In April of 2023, around the same time that the Bud Light partnership with Dylan Mulvaney was causing a huge headache for that brand, Nike infuriated many of its customers with a sports bra ad featuring Mulvaney. The ad led to a huge outcry on X and a boycott, and the bad publicity, along with other issues, helped precipitate a stock sell-off that has continued to the present day.
Chief among those other issues impacting Nike included issues in China, such as slow growth in consumer spending there, which caused investors to worry that the brand might have a hard time growing in that key foreign market. Further, bad press over the working conditions in its factories scared away some customers and investors.
Altogether, the problems Nike faced, from concerns over worker conditions and pay to pissed-off conservatives in America and slow consumer growth in China, meant that the stock sold off at a worrisome clip, with the company losing $13 billion in market value by late August of 2023 in its worst streak since its 1980 IPO. Fortune reported on the selloff at the time, saying:
“The stock slid 1.4% to $101.46 on Tuesday, falling for a ninth straight session in its longest losing streak since the company’s initial public offering in December 1980 . . .
“The rout has wiped out nearly $13 billion of Nike’s market value, which currently stands at $155 billion. Even before the recent slump, Nike had failed to keep pace with the advance in the broader market. It’s now down 13% this year, while the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary Index has surged 29%.”
It’s problems didn’t end there. The selloff has continued into the spring of 2024, with many of the same worries regarding the stock remaining, namely slow growth at home and abroad, continued conservative consumer hostility, and economic headwinds. Yahoo Finance, reporting on the state of the stock as of late March, 2024, noted:
“Nike is down 11.3% since the beginning of the year, and at $94.47 per share it is trading 26.1% below its 52-week high of $127.92 from April 2023. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Nike’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,149.”
Notably, that high came before the Nike-Dylan Mulvaney sports bra marketing partnership that set off American conservatives. Megyn Kelly, for example, led conservative female outrage in an episode of her podcast, saying, “Nike sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney now for f****ing sports bra. I’m sorry, Dylan doesn’t have breasts. Dylan’s been taking some sort of a hormone that has turned Dylan into some — I don’t know what’s happening there. But those are not breasts.”
She continued, saying, “And Dylan doesn’t need any sort of a bra — never mind a sports bra. The three ladies on this program right now have six boobs between us, and we actually know what it’s like to wear a bra, and no one would be inspired to buy one based on non-breasted Dylan Mulvaney prancing around in a Nike sports bra.”
Watch her here:
Nike, in not apologizing for or backing off of its left-leaning politics, has followed a different path in the wake of the Mulvaney issue than Bud Light, which eventually backed off and threw millions of dollars behind conservative-coded things, such as a massive UFC sponsorship deal. While not enough to appease many on the right, it at least took some of the heat off Bud Light. Nike, however, has done nothing of the sort.
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