Off Topic - Nike Seen Having lower Earnings
This may effect the markets next week
BOSTON, Sept 13 (Reuter) - Earnings for Nike Inc (NKE)
appear to be stumbling, according to U.S. News & World
Report, and a movie mentioning the footwear giant is
expected only to add to the company's woes.
The weekly magazine, which goes on sale Monday, says
analysts believe sales of the Beaverton, Oregon-based firm's
products in the United States were flat over the summer -- ``a
big change from the red-hot 36 percent increases of Nike's
1997 fiscal year, which ended May 31.''
Nike's quarterly earnings are due out on Thursday.
Shelly Hale Young, an analyst with San Francisco-based
broker Hambrecht & Quist, told the magazine that over the
long term Nike would settle down to a consistent 10 percent
to 15 percent growth but it would take at least two more
quarters of disappointing earnings before the stock recovered.
``The stock will be under pressure for the next six months,''
Young told U.S. News. He downgraded Nike to a ``hold''
from a ``buy'' earlier this year.
Now, Miramax Films has decided to distribute a movie
assaulting corporate America by irreverent director Michael
Moore called ``The Big One,'' according to the magazine.
In the film, by the man whose 1989 documentary ``Roger
and Me'' caused some woes for General Motors chairman
Roger Smith, Moore asks Nike chairman Philip Knight Knight
if he would move Nike's shoe production from Asia, where
the company has come under fire for low wages and harsh
working conditions, to Flint, Michigan, the director's home
town.
Knight responds that Americans simply do not want to work
in shoe factories, the newsweekly said.
After Knight's remarks the camera cuts to a group of
unemployed people in Flint chanting, ``We need jobs. We
need jobs.''
A young man holds up his small son, who is wearing Nike's
Air Jordans that retail for about $100, and tells the camera:
``You best believe'' he would be willing to help make them. |
