Ba517 Financial Analysis of Under Armour 2018

Xuanyu Bai, Rene Clemens, Jifei Jiao, Jason Tao, Vanessa Teo

Professor Mcclure-Nelson

BA 517

Group Project - Under Armour          

History of Company and Discussion of Management

Under Armour was founded by Kevin Plank in 1996. At that time, he was the captain of the football team at University of Maryland. He often found his cotton tee shirts soaking in perspiration while his compression shorts stayed dry. This sparked the idea to develop and find a fabric that would wick away the moisture. Eventually, he managed to come up with a product with a synthetic base layer to achieve that. By the end of 1996, Plank had his first team sale at $17,000. (Logomyway, 2017)

Over the years, the Under Armour brand was passed around through word of mouth from players as well as from films, commercials and endorsements. By 1999, Under Armour was experiencing rapid growth. In 2004, the brand was over $200 million and hence in 2005, Plank took the company public. Under Armour continued with endorsements from various big-time stars. The company signed Tom Brady, by giving him equity in the company. Under Armour wanted to expand the brand to women and thus, signed with Tom Brady’s wife, Gisele Bundchen. (Baer, 2015)

While starting out as a company who wanted to develop the material to wick away the moisture, Under Armour has come a long way. Through the company’s continuous effort in improving their products, expanding their product line and making software acquisitions, Under Armour was able to make a name for themselves and stay competitive amongst other sporting apparel brand.

Under Armour has a simple hierarchical organizational structure. At the top of the structure, is CEO and founder, Kevin Plank. Following on would be CFO David E. Bergman and COO Patrik Frisk. Under would be the Board of Directors, Committee and Executive Officers. The Board of directors mainly does the decision making in the company. (Delano, 2017) The Board is also assisted by Under Armour’s four committees– Audit, Compensation, Governance and Finance. (Under Armour, n.d.)

The Industry and Economic Environment

The sporting goods market is a huge industry in the United States. This sporting good market includes various products such as athletic apparel and accessories, athletic footwear, exercise equipment, and sports merchandise. According to a report by Global Industry Analysts, performance sportswear is valued at US$78 billion in 2016. It is also projected that the global sports apparel market would reach US 231.7 billion by 2024. (PR Newswire, 2017) Under Armour is one of the Top 5 athletic apparel companies in the United States, behind Nike, Adidas and Puma. (Statista, 2018)