Nike (NKE) share price dipped more than $7 below the $100 waterline. It dropped to $91.74 at some moment of last Friday regular trading and failed to surface completely, cleaving to an intermediate and a rather occasional support level of $93, after disappointing Wall Street expectations on the company's forward guidance. Any weakness in Nike stock post earnings would be a potential buying opportunity, Citigroup wrote in a client's note about one week before the corporate report, and many smaller investment houses echoed the estimates. Now it suddenly feels like most of them just ducked out staying away from the idea of fresh purchasing in Nike. If not, the price would rebound already, but it is frozen at lower levels for the third trading day in a row. So, retesting at $82.50 low of September 2022 or its vicinity could be considered as a rational scenario.

Nike forward equity per share (EPS) projections for 2025-2027 were revised lower during its March 25 conference call. It was at $4.27-5.41 soon after Christmas, then at $4.23-5.23 only one month after and finally worsened to $4.04-4.85 at the end of last week, IBES data by Refinitiv showed. A poor trend for fiscal ’25 – ’27 revenue estimates is also here, starting from a $55-63 area only three month ago and coming to $53-60 right now. This is why the pure fact of both EPS and revenue beating consensus by far in the recent quarter does not help to support bulls in Nike.

The world's largest supplier of athletic shoes and a great brand of sports apparel faced a number of challenges like turbulent economic environments in China and Europe and an oversupply in North America. Most retailers are still cautious when placing new orders, the competitive pressure is high from brands like New Balance, On and Deckers-owned Hoka, so enhanced inventory management efforts are needed. On's market share at Dick's Sporting in the footwear category rose to 8.2% from the 6.1% it had six month ago, while New Balance faced its market share increase to 5.4% from 4.6%. The 4-year old story with accusations in an alleged using of child slave labour force by some Asian supplying partners of Nike in Uyghur areas also helped rivals. Nike now is replacing Adidas as the main uniform sponsor of Germany's national football teams, which is a good but supposedly costly promotional measure. The company has increasingly used its old iconic basketball shoes from the Jordan brand to boost sales, which started in a distant year of 1985 under the tagline "It's gotta be the shoes". Yet, its market share is now bleeding to other brands, especially in running shoes, which its CEOs admitted.

Shifting consumer tastes is a real problem, which is not so easy to solve. "Retro footwear trends are shifting from court styles (in which Nike is overweight) towards chunky dad shoes and terrace styles", according to Stifel analyst James Duffy. Therefore, Nike chief financial officer Matt Friend said that the company would be cutting back on supplies of its "classic" shoes, including famous Air Force 1 sneakers, trying to focus on "upcoming launches and new product development". Nike already highlighted some upcoming products in the running category. That's a decisive step after decades of too much reliance on legacy or historical products, yet markets probably have no clear idea about the consequences.