Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) is scheduled to report its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Thursday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for earnings per share (EPS) of $0.83 and $7.68 billion in revenue. In the same period of the previous year, Nike posted EPS of $0.78 and revenue of $7.42 billion.

The company is getting even bigger now. Through merchandising and marketing partnerships, Nike has effectively grown its brand and become a household name.

The NBA and Nike announced an eight-year global merchandising and marketing partnership that will make Nike the official on-court apparel provider beginning with the 2017-18 season. This deal will make Nike the first apparel partner to have its logo appear on all on-court uniforms. The deal is reported to be worth over $1 billion.

This marks the second major sports uniform deal for Nike in the past few years. The company previously took over the uniform rights for the NFL at the start of the 2012 season.

Basically Nike will replace Adidas as apparel provider to the NBA in two years. At that point, the company not only will have its logo on the uniforms but it will have the global rights to design and manufacture authentic Swingman jerseys, as well as warm-ups and shooting shirts. Both Nike and the NBA do have a history together, as Nike has been a global marketing partner of the NBA since 1992.

Ahead of its earnings a few analysts weighed in on what direction they think Nike is going:

• Canaccord Genuity reiterated a Hold rating with a $96 price target.
• Sterne Agee CRT reiterated a Neutral rating.
• DA Davidson reiterated a Neutral rating with a $110 price target.
• Stifel had a Buy rating and increased its price target to $118 from $100.
• Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating with a $120 price target.

Shares of Nike were up 0.4% at $106.98 on Monday afternoon. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $110.00 and a 52-week trading range of $74.40 to $107.45.

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