When Nike Inc. posts its next quarterly earnings report, the focus will be on the conference call as Wall Street and investors try to gauge the go-forward impact from having a new financial sheriff in town.

David Denton, the new chief financial officer, joined Swoosh on Aug. 17, succeeding Matthew Friend. What caught investors’ attention was that Denton isn’t from the sports giant’s inner ranks. Nike’s new financial chief was previously CFO at Pfizer Inc. The Beaverton, Ore.-based company’s last external CFO hire was in 1999 when Don Blair joined from Pepsi. Blair served as CFO for 16 years.

Wall Street analysts, while surprised by the financial shift, saw it as a natural progression in the firm’s ongoing turnaround. Chief executive officer Elliott Hill continues to move in “measured, deliberate fashion, with the right operators being put in place to execute against a multiyear reset,” said Jefferies analyst Randal Konik.

Nike issued a statement that said Denton’s focus will be on “discipline execution” and on capital allocation. Some investors, trying to read the tea leaves, interpreted that as a potential warning that more conservative guidance is on the horizon, implying that a turnaround will likely take more time. And potentially capital allocation could shift at a time when investors want to see more growth and innovation on a faster timeline.

Investor concern and the upcoming first-quarter report due out at the end of September or early October have pushed Nike shares down to the $40-a-share trading range, about 78 percent below their November 2021 high. To be sure, Nike’s troubles aren’t new and have been ongoing for over five years. A 2020 decision to focus on direct-to-consumer saw a pullback from certain wholesale accounts. That misstep under a former CEO is often cited as the start of the sports firm’s troubles. The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic also created additional issues with sourcing and supply chain matters.

Moreover, Hill — who rejoined Swoosh in October 2024 as the new CEO — is facing geopolitical and macroeconomic factors that are just as challenging. He correctly focused first on turning around Nike Running. Hill said during the company’s fourth-quarter conference call on June 30: “Running grew $5 billion — $1 billion over the last five quarters, and we gained five market share points.”

Nike Running is an indication that the sportswear and giant has a successful running playbook that it can utilize to model the turnaround of other components of its business. Nike is already working on fixing its China business, and it also needs to tackle the issues in its European operations.

Despite significant global exposure, one big plus for Nike is that it retains sizable negotiating power with its factory and supply chain partners. Nike’s fourth-quarter regulatory filing shows that footwear is supplied by seven factories in 11 countries. Vietnam is the largest producer at 51 percent, followed by Indonesia at 28 percent and China at 17 percent. In apparel, Nike works with 303 factories in 34 countries. Vietnam is the largest apparel supplier at 31 percent, followed by China and Cambodia, each at 15 percent.

And according to BMO analyst Simeon Siegel, Nike knows what its challenges are. That means the executive team also knows what they need to focus on in the turnaround strategy. And that’s something that many short-term investors often ignore.