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The market's love-hate relationship with new CEOs

This year has seen a pick-up in CEO turnover, but the market doesn't react to all of these changes in the same way.

Yiwen Lu

On Thursday, after the market closed, Nike announced that its embattled CEO John Donahoe would step down from his role. He will be replaced by Elliott Hill, a long-time company veteran and former employees’ preferred pick.

The market seemed to love this announcement: Nike’s stock was up more than 6% on Friday, after declining more than 20% so far this year. 

Through July, 1,250 CEOs of US companies have announced their departures, according to data compiled by executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas. That’s the highest number of CEO exits in the first seven months of any year based on data going back to 2015.

Among these shifts was some high-profile turnover in the C-Suite, including Nike, Starbucks’ Brian Niccol and Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg. In some of these cases, there was a bigger market reaciton than others: On Aug. 13, the first trading session after news broke that Niccol would replace Laxman Narasimhan as CEO, shares of Starbucks gained 24.5%. It turned out that Niccol has brought Starbucks more than $21 billion in market value. 

In other cases this year, however, the market was rather muted on news of a CEO switch. For instance, shares rose 2% when Boeing said that Ortberg would step up as CEO during an earnings call after former CEO Dave Calhoun announced his retirement earlier in the year.

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Did Nike do it?

Investors had a mixed reaction after the global sports apparel company reported its fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday after the bell. Shares initially rose 5% as Nike beat out Wall Street expectations amid a hefty tariff refund bonus. However, the stock then sank to its lowest level since August 2014 in postmarket trading.

Here are the Q4 numbers:

  • Revenue of $11.0 billion (estimate: $10.8 billion).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $0.20 (estimate: $0.12).

Ahead of this report, Nike warned that results would be flattered by a one-time tariff refund (now estimated at roughly $0.52 per share for the bottom line). That gave the company an extra cushion in snapping its streak of seven quarters of year-over-year profit declines.

Over the past year, the company had been punished by tariffs on imported goods, stagnant consumer spending, and increasing competition from other footwear brands like New Balance, Adidas, and Hoka.

Outgoing CFO Matthew Friend deemed it an “increasingly challenging operating environment, where sell-through remains challenged.”

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