NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Nike (NKE) - Get Report are nearly flat, slightly up 0.02% to $97.53 in mid-morning trading Thursday, ahead of the athletic clothing and equipment retailer's fiscal third-quarter earnings results, due out after the market closes later today. 

The athletic shoemaker is gearing up to report its 11th straight positive quarterly earnings report.

For the quarter, analysts are expecting Nike to report earnings of 84 cents per share, higher than the 76 cents it posted a year ago.

Revenue is expected by analysts to come in at $7.62 billion for the period, also up from the $6.97 billion Nike reported in the same quarter of last year.

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