Elliott Hill is coming off the bench — and is going to have to bring his A-game next month when he takes the lead as president and chief executive officer of Nike Inc.
There was little surprise when the sports giant revealed late Thursday that “the board and John Donahoe have decided he will retire from his role” as president and CEO as of Oct. 13, but there was some relief.
Nike’s stock was up 6 percent to $85.81 in morning trading Friday, boosting the company’s market capitalization by more than $7 billion to $129 billion.
Jay Sole, an analyst at UBS, said that stock market momentum might not last as investors move past the moment and look closer at the company’s fundamentals during its next quarterly earnings report on Oct. 1.
“We think sentiment could turn more bearish as the market realizes Nike’s fundamentals likely aren’t great and there are probably no quick fixes to Nike’s issues,” Sole said.
Wall Street is also going to be taking a hard look at the incoming CEO.
“Is Mr. Hill the right person to help fix Nike’s product issues?” asked Sole. “Mr. Hill has a strong reputation as a leader and has deep experience at Nike in sales, retail, marketing and geographies. However, we don’t believe Mr. Hill is considered a ‘product person.’ The market has been very focused on how Nike will improve the amount and quality of new product innovation it brings to market. The market may wonder if Mr. Hill has the right skill set to help Nike fix its product issues.”
But, for now, investors are happy to see the CEO shift.
Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, called Donahoe’s departure “a difficult but necessary exit.”
“Moving from his position as a Nike outside director to the CEO office, Donahoe had a tough row to hoe, arriving within weeks of the onset of the COVID-19 virus — and was widely lauded for his efforts to shepherd this iconic company through the deadly pandemic.
“Once the economy began to recover, however, navigating the company through the multiple challenges of plunging sales, a brand that was nearing its sell-by date — and a pervasive lack of innovation in such core categories as run and apparel — Donahoe was unable to stem the tide,” Johnson said.
Hill, at least, should be able to get right into the action given his 32-year history with the company.
Before retiring in 2022, Hill, 60, was president of consumer and marketplace, leading all commercial and marketing operations for the Nike and Jordan brands.
While the appointment demonstrates that change has come to Nike, and investors approve, analysts are being cleareyed about just how quickly that change will show up in the company’s results.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said, “Sending a signal to the market is one thing, convincing consumers is quite another. Nike has a long road to travel in order to compete more successfully against younger, nimbler brands. And its reinvention coincides with a period of soft sneaker demand.”
John Kernan, an analyst at TD Securities, kept his hold rating on the company’s stock and said Wall Street’s consensus growth estimates could come down as “narrative of the Nike brand…remains the larger challenge.”
In 2021, Donahoe projected that revenues would grow at a high-single-digit to low-double-digit clip through fiscal 2025, but Kernan noted that revenues only grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 5 percent between 2021 and 2024.
The analyst called midsingle digit growth “a more reasonable target.”
Kernan is looking for Hill’s take on “future channel mix, franchise management and innovation pipeline” as well as the structure of the company and how he will define the culture at Nike headquarters.
