Nike Talks Up Women

How important are women to Nike's business? Just as important as innovation, it turns out, at least according to an accounting of how often each term was mentioned on the company's earnings call Thursday evening.

The word "women" was spoken 21 times during the company's roughly hour-long discussion of its first-quarter earnings, which jumped by 23 percent. That's equal to the number of times that another favorite Nike word—"innovation"—was spoken, and greater than mentions of "basketball" or "footwear," other subjects of strong interest for the company.