Kontoor Targets More Than $1.1 Billion of Helly Hansen Revenue by 2030

Kontoor Brands is telling investors that Helly Hansen is expected to become a much larger business by the end of the decade, setting a goal of more than $1.1 billion in annual revenue by 2030 as it lays out the next phase of growth for the outdoor and workwear label it acquired last year.

The target, announced on Sept. 2 at Helly Hansen Investor Day in Oslo, starts from $675 million of pro-forma fiscal 2025 revenue and implies a compound annual growth rate of about 10%. Kontoor also said it wants the brand to reach gross margin in the mid to high 50% range, operating margin in the mid teens, and cumulative cash generation of more than $500 million through 2030.

The announcement gives investors a clearer sense of how important Helly Hansen has become to Kontoor’s long-term story. For years the company was defined mainly by Wrangler and Lee. After the Helly Hansen acquisition closed in May 2025, management began arguing that the Norwegian brand could lift Kontoor’s growth rate, broaden its geographic footprint and deepen its exposure to outdoor and workwear categories that carry different demand patterns from denim.

Wednesday’s Investor Day turned that broader thesis into a set of operating goals, along with a more detailed explanation of where management thinks the gains can come from and what role Helly Hansen is expected to play in the reshaping of the portfolio.

Targets set a larger financial role for Helly Hansen

According to Kontoor’s Investor Day announcement, the 2030 revenue target is tied to a strategy designed to scale Helly Hansen globally while also lifting profitability. The company framed the targets as long-term financial objectives for the Helly Hansen reportable segment, not for Kontoor on a consolidated basis.

That distinction matters. The headline number is not a companywide sales target, and management was explicit that the outlook is forward-looking. The revenue base used in the growth calculation is also a non-GAAP measure, with the company citing $675 million of pro-forma fiscal 2025 revenue as the starting point. In the release, Kontoor said that figure is the base period for the brand’s expected compound annual growth rate.

Still, the scale of the ambition is notable. A business that generates more than $1.1 billion in annual revenue would stand well above Helly Hansen’s pre-acquisition size within Kontoor and would give the parent company a larger earnings contributor outside its legacy denim labels. The margin goals point to a second part of the plan: management is not simply chasing top-line growth, but trying to turn that expansion into a business with stronger structural profitability and meaningful cash generation.

Kontoor also said it would not provide a reconciliation of forward-looking non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP figures because doing so would require forecasts for items that are inherently difficult to predict. That is standard language in corporate outlook materials, but it is also a reminder that these are management targets rather than guaranteed results.

Growth plan leans on the U.S., premium outdoor categories and workwear

The strategy itself rests on three pillars. The first is a push to “supercharge” the U.S., which Kontoor described as Helly Hansen’s largest growth opportunity. Management said that effort will depend on a mix of wholesale expansion and direct-to-consumer growth, with the goal of improving brand awareness and distribution in a market where Helly Hansen has room to expand from a smaller base.

The second pillar is what the company calls winning in premium outdoor. Helly Hansen already has strong heritage positions in wintersports and sailing, two categories that give the brand technical credibility. The next step, according to the Investor Day release, is to compete more consistently across the broader premium outdoor market and extend into adjacent technical activities where the brand believes it already has a right to compete.

The third pillar is workwear. Helly Hansen has an established European workwear business, and Kontoor’s plan is to scale that business into North America by pairing the brand’s product positioning with the parent’s operating capabilities in the region. In practice, that means using Kontoor’s infrastructure, sourcing reach and relationships to accelerate distribution and category penetration where management sees room for profitable expansion.

Taken together, those pillars suggest that Kontoor is trying to grow Helly Hansen without diluting what made the brand attractive in the first place. Rather than present a broad lifestyle expansion story, the company is leaning on technical outdoor and professional-grade workwear, categories that can support premium positioning if consumer demand holds up. The U.S. emphasis is also consistent with what Kontoor has been signaling since the acquisition, namely that Helly Hansen’s brand awareness there leaves headroom relative to its standing in Europe.

Borre Hegbom, Helly Hansen’s global head, said in the release that the brand is moving from a specialist European name to a leading global premium technical brand. That framing captures the central challenge in the plan. Helly Hansen has to scale meaningfully, especially in the U.S., without becoming too broad or losing the authenticity that management is using as one of the core reasons investors should believe the targets are achievable.

Strategy arrives as Kontoor reshapes its portfolio

The Investor Day roadmap lands at a time when Kontoor is in the middle of broader strategic change. The company completed its acquisition of Helly Hansen on May 31, 2025, after announcing the deal in February of that year. In the original acquisition announcement, Kontoor said it agreed to buy the brand from Canadian Tire Corporation for C$1.276 billion, or about $900 million as of the agreement date, subject to closing adjustments.

Since then, Helly Hansen has become increasingly visible in Kontoor’s financial reporting. In its second-quarter 2026 earnings release, the company said revenue from continuing operations rose 19% to $584 million, helped by $114 million of Helly Hansen revenue in the quarter. In its 2025 annual report, Kontoor said Helly Hansen contributed $475.5 million of revenue during the year, reflecting the fact that 2025 included only a partial year of ownership after the acquisition closed near the end of May.

Those figures help explain why the new 2030 targets matter. Investors are being asked to view Helly Hansen as more than a bolt-on addition. Management is presenting it as a growth engine that can influence Kontoor’s mix, improve its international and outdoor exposure, and support a stronger earnings profile over time. Joe Alkire, the company’s president and chief financial officer, said in the Sept. 2 release that the combination of revenue growth, margin expansion and cash generation is expected to strengthen Kontoor’s earnings profile and widen capital allocation choices.

The timing is notable for another reason. Kontoor has also been reshaping the rest of its brand portfolio, including its previously announced agreement to sell the Lee business. That places more strategic weight on the brands that remain, especially Wrangler and Helly Hansen. A successful buildout of Helly Hansen would therefore do more than add revenue. It would help define what Kontoor looks like after its portfolio changes are complete.

There are still clear execution risks. The company itself cited macroeconomic conditions, uneven consumer demand, foreign exchange swings, inflation, supply chain pressures and tariffs among the factors that could affect results. Management also flagged the practical difficulty of integrating Helly Hansen and delivering the expected growth and cost benefits. For a brand with premium positioning, a weaker discretionary spending backdrop could make the path to the 2030 targets harder, particularly in newer markets where awareness still has to be built.

Even so, the Investor Day presentation gives the market a more concrete benchmark for judging whether the acquisition is paying off. Over the next few years, investors will be able to compare Helly Hansen’s reported revenue, margin progression, U.S. expansion and cash contribution against the outline Kontoor presented on Wednesday. Replay materials from the event were scheduled to be made available on Kontoor’s investor relations site after the session concluded, with the company’s next quarterly results likely to offer the next formal checkpoint on whether the brand is tracking toward management’s longer-term goals.