Nike released its earnings for the period ending August 31, 2025. The report showed stronger results than expected, giving investors insight into both its business recovery and its ongoing environmental commitments.
The sportswear company is making financial gains while focusing on its long-term goal: reaching net zero emissions. It aims to cut greenhouse gases (GHG) as part of this effort. Let’s look at Nike’s latest earnings, its climate goals, and its most recent progress on emissions.
Profits Under Pressure, but Revenue Holds Strong
Nike reported revenue of $11.72 billion in its fiscal first quarter of 2025. This represented a small increase of about 1% from the previous year and was stronger than analysts had expected.
Net income for the quarter was $727 million, down roughly 31% compared with the same period last year. While profit margins declined, mainly due to tariffs, higher discounts, and shifts in sales channels, the company still beat Wall Street forecasts.
Gross margin fell to just over 42%, showing that Nike continues to face cost pressures across its operations. Still, the earnings results reflected resilience in consumer demand and Nike’s ability to manage challenges in the global retail market.
After the earnings release, Nike’s stock responded positively. Shares rose 1.5%, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s results. The stronger-than-expected revenue, improved profit margins, and lower inventories reassured markets about Nike’s recovery strategy.
This performance marked one of Nike’s best single-day jumps in 2025, showing how financial momentum and clear progress on operations can quickly influence investor sentiment.
Nike’s “Move to Zero” Playbook
Nike’s sustainability strategy is known as “Move to Zero”, which represents its long-term vision of achieving both net-zero carbon emissions and zero waste. The company has set several science-based targets to guide its environmental goals.
- It has also set a 2030 target to cut absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 65% and Scope 3 emissions by 30% compared to 2015 levels.
Scope 1 emissions are from Nike’s own operations. Scope 2 comes from purchased energy, and Scope 3 includes the larger supply chain, like materials, manufacturing, and shipping. Since most of Nike’s carbon footprint comes from its supply chain, Scope 3 reduction is one of the company’s biggest challenges.
Nike also aligns its goals with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which ensures climate targets match global pathways to limit warming to 1.5°C.
Cutting Carbon: Wins and Stumbles
Nike’s most recent sustainability report shows mixed progress on its emissions. Here are the major ones:
- Scope 1 and 2 emissions:
Nike has cut its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 69-73% as of 2023-2024. This is compared to the 2015 baseline. They surpassed their goal of a 65% reduction by 2030. These reductions come from energy efficiency efforts and switching to 100% renewable electricity. This shift is happening in owned and operated facilities in places like North America and Europe.
- Scope 3 emissions:
Nike’s value chain emissions remain the largest part of its carbon footprint, accounting for over 90% of total emissions. Total Scope 3 emissions for 2024 were about 8.2 million metric tons of CO₂e. This marks a 29% reduction since 2020. However, it shows only a small drop from the 2022 and 2023 levels. The company emphasizes material innovation and the use of renewable energy in its supply chain. This is especially true for its Supplier Climate Action Program (SCAP).
- Renewable energy use:
The company uses 100% renewable electricity in its North American and European facilities. Globally, it aims for about 78-80% renewable electricity by 2023-2024. This is achieved through power purchase agreements, onsite solar and wind, and green energy options.
- Transportation:
Nike has reduced air freight by 80% since 2020. This aligns production with shipping schedules. They are increasing ocean freight usage and aim to ship 50% of products by ocean freight by 2025. This change could cut shipping emissions by around 40%. Pilot projects in Europe are testing hydrogen-fueled barges to support this effort.
These figures show that while Nike is reducing emissions from its direct operations, tackling supply chain emissions remains difficult.
Sneakers Go Green: From Waste to Wear
Beyond emissions, Nike is also working on materials and product design. The company has pledged to cut the environmental impact of its shoes and apparel through innovation.
Nike now uses recycled polyester and organic cotton in many products through its “Move to Zero” program, which includes a focus on zero carbon and zero waste. In 2023, almost 40% of Nike’s polyester came from recycled sources, helping reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
The company also reuses waste from manufacturing. More than 90% of Nike’s footwear manufacturing waste is either recycled or reused. The popular “Nike Grind” program turns scrap materials into new products, like shoe soles or sports surfaces.
Nike has also tested circular design models, such as recycling old shoes into new ones. Its refurbishment program extends the life of products by repairing and reselling lightly worn footwear.
Scope 3: Nike’s Toughest Opponent Yet
Nike has made real progress, but challenges remain. Scope 3 emissions are still the largest part of its footprint, and reducing them will require deeper changes in supply chain practices. This includes encouraging suppliers to use renewable energy and improving manufacturing efficiency.
Nike also faces growing consumer and regulatory pressure. Governments in Europe and North America are pushing for stricter climate reporting and accountability. Meeting these standards will test Nike’s ability to deliver on its promises.
Still, Nike has shown commitment by tying executive pay to sustainability goals. The company has also joined global climate coalitions, such as RE100, which aims for 100% renewable electricity.
Bridging the Gap: Offsets for Shipping and Beyond
The company offsets 100% of emissions from U.S. and European e-commerce orders, covering shipping from warehouses to customers. In Oregon, it partners with Ecotrust Forest Management on 28,000 acres of forests that capture about 30% more carbon than standard practices. In Europe, it supports reforestation projects that remove carbon through tree planting.
Nike stresses that carbon credit offsets are only a “bridge” and focuses on using projects verified by independent standards to ensure real and lasting results.
Looking ahead, Nike’s financial growth and climate commitments will remain closely linked. Investors are now paying attention to both quarterly earnings and ESG performance. The company’s ability to reduce emissions while maintaining strong revenue will be key to its long-term success.
Where Performance Meets Purpose
Nike’s latest earnings report shows solid financial momentum, with rising revenue, higher profit, and lower inventory levels. At the same time, the company continues to advance its net-zero journey, with major progress on Scope 1 and 2 emissions and renewable energy adoption.
However, its large Scope 3 footprint remains a challenge, making supply chain transformation essential. With strong climate targets, sustainable material use, and innovation in circular design, Nike is positioning itself as both a sportswear leader and a company working toward climate responsibility.
The post Nike (NKE Stock) Scores Big: Earnings Surprise and Climate Goals in Focus appeared first on Carbon Credits.
For most businesses, the emissions that matter most sit outside their own walls. Scope 3 emissions, everything generated across your value chain, from the suppliers who make your inputs to the customers who use your products, typically make up the majority of a company’s total carbon footprint. Under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), those value-chain emissions now have to be measured and disclosed with a rigour that spend-based estimates alone struggle to satisfy. This guide sets out how to improve Scope 3 data accuracy for CSRD: the calculation methods open to you, how to move from estimates to verified supplier data, and how to govern that data so it holds up to audit.
A carbon credit is a commitment that extends well into the future. The tonne of CO₂ compensated for today from a nature-based carbon project must remain out of the atmosphere for good, which means the forest behind the credit has to remain standing long after the transaction is complete. For any buyer, this raises a defining question: What ensures that the forest endures?
What replaced the cheap REDD credit on the boardroom slide deck, and why procurement is leading the rewrite.
Three years ago, a corporate slide showing a portfolio of cheap REDD+ credits could carry a board meeting. The number was big, the price was low, and the press release wrote itself. Today, that same slide gets sent back with questions. The questions are uncomfortable, the answers are unclear, and your general counsel is suddenly in the room.
Conventional carbon offsets are not dead. The voluntary carbon market retired 202 million tonnes in 2025, and the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing survey published in January 2026 confirmed that interest from corporate buyers remains substantial. What changed is the credibility threshold. The integrity floor has risen, the disclosure scrutiny has tightened, and the buyer profile has shifted. This article tracks what changed, what sophisticated buyers now ask before signing, and what serious corporates are putting on the board slide instead.
What boards used to buy, and why it stopped working
The 2020 to 2022 model was simple: buy a large tranche of avoidance credits at low single-digit prices, retire them against the company footprint, announce the carbon-neutral claim, and move on. Most of those credits came from REDD+ projects, renewable energy installations in countries where the renewable energy was already economic, or methane projects with thin documentation.
Several things broke that model. Academic research published in 2023, including a widely cited Science paper, found that the majority of REDD+ credits issued under the most common methodologies did not represent additional reductions when tested against rigorous counterfactuals. The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative published its Claims Code of Practice, which sets requirements for what companies can credibly claim from credit use. The European Union finalised its Green Claims Directive, restricting how companies can describe products as climate-neutral. France’s Décret 2022-539 already restricts carbon neutrality advertising. California’s AB 1305 imposes disclosure requirements on any company making net-zero or carbon-neutral claims while doing business in the state.
The collective effect: the cheap credit no longer buys the announcement, and the announcement now carries litigation risk.
The integrity reset: ICVCM, VCMI, and what changed
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market published the Core Carbon Principles in 2023 and began assessing methodologies against them in 2024. The first methodologies received the CCP label later that year. The point of the label is to give corporate buyers a defensible quality screen they can cite in disclosure.
The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative complements this on the demand side. Its Claims Code of Practice defines what a buyer can say (Silver, Gold, or Platinum claims, with associated requirements) based on the quality of credits used and the underlying decarbonisation strategy. Together, CCP and VCMI build a quality stack: CCP on the supply, VCMI on the claim, with the science-based target sitting underneath both.
The reset is not a ban on offsets. It is a ratchet. Credits that meet the new bar continue to clear; credits that do not, do not. The Morgan Stanley survey found that 61% of current buyers like the CCP label concept but that supply of labelled credits remains limited. That supply constraint is now visible in pricing.
What sophisticated buyers ask before they sign
The questions on the procurement scorecard have changed. A 2022 buyer might have asked about price, vintage, and project type. A 2026 buyer asks five different questions before any of those.
- What does the counterfactual look like, and who validated it.
- What is the permanence regime, and what is the buffer pool exposure.
- What is the leakage risk, and how is it mitigated.
- What rating has the project received from the independent ratings agencies (Sylvera, BeZero, Calyx Global), and what was the rationale.
- What is the documentation discipline that survives an audit four years from now when the procurement team that signed the contract has moved on.
If the vendor cannot answer those five questions on a first call, the conversation ends. Conversely, if the vendor can answer them with documented specificity, the conversation often expands beyond a single transaction toward a multi-year engagement.
Where this leaves your near-term commitments
You probably have near-term commitments that pre-date the integrity reset. Public targets to be carbon neutral by 2025 or 2030. Product-level claims that ran in last year’s marketing. Disclosed reduction trajectories that assumed continued access to cheap credits.
You have three workable paths. The first is to re-baseline your strategy, replacing the most exposed credits with higher-quality alternatives and adjusting the public language to match what you can defend. The second is to shift the underlying spend from offsetting outside your value chain to investing inside your value chain, where reductions count against Scope 3 directly and the audit trail is cleaner. The third is to keep the strategy and absorb the risk, which is increasingly the most expensive option once you price in litigation, restatement, and reputational exposure.
Most serious buyers are choosing the second path. It moves the carbon spend from a compliance cost to a procurement and resilience investment, and it removes the central failure point of the legacy model: the disconnect between where the emissions occurred and where the reductions sat. Nature-based supply chain investments, structured under the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard and aligned to the SBTi FLAG Guidance, are the asset class that fits this brief. They generate inventory-grade reductions, they produce audit-grade documentation, and they survive the new claim restrictions because the carbon math sits inside the value chain that the disclosure already covers.
If you are reassessing a carbon strategy under the new integrity bar, or rebuilding a board narrative that has to survive a more skeptical audience, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help. The Dual-Value Model gives you a defensible alternative to legacy offset purchases, with the documentation and operational integration that survives the procurement scorecard and the audit. Schedule a consultation.
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