Colin Kaepernick boosts Nike’s 2Q sales after controversial ads

Nike is flying high.

Shares of the sports apparel maker soared 7.2 percent, to close at $72.37 Friday on the heels of a better-than-expected earnings report released Thursday.

Sales rose 10 percent in Nike’s fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 30, despite calls to boycott the company after its controversial decision to feature former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick in its “Just Do It” campaign.

But the move proved to be a wise one as shoppers rushed to buy Nike duds in the days after the campaign was announced.

“We find that the more disruptive we are, the more we grow,” Mark Parker, Nike’s chief executive officer, said on a call with analysts Thursday, referring also to Nike’s focus on its digital business.

Investors had also worried that trading tensions between the US and China would hurt sales. Instead, Nike saw a 26 percent jump in sales in China compared with the year-ago quarter.

“We have not seen any impact on our business from some of the US-China dynamics that we’re all reading about,” Andy Campion, chief financial officer at Nike, said Thursday.