Garmin’s Stellar Profits
Garmin has just recently reported excellent figures covering the Christmas period and posted over one billion dollar profits for the full year.
These results must surely put any lingering doubts to bed about what kind of company Garmin is. Back in 2007, Garmin got 73.6% of revenue from automative and that figure is now 10.4% (Q4.2020). Aviation and Marine are currently important to Garmin but now 65% of revenue comes from the combined fitness and outdoors sectors and much of that is the sports-related tech that I regularly talk about here.
Garmin’s (edited) statement says this
Executive Overview from Cliff Pemble, President and Chief Executive Officer:
……“Strong demand for active lifestyle products fueled our growth, and we expect these trends to continue into 2021. …”
Fitness:
Revenue from the fitness segment grew 26% in the fourth quarter driven by strong demand for advanced wearables and cycling products. Gross margin and operating margin were 53% and 27%, respectively, resulting in 75% operating income growth. During the quarter, we launched the Tacx Boost, a powerful indoor trainer that is easy-to-use and features a magnetic brake, realistic ride-feel and manual resistance control for cyclists of all levels.
Outdoor:
Revenue from the outdoor segment grew 40% in the fourth quarter across all categories led by strong demand for adventure watches. Gross margin and operating margin were 66% and 43%, respectively, resulting in 55% operating income growth.
Garmin’s share price fell around the time of the news release however this was probably in line with a similar fall in the NASDAQ at the same time.
Source: Garmin.com
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Garmin has done wonders in normalising spending >£500 on a watch every 2 years. Kudos to them.
I wonder if we’ll see a slight dip in their 2021 Q1 growth after the “hacking” incident and Sony chipset accuracy (which whilst affected other brands will be more felt by Garmin users).
i doubt we will see that for that reason
i suspect more that there have not been any new models of note for volumes (yet)
Well, the normalizing was done by Apple. Back then their watch was widely considered a massive threat, if not even a death sentence to the entire sports watch business.
Turns out the opposite is true: apparently, before the Apple many people were considering a sports watch, maybe, but foregoing the purchase because your phone strapped to the upper arm during a run gets part of the job done much cheaper. And now or seems like all of them were internally greenlighting their old consumerism dream of a dedicated sports watch as soon as the first Apple watches appeared at the office.
Now they (we?) can’t get enough of that secret smugness of knowing how much more expensive their e.g. Fenix was than that doodad the Apple guy keeps showing off.
It’s really a quite surprising outcome given the general brand appeal of Apple and the undeniable mechanical qualities of their watch (Garmins appear surprisingly crude in FCC internal pics, but apparently it gets the job done, in a delightfully pragmatic way)
i think the overall market has grown and all the sub markets too.
i think the apple watch WILL be the eventual death of garmin. but AW will pull the rug from underneath the feet of the fenix rather than competing directly with it. ie it will take out the mid-tier forerunners and below
as of now AW are perhaps more interested in smarts, health and wellness and erring toward medical than erring toward athletic or overly adventurous endeavours
Worldwide Pandemic.
People were bored.
People wanted to utilize their time positively.
People thought excerise would help bolster them against the virus.
Garmin has name recognition.
Garmin knows how to SEO.
Garmin makes record profits, and will continue this year as we’re still dealing with the pandemic.
Write this again in 2023 after the virus is under control (hopefully).