Nike released blockbuster fourth-quarter numbers and the sneaker King printed record revenues in its biggest market, North America, where sales more than double to $5.38 billion. The Nike share price liked the news and is up 14.1% in early trade. This reverses Nike's 5.9% Dow index underperformance year-to-date.
Revenues increased from $6.31 billion a year ago to $12.34 billion, beating the streets expectations of $11 billion. Revenues from its digital platform dubbed Nike Direct (sneaker heads know it as SNKRS) saw revenues surge 73% to $4.5 billion. This meant healthy profits of $1.51 billion as compared to a $790 million covid loss last year.
These results show that post June last year, Nike started to gain momentum from people buying comfortable clothing as they adapted to working from home. The wholesale business also gained some traction as malls started to open as lockdown restrictions were relaxed.
Another positive surprise came from the better-than-expected sales outlook for the 2022 financial year. Management sounded very optimistic on women's athleisure category, Jordan and apparel.
The SNKRS platform has more than 300 million members across the globe who collect points to gain access to exclusive new drops/launches. This genius move has brought a lot of attention to Nike's e-commerce business. Nike still remains our core favourite in the branded apparel space. We like the brand. We like the stock!