20 August 2026
If you are covering the latest financial results from JD Sports, please find below a comment from Mamta Valechha, consumer discretionary analyst at Quilter Cheviot:
"JD Sports' second quarter trading update disappointed a little, with numbers weaker than expected. This has led to a full-year profit guidance cut of approximately 6% at the midpoint. Overall like for like sales were down 3.1%, a fairly big miss and a sequential deceleration.
"JD’s core consumer continues to feel the weight of the incremental cost of living pressures, particularly in the US with North America very weak (down 6.8%). JD flags slower footwear sales and deferred back to school demand within the region. JD also allocates the weak performance to fewer launches of high-heat products in Q2 from key brand partners e.g. Nike, and higher promotions. The UK (up 0.8%) was said to be slightly improving and Europe still weak (-2.7%), painting a fairly meek picture globally.
"Today’s results aren't the biggest surprise with the quarter dominated by the World Cup, where sales of football tops shirts take over sales from lifestyle shoes. The latter is where JD Sports over indexes. Additionally, JD remains under-indexed to categories that are doing well such as performance football and running. We also had Adidas at the end of July flagging weakness in the wholesale market, with high levels of inventory and discounting, which led it to reduce sell-in into retailers. This likely means that brands which are doing well, are protecting their full price sales by pushing them through their direct channels, with retailers likely missing out."
