Nike CEO Elliott Hill had a message for Wall Street on Tuesday as the world’s largest sportswear maker continues its multiyear corporate turnaround effort: Think of us like the New York Knicks.
The Knicks overcame several double-digit point deficits to win the 2026 NBA championship, their first in 53 years. Hill told analysts he saw parallels between the basketball team and the current quagmire faced by Nike, which continues its broad efforts to stanch declining sales and recapture the cultural conversation.
The Knicks’ championship, Hill said, “wasn’t built on a single series or even in one season. It was built over time through setbacks and step-forwards and through relationships and buying into a system where everyone knows their role.” Hill continued, “That’s exactly how we’re building Nike, the right way. Because the goal is not one championship, it’s building the team that can do it again and again.”
Unlike the Knicks, however, Nike has yet to clinch a proverbial title. On Tuesday, the company reported broadly positive results from its fiscal 2026, ended May 31, with revenues of $46.4 billion flat compared to 2025, and net income down 3% to $3.1 billion. But Nike’s outlook for the months ahead is mixed. Revenues are expected to decline “low- to mid-single digits” through the remainder of the calendar year, owing to lower consumer discretionary spending and volatile macroeconomic conditions.
“Overall, the results aren’t there yet. We know we’re not living up to our full potential,” Hill said.
Nike reported net income of $1.1 billion on revenues of $11 billion for the three months ended in May, handily beating analyst estimates of $189 million in profit on $10.8 billion in revenue, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. The boost to net income was largely derived from a one-time benefit of the recovery of tariffs paid under President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The company is seeing strong results in North America, its home market, and in sales of performance sports like running, training and soccer. Nike said it is already seeing a preliminary lift from the World Cup, noting that by the start of the tournament earlier this month, it had sold more than twice the number of World Cup jerseys as it did in a similar period before the 2022 World Cup, which took place in November and December of 2022 due to high summer temperatures in host country Qatar.
Still, challenges remain. Greater China remains a place of concern, where sales of $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter were down 12% from the same period last year. Sportswear and Jordan streetwear continue to underperform, even after Nike said it removed roughly $2 billion of product in those categories from the marketplace.
Hill said structural changes to Nike—those he broadly alluded to in his comparisons to the Knicks—should pay off beginning in 2027. Nike expects to wind down what it calls its “Win Now” turnaround by the end of this year, an internal restructuring that began at the end of 2024. The tangible results of that turnaround—product that Nike has been developing—are expected to hit shelves beginning early next year.
Shares of Nike slumped slightly after hours on Tuesday to $40.62, from their close of $41.05. Nike’s stock is down about 35% year-to-date.