Hey everyone we kevin here in this video we're going to talk about some trends. That nike is telling us to look out for in 2022 when it comes to investing we're going to talk margins, inflation, factories, supply chain issues, advertising and much more, including nfts. Let's get right into it after of course, i mentioned that i got a cold cup of coffee here, and you should also check out those programs on building your wealth link down below and use that coupon code before the end of the day on christmas, when the Price goes up, not being the grinch, that's the end of the day of christmas, so it's okay anyway uh. This is from the annual report from nike three months ago.

We already know that nike is adapting to a rapidly changing media environment, with an increasing reliance on social media and digital dissemination of advertising campaigns. Folks, when you hear digital advertising, what stocks are you thinking? I hope you're thinking what i'm thinking snap facebook, google, trade desk, adobe roku pins twitter. What about that? Reddit spat coming up, keep in mind. This advertising is going to be a big play in 2022.

In my opinion, financially, it's not guaranteed to perform well or perform at all uh, but those are some expectations that i i do have it's. That advertising's gon na do great keep in mind. Also, the apple transparency upgrade has created a lot of uh aggregation loopholes for companies like snapchat and facebook, so the apple transparency upgrade has kind of been scaled back a little bit, but going back this annual piece here was from three months ago going more importantly, to What's going on in the earnings call here take a look at this folks factories, operational they're up to about eighty percent of uh factory volume again in vietnam, and, what's really critical here, is that nike talks about supply chains, normalizing heading into their a fiscal 2023.. Now, what's interesting about that is technically their their third quarter of 2021., so you've got to align this.

This is such a mess. Okay, so q2 of 2020 in their world equals q3 21.. That means q4, which is the quarter. We're in right now is actually their q3 2022 and there uh q4.

This is such a mess. It's better. We do this together. Just so, you understand, their q4 2022 is actually q1 and then q1 2023 for their fiscal year is actually the second quarter of 2022.

For us, so why did i just waste time drawing that out? Because it's important look at this? We are increasingly confident that supply chains will normalize heading into fiscal 23 heading into fiscal 23 means between january and june of this upcoming year over the next six months. They say they think that supply chains will normalize, and this is despite the fact that omicron is surging, now keep in mind that vietnam and a lot of southeast asian countries have had massive backlash because of supply chain disruptions and factory shutdowns during the delta variant. Now, businesses and local governments have decided they're willing to stay open with substantially higher caseloads because of the amount of damage and job loss that shutdowns led to in the delta surge. This means that, even though we might see substantially high cases in vietnam and southeast asian countries, and even in china, where we typically are used to seeing port closures when cases go up anything, we might actually not see that happen again because of the massive problems we Had with supply chains, this means supply chain issues according to nike could abate starting within the next three to six months here, and that is good, because when supply chain issues, abate prices can go down, that is huge.

This is nike telling us this keep in mind. Nike only has about one third of their revenue that comes from north america. The rest comes from across the world, so if nike is excited about supply chain issues, getting better that's huge now, i only highlighted some very important things here. Not only, though, are they talking about supply chain issues getting better, they reiterate how important their digital advertising strategy is.

They call this their consumer direct acceleration strategy. They say digital is the engine driving all of their ads. Basically, so digital huge, huge, huge huge - and i thought this was very interesting - consumers to consumers, desire to wear athletic footwear and apparel and moments of in all moments of their lives is basically expanding, so it's kind of like people are wearing gym clothing more regularly in Every part of their lives now, rather than just when they're going to the gym. I kind of agree with that.

I like gym clothing too, but anyway uh. They consider that their competitive advantage is digital and the way they advertise, if they think their competitive advantage is digital advertising, expect more digital advertising and expect other companies to follow. They also think they're going to be positive, tailwinds for the health and fitness movement around the world, as we get you know into the summer and away from covid once again, uh okay, so we talked supply chains now this was also very interesting. Not only did we talk, supply chains expect it to get better within the next three to six months, which is great lots of emphasis on their digital advertising, but listen to this one folks, okay, you know how we're so worried about inflation, potentially continuing to get worse, Because of labor shortages, folks, it's happening when labor shortages get worse and it's harder to hire people.

What do companies do here? You go on automation, we've added more than a thousand robots in our distribution centers to handle the digital growth in our digital distribution center in memphis, robots handled more than 10 million units. That would have otherwise been required to use manual labor, and we continue to scale blah blah blah blah anyway they're going all-in on robotics. They by the way are using this company called geek plus for their robots. I don't believe geek plus is public, as at least as of when i last checked on geek plus.

So i don't believe geek plus is uh public, but abb is another company that is public. That's pretty big in robotics, i don't own any abb and i've started going through the earnings call a little bit for abb and uh. Just sort of i know this feels like a tangent but uh. It's worth noting the following here: uh: they they believe they're not going to deliver as many robots because of tight supply chains that have impacted them much more than they thought, and they believe that that challenge is not going to go away quickly.

So you have a little bit of a divergence here in which supply chains might actually improve sooner, particularly. The semiconductor space and machinery area was was appears to be suffering more from supply chain issues and that that they really don't yet see those headwinds abating. So you've got some parts of the supply chains loosening up. It sounds like consumer goods a lot easier, especially over at nike, but certain parts like robotics and semis still super tight, tight tight part of this could be, and the st louis federal reserve did a piece on this.

They said that uh semiconductor prices actually haven't really been going up. Even though there's such a supply chain shortage for semiconductor prices semiconductors or for semiconductors semiconductor prices haven't really been going up, probably because a lot of companies have 12 month contracts with them, which means once those contracts expire and get renegotiated. Then we can see prices go up to finally help slow down the crazy supply chain issues that we've had, but anyway, abb definitely still seeing uh issues here, uh fun, little fun fact. Here they mentioned that they also released what they believe is the world's fastest electric vehicle charger charging station.

I know that's, that's totally a tangent, but it shows you that there's a divergence in terms of which supply chains are doing better and which are doing worse and abb also talking about a substantially tight labor market which actually, in my opinion, benefits abb. With the exception of in their plants where they need the labor because they create autonomous style robots, there are a lot of companies that do robotics, though it's not just abb, and i'm not trying to just pitch them. That's just a convenient example. I came across someone that was reading the earnings report form, but anyway, uh nike, uh, obviously uh a larger digital growth sales uh we know digital is killing it for nike, but this is very.

This was a big one right here. Okay - and i wrote a note next to this - one gross margin: increased 20 280 basis points versus the prior year, so 2.8 percent, driven primarily so their margins, went up 2.8. Listen to this one here, driven primarily by nike direct margins due to lower markdowns and higher full price mix. Okay, that's critical! When a company does not have to do as many markdowns and they're able to sell more of their inventory at full price.

You know what that means. That means folks, it's not the company that's experiencing or necessary cause causing the inflation necessarily causing the inflation folks. It's us. We are causing the inflation, because we're willing to pay the merchandise we're we're willing to pay full price for that merchandise.

We're willing to pay it's kind of like with chipotle they're. Like hey, you know, our costs haven't really gone up, but we've been able to raise prices yeah, because when you raise prices and demand doesn't subside. That means that demand is elastic. When demand is elastic, it means people are going to buy, even if prices are higher.

So we are to blame in part for inflation, we're willing to pay for stuff, because we want it whether we have more money because of the child, tax, credit or stimulus or biden or or who cares or or the stock market's wealth or real estate's wealth or The perception of wealth that it's giving off - i don't know, but nike here, is saying hey. We expect this lower markdown higher pricing mix to last for at least another six months, then at some point in the future they do expect that they are going to lower uh their margins that they are going to have to go back to doing markdowns again sometime By the second half of 2022., now i thought this was interesting because, in my opinion, if they're going to lower their prices and go back to markdowns in the second half of 2022, in my opinion that again reiterates advertising like hey. Let's make sure we max our advertising before we start lowering prices. That's my expectation.

They have a partnership with roblox another digital style partnership. They do mention that here their fiscal 2022 outlook reflects inventory supply significantly lagging consumer demand. Okay, now remember they are right now, their q3, 2022 or sorry. Their q2 2022 is q3 2021.

This is such a mess i understand, but in other words for the next six months, so from october so october november december january february march, those six months. They think that inventory is still going to lag consumer demand and that is going to keep prices elevated for the next six months or for the next three months from now. But the total of six months, because they're reporting from september 30th right again a little confusing. But for that six month period last three months: first, three months of 2022.

uh they are expecting still supply chain issues and then we're gon na see the u-turn and supply chain issues. You know in that april may june period and maybe that's when we start seeing prices come down, which is hopefully also when the federal reserve slows down a little bit on their interest rate, push uh, although we're we're still 90 likely to get an interest rate jack In uh in march uh, then they do say that full price realization will remain our long-term target with lower channel markdowns. However, we expect product costs to rise in the second half due to higher macro input costs, so in other words uh. They.

They think that uh, once their supply chain catches up, their margins are going to compress a little bit and then this is potentially either because people will finally be willing to pay less or their just their input. Costs are going up that their contracts potentially have expired. Fine, so margin gets beat up a little bit at nike, starting potentially in the middle of 2022 uh, but again overall supply chain issues loosening up and that maybe they're going to advertise more to uh to avoid some of those markdowns. But they are expecting some markdowns uh adidas mentioned, and one of the analysts reported that adidas mentioned that maybe they had too much inventory nike kind of punted.

On that question and mentioned that hey you know, they've they've still got uh. They've still got more demand. Although remember these earnings calls are like sales pieces for the companies, this was interesting uh, we started to re big one here. Okay, we restarted brand activity folks.

What does that mean? Well, when you brand a company, you advertise, they just restarted it! That's because why would you advertise a ton in 2021 if you have supply chain shortages like what's the point you're gon na advertise and then people to go on a six-month wait list for shoes? That's lame, but if your supply chains catch up now you're prone to advertise more boom, advertising starts doing well again right, big big big potential play there. I know i keep going back to that, but it's a big one. I've been talking about it in the course member live stream and buying the dip quite a bit on on uh on this at least i have been, but anyway uh, they uh, they think they're a better position than they ever been. Okay, who cares today, we've been so they've, still been, delaying launches as they've been waiting for supply of these supply chains to catch up.

This was interesting here on nfts. They got asked about their artifact acquisition, that's rtfkt and the ceo literally punted on it he's like yeah, not a priority for us, so they're buying an nft, slash, footwear company where, where you can buy an nft of a shoe or whatever, and and then get that Shoe so you kind of have like a bridge between uh, the virtual and and the real. Yet they punted on that saying: it's not a priority kind of odd interesting. They buy a company and they go yeah.

We just we just bought a company, but not a priority for us: okay, uh we and then in the near term, uh regarding uh advertising. They're asked again here about advertising uh. They mentioned that their black friday was absolutely massive that they sold more and more products. At full price than they had ever expected before, they were surprised by this they're, calling it the strength of the brand and i'm like lol.

No people just have more money and they're willing to pay more, but they do think that uh they're going to see more markdowns in the second half so coming up, especially as supply inventory. Normalizes. Also, a lot of talk about engagement, going direct to consumer and how important their digital direct digital uh penetration is so direct digital penetration is basically rather than selling their stuff through, like target selling it directly to the consumer by getting people to go to nike.com, whether That's through their apps and their partnerships, or or just straight up ads again ads, restarting brand, see the theme here here. We talk a little bit about vietnam, but we've already talked about vietnam, so i already covered that and that's the end here so bottom line.

All of this, what what? What do we take away from this? Well, some consumer product supply chains are going to relax in the next six months. That means that we could start seeing margins compress a little bit at companies that sell consumer goods over the next six months. Robotic supply chains still a disaster semiconductors hard materials. So we would expect continued potential pain for autos continued potential pain for uh for for chip manufacturers uh for not being able to get out as much inventory as they could otherwise right, because, ultimately, even a company like nvidia, even if you might have some pricing power To raise prices, you still want to be able to manufacture more and catch up, right, sell, more chips to bitcoin miners or whatever that that ultimately helps revenue growth, but uh.

Advertising, i think, is, is the critical moment uh and the critical inflection point here. When you see nike going hey, we've restarted our advertising and we're ready to go before we start cutting prices. That's a big one! So personally not invested in nike. I think it's a great company, don't get me wrong, but uh to me.

This is uh much more of a tell that uh as as um prices, potentially start compressing supply chains, ease ads ads, ads ads ads and robotics and robotics will help keep inflation down as well over time. That'll take longer, though, we're still going to see wage pressure for the time being anyway. Those are some insights from nike. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see in the next one.

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