On March 3, 2023, shoppers walked into the Nordstrom department store in Austin, Texas.
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Nordstrom Department stores and websites on Friday raised their full-year sales forecast after holiday shopping results came in stronger than cautious expectations.
The company stuck to its profit guidance despite higher sales guidance.
The Seattle-based retailer said it now expects full-year revenue to grow 1.5% to 2.5%, including the impact of a reduced budget. Week. This compares with previous expectations for unchanged or a 1% gain.
Nordstrom’s outlook for the end of November remains conservative despite fiscal third-quarter sales beating Wall Street expectations. The company expects full-year revenue to be flat to grow 1%. The company said it expects adjusted earnings per share this year to be between $1.75 and $2.05. Its revenue includes retail sales and credit card revenue.
On an earnings call at the time, Chief Executive Erik Nordstrom said the company had seen “a significant decline in sales trends toward the end of October” and factored that into its forecast.
However, in a press release Friday, he attributed the better-than-expected holiday sales to the company’s “efforts to remain competitive in a promotional environment and the strength of our products.”
Nordstrom said net sales rose 4.9% during the nine-week holiday period that ended Jan. 4, and comparable sales, a metric that nets out the impact of store openings and closures, compared with the same period last year, which ended Dec. 12. An increase of 5.8%.
During the holidays, Nordstrom’s net sales increased 3.7% and comparable sales increased 6.5%. Net sales of Nordstrom Rack, the company’s discount product, grew 7.4%, and comparable sales increased 4.3%.
The department store operator’s results provide additional insights for investors monitoring the health of U.S. consumers and retailers’ performance during the key shopping season. Walmart, Best Buy, Macy’s and other retailers will begin reporting earnings in late February.
So far, the data on early holidays looks promising. Data from Adobe Analytics shows that from November 1 to December 31, online spending in the United States grew by nearly 9% compared with the same period last year, totaling $241.4 billion. U.S. holiday quarter retail sales, excluding auto sales, Annual increase of 3.8% That’s according to Mastercard’s SpendingPulse data, which measures in-store and online sales across payment types from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24.
The latest news from Nordstrom comes as its founding family prepares to take the retailer private. Nordstrom announced a $6.25 billion acquisition deal with the family and Mexican department store El Puerto de Liverpool in late December. The transaction has been approved by the company’s board of directors and is expected to close in the first half of 2025.
Nordstrom shares closed at $24.01, down about 4% from their 52-week high. The company is scheduled to report fourth-quarter and full-year results on March 4.
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