The Lace Up strategy at Foot Locker is showing some green shoots, but will it be enough? Retail turnarounds are notoriously difficult at the best of times, with Foot Locker struggling with the additional nuance of its relationship with Nike. The market has gotten excited about the turnaround, which also brings valuation risk into the analysis.
Foot Locker and Nike: friends, but also enemies. Foot Locker is Nike’s customer, yet Foot Locker’s customers are also Nike’s customers. Nike’s customers are Foot Locker’s customers. As you can see, there’s only one way to describe the relationship status here: complicated. Foot Locker has been the love-to-hate stock that value investors sometimes dip into. Nike has been a growth investor favourite, yet the stock really hasn’t done well either.
Foot Locker is a perfect example of a business model that has been cracked wide open by a shift in the value chain. After previous management allowed the company to become a glorified Nike store, the new team is being forced to cut back on Nike because of that company's direct-to-consumer strategy. This creates plenty of uncertainty and a need for a turnaround strategy, which is why the dividend has been suspended.
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