Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: ‘Just Do It’ Falls Flat

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Nike (NKE) reports mixed results with a beat on profit, miss on sales; delays Investor Day. (00:25) Samsung (OTCPK:SSNLF) plans to slash thousands of positions: report. (01:24) Middle East conflict: Fears of wider war mount, oil continues to gain. (02:14)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

NIKE (NYSE:NKE) announced better-than-expected fiscal Q1 profits but a miss on total sales and the company postponed its Investor Day.

After initially launching higher on the knee-jerk reaction to an EPS beat, shares are down nearly 6% in premarket action.

For the fiscal first quarter ended August 31, NIKE (NKE) earned a profit of $0.70 per share, down from $0.94 a year ago, but 18 cents better than expected, on a 10.4% decline in revenue. The sportswear giant’s profit margin improved by 120 basis points to 45.4%, beating 44.4% estimates.

By region, North American footwear sales were down 14%, apparel sales were down 10% while equipment sales increased 34%.

In China, footwear sales remained softer, but were down less than what was expected, while apparel sales were down more than what the Street estimated.

Samsung (OTCPK:SSNLF) plans to layoff thousands of employees at company locations in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, according to a report Tuesday by Bloomberg.

The layoffs could affect up to 10% of employees in these regions. The South Korean-based tech giant has about 268,000 employees, of which 147,000 work overseas. No layoffs are planned in South Korea. The cuts are expected to focus on management and support positions.

Apparently, Samsung is trailing rival SK Hynix (OTCPK:HXSCF) in producing high-bandwidth memory chips used in GPUs used to power artificial intelligence applications.

Samsung also recently laid off about 10% of its employees in India and Latin America.

Now an update to our top story from Tuesday’s edition of Wall Street Lunch with Kim Khan.

Fears of a wider war in the Middle East have swelled even more after Iran launched its biggest missile attack on Israel, pushing crude oil higher.

Iran fired close to 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli military facilities on Tuesday and has since said its attack is over, unless Israel responds. Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Iran will pay for its “big mistake.”

Crude oil futures (CL1:COM) (CO1:COM) continued to rally in the wake of Iran’s attack, rising more than 2% overnight.

Some analysts think Iran’s oil assets may be on the target list for any Israeli retaliation, and an attack on Iranian oil production or export facilities could cause a material disruption, possibly more than 1M bbl/day.

Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING says, “The U.S. will likely try to push Israel for a more modest response, wanting to avoid a significant escalation in tensions.”

More articles on Seeking Alpha:

Gold rises to second highest-ever settlement on Middle East escalation fears

CVS Health investor Glenview denies it’s pushing to break-up company

U.S. port strike expected to have limited impact on healthcare supply chain: HHS

Catalyst watch:

• The OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee will hold a meeting via video conference.

• Desktop Metal (DM) will hold a special shareholder meeting to vote on the acquisition offer from Nano Dimension (NNDM).

• Apellis Pharmaceuticals (APLS), EyePoint Pharmaceuticals (EYPT), and Adverum Biotechnologies (ADVM) are some of the companies participating at the UBS Ophthalmology Day event.

• TotalEnergies SE (TTE) will give a strategy update at a high-profile Investor Day event.

Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the red. Crude oil is up 2.6% at $71/barrel. Bitcoin is down 3.9% at $61,000.

In the world markets, the FTSE 100 is flat and the DAX is down 0.2%. The markets in China and India were closed today for a holiday.

The biggest movers for the day premarket: Lamb Weston (LW) is down 4.3% after it exceeded FQ1 expectations but revised down its FY2024 outlook and introduced a cost-saving restructuring plan.

On today’s economic calendar:

Editor’s Note: This article discusses one or more securities that do not trade on a major U.S. exchange. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.