Top Nike Shareholders

Nike, Inc. (NKE) is a global designer, marketer, and retailer of athletic footwear, sneakers, apparel, equipment, services, and accessories. Most of Nike’s products are manufactured by independent contractors. The company sells its products direct-to-consumer through both retail outlets and its digital platforms as well as through independent distributors and retailers.

The top shareholders of Nike are Phil Knight, Mark Parker, John Donahoe, Swoosh LLC, Vanguard Group Inc., and BlackRock Inc. (BLK).

Nike’s 12-month trailing revenue and net income are $51.3 billion and $6.3 billion respectively. The company has a market capitalization of $110.9 billion as of Aug. 3, 2024.

Nike has two classes of stock. Class A shares aren’t available on the open market. They’re convertible into class B shares on a one-for-one basis. Class B shares the normal Nike shares available to all investors. The primary difference is that holders of Class A shares elect nine of the 12 members of Nike’s board. Holders of Class B shares elect the other three.

Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, and his son Travis Knight own more than 97% of outstanding Class A shares along with the holding companies and trusts they control. This allows the Knight family to exercise effective control of Nike even though it’s a publicly traded company.

Key Takeaways

• Nike, Inc. is a leading retailer of athletic footwear and apparel.
• Nike was founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman in 1964.
• Class B shares of Nike are publicly traded but Class A shares are largely controlled by the founder and his family.
• Most of Nike’s directors are elected by Class A shares, giving the founder effective control of the company.
• Most Class B shares are held by institutions like Vanguard and BlackRock.

Top 3 Individual Insider Shareholders

This list reflects direct ownership. It doesn’t include indirect ownership of shares or shares that are accessible through stock options.

Important

The term “insider” refers to people in senior management positions and members of the board of directors, as well as people or entities that own more than 10% of the company’s stock. It has nothing to do with insider trading in this context.

Philip Knight

Billionaire Philip Knight directly owns 23,879,487 shares of Class A and 32,215,174 shares of Class B Nike stock, representing 8.0% of outstanding Class A shares and 2.6% of outstanding Class B shares as of June 28, 2024.

Knight co-founded Blue Ribbon Sports, later to be renamed Nike, with his former track coach, Bill Bowerman, in 1964. Nike would become one of the world’s biggest and most powerful brands in sports shoes and apparel over the next six decades, making Knight one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.

Knight ran the company as president from 1968 to 1990, except for a brief interlude, and again from 2000 to 2004. Knight has served on the board of directors since the 1960s and retired as the chair in June 2016. He was appointed Chair Emeritus, a non-voting board member. He and his family are ranked 52nd on the Forbes list of billionaires with a net worth of $33.1 billion.

Mark Parker

Mark Parker held 2,740,543 shares of Nike stock, representing roughly 0.2% of outstanding Class B shares, as of June 28, 2024.

Mark Parker serves as Executive Chair of Nike, having previously served as the President, CEO, and chair for 14 years. Parker stepped down as CEO in 2019.

Parker’s career at Nike began in 1979 as a footwear designer and he has also held executive leadership positions at the company in business lines such as Consumer Product Marketing, Global Footwear, and Nike Brand.

John Donahoe II

John Donahoe held 1,710,599 shares of Nike stock, representing about 0.1% of all Class B shares, as of June 28, 2024.

Donahoe is the President and CEO of Nike after succeeding Mark Parker in 2019. He’s served on Nike’s board since 2014. Donahoe served as chief executive at eBay and ServiceNow before his leadership position at Nike and he continues to serve on the board of PayPal.

Top 3 Institutional Shareholders

Institutional investors hold the majority of Nike’s shares at about 83.4% of total shares outstanding.

Swoosh LLC

Swoosh LLC owns 230,750,000 shares of Nike Class A stock and another 230,750,000 of Class B stock, according to the company. That adds up to 77.5% of all outstanding Class A shares and 16.1% of all Class B shares.

Swoosh is the limited liability company created by Phil Knight to hold the bulk of Knight’s shares in Nike. Knight transferred his voting interests in Swoosh to a trust owned by his son, Travis Knight, upon his retirement from his position as chair of Nike’s board in 2016. Travis Knight serves on Nike’s board of directors.

Vanguard Group, Inc.

Vanguard Group owned 109,539,710 shares of Nike, representing 9.0% of all Class B shares outstanding, as of June 28, 2024.

Vanguard is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with about $8.6 trillion in global assets under management (AUM). The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG) tracks an index of U.S. companies with steadily increasing dividends over 10 or more consecutive years and has $79.4 billion in AUM. Nike stock represents around 0.7 % of the fund’s holdings.

BlackRock, Inc.

BlackRock owns 89,773,424 shares of Nike Class B stock, representing 7.3% of the shares outstanding.

The company is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with approximately $9.09 trillion in global AUM. The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) is among one of BlackRock’s largest ETFs with approximately $503.4 billion in AUM. Nike represents 0.2% of IVV’s holdings.

Diversity and Inclusiveness of Nike

As part of our effort to improve the awareness of the importance of diversity in companies, we offer investors a glimpse into the transparency of more than just who are the shareholders at Nike. We highlight the company’s commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social responsibility as a whole.

Find out how Nike reports the diversity of its management and workforce. The ✔ shows if Nike discloses its data about the diversity of its board of directors, C-Suite, general management, and employees overall across a variety of markets.

How Did Nike Get Famous?

Nike was originally founded as Blue Ribbon Sports by Phil Knight in 1964. Knight was a runner at the University of Oregon.

Knight was impressed by the speed and quality of the manufacturer after touring a shoe factory in Japan and signed a deal to sell the shoes in the United States under the Blue Ribbon Brand. The company changed its name to Nike in 1971 and adopted the famous Swoosh logo. The defining moment was when the young company signed Michael Jordan in a $2.5 million marketing deal.

What Is the Ownership Concentration of Nike?

About 65.8% of public Nike stock is held by institutional investors with the general public holding an additional 13.3%. Company insiders held 20.7%, as of May 2024.

More than 97% of Class A shares are still controlled by the original owner, Philip Knight, and his family through holding companies and trusts. This gives the Knight family effective control over Nike’s board because the Class A shares elect nine out of 12 directors.

Who Created the Nike Symbol?

The famous Nike swoosh symbol was created by Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University. It was originally accompanied by a wordmark in Futura Bold Condensed font.

Davidson also provided other work for Nike’s founders in addition to the Swoosh symbol, such as graphics and chart design. Davidson was only paid $35 for the logo but Knight later awarded her 500 shares of the company which are worth about $36,000.

The Bottom Line

Nike is one of the leading brands in high-end athletic wear and one of the most successful and recognized companies in the retail sector. Most of its shareholders are institutional investors like pensions and mutual funds. Founder Phil Knight and his family continue to exercise a controlling influence over the board of directors because of the way share classes are structured.

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