Adidas Aims to Overtake Nike

Adidas (ADDYY) aims to boost its sales to 17 billion euros ($24 billion) by 2015 as part of a strategy to overtake Nike (NKE) as the world's largest sporting goods company.

"Our aspirations are to outperform total market growth ... to outgrow our major competitor and have the bottom line grow faster than the top line," CEO Herbert Hainer said, according to Reuters.

Adidas is targeting 8% sales growth this year, from sales of 10.4 billion euros in 2009. Nike posted sales of $19 billion in the year to May 2010.

Adidas hopes to post compound annual earnings growth of 15% and an operating margin of 11% by 2015.

The German company said the key growth markets include North America, China and Latin America.

"The new strategy plan is very promising and is encouraging investors after strong results," a trader at Frankfurt's Alpha brokerage told Reuters.