Limited Assurance Report of the Independent Auditor regarding the Combined Nonfinancial Statement1

To the Supervisory Board of adidas AG, Herzogenaurach

We have performed an independent limited assurance engagement on the Combined Non-Financial Statement of adidas AG, Herzogenaurach, (further the “Company” or “adidas”) and the adidas Group according to §§ 315b, 315c German Commercial Code (HGB) in conjunction with §§ 289b to 289e HGB (further the “Report“) for the year from January 1 to December 31, 2019.

As described in the section “Working conditions in our supply chain” in the Report, 1,191 social compliance and environmental audits at suppliers were performed by in-house technical staff as well as external third-party monitors commissioned by adidas business entities and licensees. The reasonableness and accuracy of the conclusions from the performed audit work were not part of our limited assurance engagement.

Management’s Responsibility

The management board of adidas is responsible for the preparation of the Report in accordance with §§ 315b, 315c HGB in conjunction with §§ 289b to 289e HGB.

This responsibility of the management board includes the selection and application of appropriate methods to prepare the Report and the use of assumptions and estimates for individual disclosures which are reasonable under the given circumstances. Furthermore, the responsibility includes designing, implementing and maintaining systems and processes relevant for the preparation of the Report in a way that is free of – intended or unintended – material misstatements.

Independence and quality assurance on the part of the auditing firm

We are independent from the Company in accordance with the requirements of independence and quality assurance set out in legal provisions and professional pronouncements and have fulfilled our additional professional obligations in accordance with these requirements.

Our audit firm applies the legal provisions and professional pronouncements for quality assurance, in particular the professional code for German Public Auditors and Chartered Accountants (in Germany) and the quality assurance standard of the German Institute of Public Auditors (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer, IDW) regarding quality assurance requirements in audit practice (IDW QS 1).

Practitioner’s Responsibility

Our responsibility is to express a conclusion based on our work performed of the Report within a limited assurance engagement.

We conducted our work in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (Revised): “Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information” published by IAASB. This Standard requires that we plan and perform the assurance engagement to obtain limited assurance whether any matters have come to our attention that cause us to believe that the Report for the period from January 1 to December 31, 2019, has not been prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with §§ 315b, 315c HGB in conjunction with §§ 289b to 289e HGB. We do not, however, issue a separate conclusion for each disclosure. In a limited assurance engagement the evidence gathering procedures are more limited than in a reasonable assurance engagement and therefore less assurance is obtained than in a reasonable assurance engagement. The choice of audit procedures is subject to the auditor’s own judgement.

Within the scope of our engagement, we performed amongst others the following procedures:

  • Inquiries of personnel on group level who are responsible for the materiality analysis to get an understanding of the process for identifying material topics and respective report boundaries for adidas
  • A risk assessment, including media research, of relevant information about the sustainability performance of adidas in the reporting period
  • Evaluation of the design and implementation of systems and processes for the collection, processing and monitoring of disclosures on environmental, employee and social matters, human rights, corruption and bribery, including data consolidation
  • Inquiries of personnel on group level who are responsible for determining disclosures on concepts, due diligence processes, results and risks, the conducting of internal controls and consolidation of the disclosures
  • Evaluation of selected internal and external documents
  • Analytical evaluation of data and trends of quantitative disclosures which are reported by all sites on group level
  • Assessment of local data collection and reporting processes and reliability of reported data via a sampling survey in Herzogenaurach (Germany) and a video conference with the distribution center Moscow (Russia)
  • Evaluation of data collection and reporting processes and reliability of reported E-KPI and C-KPI data via a sampling survey for the two most relevant suppliers (by production volume, tier 1) conducted via video conferences with the sites in Vietnam and Indonesia
  • Evaluation of the methodology for supplier assessment (E-KPI, C-KPI)
  • Assessment of the overall presentation of the disclosures

Conclusion

Based on the procedures performed and the evidence received to obtain assurance, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the Report of adidas for the business year from January 1 to December 31, 2019 is not prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with §§ 315b, 315c HGB in conjunction with §§ 289b to 289e HGB.

Restriction of Use / Clause on General Engagement Terms

This report is issued for purposes of the Supervisory Board of adidas AG, Herzogenaurach, only. We assume no responsibility with regard to any third parties.

Our assignment for the Supervisory Board of adidas AG, Herzogenaurach, and professional liability is governed by the General Engagement Terms for Wirtschaftsprüfer and Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften (Allgemeine Auftragsbedingungen für Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften) in the version dated January 1, 2017. By reading and using the information contained in this report, each recipient confirms notice of provisions of the General Engagement Terms (including the limitation of our liability for negligence to EUR 4 million as stipulated in No. 9) and accepts the validity of the General Engagement Terms with respect to us.

Munich, February 27, 2020

KPMG AG

Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft

[Original German version signed by:]

Andrejewski

Hell

1 Our engagement applied to the German version of the Annual Report 2019. This text is a translation of the Limited Assurance Report issued in German, whereby the German text is authoritative.