For the month of November, Australian retailers recorded $23.765 billion of sales, up from $23.739 billion in October, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data released today.
Seasonally adjusted, spending was up just 0.1%, slightly below economist expectations. However the results come on the back of a 0.4% increase in October and strong 1.3% rise in September.
Retailers in food, household goods, department stores, clothing and footwear, cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services all showed modest increases.
Investors are clearly enthusiastic for some retailers though, particularly Pacific Brands Limited (ASX: PBG), Myer Holdings Limited (ASX: MYR), Specialty Fashion Group Ltd. (ASX: SFH) and Super Retail Group Limited (ASX: SUL). All four were trading higher, between 2% and 4%, in early afternoon trade.
With many retailers expected to have heavily discounted over the busy Christmas period, all eyes will now be fixed firmly on the key December trading figures, released 5 February 2015.
As I highlighted in this article, retailers can be extremely fickle businesses to own. Monthly industry sales figures should be taken with a grain of salt. To accurately value their shares, investors shouldn't become overly concerned by these figures and instead focus on the underlying businesses and their prospects over many years.
With consumer confidence is expected to remain subdued in the year ahead and unemployment is expected to rise modestly, share prices of many well-known retailers are currently looking cheap. Therefore astute investors who have a view to the long-term could potentially lock in some high yielding stocks at a discount. That's something which should be especially appealing in this low interest rate environment.
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