Adidas' new strategy

At an Investor Day 2015 event at its home base Herzogenaurach, Adidas said Thursday it was shooting for annual revenue increases, on a currency-neutral basis, in the high single-digits until the year 2020.

It added that net earnings were predicted to grow at a considerably higher rate than the top line, forecasting growth of about 15 percent in each of the next five years.

The speed of bringing new products to the market would be of the essence, CEO Herbert Hainer remarked.

"We're living in a fast-changing world, and only what is new is relevant to the consumer," he said. "We constantly have to reinvent ourselves to lead the change in our industry."

Shareholders pleased

Adidas said some 80 percent of global GDP was being generated in cities and global trends were being increasingly shaped there. That's why the world's No. 2 sporting goods company wanted to focus much more on six global cities, notably Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo, where Adidas would be willing to "overproportionally invest in talent, attention and marketing."

"If we win running in New York and Los Angeles, we will win running in the US," Global Sales executive Roland Auschel said in a statement.

The sportswear company increased the corridor for future dividend payments.

It said it now intended to pay between 30-50 percent of its net income attributable to shareholders, up from between 20-40 percent.

hg/pad (Reuters, dpa)