Nike Beats Earnings, Slight Miss On Top

After the bell Tuesday, Nike (NKE – Analyst Report) reported fiscal Q3 2016 earnings results that were mixed compared with analyst expectations. Earnings per share of 55 cents on revenues of $8.0 billion beat and missed the 48 cents per share and $8.2 million in sales, respectively. Shares on NKE slipped 4 percent immediately upon the news, and have begun to creep back up since.

This is a company that always beats on its bottom line, but now has missed for the second consecutive quarter on revenues. The stronger dollar is partly to blame — instead of the headline 8 percent year-over-year growth in the quarter, minus dollar issues Nike would have seen 14 percent — and purchase order futures up 12 percent would have been 17 percent if not for the dollar currency headwind.

China futures gained 36 percent in the quarter (Nike’s fastest-growing region), while Western Europe lagged expectations a bit. Gross margins remained at 45.9 percent. But at a P/E of 30x earnings and trading at a 40 percent premium to the market, Nike shares are priced for big positive surprise numbers in its earnings reports, and this quarter the company did not quite deliver.

That said, Nike’s direct-to-consumer business looks to be growing nicely, which is good because these sales have higher profit margins. Inventories were up 8 percent year over year. In Q3-16, Nike repurchased $1.5 billion in shares (24.3 million overall) and concluded its 4-year obligation of repurchasing $8 billion in shares going back to September 2012.

Analysts had been revising estimates for this quarter and next quite busily over the past couple months, with a modest positive bias overall, but not really moving the needle on share price expectations all too much. Today’s 14.6 percent beat on the bottom line might see an upturn for next quarter and full-year 2016 revisions, however.

We hope the conference call will include some information on how Nike has fared taking market share in the Women’s category — it, like so many other fitness retailers, are looking to take a bigger piece from companies like Lululemon (LULU – Analyst Report) and Under Armour (UA – Analyst Report). The company that made Beaverton, OR famous also has the NCAA Tournament ongoing and looks forward to the Summer Olympics in Brazil this year.