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With recession fears, housing market worries and credit concerns, retailers have been facing tough times over the past few months. But on the heels of these worries, shares of world's largest athletic shoemaker, Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), have been climbing today the most in almost nine months after announcing last night stronger-than-expected third-quarter profit.The company said its quarterly profit surged 32% to $463.8 million, compared with $350.8 million a year earlier boosted by strong gains in Europe and Asia. The company posted earnings 92 cents a share, exceeding analysts' forecast for a quarterly profit of 80 cents a share.
The company's quarterly revenue grew by a respectable 16% to $4.54 billion. For this period, the athletic shoemaker counted strong sales for products lifted by the weak U.S. dollar. Analysts, on average, expected Nike's sales to be $4.36 billion, according to FactSet.
Strong demand for the company's clothing and footwear resulted in gains of 23% in Europe and 27% in Asia, as Nike gears up for the Olympic Games in Beijing and European soccer championship this year. Sales in China surged more than 50% to cross over $1 billion. Meanwhile, U.S sales grew by only 5% following weak revenue from the company's major customer Foot Locker Inc. (NYSE: FL).
However, taking into account the difficult market conditions from U.S, one analyst at Goldman Sachs, Brad Cragin, sees the company's sales figures as "pretty impressive."
Traders expressed their enthusiasm over the company's surprising earnings figures and have pushed the stock up 6% in early trading.
Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.
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