Nike's PACE restructuring targets about $2.5 billion of savings against roughly $1 billion of costs, but most savings come only in fiscal 2029-2030 with full implementation to fiscal 2031 — about four years — raising whether Nike is too large and stagnant to change course quickly.

Nike's management team told investors that they have a strong understanding of the company's business and the market, and what they need to do to achieve the success the company has historically enjoyed.

Now, I don't know if investors agree with that. If they agree, it means that Nike's business is so huge and difficult to change course that it takes time to transform or restructure the business towards the appropriate value chain to deliver value to stakeholders at all levels. This has not happened yet.

Investors are asking: When will that happen? Management continues to tell investors that it will take time. It will take time, and that time keeps stretching into the remainder of this year, and perhaps even fiscal year 2028.

So, investors are understandably worried. I wanted to elaborate on those decisions, the strategic implications, and the situation Nike finds itself in, because I know many investors are currently studying the situation as Nike's stock approaches its lowest level in 52 weeks, the lowest point it has reached in years, with a valuation approaching its lowest level in a very long time.

Therefore, there is much greater interest, including my own personal interest, in Nike stock. One of the things they do is drastically reduce costs. The administration says it will achieve savings of about $2.5 billion through what they call the PACE program.

All companies do this when they have restructuring efforts. They are putting a name, a brand, so to speak, on the restructuring efforts, giving them a name, and presenting them in a package so that they can hand them to investors in a nice package and say, "Here's this, this is what we do." These are the big changes we are making.

It's important to remember that this is the right time to make cost reductions, isn't it?

And that's exactly what's happening with Nike, isn't it? Sales are declining. They don't have many opportunities. Their employees aren't busy enough, so they can focus their attention on these efforts to see where there's waste in their system.

And even if there isn't waste, they can look for where their current system isn't aligned with the current business environment. Are there newer areas to allocate company resources that might offer more value?

And that's healthy for companies in the long run. It's one of the reasons you know, if you've read Nassim Taleb, that he has some great books, including Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness.

In those books, he talks about how concerned he is when he sees a company achieve success for too long without any challenges. Isn't that right? And that's why I agree with what Nassim Taleb says in his books; when a company achieves success for too long, a lot of waste and inefficiency accumulates because they haven't found the time to address any of those concerns.

And it's likely that headwinds will come in that cause a drop in sales or a change in the course of business as a result of something that may or may not be within the company's control.

And that's the moment." This is when the company finally recognizes reality, and in many of those cases, the stock price collapses.

So, having this happen occasionally is generally healthy for the company, but I don't think any investor wants to see this period of underperformance drag on. Nike expects these restructuring costs to result in a loss of about $1 billion over its lifetime.

Most of these costs are severance packages, and some might be, say, if you have a supply agreement where you've agreed to buy a certain quantity of a product from a factory, and then you tell that factory, "You know, we're not going to be able to fulfill this obligation.

What if we agree on a price to release me from that contract?" So that's a cost Nike is likely to face.

They might also have some properties they want to terminate and say, "I know we have a 12-month or 24-month lease. We don't need this location anymore. How much would it cost us to get out of that lease?"

These things, and of course, they've made offers to some of the employees they want to let go. They say, "What if we pay you a certain amount of money for early retirement," etc.

So, Nike says it has already begun taking these steps. The procedures, and that they expect to achieve the majority of the program's savings in fiscal years 2029 and 2030, just a few years from now, with full program implementation continuing into fiscal year 2031.

Wow. Four years to fully implement this program. This highlights the point I made in the video's introduction. Has Nike's business become so large and stagnant that it's difficult to move, that it takes four years to make these adjustments?

That's a really long time to restructure and change the course of a company.

And Nike's business, I mean, isn't that large when compared to some of the major companies in the US and around the world that I've seen undertake similar types of restructuring and complete them in a shorter time.

So this is interesting. We're learning a lot about Nike's business. Not just the surface, but we're learning more about the fundamentals, the pillars that Nike is built on, and how the company is adapting to the changing reality and the changing dynamics of the market.