Notable Hit 1: On Tuesday June 10, 2025 Dave & Buster’s Entertainment, Inc. (PLAY) posted revenues of $567.7M missing the analysts estimates by 0.98% and in the same direction of Advan’s implied sales. Advan’s data showed 1% decrease YoY in overall foot traffic across all Dave & Buster’s locations in Q1 2025; the company’s revenue decreased 3% YoY. Advan’s foot traffic data has a correlation of 0.96 on a YoY basis with PLAY’s top-line revenue over the last 21 quarters.

Despite dismal sentiment about the low-end consumer and consumer confidence, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Five Below blew past Wall Street expectations on comp-store sales, with both comp-ticket and comp-transactions driving a material improvement in the 2- and 3-year comp-store sales trend as shown in the table below. With Dollar General’s results, we wrote about the upside stemming from trade-in, share-of-stomach gains from the fast food channel, and better retail execution / fundamentals.

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Notable Hit 1: On Tuesday June 3, 2025 Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings, Inc. (OLLI) posted revenues of $576.77M surpassing the analysts estimates by 2.07% and in the same direction of Advan’s implied sales (1.96%). Advan’s data showed a 13.5% increase YoY in overall foot traffic across all Ollie’s locations in Q1 2025; the company’s revenue increased 13.4% YoY. Advan’s foot traffic data has a correlation of 0.91 on a YoY basis with OLLI’s top-line revenue over the last 20 quarters.

As was anticipated by Advan’s data, Costco reported another strong comp-store sales increase for May (+5.5%), but at a touch lower rate than the March / April trend of +7.2% / +8.6% (adjusted) which benefited from pull-forward on large ticket items which consumer purchased to get in front of prices increases resulting from tariffs. General merchandise comp sales, which is where the pull-forward happened, went from +10% in March / April to around +5%.

Dollar General results were stronger than expected, including Advan’s. Comp-sales increased by +2.4%, whereas we expected a +1.2% increase. Our estimate “miss” was a result of General closing an unusually large number (168) of dog stores. General typically closes 90 stores annually. Thus, this cycle was 7.5X greater, which adversely impacted foot traffic, but which also likely juiced the comp as the dogs were no longer a drag. General also only opened 156 new locations vs.

The second issue of The Advan Buysider is now available, featuring updates to the names from Issue #1, along with new themes on DVA, PII, and GWW. As a reminder, The Buysider is designed to provide timely, novel, and impactful insights on specific names and topics using Advan’s data. Download Issue 2 Watch the webinar

Fiscal Q1 comp-sales results for off-price retailers were softer across the board due to a moderation in traffic. Traffic per location was slightly up for Burlington and HomeGoods and slightly down for TJ Maxx and Ross Dress for Less (per Advan). Results for the traditional department stores were less bad. In sum, this demonstrates that the share transfer from traditional to off-price slowed. In our view, this is the result of the traditional department stores executing better, rather than off-price brands executing “less well.

AutoZone reported solid sales results, offset by some gross margin contraction. The commercial side particularly improved to again post a double-digit increase. CEO Phil Daniele has been in the job for just over a year and improving commercials was one of his key objectives. Daniele said, “While the macro environment and the uncertainty around tariffs have forced customers to be cautious with their spending, the consistency of our failure and maintenance businesses continued this past quarter.

Notable Hit 1: On Thursday May 22, 2025 Ross Stores, Inc. (ROST) posted revenues of $4.98BN surpassing the analysts estimates by 0.8% and in the same direction of Advan’s implied sales (0.4%). Advan’s data showed a 0.9% increase YoY in overall foot traffic across all Ross Stores locations in Q1 2025; the company’s revenue increased 2.5% YoY. Advan’s foot traffic data has a correlation of 0.97 on a YoY basis with ROST’s top-line revenue over the last 17 quarters.