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After telling the world he couldn’t be dropped by Adidas, Kanye West later said he stood to lose $1 billion the partnership with Adidas had officially ended. Now it turns out Adidas could lose even more.
The German sportswear brand predicts it will lose $1.3 billion in sales this year because Yeezy clothes and shoes will not be available, the company said Thursday.
A lack of Yeezy products will also reduce operating profit by $534 million, with the long-established sporting company projected to break even this year, Adidas said.
“The numbers speak for themselves. We are currently not performing the way we should,” CEO Bjørn Gulden said in a statement. “2023 will be a year of transition to set the base to again be a growing and profitable company.”
CBS News reports the warning about revenue loss sent Adidas’ stock price for a tumble Friday, falling 11.5% to $138.50 a share. Its stock has fallen 45% since the beginning of this year.
Adidas ended its clothing-and-shoe deal with West, who now goes by Ye, last October after he made damning antisemitic remarks on social media and podcasts.
Adidas drops Kanye
Adidas’ deal with West officially started in 2016, with the company at the time calling it “the most significant partnership ever created between an athletic brand and a non-athlete.”
Though the partnership started with high demand and high profits, West first said he wanted to leave Adidas last June, when he accused the company of launching a shopping event called Yeezy without his prior knowledge.
According to Bloomberg, in early September, he called a reporter at midnight in New York to say he was done with corporations. “They steal my ideas,” he said. “It was all collusion, and it was just people trying to control Ye.”
One month later, West would cause a global uproar in early October for hosting a fashion show in Paris where he and models wore shirts reading, “White Lives Matter.” Days after that, Adidas finally put its partnership with him “under review.”
Because of the scale of the Yeezy business, the company’s supervisory board needed to weigh in on the decision. Once Adidas executive opinions were in hand, the top management held a two-minute phone call and reached the decision. The press release went out, and in an instant, Ye’s billionaire status was a thing of the past.
He will continue to own Yeezy, which he officially launched in 2016, as well as control trademarks for the brand.