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You can just feel and see the hate for Nike’s (NKE) stock heading into what may be another dreadful earnings report on Thursday.
Short interest on Nike just hit an all-time high at 87 million shares short, according to new research from S3 Partners. This is up sharply from 55 million shares short over the past year. The short interest percentage of the float has gone from under 3% to over 7%.
When investors short a stock, they expect it to decline in value.
“Importantly, short sellers have persistently added exposure as NKE shares declined, rather than using the weakness to unwind positions and book profits,” the S3 Partners team said. “Shorts are sitting on an estimated $1.4 billion in mark-to-market paper gains so far in 2026.”
The concerns about Nike are plenty, Evercore ISI analyst Michael Binetti said in a note on Monday.
“Nike’s last guidance gave visibility to revenues decelerating from -1% year over year in F4Q26 (May 2026 quarter reported revs) to down low/mid-single digits in F1Q27, and then decelerating further from that in F2Q27,” Binetti said. “Nike already significantly lowered its embedded China assumptions, and talked about improving innovation for Spring 2027 … together resulting in current consensus assuming revenues will bottom in F1H27 at -4% year over year, and then improve to flat year over year in F2H27. Since the F4Q call, we think the brand has seen cancellations or negative order revisions from retailers for Spring 2027 that we think will translate to further negativity in Nike’s F2H27 revenue outlook.”
Binetti added, “While Nike has hinted that it would likely not reintroduce annual guidance (and give a full picture for FY27) until the November analyst day, we think with a new CFO joining, it might make sense to signal F2H27 revenues lower on this call—especially if the company wants to keep investors focused on its longer-term turnaround story at the November analyst day (and not get tangled up in near-term revisions on that important day).”
A poor report would add to Nike’s terrible 12-month stretch.
For one, Nike stock is down about 27% since the company’s last earnings report on May 28, per Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace data. It’s currently trading near a 52-week low. The stock is off by a whopping 55% from its year-ago peak.
Overall, the market cap has been roughly cut in half since the 2021 highs.
Soccer icon Kylian Mbappé ended his long-term business tie-up with Nike this month and announced he will now be joining Swiss sports giant On (ONON). Nike’s stock was kicked out of the S&P 100 (^SP100) last week, ending an 18-year tenure on the index.
