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Hong Kong-listed Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning says mainland growth a springboard to take on global names

  • Company posts 187 per cent rise in first-half net profit to 1.96 billion yuan
  • Want to develop eponymous label into ‘internationally recognised top-class global, fashionable and professional sports brand’, executive chairman Li Ning says

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A Li-Ning store in Beijing. The company is among major domestic brands that have benefited from the recent Chinese boycott of Western sportswear brands over the use of Xinjiang cotton. Photo: AFP
Peggy Sito
Li-Ning Company, the Hong Kong-listed mainland Chinese sportswear brand, wants to take on global competitors after seizing market leadership in the booming sports industry at home.
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The company will seize new opportunities to expand and “develop its brand from a Chinese brand to an internationally recognised top-class global, fashionable and professional sports brand”, former Olympian Li Ning, who is the brand’s executive chairman and joint CEO, said in a statement reporting its six-month financial results on Friday.

The company expects to benefit from a five-year (2021-25) mass fitness programme introduced on August 3 that targets growing China’s sports industry to five trillion yuan (US$772 billion) by 2025. This growth will be driven by an increase in supply of fitness facilities, the cultivation of a modern sports industrial system, as well as the promotion of digitalisation.

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Global brands face backlash in China for rejecting Xinjiang cotton

Global brands face backlash in China for rejecting Xinjiang cotton

On Friday, the company posted a 187 per cent rise in first-half net profit to 1.96 billion yuan. Its net profit margin rose from 11.1 per cent to 19. 2 per cent, and revenue rose 65 per cent to 10.2 billion yuan. But directors did not declare any interim dividend for shareholders. Its shares closed 1.1 per cent higher at HK$87.4 on Friday against a 52-week high of HK$105 apiece.

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Li-Ning is among major domestic brands that are riding a wave of national pride that has followed the recent Chinese boycott of Western sportswear brands over the use of Xinjiang cotton. Where as foreign brands such as Nike and H&M, among others, said their products did not use cotton from the region, Li-Ning has attracted Chinese consumers with branding that states “Xinjiang cotton is used in our products”.
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