Management and incentives

NIKE, Inc. NKE

NIKE pays Elliott Hill to hold sales flat and widen the profit margin, and in fiscal 2026 the profit half of his bonus paid at 125% of target on Adjusted EBIT of $3.3B. He gets there by pushing goods back through wholesale, shrinking Converse and cutting payroll, because the $986M tariff refund that flattered fiscal 2026 does not come twice.

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NIKE, Inc. NKEThe bet you're really making is that Nike can keep selling the same quantity of sneakers while fewer people walk into its stores and open its app. Nike's own shops and website took in $17.7 billion last year against $18.8 billion the year before, and the company says the reason was fewer visitors. Right now it is not going well: sales held flat at $46.4 billion only because Nike pushed $1.6 billion more product into Foot Locker and the other retailers, while China fell 13% and Converse fell 32%. You pay about 17 times last year's profit, less than the stock has cost in any of the last twelve years. Company reportSep 20 Lululemon Athletica Inc. LULUlululemon's compensation committee added $287.4M of cost back to fiscal 2025 operating income before deciding what its executives had earned, and $20.3M of that was the bill for firing the chief executive and for fighting Chip Wilson's proxy contest. That rewritten $2.50B still missed the annual profit bar by $33.0M and paid nothing on that half, while clearing the three-year bar at 134.4% of target. Management and incentivesSep 20 Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVSThe bet you're really making is that Chinese tourists keep flying to Macau and losing money at Sands' tables, and that Sands keeps taking a bigger slice of it than the other five casino operators there. You are betting on the ordinary gambler rather than the whale, because Sands' ordinary-gambler business grew 8% last quarter while the whole Macau market's grew 4%. Right now it is going well with one thing to watch: the Singapore resort is earning more than it ever has, while the high rollers stayed home during the World Cup and the company's own tables ran unusually cold. You pay about 16 times last year's profit, less than the stock has cost in any of the last twelve years the company made money. Company reportSep 20 Wynn Resorts, Limited WYNNThe bet you're really making is that Wynn finishes a brand new resort on a man-made island north of Dubai, opens it in September 2027, and that it earns real money before the borrowing to build it does damage. Everything else Wynn owns is already finished and running: two resorts in Macau, one on the Las Vegas Strip, one outside Boston. Right now it is mixed. Las Vegas made $215 million last quarter and Macau $297 million, while the opening date slipped a year and the budget went up $600 million. You pay about 20 times last year's profit, the middle of what the stock has cost across the last twelve years it earned anything. Company reportSep 20