In contrast to the frequent press articles that Target’s foot traffic and sales were down mid-to-high single-digits due to consumer backlash over Target’s DEI policy changes, comp-transactions / traffic was down only -2.4%. Comp-sales for the stores were down -5.7%, which was partially offset by a +4.7% in digital sales (which is mainly store-delivery and curbside). As shown in the table below, February was the softest month per Advan traffic, and the period’s reported traffic* was largely in line with the Advan estimate.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights On Wednesday, Walmart had a well-timed investor day to make its pitch on why it is a steady ship in all sorts of tempests (and sunnier periods), and the justification for accelerating the number of Sam’s Club openings. Big picture, what we heard: (1) while Walmart sources mostly from US suppliers (2/3rds of COGS), China is also a large supplier, meaning that tariffs could be a meaningful impact on the business as they will be judicious on what gets passed through to the consumer, (2) February was a very soft period for its sales of discretionary goods, but March was much improve (something that we’ve broadly covered ), and (3) it’s US ecommerce business, as part of its omni-channel consumer offering, has flipped to profitable.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Last Friday, we delivered a presentation to Morgan Stanley’s institutional clients. Our conclusion of the work was that consumer spending had picked up in March following a slow start to the year. However, given Wednesday’s news, what happened in March was of limited importance as the focus ripped over to “how bad are things going to get.” Well to understand how significantly things moved, one needs a starting point.