Sporting goods and apparel retail companies such as Under Armour (NYSE:$UAA), Nike (NYSE:$NKE), and Foot Locker (NYSE:$FL) saw their stocks fall on Monday, August 21st. This was largely due to analysts downgrading the stocks of sports apparel retail companies and cutting their price targets for said stocks. The downgrades and price cuts may very well be related to the continuing struggles of the industry. As of market close on August 21st, Foot Locker fell the most at 7.45%, while Under Armour fell by 3.10% and Nike fell by 2.44%.
Like many businesses in the retail industry, sporting goods and apparel companies have been facing bankruptcies and massive store closures. Additionally, certain sports have been seeing a slowdown in sales like golf. This has resulted in companies doing direct-to-consumer selling in order to keep the numbers up.
The industry’s struggles can be seen through the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (NYSEARCA:$XRT), which has gone down by 14.1% this year to date. To compare, the S&P 500 index (INDEXCBOE:$.INX) has been up by 8.1% year to date.
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