We provide a presentation of the retail outlook including the key factors to consider for the year ahead. We expect retail spending to be challenging in FY24e with an improvement likely in FY25e. Excess household savings, price inflation and interest rates are all factors to watch for the year ahead. Retailers are lowering inventory levels and looking for labour productivity initiatives to offset wage inflation.

Australian retailers have begun to experience a slowdown in retail spending and it’s going to get tougher over the next 4-6 months. We expect FY24e retail industry sales to rise 1.5%, a slowdown from 9.0% growth in FY23e. While this may sound gloomy, a glass half full perspective is overall sales may not slow any further from the trends as at June 2023. The glass half-empty view is that we may not return towards trend sales growth until 2025. The willingness of households to tap into excess savings shapes our view that the downturn will be shallow. We also note that food inflation will prop up that sector until early 2024. The path of price inflation is likely to have a greater bearing on sales outcomes more so than retail volumes, which are already in decline.