Nike stock closed at a 12-year low one day after CEO Elliott Hill told employees the company is putting sport first again following years of political branding campaigns.
On Oct. 1, Nike CEO Elliott Hill sent an 860-word note to employees. The message stressed a return to the company's athletic core and skipped any defense of past advertising choices.
Hill wrote that the firm had already shifted its focus. The next trading day, the stock finished at $33.87 a share, its weakest close in more than 12 years.
Outkick columnist Matt Calkins reported the memo arrived as Nike tries to steady a brand that spent years courting left-wing audiences instead of its core customers.
From its November 2021 all-time closing high of $177.51, the shares have dropped 81 percent. The company has already cut staff twice this year and expects more layoffs in 2027. It has also been knocked out of the S&P 100.
Hill's note stayed on operations. He pointed to a new campus in India, faster supply-chain upgrades, and a plan to reorganize into three regions: the Americas, Asia Pacific and Greater China, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"Over the past year, we've put sport at the center of everything we do. We're seeing encouraging signs of progress, but we have more work to do to win over the long term."
That 33-word passage was the clearest signal. The rest of the memo did not revisit the political ads and partnerships that defined the prior decade.
In 2017 Nike ran an "Equality" commercial that declared "the ball should bounce the same for everyone." Two years later the company made former NFL player Colin Kaepernick the face of its 30th-anniversary Just Do It campaign.
A New York City display of the Kaepernick ad went up in September 2018. After George Floyd's death in 2020, Nike released its "For Once, Don't Do It" spot.
"don't pretend there's not a problem in America,"
The same ad told viewers:
"Don't turn your back on racism."
In 2023 the company partnered with Dylan Mulvaney to promote women's leggings and sports bras. That deal drew the same kind of consumer backlash that hit Bud Light. Outkick's Dan Zaksheske last month listed a string of similar decisions he said were aimed at a left-wing audience.
Nike gave no immediate comment when Outkick asked about the pattern.
Even product launches showed the same tilt. Sports writers Ethan Strauss and Dan Wetzel noted that Nike held back Caitlin Clark's signature sneaker until June of this year.
The company debuted A'ja Wilson's shoe first. Clark ranked first in WNBA jersey sales; Wilson ranked fifth. Clark is the bigger commercial draw by the numbers the league itself publishes. The delay still happened.
Calkins wrote that the sequencing reeked of identity politics. Wilson is widely viewed as the superior pure player, yet the sales ranking was not close. Customers noticed.
Similar pressure has shown up across the athletic sector, with Nike's soft outlook weighing on other brands.
The stock's recent slide fits a longer slide that began after the peak in 2021. Shares have crashed further in recent weeks.
Hill's memo cast the sport-first language as progress. The market price says the repair work is incomplete. An 81 percent drawdown from the high is not a rounding error.
Staff reductions already hit twice this year. More cuts are expected in 2027 as the company keeps trying to right-size after the lost ground. Those moves track with earlier warnings when Nike stock slides on weak forecasts.
Removal from the S&P 100 adds a public marker of how far the valuation has fallen. Index committees do not drop names for sport.
Operational fixes, the India campus, the three-region map, the supply-chain push, are real management steps. They do not erase the years spent elevating political messaging over product.
Shoppers who just want shoes and gear have other options. That shows up in the price. Further job reductions remain on the table as Nike plans more job cuts while sales stay soft.
Hill never used the memo to apologize for the Kaepernick campaign, the 2020 race ads, or the Mulvaney partnership. He simply declared that sport is again the center and that more work remains.
The calendar makes the contrast plain. Peak valuation arrived in late 2021. The political ads and activist partnerships stacked up before and after that high. The share price kept grinding lower while the company told itself it was leading on social issues.
Clark's delayed sneaker is a small case study with clear numbers. First in jersey sales should have meant first in signature product. It did not. Writers called out the order; customers already had.
The same gap appears in the bigger picture. Nike once owned the cultural lane through performance and aspiration. It traded that lane for lectures. Job cuts after sales drop are the bill coming due.
Hill's letter tries to close the chapter without naming it. The 12-year low on the board names it for him.
Markets eventually punish companies that forget the customer who pays full price for the cleats and the running shoes. Nike is learning that lesson in public, one earnings cycle and one layoff round at a time.
Brands that put ideology ahead of the product eventually meet the only referee that counts, the people who stop buying.