Time for retailers to step in to the earnings confessional
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) is scheduled to report earnings before the open this Thursday, November 14 and that will kick off a stretch of big earnings reports from various retailers over a short period of time. Over the course of five trading days we will get reports from Walmart, Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Kohls (NYSE: KSS), TJX Companies (NYSE: TJX), Lowes (NYSE: LOW), and Target (NYSE: TGT).
The six stocks listed are from different segments of the retail industry, but we see in the table below that there are some really good fundamental and technical statistics for the group as a whole. This particular table shows the different categories from Investor's Business Daily and we see lots of green, or positive notations. Two stocks in particular have dark green notations across the board—Home Depot and TJX. The dark green notations mean that the company ranks in the top 20th percentile in that category.
We see that Lowes and Target are green across the board, but they both have SMR ratings that are B's and that is just a notch below the grades of Home Depot and TJX.
The only stock that has any below average ratings is Kohl with a composite reading of only 30 and a Relative Price Strength rating of 26, both in the 21 to 40 percentile range. Walmart has an average EPS rating and an average SMR rating.
The table of Tickeron's Fundamental indicators shows more strong fundamentals for the group, but is also highlights a few more areas of concern than what we saw in the IBD table. Once again we see that Home Depot's numbers are tagged with green highlights across the board, but in this case it is the only stock with such a distinction.
The valuation ratings for Lowes and TJX are concerns, the Profit vs. Risk rating for Kohls is a concern, and Walmart's P/E Growth rating is a concern. The SMR rating from Tickeron for Walmart is also a concern.
Target shows pretty solid results across the board with only its SMR rating being average.
Finally, we have the sentiment table for these six retailers and what we see is that Kohls shows the most pessimism with both the analysts' ratings and the short interest ratio showing more bearish sentiment than the average stock. The most surprising item in the sentiment table is the fact that the analysts' ratings for Home Depot are below average. The overall buy percentage is at 57.6% while the average buy percentage falls in the 65% to 75% range.
The only areas where the sentiment is below average are the short interest ratios for Lowes and Target, but those indicators are only slightly below average.
Overall I would say that the fundamental picture looks pretty strong for the retail sector. The consumer has been the backbone of the economy in the last few years. Corporate spending has been declining in recent years and it has been the consumer that has kept the expansion going.
In addition to all of the earnings reports due out in the next week or so, the Retail Sales report for October is due out on November 15. The September report came in weaker than expected, so investors will be watching the October report a little more closely.
As for the retailers mentioned in this article, Home Depot looks to be on the most solid footing as we head into the reporting period.
