Garmin announces record revenue and $1.6 billion operating income in 2024, citing strong demand for smartwatches and other wearables

One of the biggest brands in sports and fitness tech, Garmin, has managed to buck the trend of woes often seen in the bike industry and announced record figures for its total revenue and operating income in 2024, with a “strong demand for wearables” being key for its financial upturn.

The overall increase in revenue and operating income was buoyed by a year-over-year 23 per cent increase in the fourth quarter that was led by Fitness segment sales, which includes cycling products.

For the fiscal year of 2024, Garmin’s consolidated revenue* was $6.3 billion, up 20 per cent from the $5.2 billion reported in 2023, while for the fourth quarter of the year, consolidated revenue was $1.8 billion, compared with $1.5 billion at the same time last year.

Meanwhile, the company’s operating income in 2024 grew by 46 per cent, reaching $1.59 billion. For the 13-week period of the Q4, its operating income was $516 million, an eye-catching increase of 52 per cent increase compared to the prior year quarter.

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Cliff Pemble, President and Chief Executive Officer of Garmin, said: “2024 was a year of remarkable growth and achievement for Garmin, resulting in record full-year consolidated revenue and record full-year revenue in all five of our segments, as well as record full-year consolidated operating income.

“We are entering 2025 with continued strong momentum from our robust product lineup and have many product launches planned during the year. I am very proud of what we accomplished in 2024 and look forward to all that 2025 will bring.”

Much of the company’s success came from its Fitness segment, which had the most year-over-year revenue growth in the fourth quarter at 31 per cent, going from $412 million to $539 million. For the year, Fitness grew 32 per cent compared with 2023, from $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion.

Meanwhile, Garmin’s outdoor segment, its largest by revenue, saw strong demand for its adventure watches in the holiday-season quarter, reporting quarterly revenues of $629.4 million, trouncing an estimate of $585.6 million.

Revenue from its auto OEM segment jumped 30 per cent to $165.8 million, led by increased shipments of domain controllers to automakers such as BMW.

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The Olathe, Kansas-headquartered company said that expectations for its 2025 revenue are also high, estimated at around $6.80 billion, a jump of eight per cent over 2024.

Garmin was in the news a few weeks ago when the brand’s smartwatches and cycling computers were prey to a bug which rendered thousands of its devices unusable. The issue came as a result of some corrupted pre-cache files, which forced the devices to crash and enter a reboot loop when accessing any GPS-related activities.

*Consolidated revenue means the total of all revenue generated by a parent company and its majority-owned subsidiaries, after intercompany eliminations.