Nike's turnaround effort has not been a quick pivot, to borrow a basketball term. It has been more like a wobbly slide on a dusty gym floor. The stock price peaked at over $170 in late 2021. It was down to $79 in October 2024, when company lifer Elliott Hill returned from retirement to take over and set things right. Now it is $46, a price investors could have paid nearly a dozen years ago.
There are two more problems. First, although shares are cheaper than they were, they are not trading at a deep and obvious discount, at 24 times projected earnings for the company's fiscal year ending May 2027. A bounceback in earnings would help, but estimates for the years ahead have been slipping.
Second, Hill is already doing the things investors are demanding: refocusing the company on performance shoes after years of shuffling along on casual designs, and repairing relationships with stores after an arrogant move online. There are pockets of success, like a modest rebound in North American sales in the latest quarter. But it has not been enough.
It is a tempting buy when one of history's great growth stocks has fallen so much. A 3.6% dividend is a sweetener. But investors should first consider the possibility that Nike's problems run deeper than they appear.
A plunge in demand from China is clearly a key concern, but there are also questions over whether Nike has lost its marketing edge, amid what might be a shift in the phenomenon that brought it to dominance to begin with: basketball stardom. It may be wise to wait for more progress before buying shares.
## Shoe Drop
An investor who held Nike from the start would have no regrets. Shares sold for 18 cents apiece, split-adjusted, at the initial public offering in 1980. But the price had dropped to 12 cents by Oct. 26, 1984. That was the day Nike gambled a then-unheard-of $2.5 million on a five-year shoe deal with a college basketball star who had not yet played a day in the pros: Michael Jordan. The pact was so transformative that Ben Affleck made a 2023 movie about the executive who landed it, called Air, starring Matt Damon.
It was not just that Jordan won six championships with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, or thrilled fans with soaring dunks. The 1990s were the twilight of monoculture, when consumers watched the same television shows and read the same magazines, before the internet splintered audiences.
The 1992 Olympic "Dream Team" showed Jordan off to an adoring world. In marketing, there is a proprietary measure of celebrity reach and popularity called the Q Score. Anything over 20 is excellent, and 40 is a rare pop miracle. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II, a celebrity pontiff if ever there was one, is said to have scored in the low-to-mid 40s. Jordan hit 56. Everyone knew him, and everyone liked him. He made Nike the place to be for top athletes.
In Nike's fiscal year ended May 2025, its Jordan brand did $7.3 billion in sales, or 15% of the company's total. But that dollar figure was down a painful 16% from the year before.
For years, the brand generated hype through limited releases and instant sellouts of retro shoes, which "sneakerheads" traded on secondary markets. During the pandemic, Nike flooded the market, creating an easy boost for sales and profits, but also suffocating its hard-won hype.
Two disastrous things happened around the same time. Nike's Consumer Direct Acceleration strategy under previous CEO John Donahoe involved cutting ties with middling shoe retailers and reducing allocations to longtime partner Foot Locker, while pitching more shoes online for a higher cut of profits. Meanwhile, consumer preference abruptly shifted away from bulky basketball silhouettes toward running aesthetics, especially dad shoes and tech wear. New Balance, Hoka, and On surged, and stores that had been spurned by Nike were happy to give them shelf space.
## The Skeptic
If there is a measure beyond Nike's stock price that captures its slump, it might be operating margin, which averaged around 13% over the decade through May 2024, and is projected to dip below 6% for the year through May 2026.
Part of the decline is necessary medicine. CEO Hill has pulled back on Jordan retro models, along with an oversaturated basketball low-top turned lifestyle shoe called Dunks. He is also making amends with retailers, which has involved accepting humbler economics. The bull case on Nike - less than half of Wall Street analysts say to buy the stock today, versus more than three-quarters at its 2021 peak - is that margins will revert to normal once Nike regains its footing.
Jay Sole at UBS is not so sure. For one thing, double-digit margins for sneaker giants are unusual. Adidas (ADS) had an 8% margin last year, and it led Puma (PUM) and Under Armour (UA). Also, it is unclear how much Nike needs to shrink to grow. Sportswear, including apparel, has recently been half of sales, Sole reckons, even though the company once said it should never be more than 30%. This risks spending down brand equity that was built with performance shoes, and cultivating a customer base of trend chasers, not brand loyalists.
Stepping back, Sole wonders whether Nike has lost what he calls its superpower: the ability to be all things to all people. "Most brands have some sort of limitation," he says. "They are footwear only or they are apparel only, or they are one country only, or they are one sport only, because that is sort of what they are known as. And it is hard to be more than that."
Lululemon Athletica (LULU, +2.90%), for example, attracts primarily women, and Under Armour attracts primarily men. In past UBS surveys that asked respondents which brands are for them, most topped out at 60%, but Nike hit 95%. It sells to men, women, young, old, suburban, urban, and participants in just about every sport, or no sports.