• At this week’s ICR conference, most presenting retailers announced that they had an on-plan, or better, holiday season. The message from restaurant companies was more nuanced, full-service better (in-line with our preview), limited service, still facing headwinds, which are likely to last for the 1H, excluding the $90bn estimated (per Morgan Stanley) increase in consumption from consumer-facing tax cuts (OBBBA).
  • Yes, lots of talk of AI. It won’t be 2026. The wins (only if the employed data is accurate) are likely seen in increased personalization and the ability to serve customers on new occasions which did not begin with commercial intent (shopping agents, and the like).
  • As to the latter (new occasions), it reminds one of search engines when they started to put paid search results at the top of a query response. That landed billions of dollars for Google and was a seismic shift to the on-line channel, from brick & mortar, but not more overall spend from consumers. In total (excluding Amazon and other digitally-only brands), it loaded the retail industry’s financials with less revenue (than would be otherwise), significantly more capital expense, delivery expense, billions of revenue for Google, and less pricing power, resulting in lower margins and financial returns for retailers, and the so-called “retail apocalypse.” (E-mail me if you want my presentation.)

This week brought the ICR conference, which features many retailer / restaurant C-suite leaders presenting their plans for the near to mid-term to investment analysts, as well as providing an update on their holiday performance. Recall that we did a preview of the holiday results last week in our presentation  to Morgan Stanley’s institutional clients. And so, the ICR event passing allows us to grade our preview. The result, not bad. The preview called out Costco as having a strong holiday. Costco was not at ICR, but it did release December comp-store sales; US comps were +6.3%, +50bps stronger MoM, with comp-traffic (+2.4%) and comp-ticket (+3.9%). And so, put that one in the hit! bucket. Walmart, which we also highlighted as a standout winner this holiday season, was at ICR, but it did not pre-announce. As such, we will have to hold off the grading (a TBD) until results.

In the preview, we also stated that Holiday 2025 was a strong season against a difficult comp. NRF came out this week with its read  – overall holiday sales increased +4.1%. Sporting goods stores and clothing & accessory stores outperformed, whereas general merchandise stores, grocery & beverage stores, consumer electronics, furniture, and home improvement retail underperformed the +4.1% total. That aligns with our preview, save home improvement, which we said had strengthened QoQ. NRF measured the category as down -5%. Our December read of Home Depot / Lowe’s is +0.9% / +2.3%. And so, it’s a TBD till results. Weak consumer electronics is Best Buy, which we had flagged as underperforming, thus another hit!

Other hits / misses include:

  • Five Below pre-announced blow-out holiday results, as previewed, of +14.5% comp-sales. Per Advan’s data, comp-traffic contributed +low-single-digits, an improved conversion rate contributed +mid-single-digits, and average transaction size, +high-single-digits. Another hit! for the preview. More effective digital / social marketing is driving the traffic. More effective merchandising is driving up the conversion rate and more items in the basket. The “more effective” should drive above-trend results for the 1H’26. As they comp themselves in the 2H, comps should normalize (+low-to mid-single-digits).
  • Aritzia was a hit! for our preview; read our review here .
  • American Eagle reported +3% same-store sales for the holiday. (Aeria comp-ed low-twenties.) Eagle was less buoyant than our preview. When we reviewed the data again, it was due to a weak final week of December. We didn’t have week-4 at the time of the preview. And so, while it was a “miss” we are going to grade it a “neutral.”
  • Saks / Neiman Marcus was not at ICR this year, no surprise. However, the week brought sales announcements from Brunello Cucinelli (+14.2% organic growth in its Americas region, +370bps QoQ) and Richemont (+14% in its Americas region and +500bps stronger QoQ on a 2-yr basis). As such, we grade our claim that “prestige luxury had a very strong season” as a hit! 
  • For restaurants, Darden noted good momentum at Olive Garden and LongHorn, thus aligned with our preview that full-service had a strong holiday – hit! By contrast, Shake Shack reported softer than expected comp-sales (+2.1%), which we believe is due to trade-down to QSR per our preview – hit!
  • For restaurant distributors, US Food Holdings, which our preview called out as having a stronger Q4 (levered to outperforming independents, full-service, and sales momentum / execution), didn’t preannounce; thus, this gets a **TBD. **At ICR, CFO Dave Flirtman said, “I think we’ve got a stable consumer backdrop. We’d love to see it stronger, but it’s stable. And ours is very much a self-help story as it has been for a very long time. So our ability to continue to take market share… That trend has been a long-term trend where independents have been taking share from chains and even QSR. I think the difference around independence is they have a very loyal local customer base…. we’ve seen of independents gaining share from other segments, the restaurant space will continue in ‘26 and beyond. (Stronger independents was the callout in our Advan Buysider report .)