1. NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 73
NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) is an athletic apparel company. Cramer has discussed the firm several times this year. Most of his remarks have focused on the firm’s former CEO and his disastrous decisions that led NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE)’s stock to bleed 29.6% in market cap in 2024. The shares dropped by 9.8% in March after the firm’s latest financials saw CFO Matthew Friend warn that fiscal Q4 sales could drop in the mid-teens percentages which was higher than analyst estimates of 12.2%. Cramer discussed NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) in great detail after the earnings:
“Yes, Sarah, you know that Nike had a, it was tough to listen to because of the inventories.”
“Look, let’s just cut to the chase. What really killed us? . . .is when you hear a company just basically saying look, macroeconomic is bad, I wanna read the words. . .’we expect revenues,’ this was devastating, this is from Matthew Friend, and you know straight shooter right,. . .’we expect Q4 revenues to be down in the mid-teens range,’ why?, okay ‘unfavorable shipment time in North America,’ ‘two points of negative impact from foreign exchange,’ and of course, ‘400 to 500 basis points down creating restructuring charges for gross margins,’ look you’re not gonna want to own that stock if you hear that. But do you want to sell it Sarah at 65? That’s the question.”
“And if we just want to focus, listen, Sarah, if we only want to focus on how Nike Jordan’s are doing, then we are doing a disservice to people. We know that they’ve got that wrong locker, we know that Donahue almost wrecked this company. Which is really a kind of a land speed record. . . I don’t know I would put Donahue in the fastest ever to crash a car. But I liked very much what I hear from Darden. I mean why didn’t Darden get mentioned? Why isn’t Olive Garden mentioned in the equation? I mean that’s the consumer. But you know what again, we can focus on the negative. I can have more fun doing the negative than anyone because I read four conference calls that were negative. I read ten that were positive.”
“But Sarah, let’s talk about a stock that is bad. . . Nike is the paradigm of what is wrong. But, it’s a great franchise so you have to say at 65, is that company worth something? You know the negatives last night were heavy, no real positives. But is that stock deserving of say fifty dollars, fifty five dollars? Is that where you should trade.”
“Well, the uncertain consumer seems to be certain when they’re buying on ON, a little more certain when they’re buying Hoka. I think the uncertain consumer turns certain when they’re buying New Balance. I think that as you know, the Adidas consumer doesn’t seem all that uncertain. I don’t want to hear uncertain. If you’re going to talk about win, you should talk about loss. The company had a huge series of losses. Look I know Corporate America likes to say you know what, don’t worry, let’s forget about the past. Corporate America. . .never wants to be able to say we were gutted by a previous CEO. Because that’s just not the way it’s done. I’m gonna do it. I cannot believe, how that man, the previous CEO, gutted anything that was new, relied on the old, it failed. Decided to sabotage people like Mary Dillon, at Footlocker. Now they have to take back all the inventory. They have no place to put it other than the Nike factory stores. Look there’s a lot of damage. And I think what happened is, there was much more damage than people realized, Sarah. And the other guys didn’t have damage. The other guys didn’t sit still. And I think the company should start acknowledging that not only do they have to win, but the other guys have to lose. And you have to beat them. And I think that while they talk a good competitive game and they talk about the Ohio State football program. . .what they didn’t talk about is how to beat the other guy. Yes, they’re gonna return to sport. . .but that means you’re going to have to design, and you can’t start designing overnight!”
NKE is a stock Jim Cramer recently discussed. While we acknowledge the potential of NKE as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NKE but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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