November 18, priced at $13, opening at $31 — UA had ~$205M of revenue and Nike as an official rival. The company IPO’d with Plank keeping all Class B super-voting shares (10 votes each), a governance choice that later kept every dissatisfied shareholder from doing anything about it.

How it works

Under Armour is a vertically-integrated athletic-apparel operator: Baltimore-based design and merchandising, primarily-Vietnam-and-Jordan-and-Indonesia contract manufacturing, three US distribution centers (Sparrows Point MD, Rialto CA, Nashville TN) plus regional international DCs, sold through three channels — wholesale, direct-to-consumer, and licensing — into three regions: North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Q3 FY26 (Dec 2025) wholesale was ~58% of revenue, DTC ~40%, licensing/other ~2%.

The wholesale distribution split is the whole business. Dick’s Sporting Goods is the largest single account, followed by Kohl’s (since 2017), Academy Sports, Foot Locker/Champs, DSW, Amazon and the specialty run/team shops. Roughly two-thirds of UA’s owned DTC revenue runs through ~200 US Factory House outlets — the discount-priced channel that has been the volume workhorse and the brand-perception headache for a decade. Real full-price Brand House stores are the exception, not the base case.

The Plank-era Reset (announced May 2024) has three pieces: cut total SKU count by ~25% to focus on higher-margin newness; walk away from the deepest promotional wholesale (Kohl’s off-price, factory-outlet flooding); and rebuild wholesale door segmentation so premium product sits with premium retailers and value product with value retailers. It is exactly the play Nike ran in 2017-2019 and Vans (VFC) is running in 2024-2026. UA is still in year two.

Product and business overview

Apparel (~68% of FY26, ~$3.4B). Core HeatGear/ColdGear performance tees, hoodies, base layers, shorts, pants and outerwear at $25-$100 typical. The volume category and the margin category. FY25 apparel revenue fell 9% to $3.5B; FY26 apparel down again but less. Team, training, running and men’s core drives the mix; women’s is under-indexed relative to Lululemon, Alo and Athleta.

Footwear (~24% of FY26, ~$1.2B). UA basketball (long-anchored by the Curry line), running (HOVR Sonic, Machina, Infinite Elite, and the new ARC 96 at $125), and training (SlipSpeed, Project Rock). FY25 footwear fell 13% to $1.2B. Q4 FY25 footwear was down 17%, the most damaging single number in the entire recent P&L given how much of the growth thesis rested on footwear pulling apparel. Curry Brand is now on borrowed time: Steph Curry and UA mutually parted ways November 13, 2025 after a 13-year relationship, with Curry keeping sole ownership of the sub-brand and free to shop it. UA released the Curry 13 in February 2026 as the “final chapter.”

Accessories (~7% of FY26, ~$400M). Hats, bags, socks, gloves, mouthguards. FY25 down 1% to $411M — the flattest and most stable line in the business, which is a comment on the volatility of everything else.

Connected Fitness (0%). MyFitnessPal, MapMyFitness and Endomondo were $150M+$85M+$475M of spend between 2013 and 2015 that was supposed to build a data moat and a subscription flywheel. MyFitnessPal was sold to Francisco Partners for $345M in December 2020; MapMyFitness and Endomondo were wound down. The category vacated.

Business model and pricing

Revenue is booked as merchandise net sales through wholesale (invoiced-on-shipment at negotiated cost with promotional allowance credits), owned retail (Brand House full-price plus Factory House outlets), and e-commerce. Reported gross margin was 47.9% in FY25 and 47%+ in the FY26 quarters, up ~200 bps versus the promotional trough — the single genuine bright spot. Adjusted operating income guidance for FY26 was raised to ~$110M at Q3, versus a mid-teen operating income target that used to be routine at $5B+ of revenue.

Pricing architecture is where the strategy contradicts itself. On the shelf at Kohl’s, UA HeatGear tees are $18-$25 and 30-50% off within weeks. On the shelf at Dick’s, the same silhouette is $30 and stays there longer. On the UA e-commerce site the ARC 96 is $125 next to $60 Charged Rogue running shoes bought by the same customer. Brand elevation requires the walk-away from Kohl’s and the outlet flooding UA cannot yet afford to do — the Plank Reset promises to phase both down without a specific end date. Compare to On (avg selling price $150+, DTC 42% of revenue) or Hoka ($140-$165 across Clifton/Bondi, ~35% DTC): they wrote the premium ticket UA is still trying to punch.

Traction over time

Peak revenue $5.90B in CY2022 (short-year transition); peak sustainable revenue ~$5.27B in CY2019. Peak share price $53.78 September 17, 2015. FY26 revenue is now ~5% below the CY2019 peak in nominal dollars — call it ~25% below on an inflation-adjusted basis.

Market analysis

Global athletic apparel is a ~$430B market growing high-single-digits (Grand View Research); North American athletic wear specifically was $25.4B in 2024 and is projected to hit $48.6B by 2033 (Research and Markets, 7.5% CAGR). North America running and running-adjacent lifestyle has been the single fastest-growing subsegment: On and Hoka combined took ~20% of the North America running-shoe market between 2021 and 2025, most of it from a Nike that was distracted by its DTC pivot and, secondarily, from Under Armour. Lululemon expanded from ~$4B to ~$10B in the same window; Alo went from a boutique to a ~$10B private valuation. The pot of demand grew; UA’s slice did not.

Structural forces cut against UA specifically. First, athletic apparel has bifurcated: performance-lifestyle premium (On, Hoka, Lululemon, Alo, New Balance 990v6, Arc’teryx) or value-mass (Costco Kirkland, Walmart Athletic Works, Target’s All In Motion, Fabletics). UA sits in the middle with insufficient premium credibility and inadequate cost structure for the value fight. Second, the anchor wholesale doors have consolidated: Sports Authority bankrupt (2016), Foot Locker bought by Dick’s (September 2025) — reducing the number of buyers and concentrating power. Third, the athlete-endorsement economy has moved to running influencers (Kipchoge for Nike, Bekele/Kiptum-era) and cultural crossover (Aime Leon Dore x New Balance, Union x Nike) — UA’s roster (post-Curry) is thin and lacks a cultural anchor.

Competitive intel

Rivals in frontmatter. The most damaging read: On grew from CHF 725M in 2020 to CHF 3.0B in 2025 (+30% in 2025 alone); Hoka grew from ~$500M in FY21 to $2.2B in FY25 (+24% in 2025). Their combined ~$5B run-rate did not exist five years ago and now essentially matches all of Under Armour, and the incremental shelf came directly out of the Dick’s, Foot Locker and REI running walls UA used to hold. Nike under Elliott Hill from October 2024 is leaning back into wholesale, which reactivates Nike-vs-UA head-to-head in the same doors just as UA is trying to elevate. Lululemon owns women’s premium and is expanding men’s, where UA has always struggled — men’s tees for Lulu are $88 and sell through. New Balance, private and family-owned, ran the boldest brand-elevation play of the decade: it turned dad shoes into cultural currency with Aime Leon Dore, Miu Miu and Ronnie Fieg collabs and shipped ~$8B in revenue growing double-digits. Fanatics is the licensed-uniform play; UA never had a major pro-league on-court/on-field position and it doesn’t now. Alo Yoga is the private threat to any women’s opportunity UA might have.

Where UA still wins: performance-focused men’s team and youth football, baseball, wrestling and select training categories where the HeatGear brand carries genuine authority; freezing-weather ColdGear technical layers that outperform Nike Therma at the same price; and the UA Rewards loyalty program (launched under Linnartz) which has quietly signed up meaningful membership. Not enough to reverse the mix.

History and evolution

• September 25, 1996 — Kevin Plank founds KP Sports (later Under Armour) in his grandmother’s Georgetown basement.
• 1999 — Featured in Warner Bros’ Any Given Sunday as an authentic locker-room brand. Revenue hits ~$5M.
• 2003 — “Protect This House” campaign; ESPN and college-football placement lock UA into the team-issue narrative.
• November 18, 2005 — IPO on NASDAQ at $13; stock closes day one $26.14.
• 2011 — Revenue crosses $1B for the first time.
• 2013 — Acquires MapMyFitness for $150M.
• February 4, 2015 — Acquires MyFitnessPal ($475M) and Endomondo ($85M) to build Connected Fitness.
• September 17, 2015 — All-time closing high $53.78/share; market cap $18B+; NYSE listing upgrade.
• 2016 — Sports Authority bankruptcy; UA cuts guidance, takes a $23M impairment, forecasts $120M sales hit. Announces Kohl’s partnership. Class C non-voting stock issued.
• January 31, 2017 — Q4 2016 print: first revenue miss in decades; stock drops 25%+. Follow-on quarterly loss later in 2017.
• November 4, 2019 — Public disclosure of federal accounting probe by SEC and DOJ; stock falls 18%+.
• January 2020 — Plank steps back to Executive Chairman; COO Patrik Frisk becomes CEO.
• December 18, 2020 — MyFitnessPal sold to Francisco Partners for $345M.
• May 3, 2021 — $9M SEC settlement over “pull-forward” sales practice Q3 2015 – Q4 2016.
• May 2022 — Frisk out; Colin Browne (CFO) interim CEO.
• February 27, 2023 — Stephanie Linnartz (ex-Marriott) named President & CEO.
• March 13, 2024 — Linnartz out; Plank returning as CEO effective April 1.
• May 16, 2024 — FY2025 restructuring plan announced: $70M-$90M in charges including ~$22M severance.
• August 8, 2025 — Q1 FY26 print: revenue $1.13B (-4%); gross margin +70 bps.
• November 6, 2025 — Q2 FY26 print: revenue $1.34B (-5%); FY26 guidance held at -4% to -5%.
• November 13, 2025 — Under Armour and Stephen Curry mutually end the 13-year partnership. Curry keeps ownership of Curry Brand.
• February 6, 2026 — Q3 FY26 print: FY26 adjusted operating income target raised to ~$110M. Curry 13 released as the final Curry-branded UA product.
• May 2026 — FY27 initial outlook issued: slight decline.
• August 7, 2026 — Q1 FY27 print: FY27 outlook cut to mid-single-digit decline. North America moves from low- to mid-single-digit down; EMEA and APAC flip from growth to decline.

What people say

The case for

Gross margin has expanded ~200 bps under the Reset — 48.2% in Q1 FY26, up 70 bps YoY — which is the leading indicator that walking away from Kohl’s-style promotional wholesale is working at the margin line even as the revenue line falls. Q2 FY26 revenue came in ahead of the company’s own -6% to -7% guide. The Plank team hit its Q3 FY26 raise on adjusted operating income to ~$110M despite the top-line miss. WWD and SGB Media have reported the disciplined tone from Plank as more credible than any of Linnartz’s or Frisk’s public strategy. Analyst upgrades in early 2026 (BofA Neutral to Buy) cited the margin story and the international green-shoots — EMEA +2% in Q2 FY26, APAC flatter but stabilizing under the new premium posture. Glassdoor sits at 3.7/5 with ~64% CEO approval for Plank and generally positive reviews of the Baltimore Peninsula HQ campus, benefits (immediate 401k vesting, ESPP), and the tenure culture the founder rebuilt on return. The company is not going bankrupt, has minimal net debt, and generates ~$300-400M of free cash flow at current margin levels — plenty of runway to keep resetting.

The complaints

The scoreboard tells the harder story. Five straight years of flat-to-declining revenue since the 2019 peak. Q4 FY25 footwear -17% is the single worst datapoint in the segment. North America -8% in both FY26 and the Q2 FY26 quarter means the home market — 58% of revenue — is not participating in the recovery. The August 2026 FY27 cut, coming just three months after the initial FY27 guide, tells investors management still can’t call demand. The Curry Brand exit removes UA’s only genuine star. Reddit r/UnderArmour and r/running threads recur on the same three complaints: sizing runs small and inconsistent between silhouettes, footwear (Charged Rogue, HOVR) delaminates and shrinks after washes, and “outlet UA” quality is visibly worse than “Dick’s-shelf UA.” The 2015-2021 SEC “pull-forward” episode is still cited in every short thesis as a governance red flag, and Plank’s ~65% super-voting control means shareholders have no lever — an activist cannot force portfolio moves the way Engaged Capital did at VF. Glassdoor’s Baltimore HQ page carries multiple mid-2024-to-2026 layoff-round reviews describing morale as thinner than the numbers suggest.

Outlook: well positioned or at risk?

At risk. The mechanical reason is simple: FY26 revenue at ~$5.0B is below the FY19 peak of $5.27B seven years later, and the FY27 guide is for another mid-single-digit decline, taking Under Armour to a run-rate ~10-15% below the 2019 peak in nominal dollars and ~25%+ below on an inflation-adjusted basis. Every year since 2019 that On and Hoka have added CHF 500M-1B and $500M-1B respectively in North American running/lifestyle, UA has ceded shelf, and the shelf does not come back once a Dick’s buyer has committed the wall to a rival brand. The Plank Reset targets margin, not revenue, and the margin story is real. But a $5B athletic brand losing 4-5% a year while its two direct performance-lifestyle rivals grow 25-30% is a share-loss story, not a turnaround, and there is no version of a brand-elevation reset that reverses share this late without either a category shift (which UA is not driving) or an athlete cultural moment (which the Curry exit made harder).

The upside case is that stabilized ~$4.5B-5B revenue at 48%+ gross margin and ~$300-400M of operating income throws off enough cash to compound book value while Plank reruns the same brand-elevation playbook Vans is running at VF and Nike is running under Elliott Hill. That would leave UAA as a value stub trading at ~5-7x EBITDA — fine for a private-market buyer, uninteresting for a public investor. The downside case is that FY27 comes in worse than the August 2026 cut and Plank faces another leadership question in FY28, with no natural successor, no strategic buyer at scale (the Nike/adidas rumors have been dead since 2018), and Class B super-voting shares that would make any activist campaign symbolic. Realistic middle: 2-3 more years of low-single-digit decline, gross margin at 48-50%, low-single-digit operating margins, an EV that trends toward $2B. The turnaround optionality is priced in; the share-loss reality is not.

How to attack it

The wedge is a DTC-first premium men’s performance-training and performance-lifestyle brand at $80-130, sold direct via Shopify, Instagram, TikTok, and a curated wholesale specialty channel (running specialty, elevated department, one or two skate/streetwear anchors), with real athlete-equity partnerships in the college and lower-major-league tiers UA used to own. Under Armour has four exploitable weaknesses. First, star-athlete gap: with Curry exiting, UA’s endorsement roster has no cultural anchor equivalent to LeBron/Nike, Kyrie/Anta, or Sabrina Ionescu/Nike. A challenger paying six to twelve emerging pros equity stakes and content deals — the Union / Aime Leon Dore / Palace playbook — buys the top of the funnel UA cannot pay for. Second, product credibility: the “outlet UA versus shelf UA” Reddit drumbeat and the FY25 footwear -13% number are market-priced evidence that the customer no longer trusts UA quality. A challenger with a tight ~40 SKU line, longer product cycles, and premium construction at the same $80-130 wins on the specification card at Dick’s or on Instagram. Third, channel-mix trap: UA’s ~60% wholesale dependence and ~200-store Factory House outlet fleet mean every SKU is priced against Nike/adidas/Puma in the same case and every marketing dollar has to fight the discount signal from the outlets. A DTC-first challenger controls the pricing narrative and captures the 20-25 pts of gross margin UA gives up to wholesale. Fourth, governance and speed: Plank’s ~65% voting control lets him move but it also concentrates every product and brand decision on a single Baltimore HQ. Challenger brands ship product cycles in 12-16 weeks; UA’s cycles are 12+ months.

Corporate weaknesses to exploit: (1) North America -8% in FY26 and FY27 — momentum is negative, so incremental wholesale wins do not require displacing growing product. (2) Curry Brand exit — the single most identifiable athlete asset is gone. (3) Outlet-heavy DTC — the ~200 Factory Houses are a fixed-cost drag when the brand-elevation strategy requires them to shrink. (4) Baltimore HQ layoff cycles — the June 2023, May 2024 and quieter 2025-2026 rounds mean product, design and merch teams are two years old. (5) No women’s franchise — Alo, Lululemon and Vuori have a 5-10 year head start UA has never seriously contested.

Adjacent-segment play

The obvious adjacency is women’s premium technical training and performance-lifestyle at the Lululemon/Alo/Vuori price tier, where Under Armour has been under-indexed for its entire history. UA has a functional supply chain in synthetic performance fabric, a Baltimore design bench, and a legacy team-sports women’s operation (softball, lacrosse, volleyball) that could be repackaged as a premium standalone women’s-only brand at $70-150 leggings and $60-90 tops — the exact air pocket between Athleta (drifting) and Alo (crowded at the top). A challenger doing this from scratch has effectively built Vuori (private, ~$4B valuation) in five years by focusing exclusively on the male-then-female coastal-athleisure customer with a narrow premium assortment. UA’s disadvantage in doing it internally is the same one Athleta, Old Navy Active and Nike Women have shown: house-brand women’s activewear inside a men’s-dominated athletic company chronically under-invests and under-indexes.

The second adjacency is team and youth performance at private-label cost, where UA’s residual college/HS football/baseball authority could be extended into a low-cost team-issue business selling directly to athletic departments and youth programs at wholesale-minus pricing. Under Armour Team Sports already exists; it has been de-emphasized under successive brand-elevation resets in favor of premium DTC. A DTC challenger cannot easily attack this — the moat is field reps, custom decoration and school relationships. It is one of the few places UA could grow if it stopped treating team as a legacy anchor and started treating it as a distribution advantage.

Neither adjacency scales the way running/premium-lifestyle would have, which is why the harder answer is that UA’s most valuable capability — technical synthetic performance apparel at scale — was the moat when the category was performance-driven, and the category has moved to lifestyle-first. The wedge for a challenger is exactly the space UA cannot enter without cannibalizing its own outlet-heavy channel.

Sources and further reading

• Under Armour Reports Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Results; Provides Fiscal 2026 Outlook, PR Newswire, November 6, 2025
• Under Armour posts 5% Q2 revenue decline, shares FY26 outlook, Just-Style, November 2025
• Under Armour cuts FY27 sales outlook amid soft demand, Just-Style / Yahoo Finance, August 2026
• Under Armour Announces Leadership Transition, Under Armour investor releases, March 13, 2024
• Under Armour to pay $9 million to settle SEC charges, CNBC, May 3, 2021
• Under Armour splits with Steph Curry, leaving NBA legend free to find a new business partner, CNBC, November 13, 2025
• Kevin Plank and the Rise of Under Armour, Quartr, 2024
• Back as Under Armour CEO, Kevin Plank is Ready to Take on the World’s Top Athletic Brands, Baltimore Magazine, 2024
• On Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results for 2025, On Holding investor releases, March 2026
• Deckers FY2026 financial results: HOKA growth, FY2027 outlook, Sporting Goods Intelligence Europe, 2026
• Under Armour cuts FY27 revenue outlook, Q1 earnings, Qz.com, August 2026
• Under Armour lays out restructuring plans, including layoffs and costs, Baltimore Sun, May 16, 2024