consumer Blog Articles

Amazon facilities traffic

Amazon’s Q1 – Whole Foods outperformed its market, Amazon.com didn’t

May 2, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Amazon’s Q1 results and guidance for Q2 reflect what we are broadly witnessing – relatively stable demand for goods, some pull-forward effects ahead of tariffs, and a lot of uncertainty. Including Leap Year, the North American retail business slowed about...

Sprotus vs Kings Sooper traffic

Sprouts – distinctive merchandising delivers again

May 1, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Sprouts Farmers Market again produced stellar quarterly results; comp-sales increased +11.7% (vs. Advan’s estimate of +11.9%) and management guided Q2 for a 6.5% - 8.5% increase. We take that outlook to be “conservative” as Advan’s ML estimate is +8.8%,...

BLS CPI index

McDonalds - the environment changed to worse

May 1, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

McDonald’s US “comp-sales” declined -3.6%, or roughly -2.6% excluding Leap Day. The -2.6% figure was below expectations (+0.7%) and Advan’s estimate* (-1.2% +/-0.8%) -- as such, something in the “environment” changed (that’s why you have errors in...

Polaris plant traffic

Polaris – CEO “The good news is we haven't seen it get significantly weaker relative to where we were expecting”

April 30, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Polaris makes snowmobiles, motorcycles, ATVs, and power boats – all big-ticket discretionary goods, a category of consumer expenditure that has been in a world of hurt following a pandemic / fiscal stimulus fueled super-cycle in 2021 / ‘22. Higher...

KHC plant traffic

Trader Joe’s and Aldi– no pause to their gobbling up market share

April 30, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

In the context of ongoing weak earnings results for Kraft Heinz and other branded food names, we took a deeper look into Trader Joe’s and Aldi’s traffic growth. Recall that one of our central themes is that industry growth of food-at-home will be driven...

Hilton traffic

Hilton Worldwide Holdings – preparing for a measured slowdown, not a dramatic one

April 29, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Given the recent news from the airlines that bookings were dropping and the deceleration in longer-term visits to Hilton’s brands as shown in Advan, it wasn’t surprising to hear Hilton cut guidance for the year. CEO Chris Nassetta said, “We reported...

Domino

Domino’s Q1 Results: softer, but still ahead of the market

April 28, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Similarly to Chipotle, Domino’s reported softer comps for the quarter with U.S system comp-sales falling -0.5%, a figure that aligned with Advan’s -0.8% estimate* and the weaker traffic for limited-service category overall. While down, the 2- and 3-yr...

tsco traffic

Tractor Supply – Q1 whacked by bad weather and fewer riding mowers

April 24, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Tractor Supply reported $3.47B in sales for Q1, a +2.1% increase vs. last year and slightly less than Advan’s estimate of $3.52B (-1.5% miss). We suspect that the miss was due to the timing of Easter, which would have pushed sales into the last day of the...

cmg visits per location traffic

Chipotle – Sales Softer, lapping last year’s success, weather, or competition? Too soon to tell

April 24, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Chipotle reported a +6.4% revenue increase for Q1, composed of a comp-sales decline of -0.4% and a +680 bps contribution from more locations. Breaking down the comp increase, transaction fell -2.3% (-630 bps QoQ) and check grew by +1.9%. Advan traffic...

tesla traffic

Tesla’s “Implied” Outlook through the Lens of Advan – “Bad but not worse”

April 23, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Elon Musk started off the Q1 results call saying, “Well, it's never a dull moment these days. Well, thanks, for sure, every day is going to be exciting.” That’s a statement that most would agree with. Following TSLA the company and stock has never been...

traffic to easter related locations

Easter 2025 - I was a success at Dollar General and Walmart

April 21, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

Traffic trends going into Easter Sunday 2025 demonstrated that households planned to celebrate the holiday this year and that the “outside environment” didn’t diminish their enthusiasm and preparations. (Generally, holidays are largely immune from...

retail traffic

March Retail Sales - Stronger as previewed

April 16, 2025

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights

As anticipated, March was a strong month for retail sales per the Census Bureau’s Advance Monthly Sales report, and no, it wasn’t all due to pull-forward effects and pre-buying ahead of tariffs as we showed earlier. Yes, there was pull-forward in auto,...