This past week brought a lot of news on the beauty market with earnings from Procter & Gamble, e.l.f. Beauty, Estée Lauder, and L’Oréal. The takeaway from those is that luxury part of the market remains robust, but L’Oréal is taking a lot of share from Estée, which is in trouble. The mass part of the market has experienced a further slowdown. That divergence demonstrates that the K-shaped consumer economy in the U.

Savers Q4 results showed US sales up +10.5% and comp-sales up +4.7%. The sales increase was ahead of Advan’s +8.2% estimate* (+/- 40 bps T4Q Moe, 95% T5Q correlation). The 230 bps of outperformance largely reflects a +580 bps contribution from the bolus of new stores opening in the 2H (vs. the 6-month trend of 390 bps). (The year-end U.S. store count was up +11.6% vs the 1H’s +8.6%.) Unfortunately for the company, its large Canadian business continues to be an anchor with comp-sales down -2.

Sprouts reported Q4 results showed sales up +18%, comp-sales up +11.5%, and gross margin up +160 bps. The sales increase was well ahead of Advan’s +15.4% estimate* (+/- 130 bps T4Q Moe, 96% T8Q correlation) although Advan’s estimate did correctly forecast a beat vs consensus**. E-commerce grew at a much stronger +37% rate, which added 300bps to the comp growth; additionally, a larger basket size contributed to comp-growth. Those two led to the outperformance versus our estimate.

Walmart U.S. Q4 results showed sales up +5.0%, comp-sales up +4.6%, and operating margin up +12 bps. The sales increase was ahead of Advan’s +4.3% estimate* (+/- 90 bps T4Q Moe, 55% T8Q correlation). Excluding e-commerce, curbside, store delivery, and marketplace, comp-sales increased +1.7%. Excluding the average ticket increase of +1.8% implies a slight comp-traffic increase for the period, right in line with Advan’s +0.6% estimate. (Management did say in-store comp transactions were positive.

Ahold reported a stronger set of figures for Q4. Per Advan Research, traffic is even better 2025-to-date, including for its Stop & Shop, as shown in the chart below. The improvement is on both a 1-year and 2-year basis for all Ahold brands. On its results, management noted that volumes for the U.S. business had finally turned positive and that consumers were responding to its price investments in the market (i.

Differentiation was the key to growth in sales and market share in food retail in 2024 – a challenging year for conventional retailer offerings. As shown above, Whole Foods enjoyed robust comp-traffic all year long, and the traffic aligns with its reported sales growth rate of mid-single-digits-plus, with a Q4 increase of +8%. (Mid-February comp-traffic is +7% on a T4W basis.) In our observations at their locations, the success stems from leveraging the Amazon relationship, sharper value on its offering, and solid execution on retail fundamentals.