The world’s second-largest footwear and apparel maker, Reebok International, today reported an 18% fall in fourth quarter net income.

Though earnings in the fourth quarter were $5.1 million or 9 cents a diluted share, compared with $6.2 million or 11 cents per dilated share the year before, this was still above the Wall Street consensus estimate of 5 cents per share.

Admitting that the company was unlikely to realise its long term profit growth objective of 15% this year, Chairman Paul Fireman said he expected most of the company’s earnings improvement to occur in the second half of 2002.

In contrast to domestic footwear sales, which fell 4.4% to $192 million, US sales of apparel came in way above expectations, showing a massive 89% increase to $113.1 million. According to Fireman, this was mainly due to licensing agreements with the National Football League and the National Basketball Association.

Fourth quarter net sales increased to $664.6 million, up 6.8% on last year.