By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
So, tracking that momentum is going to be key for investors. What are some of the things that you’ll be watching, you know, in the next several weeks, several months throughout the summer to kind of get a feel that that guidance is tracking?
00:13 Michael Lasser
Sure. Well, we have a number of leading indicators that we track on an inter quarter basis and, and publish frequently. This is things like overall retail sales. We spend a lot of time looking at their vendors, a lot of their publicly traded vendors report a month before Home Depot does because they have a December year end, whereas uh, Home Depot has a January year end. So we hear from Stanley Black & Decker, Masco, et cetera. That gives us good insight. We do get weekly uh, point of sales data. So there’s a lot of stuff that we track and we, and we publish on and that really does help us get a sense as to whether uh, they’re tracking in line or not and if we see things waver, uh, we’ll adjust accordingly.
00:56 Brian Sozzi
And, and Michael, I also want to look ahead to some of the other retail earnings that we have coming up, particularly when it comes to a company like Costco. How are you thinking about that retailer in this moment?
01:09 Michael Lasser
Well, Costco is doing exceptionally well. We know that. Uh, remember Costco is the only retailer still that still gives us monthly comps. So we have a very good sense as to how they’re comping uh, into quarters. So, so when they report it, it’s really about margins. Uh, but when we look at the, the, the, the monthly comps, uh, they’re just taking a lot of share. Uh, really all the clubs are doing well. Sam’s Club within the Walmart um, uh, uh, report last week was very strong. BJ’s has been taking market share. Uh, in fact, BJ’s has been one of the best performing stocks in, in our space year to date. BJ’s stock is up more than Costco’s. Uh, but all three of them are doing very well that the club space in general just taking market share uh, in an environment where consumers are, are really focused on value.
02:13 Brian Sozzi
And I guess I wonder if you can kind of put a bow on all of this for me here, especially as we head towards Target earnings. How are we going to see retailers sort of entering either the Walmart camp of admitting to raising prices versus the Home Depot camp of saying we’re going to keep prices where they are and what are the factors that you think different retailers are going to consider as they’re deciding which camp to signal that they’re going to be in to investors.
02:41 Michael Lasser
Well, well, it’s very tricky and you’re right, to me it’s much more about signaling. I don’t really think those two companies, Home Depot and Walmart, are doing things that much differently. It’s just how it’s articulated. Uh, I think Walmart wants to send a, a message uh, perhaps to the administration that, you know, some prices will go up uh, and, and, and so uh, try to help with the tariff negotiations, if you will, telling the administration that we really need some help on, on tariffs. But again, I, Walmart also use a portfolio effect and in some areas prices will go up, some, some will go down and I think it’ll be about neutral. Uh, but, but really it’s just about how much you want to sort of signal to the administration and, and Home Depot just seems to be taking a, a more conservative approach to that, uh, Walmart a little bit more aggressive. How other companies do it? You know, Walmart really has the size, the scale, the credibility, whatever you want to call it to, to, to, to, to really articulate that a little bit more effectively than, than I think some smaller retailers. That being said, smaller retailers, they might not have a choice. They might have to raise prices because they don’t really have the offsets that the bigger retailers with scale have, i.e. pushing some of the uh, tariffs back onto their suppliers.