Amer Sports is no longer the leveraged brand-roll-up the IPO priced. That story changed in the first quarter of 2026, and the change is the only thing that matters about the print. Revenue of $1,945.5M rose 32% in reported terms and 26% in constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA reached $432.4M at a 22.2% margin, up from 20.3% a year ago. Net income to common shareholders was $164.6M versus $134.6M. Arc'teryx, Salomon and Wilson all grew. Greater China grew 44.5%, Asia Pacific grew 52.6%, the Americas grew 18.1%, EMEA grew 26.6%. The direct-to-consumer channel - owned retail and e-commerce - grew 44.6% and crossed 51.5% of total revenue for the first time. These are the numbers the market was waiting to see.
Then the balance sheet absorbed the year-end's largest overhang. Amer Sports fully redeemed its $800M of 6.750% senior secured notes - $80M at 103% on February 6, and the remaining $720M at 105.65% on March 16, the latter financed by an early-March public offering the company did not break out separately in its interim report. The redemptions cost $50.5M in non-cash loss on debt extinguishment, which is the entire reason GAAP pretax income rose only 22% on a 50%-plus segment-profit gain. Strip the extinguishment, and pretax income was up roughly 45%. Cash and cash equivalents ended the quarter at $683.7M, total debt fell to $145M (two China working-capital lines, both fully drawn), and the company moved from $283M of net debt at year-end to $539M of net cash in a single quarter. The revolver - $710M of it - sits untouched. There is no longer a leverage story.
The Q1 print was a quarter-and-a-half of operating leverage compressed into three months, plus a balance sheet that stopped earning 6.75%. The market has not fully repriced the second half of that sentence. The stock closed at $33.12 on August 13, down 21% from the 52-week high of $41.96 set in February - a drawdown that began before the Q1 release and continued through the May print, in part because of comparable fears on the consumer side and in part because Greater China's growth was indistinguishable from a credit-fueled property-services read. The thesis question going into the second quarter is whether the deleveraging is the inflection, or whether the consumer already had a banner quarter and the second half decelerates. The data below decides which.