Holiday shoppers in New York City last year. About 148 million people are expected to shop in-store and online this Saturday.
Scott Heins/Getty ImagesHaven’t finished your holiday shopping yet? You’re not alone.
The busiest day of the holiday shopping season is this weekend, with nearly 150 million people expected to hit stores or fill up their online carts on Saturday, dubbed Super Saturday. Investors will be watching retailers during the final weekend before Christmas for signs of whether November’s slowdown in sales seeped into December.
Analysts say stores will need a big final push to meet fourth-quarter sales expectations. Consumers, worried about the shortages and inflation, started their shopping in October instead of waiting for Black Friday and didn’t pick up their spending as much as anticipated in November. Retail sales advanced 0.3% month over month in November, a slowdown from the 1.8% rise in sales in October and below forecasts for an increase of 0.8%.
“Companies started off ahead of plan,” Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom tells Barron’s. “I think they’ve given back some of that. In order to succeed, the next week is going to have to be really good.”
So far, the projected numbers are promising. More than 148 million consumers plan to shop in-store and online Saturday, according to a survey published by the National Retail Federation. That would be a slight drop from last year when 150 million consumers were expected to shop, but an increase from the 147 million expected shoppers in 2019.
There’s still plenty of spending left for people to do. About 18% of consumers had already completed half their shopping by Nov. 5 this year, according to a Jefferies survey of 960 respondents. That number was about 21% in 2020. Jefferies noted that 7% of respondents hadn’t started their shopping as of Dec. 14.
Several retailers are poised to benefit from that last-minute dash. Top destinations include department stores and discount stores, the retail federation says. Three-fifths of respondents to the Jefferies survey said they’d shop in-store at Walmart (ticker: WMT), while 50% said they’re headed to Target (TGT). Kohl’s (KSS) was also a popular choice among respondents headed to bricks and mortars, and Amazon.com (AMZN) was a favored pick for those shopping online. Nearly half of consumers plan to complete the remainder of their shopping online, the retail federation says.
Inflation has been a challenge this year, too. About 49% of respondents in the Jefferies survey reported an increase in monthly expenses. And stimulus checks, which boosted retail sales last year, are having less of an effect this year. Nearly 20% of respondents last year said stimulus bolstered their spending. Only 15% said that was the case this year.
Rising prices could be why many more consumers opted for financing options this year, Salesforce says. About 7% of all online global orders were financed between Cyber Monday and Dec. 13, an increase of 48% year over year, according to Salesforce.
Still, there’s plenty to be optimistic about despite inflation, Gordon Haskett’s Grom says. Broadly, demand is strong for middle-class Americans and consumers are flush with savings, he adds. Whether that continues and for how long is the question.
“Big picture, a lot of investors are focused on what happens after this weekend, into the fourth quarter, and into the beginning of next year,” Grom says. The analysts will be watching foot and web traffic this weekend to see whether enough people procrastinated on their shopping this year.
Write to Logan Moore at logan.more@barrons.com
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December 18, 2021 at 05:00PM
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The Busiest Shopping Day of the Holiday Season Is Here. What to Expect. - Barron's
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