By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights We’ve recently analyzed Sprouts Farmers Market’s strong 2024 performance and highlighted its success of driving capturing market share and avoiding the grocery industry’s woes. That success stems from merchandise differentiation (see the figure below). The merchandise strategy and the successful execution come from its team – a team that Sprouts affectionally calls its “foragers.” Since the results, Sprouts has met with investors and updated them on Sprouts medium- to long-term aspirations, particularly on retail store expansion, which is to be at a 10% rate in the markets shown in the chart below.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Dollar Tree reported an improvement in its comp-store sales trend due to an improvement in its discretionary business (as did Dollar General, Walmart, and Target). The discretionary comp increased by +0.4%, the first positive number of the year; moreover, its 2- and 3-year trend also improved. The earnings release quotes CEO Mike Creedon saying, “2024 [finished] on a high note with strong execution at Dollar Tree as growing customer acceptance of our expanded assortment drove sales momentum.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights RH reports quarterly results next week and we expect strong revenue growth of +12% ($829M). RH has seen its revenue improve each quarter this past fiscal year, after declining -16% last year (meaning 2023). Visits are up roughly 10% for the quarter which is similar to FQ3. Given the lower conversion rate of the category, these metrics are less helpful in understanding revenue, but the trend is.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Lately, we’ve read some commentary that CEO Brian Niccol’s plan to turn Starbucks around has failed to turn the business, because the brand has lost some wallet share. However, Niccol didn’t plan an immediate turn; he has planned for a long-term sustained improvement in the business. A key strategy of the plan is to return Starbuck’s status as a “third place,” which in a fashion is customer love for the brand.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings reported solid FQ4 results with adjusted sales growth of +9% to $667M (just shy of Advan’s estimate of $672M). Growth was driven by a +2.8% comp-sales increase and 47 (+9%) more stores over the past year, including locations taken over from Big Lots and 99 Cents Only. The earnings release quoted CEO Eric van der Valk saying, “With so many retailers closing stores or going bankrupt in the past year, there are a considerable number of abandoned customers, merchandise, real estate, and talent in the marketplace.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Over the weekend, again numerous press and blog reports declared Target’s store traffic to be down due to boycotts and upset feelings over Target’s messaging around DEI. However, those reports cite a traffic decline YoY against a week last year that included an extra day (Leap Day). We adjust for that by using 7-day and 91-day rolling periods and Advan’s data shows no unusual trend for Target vs.

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.