Nike’s stock is struggling despite it beating its sales expectations for the quarter. The company announced yesterday that it expected sales to continue to decline this year thanks to slow sales in China.
Shares of Nike fell in extended trading Tuesday after the retailer warned sales will fall for the rest of the calendar year, led by an expected 20% decline in its key China market during the current quarter.
Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said during the company’s earnings call that Nike expects sales for its current fiscal fourth quarter to drop between 2% and 4%, compared with Wall Street estimates of a 1.9% increase, according to LSEG.
For the duration of the calendar year, Friend said, the company expects sales to fall by a low single-digit percentage, led by growth in North America and offset by declines in China. That outlook wasn’t comparable to estimates.
Behind the scenes, Nike’s CEO Elliott Hill expressed exasperation that the company-wide turnaround was still eluding him.
“I’m so tired, and I know you are too, of talking about fixing this business,” Hill said during the all-hands meeting Tuesday, according to a recording reviewed by Bloomberg News. “I want to move to inspiring and driving growth and having fun.”…
Chief Financial Officer Matthew Friend discussed Nike’s forward outlook during the all-hands, saying that “the trajectory for the business was stepping down.”
“We’re going to be managing costs carefully as we have been doing,” the CFO said. “I realize that that creates a tension inside, but I just need you to know that the reason why that tension is there is because our business is not moving in the right direction.”
Nike first got in trouble in China back in 2021 when it was targeted by the Communist Youth League who were angry about sanctions connected to the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Nike has made speaking out on social issues the core of their marketing over the past decade, but when it came to China they didn’t have anything to say. Here’s then CEO John Donahoe saying the company was taking the “long-term view.”
“China is a very important market for us, we have a long-term history in China,” says @Nike CEO John Donahoe. “We take a very long-term view with China, we’ll continue to invest in China while also operating a very responsible global supply chain.” pic.twitter.com/FdhgU6qOBM
— CNBC’s Closing Bell (@CNBCClosingBell) August 5, 2021
That was very different than the response to social issues Nike took here in the US.
— Nike (@Nike) August 27, 2020
And of course, the whole promotion of Colin Kaepernick as a brand spokesperson. Nike’s stock price went up in the years after that decision. The peak was in 2021. But the stock has been headed down ever since even as the rest of the market has gone up.
I wrote this editorial for USA Today in 9/18. I advised everyone to sell their Nike stock. As the stock market has risen by 150% over the past seven years, Nike has tanked. When you embrace woke culture, you tank. It’s anti-excellence & anti-meritocracy: https://t.co/uskLKNpsQZ
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 19, 2025
Nike’s hypocrisy was pretty glaring in China compared to its promotion of Kaepernick in the US. So it’s amusing that it has failed to fix its China sales problem despite bending over backwards not to offend the communists.
Unlike some companies, the PR talk didn’t end on the company’s social media accounts. The company is currently under investigation by the EEOC for alleged racial discrimination in its hiring practices. We’ll have to wait and see what the EEOC turns up in that case.
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