We have gathered feedback from a range of retail industry contacts to gauge the initial read on Christmas trading. In short, sales trends have been good. It was a strong Black Friday month in November, early December was soft, but there was a noticeable improvement in sales in the last two weeks of December. Strongest feedback is for Chemist Warehouse and the furniture industry. The weakest feedback is in footwear and liquor, albeit Endeavour Group has won share. Woolworths had a strong December quarter, which largely reflects strikes from the pcp. Its underlying performance looks to be still lagging a little. The key risk for 1H26e will be gross margin. When we combine the sales and margin feedback, the EPS upside risk to consensus could come from Super Retail Group and Sigma. There is downside risk for JB Hi-Fi, Endeavour and Myer in our view.

Australian retail sales rose 4.0% in December 2024, with some notable outliers across segments. Electronics was up 11%, furniture up 8% and pharmacy up 7%. On the other hand, department stores, supermarkets, liquor and recreational goods were all very soft. Some of the shifts reflect the baseline with December compound annual growth rates actually slower than November for all categories other than hardware and liquor.