Barclays on Retail: Key Takeaways from Black Friday Weekend

Barclays on Retail: Key Takeaways from Black Friday Weekend

Barclays analyst, Robert S. Drbul, said, "Following our store checks, Black Friday seemed to be relatively in line with our expectations, and we believe the holiday season got off to a strong start, although shoppers appeared very disciplined and focused on specific items from their lists. We visited several stores in New York City, Connecticut, Long Island, and Dallas throughout much of the day (as well as the night prior)."

"Many stores continued the trend of opening stores even earlier this year: Walmart (NYSE: WMT) began running specials at 10pm on Thanksgiving, and Macy's (NYSE: M) and Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) opened at 12am Friday. In New York, similar to last year, we believe traffic was strong throughout the morning, but tapered off during the day. We believe Walmart's three-event strategy (10pm Thanksgiving night, midnight, and 8am Friday morning openings) appeared to be successful. Given our observations, along with the company's revival of its layaway program this year, we believe Walmart appears to be on the right track to achieve our 1% comp estimate for its U.S. stores. We view the company as more relevant this year than in the past several years."

"We believe traffic was also impacted by a shift in timing and higher penetration of e-commerce and m-commerce. The majority of broadline/department store retailers began offering promotions and Black Friday specials on their websites on Thanksgiving or earlier, and continued to offer discounts through Friday night. The National Retail Federation reported that 51% of online retailers planned to offer promotions on Thanksgiving Day, 92% planned to offer special promotions at some point during the Thanksgiving weekend, and 78% intend to offer promotions on Cyber Monday. This translated to a 20% increase in online sales on Black Friday, and a 39% increase in online sales on Thanksgiving Day according to Coremetrics. Reportedly 17% of Black Friday visitors to retail websites came via mobile devices, up from 5% last year."

---

GET THE HOTTEST RESEARCH CALLS ON THE STREET- FREE TRIAL!