NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Nike Inc (NKE) - Get Report are up 0.79% to $99.10 on heavy volume in after-hours trading Thursday, after the athletic footwear company reported mixed fiscal third quarter earnings results after the market closed today.

For the quarter, Nike posted earning of 89 cents per share, topping the consensus estimate of 84 cents per share. Nike, the world's largest shoe retailer, said its better than expected third quarter profit was primarily driven by strong demand for its basketball and running shoes, as well as apparel goods.

Revenue came in at $7.46 billion for its fiscal third-quarter, missing the $7.62 billion analysts were expecting.

Worldwide futures orders, its key metric of demand, was up 2%. It noted that excluding currency changes, the figure rose 11%.

About 6.11 million shares of Nike exchanged hands as of 5:05 p.m. ET today, compared to its average trading volume of about 3.62 million shares a day.

Beaverton, OR-based Nike is engaged in design, development, marketing and selling of athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services.

Nike sells its products to retail accounts, through Nike owned retail stores and internet websites. It focuses on product offerings in eight categories including running, basketball, soccer, men's training, women's training, action sports, sportswear, and golf.

Insight from TheStreet's Research Team:

Chris Versace and Lenore Hawkins commented on Nike in a recent post on RealMoney.com. Here is what Versace and Hawkins had to say about the stock:

Just because many companies are about to enter the quiet period for the current quarter -- so hard to believe there are just over two weeks left -- doesn't mean we are lacking for earnings reports this week.

In particular, Oracle (ORCL), FedEx (FDX), Williams-Sonoma (WSM), Lennar (LEN), Nike (NKE) and Darden (DRI) will be the ones to watch. For shoe-loving investors like Hawkins, it means digging into the results from Shoe Carnival (SCVL) and DSW (DSW) while chomping on some take-and-bake pizza fromPapa Murphy's (FRSH) in a Herman Miller (MLHR) desk chair, which also report this week.

-Chris Versace and Lenore Hawkins, 'The Week Ahead: Oh, the Drama!' originally published 3/18/2015 on RealMoney.com.

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Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates NIKE INC as a Buy with a ratings score of B+. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

"We rate NIKE INC (NKE) a BUY. This is driven by a number of strengths, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, growth in earnings per share, increase in net income, revenue growth and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook." You can view the full analysis from the report here: NKE Ratings Report