Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

Nike is a mess under JD. He has brought in service now, Bain despite conflicts of interest. Nike is failing by all measures. He says the same stuff over and over again. Coach K. Phil Jackson. Robot CEO lacks a soul. Nike had one before him. The board is failing the shareholders. The time to fire the fake coach is NOW before it’s too late.

Anyone read the Oregonian article on CEO pay?

Some highlights:

• The annual survey of executive pay by The Oregonian/OregonLive finds that among 21 public companies active in Oregon and southwest Washington, most of their CEOs actually earned less in 2022 than they did the year before.

• Nike is Oregon’s largest company, and CEO John Donahoe made the most of any chief executive in the regional survey. The shoemaker valued his compensation at $32.8 million in its last fiscal year, a 14% increase. That’s despite a difficult year for Nike’s stock, which fell by about 11%.

• Donahoe’s $1.5 million base salary didn’t change, but Nike paid him $3.6 million in performance incentives and he got a boost in stock options.

• Meanwhile, the median Nike employee actually saw an 11% decrease in pay last year, by the company’s reckoning. That means Donahoe’s compensation was 975 times larger than the median employee’s.

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2023/09/oregon-ceo-pay-cooled-off-as-stocks-suffered.html

Pretty sure $NKE opened at $101 the day he took office, making the above analysis much worse.

Fun facts from the Fiscal 2022 proxy:

• The median Nike employee is a retail worker in Canada who made total annual compensation of $37,410.

• This means 50% of Nike employees earned more and 50% earned less.

• JD made total comp of $28,838,060 that same year.

• This means JD made 771x more than the median comp for all employees.

• Since he started at Nike JD has made close to $200,000,000. An OK haul I suppose for four years. If you’re into slumming it every once in awhile.

• If JD was to leave next year and the stock price was close to the current price, that would mean he made about $200,000,000+ for taking the stock price from about $80 to about $100 over a five year period. About the same rate of return as a high-yield savings account.

If all of the above doesn’t make you upset then you aren’t paying enough attention. Corporate executives in the Fortune 500 are robbing their shareholders blind but there’s nothing we can do about it because those same people own our politicians too. Don’t look at the Board’s Compensation Committee for help either because everyone on that Committee is fantastically wealthy themselves. They all take care of each other.

Meanwhile, according to USA Today almost 60% of Americans would be in trouble if confronted with an unexpected expense of $1,000. More than 40% of Americans would be in trouble if that expense was just $400.

Have an enjoyable week!

I won’t defend JD because I agree that Nike lost its mojo under his charge. New leadership is definitely needed.

That said, Nike’s stock price was around $80 when JD arrived. By 2021 it had catapulted to almost $180. In all honesty the stock was ridiculously overpriced near $180. Even at today’s much lower $100 or so, by standard stock valuation measures it’s still pretty expensive.

JD is partially responsible for the stock decline but it’s also the market correcting what was a massively overpriced stock. JD owns some of the blame but not all of it.

If there’s any good news, the compensation of Nike executives is heavily tied to stock performance. Not that they aren’t still overpaid anyway.

Adidas will be doing fine. Look at their classics franchises like Samba, it is skyrocketing above Nike Airmax.