Critical Analysis: Gildan Activewear (NYSE:GIL) & Amer Sports (NYSE:AS)

Amer Sports (NYSE:AS) and Gildan Activewear (NYSE:GIL) are both mid-cap consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Amer Sports and Gildan Activewear, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Amer Sports	0	2	12	0	2.86
Gildan Activewear	0	4	8	0	2.67

Amer Sports presently has a consensus target price of $19.18, indicating a potential upside of 19.42%. Gildan Activewear has a consensus target price of $41.05, indicating a potential upside of 12.13%. Given Amer Sports’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe Amer Sports is more favorable than Gildan Activewear.

Profitability

This table compares Amer Sports and Gildan Activewear’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Amer Sports	N/A	N/A	N/A
Gildan Activewear	16.70%	23.19%	12.58%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

40.3% of Amer Sports shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 82.8% of Gildan Activewear shares are held by institutional investors. 2.0% of Gildan Activewear shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Amer Sports and Gildan Activewear’s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Amer Sports	$4.37 billion	1.86	N/A	N/A	N/A
Gildan Activewear	$3.20 billion	1.93	$533.58 million	$3.03	12.08

Gildan Activewear has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Amer Sports.

Summary

Gildan Activewear beats Amer Sports on 6 of the 10 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Amer Sports

Amer Sports, Inc. designs, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells sports equipment, apparel, footwear, and accessories in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, China, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates through three segments: Technical Apparel, Outdoor Performance, and Ball & Racquet Sports. The Technical Apparel segment offers outdoor apparel, footwear, and accessories under the Arc'teryx and Peak Performance brands. The Outdoor Performance segment provides outdoor apparel, footwear, accessories, and winter sports equipment under the Salomon, Atomic, Armada, and ENVE brands. The Ball & Racquet Sports segment offers sports equipment, apparel, and accessories under the Wilson, DeMarini, Louisville Slugger, EvoShield, and ATEC brands. The company also provides climbing gears, hiking and running footwear, skiing and snowboarding gears, functional athletic apparel, and lifestyle footwear, as well as sporting equipment for tennis, baseball, American football, basketball, golf, and various other professional and recreational sports. It sells its products through its retail stores, general sporting goods retailers, specialty stores, independently operated partner stores, and distributors, as well as its e-commerce websites, and retailer-owned and third-party e-commerce websites. The company was formerly known as Amer Sports Management Holding (Cayman) Limited and changed its name to Amer Sports, Inc. in August 2023. Amer Sports, Inc. was founded in 1950 and is based in Helsinki, Finland.

About Gildan Activewear

Gildan Activewear Inc. manufactures and sells various apparel products in the United States, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. It provides various activewear products, including T-shirts, fleece tops and bottoms, and sports shirts under the Gildan, Gildan Performance, Gildan Hammer, Glidan Softstyle, Gildan Heavy Cotton, Gildan Ultra Cotton, Gildan DryBlend, Gildan HeavyBlend, Comfort Colors, and American Apparel brands. The company also offers hosiery products comprising athletic; dress; and casual, liner, therapeutic, and workwear socks under the Gildan, Under Armour, GoldToe, Signature Gold by Goldtoe, Peds, MediPeds, All Pro, and GoldTeo Edition TM brands. In addition, it provides men's and boys' underwear products, and ladies panties under the Gildan and Gildan Platinum brands. The company sells its products to wholesale distributors, screen printers, and embellishers, as well as to retailers and lifestyle brand companies. The company was formerly known as Textiles Gildan Inc. and changed its name to Gildan Activewear Inc. in March 1995. Gildan Activewear Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.