It’s probably a mistake to focus on corporate commentary around the consumer because it can vary from one company to the next. Plus, there’s a temptation for executives to blame the macro situation whenever their company is struggling.
Yesterday, I would note that Couche Tard, one of the largest convenience store operators in North America, saw a drop in same store sales in both Canada (-1.2%) and even worse in the United States (-1.5%).
“On the consumer side, on the convenience side specifically, it’s really that lower income consumer that we’re seeing strain today. One example would be our EBT or SNAP, which is a U.S. federal government program for low-income consumers. Our SNAP volume or revenues were down 40% over the same period last year. And that’s just a sign that consumer is being more value conscious and we’re seeing that show up in trip consolidations with the center store. So if you think about salty confectionery grocery is certainly the softest part of our business, while the beverages, which we think is a continued opportunity for both our industry and for Couche-Tard Win, continues to perform fairly well. It was plus 2% in the U.S. as an example. So again, it’s that low-end consumer. And we can look geographically and see that where we’ve got lower income consumers, our results are worse and where we’ve got higher-income consumers, the results are pretty stable.”
We will hear from Lululemon, Nike and Fedex today.