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.