Nike CEO Elliott Hill confirmed more job cuts and a steep full-year revenue drop after China sales plunged 26 percent, with shares tumbling in extended trading.
Beaverton, Ore.-based Nike Inc. posted first-quarter fiscal 2027 results that missed targets and projected a steep decline in full-year revenue, adding fresh pressure on a brand already under investor scrutiny.
Net income came in at $712 million, down 2 percent from $727 million a year earlier. On a constant-currency basis, sales in Greater China tumbled 26 percent. Shares dipped more than 3 percent after the market close Thursday and fell 8.5 percent in extended trading.
Hill told the post-earnings call that weaker segments are still dragging the company down.
He said, per the call coverage carried in the Breitbart report:
"Our Nike performance business is not yet large enough to offset the pressure we're seeing in Nike sportswear, Jordan brand, and Greater China."
Reviving those areas “will take time,” Hill added, pointing to a deliberate cutback in the volume of Jordan retro launches.
Hill confirmed Nike plans to cut more jobs and reorganize its global business divisions as part of the response. That move lands on top of earlier cost-cutting and comes as the company tries to stabilize sales that have already forced hard choices.
Readers tracking the brand’s recent restructuring have seen the same pattern in coverage of how Nike readies more job cuts while the China slide worsens.
Last month Nike was ejected from the S&P 100, ending a run of nearly 18 years. The removal marked another public signal that the onetime growth engine had lost altitude with big index managers and the investors who follow them.
The same stretch of weakness has been laid out in reporting on how Nike dropped from the S&P 100 after its long tenure in the benchmark.
Breitbart’s account places the latest numbers against a string of high-profile marketing bets that split the customer base. The company tied itself to Colin Kaepernick in a major campaign; a Business Insider poll cited in the piece showed Nike’s favorability ratings took a 15-point hit around that period.
The brand also signed TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney to a lucrative endorsement deal aimed at women’s sports bras and leggings. A LeBron James shoe release that linked the product to Martin Luther King Jr. and the site of King’s assassination drew its own backlash. President Donald Trump was moved to comment on the company’s direction, though the report supplies no verbatim remark.
None of those episodes appear in Hill’s prepared math. They do form the backdrop against which many customers and shareholders now judge every miss. When a company spends years elevating political and cultural flashpoints, soft sales in core categories and a sharp China drop read less like a random cycle and more like a bill coming due.
Investor unease showed up immediately in the after-hours slide. The projected full-year revenue drop, the China figure, and the open talk of further layoffs gave traders a clean set of reasons to mark the stock down again.
That reaction fits the broader tape in which Wall Street keeps piling on Nike as analysts cut forecasts and question the pace of any turnaround.
Hill’s own framing was sober. Performance running shoes and related gear have not grown fast enough to cover weakness in sportswear, the Jordan brand, and Greater China. Management is throttling certain retro releases on purpose. The fix, he said, will not be quick.
Order trends and stock resets have been a running concern as well, including analysis that Nike stock may face another reset when demand signals stay soft into earnings.
Store-level moves have accompanied the same pressure. The company has already been closing locations as sales soften and the cost base gets reworked, a thread followed in coverage of how Nike shutters U.S. stores amid falling sales and restructuring.
China down 26 percent. Net income down 2 percent. A steep full-year revenue warning. More jobs on the chopping block. An S&P 100 exit after nearly two decades. Extended-hours trading off 8.5 percent. Those are the verified markers from the latest quarter, not mood music.
Hill owns the timeline: the turnaround will take time. Customers who walked away from politicized ads and activists who cheered them both get to watch the same spreadsheet. A brand that once sat at the center of American sports culture is now explaining why its biggest categories cannot carry the load and why Greater China has gone cold.
Shareholders do not need a culture seminar. They can read a 26 percent plunge and a fresh round of layoffs just fine.
When a company treats core buyers as a captive audience for political messaging, the market eventually answers in the only language it trusts, sales, margins, and jobs.