By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Dollar General reported $10.2B revenue for Q4, up +5.0% YoY, and above our +3.9% estimate* (120bps Moe, 97% correlation). Comp-sales increased +1.2% driven by consumables (+2.7%). The non-consumables comp was roughly flat, the best result since early 2021. Additionally, comp-tickets increased +2.3% and comp-transactions decreased -1.1%. Advan shows traffic per average store declining -0.4%. The earnings release quotes CEO Todd Vasos saying, “As we reflect on our full fiscal 2024 year, we believe our Back to Basics work is resonating with customers, as demonstrated by higher customer satisfaction scores and healthy market share gains.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Dick’s Sporting Goods, Inc. reported solid results, including an underlying sales increase of 6% based upon a 6.4% comp-sales increase and improved gross margin rate. The comp-sales increase was composed of increases of 4.4% in comp-ticket, 2.0% in comp-transactions, and a modest decrease in comp-traffic (Advan) of -1.1%. Assuming online comp-transactions were up high-single-digits and stripping that from the 2.0% increase in transactions, lowers estimated store comp-transactions to the Advan’s measure of comp-traffic, which implies a stable conversion rate.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Kohl’s: Quarterly sales were “less bad” at a decline (-9.4%) than our preview (we said -14%). In our preview, we also forecasted that incoming CEO Ashley Buchanan would set a very low bar on forward expectations, he did. Revenue for 2025 was guided for a decline of -5 to -7%. The operating margin target for the year was also significantly down (2.2% to 2.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Last week’s analysis included management’s comments relative to any DEI backlash that they were seeing no impact to their business. However, over the weekend, media outlets wrote about a negative impact on Target store traffic and business from the backlash. Well, third-party data being third party (i.e. an estimate vs. ground truth first-party data) requires understanding the scope of the aggregation and its limitations.