Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to NIKE, Inc. Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter Conference Call. For those who want to reference today's press release, you'll find it at investors.NIKE.com. Leading today's call is Paul Trussell, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Treasurer. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Paul Trussell.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss NIKE Inc's Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter Results. Joining us on today's call will be NIKE Inc. President and CEO, Elliott Hill; and our CFO, Matt Friend. Before we begin, let me remind you that participants on this call will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations, and those statements are subject to certain risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in NIKE’s reports filed with the SEC. In addition, participants may discuss non-GAAP financial measures and non-public financial and statistical information. Please refer to NIKE’s earnings press release or NIKE’s website, investors.NIKE.com, for comparable GAAP measures and quantitative reconciliations. All growth comparisons on the call today are presented on a year-over-year basis and are currency neutral, unless otherwise noted. We will start with prepared remarks and then open up for questions. We would like to allow as many of you to ask questions as possible in our allotted time, so we would appreciate you limiting your initial question to one. Thanks for your cooperation on this. I'll now turn the call over to NIKE Inc. President and CEO, Elliott Hill.

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start by saying I'm proud of the progress we made against the key actions we committed to 90 days ago. While we met the expectations we set, we're not satisfied with our overall results. We can and will be better. For the quarter, the big takeaway for me was clear. When we lead with sport, we create impact for NIKE. We told inspiring athletes stories, we brought more energy to sports biggest moments, and we introduced performance product across an integrated marketplace. We delivered something new to the consumer week after week and that's exactly the kind of sustained pace we need to strengthen our business. Last quarter, I shared my initial observations and where we need to focus. The last 90 days only reinforced my early assessment of the areas that are most important. Since our last call, I continued to meet with wholesale partners to discuss the distinct role each can play with NIKE. I also had an incredibly inspiring trip to visit factory partners and NIKE teammates in Asia to see how we're executing in our supply chain with a focus on production for our new innovation. Most importantly, I continue to spend meaningful time with our NIKE teammates. We focused in two areas: strengthening our culture; and committing to our top priorities. In fact, right after my first call with you in December, we met with our teams and shared the five priority actions we outlined on the call, with a sharp focus on five fields of play, three countries, and five cities. We call these strategic priorities Win Now. We have a clearer picture on our path forward, and despite the global economic uncertainty, I believe our priority actions will continue to drive progress. The first action is…

Thanks, Elliott, and hello to everyone on the call. The team is moving aggressively to reignite brand momentum through sport and stabilize our business. Our third quarter financial results reflect the headwinds from the Win Now actions we identified for you last quarter. Today I will review our third quarter results and provide context on the progress we have made. Then I will share additional insight for how we expect our Win Now actions to shape our business performance over the near term. This quarter, revenues were down 9% on a reported basis and down 7% on a currency neutral basis. The quarter benefited from strong holiday results in December, including a non-comp benefit from Cyber Monday, followed by double digit declines in January and February. NIKE Direct was down 10% with NIKE Digital declining 15% and NIKE Stores declining 2%. Wholesale was down 4% largely due to declines in Greater China. Gross margins declined 330 basis points to 41.5% on a reported basis, due to higher markdowns on NIKE Direct, higher wholesale discounts, inventory obsolescence, and product costs and channel mix headwinds. SG&A was down 8% on a reported basis, as increased investments in brand marketing and sports marketing were more than offset by declines in operating overhead. Our effective tax rate was 5.9% compared to 16.5% for the same period last year, primarily due to a onetime tax benefit from US tax regulations related to foreign currency gains and losses. Earnings per share was $0.54. Now let me provide additional insight into our progress against our Win Now actions this quarter. Let's begin with our product portfolio. Our performance business grew in the third quarter, led by improving brand and business momentum in training and running, with new product launches, strong sell through of innovation, and a more…

Thank you, Matt. I'll close by taking a minute to talk about my teammates at NIKE. Look, it's been a tough couple of years. We've been through a lot of change, but what's encouraging is that in the 150 days since I've been back, we've reclaimed our identity. We know who we are. NIKE Inc. is a sports company. We inspire through iconic brands and create innovative products for all athletes. It may seem like an obvious direction, but we needed to say it out loud to reawaken the fire in our teams and I have been unrelenting in that message. One of the things that makes it special to work at NIKE is we invite athletes, coaches, and teams to our business meetings to spend time with our teammates. One conversation that stirred something up in me this quarter was with Coach Ryan Day, coach of the National Champions, the Ohio State Buckeyes. He had an answer to the question that really connected with how I'm thinking about our team right now and the tone we're setting. The question to him was, how do you stay on the offense and what's the key to keeping your program moving forward? His answer was that Ohio State applies pressure constantly in all three phases of the game, no matter who he's playing. Get vertical down the field on offense. Play suffocating man coverage so no throw is easy, go after punts, and have his best athletes returning kicks. He just painted this picture of a team that is relentlessly pushing and challenging, being aggressive and making it uncomfortable to play against. I love that attitude. And that's how I think about NIKE when we're at our best. Success for NIKE has never been about protecting our turf. We force others to play our game. We drive trends, grow markets we lead. Coach Day made it clear that it takes complete buy-in to be a championship team. That's exactly what we're asking of our teammates right now, to keep up the intensity, to move with focus and urgency, to have passion and take pride in all that we do, and to win as a team. With that, I'll turn it over for questions.

Thank you. And we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thank you, good afternoon. Elliot, can you provide a timeline on when you think classic shoe inventories will be clean in the wholesale channel? And then same question for the direct channel as well.

Thanks for the question Lorraine. Before I dive too deeply into the specific question, I do want to start really quickly because I think it's important to set the tone here on the call for these types of questions, that 90 days ago, we declared five actions to return to growth. And what we'll say 90 days later, I'm even more convinced that these are the right actions to move our brand and business forward. And these Win Now actions really start with our culture, our product portfolio, which is a question that you're asking here, and I'll dive into that here in just a second, shaping our brand for distinction, elevating and growing the marketplace, and winning on the ground. And what we did add to our teams after coming off the call was providing them a sharp focus on which sports. We have five sports, running, basketball, football, training and sportswear, three key countries I outlined for you, and then the five cities. So the teams are really rallying around this Win Now priorities and even calling it the [5535] (ph). So now let me let me jump more specifically into product for you and I will also start a little higher level before I dive into the specific question around the key franchises. We are going to run a balanced and complete portfolio. I want to make sure everybody on the call hears that. We're going to run that through all three brands, NIKE, Jordan, Converse, across performance and sportswear, men's, women's, kids' footwear, pair of accessories, and up and down price points. And we're going to be sharper on specific sports. And I've touched on those already, so I won't dive too deeply on those five sports, but we have set teams up against each of…

Hey Lorraine, I'll just add that what I said in my prepared remarks was that, we intend to drive -- we've made really good progress over the past year and as Elliott came in, he challenged the teams to increase the pace at which we reduce the supply of those three franchises in the marketplace. And as a result of that, it had some impact on our Q4 headwinds that we talked about, but it will continue to be a headwind in fiscal year 2026. By the time we execute Q4, we expect that we will have reduced the contribution of those franchises by 10 percentage points as a percent of our overall footwear mix. And we intend to drive that down more in fiscal year 2026. When I think about it through the lens of channels, what I would say to you is that on the NIKE Direct side and the Digital side in particular, we're already taking action, as Elliott and I both outlined, to reduce the number of promotional days and to reducing the discounts that we see in the marketplace. The challenge we have in the near term is that, we were buying against a different plan. And so we've tightened the buys against NIKE Digital, but we really did that towards the end of summer and heading into fall. That inventory will not end up in the digital channel. We will directly transition it to our factory stores and we will clean it in a value channel like we typically do as we clean up the season. On the wholesale side, we're making investments and I talked about us needing to use the first half of fiscal year 2026 in order to be able to clean up the marketplace. And what I would tell you there is that, the combination of the actions that we're taking in digital, plus the actions that we've communicated and worked through with our partners, we're already starting to see fruit. And what I mean by that is, one, inventory of Air Force 1 is beginning to stabilize with retail sales for Air Force 1. But secondly, when you look at the order book in wholesale for our partners in North America, Maine, and APLA, we're seeing growth in the performance dimensions of our business plus newness in sportswear almost offset the declines we're managing in the classic footwear franchises. And that gives us a lot of confidence that our partners are coming behind us and that we are moving down the right path to affect the cleanup.

And our next question comes from the line of Brooke Roach with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Good afternoon, and thank you for taking our question. Elliot, I was hoping to get your latest thoughts on innovation within NIKE. How do you feel about the strength of your innovation team and the pipeline ahead? And how are you thinking about innovating into some of the sportswear franchises as we look into fiscal 2026? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Brooke. Let me first start on innovation. When we think about innovation, we think about it really in two forms. We have long term, let's call it three to plus five years, and we have a dedicated team against that over at our LeBron James NIKE Sports Research Lab and what I would say a really confident in the team that we have there and not only the team but the work that they are doing long-term creating new innovation for our team. So that's a little longer term. I spent a lot of time with [John Hoke] (ph) and his team over there and excited about some of the products that are coming through the NIKE Sports Research Lab. Shorter term and more near term, again, I touched on it in my first answer and it's really coming back to driving newness and freshness against Performance and sportswear, men's, women's, kids, footwear, apparel, and accessories, not just footwear. We've got some really interesting innovation coming from apparel. I touched on it briefly in my prepared remarks around 24/7. And it comes out of our training line, but it is also viewed as sportswear. And there's some innovation there. And I'm really pleased with the sell through on 24/7 and the reorders that are coming on that from an apparel perspective. And then on a footwear perspective, we'll continue to right size the three franchise that I touched on. We still believe all three of them are meaningful products. And then you'll see us continue to invest in innovation around sportswear. And I touched on some of those products. The Vomero 5, P6000, Shox. Shox is having a really built into momentum. Air Max 95, etc. And I'll just close out here, Brooke. This week we had our Spring 26 product review where we bring all of our Geo partners here to the campus to go through our Spring 26 line. And what I'll tell you is, we are all excited about the products that are coming for Spring 26. We're starting to see our Win Now focus on accelerating our product portfolio against these five sports, running, basketball, football, training, and sportswear, paying dividends. I'm really excited about the work I saw there. And while I have you, I'll just add one other thing that I saw that I was excited about. We are also working on elevating the marketplace and the retail team's done some phenomenal work around elevating our presentation at both wholesale and physical retail. And so excited about some of that work. So overall, I'm confident that our innovation pipeline is there. We just now have to flow through it to get back to building the brand and the business.

And to our next question comes from the line of Aneesha Sherman with Bernstein. Your line is open.

Thank you so much. Elliot, I just want to follow up on the comment that you just made about the Spring 26 product review. Based on some of the comments earlier from Matt around performance growth almost offsetting classic declines, do you expect that inflection point to be in Spring 26? I know you don't have the orders yet, but is that when you expect performance growth to more than offset classics in your total wholesale order book to grow? And then, Matt, a follow-up on your comments on gross margins. You talked about wholesale liquidations at H1. I know you're not giving margin guidance for next year, but are you generally expecting gradual progression of gross margins through the year as some of those liquidations roll off and then you get a stronger order book in the second half? Thank you.

Let me -- here's -- we're absolutely gaining confidence in the product pipeline. In the fall, Matt already touched on some of the order book on fall in North America, APLA, and EMEA. So definitely gaining confidence around the order book fall holiday and then like I said this sneak peek into 2026. The key here though is how quickly we can clean up the marketplace. That's why you see some of the results that we have in Q4 and then resetting both the digital and physical marketplaces to receive this innovation, making certain that we present it in the way that we believe we need to present the product at point of sale, digital, physical, so that we drive the sell through. And so that's where we have the team's focus right now. The brand, I believe we've already started to invest in, we did that early. I see product coming now and that excites me and so I feel good about that. Now we've got to reset the marketplace and make sure that we get the sell through and it's that sell through that's going to continue to drive the order book and get us back to profitable sustainable growth.

Yes, and I just would add that, last quarter we said that the fourth quarter was going to have the largest, the greatest impact from the Win Now actions that Elliott outlined. And we continue to believe this is true and it's on our plan. But what we can also tell you is that we now expect Q4 to reflect the largest impact from these Win Now actions. And that the headwinds to revenue and margin we expect to moderate from there. And so, how I think you translate that, Aneesha, as you start to look forward is, we've tried to lay out each of these actions and the implications that they have as we start to think about heading into 2026. And we expect that these headwinds will continue in 2026. And as Elliott referenced, while we're going to have positive things beginning vis-a-vis greater full price selling in digital, and we're going to have a clean and full price order book with our wholesale partners, we are going to continue to be liquidating inventory. And we expect that that's going to take us several quarters to work through. But the reason why we're confident in it is because we know we'll be liquidating it through the channels where we're used to liquidating that inventory. So we will continue to be transparent as we've got greater visibility as we get into fiscal 2026. But we're still in the early days of executing against these partnerships. And I'm sorry, we're still in the early days of executing against these priorities. And we remain committed to providing guidance and financial updates every 90 days.

And your next question comes from the line of Simeon Siegel with BMO. Your line is open.

Thanks. Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. Elliott, I'm curious, how are you going to balance the promotional, just like as you think about the presentation and bringing out promotions at the same time that it's clear we can hear your excitement around the new product and your amplifying storytelling, just from a consumer's perspective, how do you tell them this exciting story while still clearing the product? So how are you going to protect that and maybe segment that? And then Matt, it seems operating overhead versus demand creation trajectory flipped in recent years. So as you're re-embracing wholesale, as you're re-embracing elevating, any thoughts as to just the right level, long-term of overhead versus demand creation as the rate of sale. Thanks, guys.

Yes. Simeon, I think I'd be fairly brief here. Matt touched on some of the headwinds to the P&L, and one of them is us taking products -- we're returning products from our wholesale partners. So we're bringing the product that's not selling out of the market and then we will liquidate that to our value stores, NIKE value stores, to make room for the new innovation. And so -- and it's already starting -- and by the way, we're doing the same thing not only in a physical space, but we're also doing it -- excuse me, we're doing it in a digital space as well. We touched on how we've already moved NIKE Direct, Digital to a full price presentation, really elevating the assortment, the presentation, the user experience. And so, we're moving the -- both digital and physical owned and partnered retail floor sets to full price as quickly as possible. And then we'll use the value channels to move through the excess inventory. I think the last -- I'll just kind of finish here, the best example of that is how we're going to reset running. We've had some great examples of Peg Premium this quarter, Vomero 18 this quarter, both new innovations with great storytelling, great presentation. And we've had wonderful sell-throughs on those. And then you'll see that Simeon continue to flow into fall and holiday of Q1, Q2 of 2026 with a full range of product in running across three different silos of running, Vomero, PEG, Structure, three different price points, trail running, and then of course our racing flats. And that was one of the floor sets that I saw over at the Spring 26, And again, it looks amazing. So we're trying to get our marketplace to full price as quickly as possible and feel like the teams are moving with a sense of urgency.

Yes. And on the SG&A side, I've said for a couple quarters that we continue to manage our expenses and what I meant by that specifically was overhead tightly. While we accelerate investment in demand creation and so our demand creation being up high single digits, 8% this quarter, is truly a reflection of Elliott coming in and challenging the team to elevate our storytelling with impact. And it's the easiest lever for us to pull. And the team mobilized around the Super Bowl and the All-Star weekend and the product launches for Peg and Vomero, but also the way that they executed on the ground those activities in the cities in which we were focused. As we look forward, I think we're going to continue to manage expenses tightly. I think that part of what you're seeing this quarter in the double digit decline in operating overhead is some of the variable expense from Direct coming down, flowing through the P&L. You're also seeing the great work our teams have done from a productivity perspective in managing against some of the productivity goals that we had set several quarters ago. If you look at our operating overhead growth, excluding the restructuring impact in the prior year, it was down 3%. And we're focused on ensuring that we invest behind our sales organizations, our key city teams on the one end and on the other end making sure that we've got the right resources and product and in innovation. And so we'll continue to do that and we'll continue to try to do it while we manage expenses tightly as we look forward to returning to growth.

And your next question comes from the line of Alex Straton with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Thanks so much for taking the question. I just wanted to focus on wholesale here. And maybe for Elliott, as you've kind of returned to that channel and gotten back in the mix, I'm just curious, your biggest learnings there, any surprises of the upside or downside versus how you've historically operated there with all your knowledge? And maybe then for Matt, you just mentioned wholesale discounts as a headwind, which should continue. Are historical wholesale margins still in view? Are those structurally lower? Just curious for your latest thoughts there. Thanks a lot.

Yes, thank you, Alex. It’s maybe a surprise. We were probably working probably two siloed, direct versus wholesale. And again, I think to really drive the potential of our brand and our revenue and to meet consumers' needs, it's got to be integrated. It's got to be an aligned approach to both direct and wholesale, digital and physical. It all has to work together in a consistent ecosystem. And so, I'm really driving hard [indiscernible] integrated consumer-led marketplace, let the consumer decide where they want to choose to shop. May 2 moves, Craig Williams and I, we've put in place two new leaders, one in NIKE Direct, Shannon Glass, and then the other one in sales, Erica Bullard, both long-term industry veterans and NIKE veterans. In fact, we put them sitting next to up on our floor together. They have offices right outside of one another and they walk hand-in-hand and making certain like literally almost physically. So I told them those two have got to walk together everywhere they go and make certain that we stay aligned. And I think they're doing a tremendous job of really making certain that we have an integrated approach to the overall marketplace. So I'd say that's probably number one. Number two, we just got out of a rhythm of working closely with our wholesale partners. That was a bit of a surprise, and we are quickly getting back to -- we've got cross-functional teams, we're having key account planning meetings now with our wholesale partners. We're working through unaligned growth plans. We're working on consumer right assortments in the right depth. We're working now to elevate the presentation of our brand. And you know all too well when we have beautiful, innovative product and we elevate the presentation, it really helps sell through the product and marketing support. So again, I'm confident in the progress we're making. It's going to take time to build back all of the teams around the world. And that's why we have the three key countries where we're trying to focus, United States, China, and the UK, so that our teams know where we're going to focus our investments and resources. So all in all, the wholesale partners, they want and need us to get back to be a NIKE.

And from a margin perspective, what I would say is that, over the past several years, Alex, the profit pool in wholesale has been relatively volatile. There's been a lot of things that have happened with supply chain disruption, ocean freight rates moving, the supply demand imbalances. And as a result of that, we've all navigated through many things in order to be able to manage the profitability of the channel. I think one of the things that we did a couple of years ago as we were seeing a significant demand versus supply imbalance, meaning an incredible amount of demand and less supply, is we actually lowered our wholesale discount rates in order to offset other headwinds that we were dealing with from a freight and transportation perspective. And so we are investing in commercial terms, but we're putting them back to historical levels. And so -- and we believe that by doing that, we'll be competitive. It will enable us and our partners to have mutually profitable businesses and also have the capacity that we need in order to be able to invest in the presentation of our brand at retail, which is ultimately what wins at the end of the day.

And your final question comes from the line of Randy Konick with Jeffries. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks a lot and good evening. I guess Elliott, maybe give us some perspective. I think you spoke about a lot of things you're doing with urgency in China, but maybe give us a progress report on where you see the different geos from all these strategies you're undertaking. Give us some perspective where you're furthest along -- we're furthest along. That'd be very helpful. Thanks.

Yeah. I think the key here, Randy, is as we think about our overall portfolio, is that we have 190 countries that all roll up to four different geographies. And we're working closely with the leaders of each of the geos and countries to implement the Win Now strategy. Because again, the strategy works no matter if you're in the United States or in Japan. It all goes back to putting the consumer at the center, right products, storytelling, marketplace. And so, Matt in his prepared remarks touched on APLA, EMEA, and North America being where they are in almost -- in terms of futures in performance and looks of sportswear offsetting. And so, we're, I think, making progress in each of those three geos. In terms of China, here's what I'd say about China. We remain committed to China. We see the long-term opportunity there. There's 1.3 billion consumers, and it's our opportunity. And what we've always done there is to invite and inspire those 1.3 billion consumers into sport, fitness, and the lifestyle of sport. And our team is doing a good job there. We've also made some significant investments in China, whether it's around some of the big teams like the national basketball team, the track and field team, and the football team. So we've made big investments there. We've got now a product creation arm that we call Geo Express Lane in China. So overall, I think we've made the right investments. What I will say, I spent some time over there in December. I hadn't been over there in a while. The competition is a bit more aggressive than I had -- when I remembered it four and a half years ago. And so we've just got to accelerate our pace. Good news is, we're starting still as the number one brand there. We're working closely with Angela and her team to implement these Win Now strategies. We're cleaning up the promotional marketplace just like we're doing everywhere to make room for new innovation. We're getting back to elevating NIKE Direct and Digital, and then working closely with our two big partners to make certain that we're investing in consumer-led concepts with a focus on performance, running, training, basketball, Jordan, ACG, put the right assortments, depth, presentation, all the things that I've talked a lot about. But in the end, I believe we're taking all the right actions and we're confident in the long-term opportunity in China.

And when you look at the financial performance for China in the quarter, what I tried to highlight was the amount of actions that we took in the quarter between marketplace returns, rebates, and also some investments that we're making to liquidate inventory. And given that it's a mono-brand market, as Elliott mentioned, it's going to take us time to execute the Win Now in China. So we went aggressive because the faster we can clean up the marketplace and create the capacity and the space to present the new product stories, the new product assortments that we're excited about that are coming, the quicker we're going to create energy with consumers, that's when we should see traffic start to improve and we should start to build more momentum in that marketplace. So as we look at that, we just expect it's going to take us some time to be able to execute this.

And ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session as well as today's conference call. We thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.