Nike’s Comments on Future with Tiger Woods (NKE)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 27, 12:44AM EDT · Published Dec 17, 7:01PM EST

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Most people in America now are probably not as interested in what Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) did for earnings after the closing bell today, but the Tiger Woods story is still big news. Our guess going into today was that everyone would want to hear about whether Tiger Woods was still going to be in the lineup of Nike athletes. Nike did not really address this is the earnings release today. It did turn out that this was the first question from the first analyst in the conference call Q&A session today.

The question came from the analyst at Barclays named Bob Drbul. Nike’s response was that it is standing by Tiger Woods.

Management said that Nike has a $650 million golf business, and that area has been the hardest hit during the recession compared with most sports. The company says it feels good about its place in the golf market.

The representative from Nike further noted that Tiger has chosen to step away from the game and that Nike will respect his choice and given him space. Nike will continue support Tiger Woods and his family and looks forward to his return.

Over the weekend before it came out about Tiger’s pause from golf, we had discussed how this had moved beyond scandal to one of the top business stories out there. I apologize for not giving direct quotes on this, but these comments were transcribed live from the Nike conference call and it was occurring at the same time there were other, more pressing issues going on. That transcript should be available shortly or in the morning.

Jon C. Ogg

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.