With retail sales numbers rising, how are these 3 ASX shares performing?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released impressive retail sales numbers yesterday. We look at some ASX retail shares and how they're going.

Gretchen Kennedy

Gretchen grew up in a small Connecticut town where she learned to read The Wall Street Journal as part of the grade six enrichment program. She moved to Australia in 2002, earned a Master of Arts (Professional Writing) and went on to spend eight years writing on Wall Street. In June 2018, Gretchen returned to Australia and has since developed a keen interest in all things ASX. In December 2020, she started writing for the Motley Fool. Gretchen's usually writing something, reading a book or chasing her dogs around.

Published January 13, 2021 2:52 pm AEDT

Retail sales are a good indicator for how the economy is moving along. If people are spending money, that means that they must be making money. Retail sales also offer a tangible indication of consumer spending as a whole, which is an important part of any country's gross domestic product (GDP).

November retail sales soared 7.1% month-to-month according to Monday's retail trade report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Year-over-year, retail sales posted a massive 13.3% gain.

Let's take a look at some ASX retail players and see how they've been faring.

woman excitedly holding shopping bags and jumping — Image source: Getty Images

Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES)

With a market cap of $58.3 billion, Wesfarmers is the biggest player in the retail space on the ASX. The Wesfarmers share price has jumped higher than 17% over the past 12-month period. In fact, just last week the Wesfarmers share price hit a record all-time high. This is quite the contrast to the March price following the coronavirus lock downs. At its lowest point, the Wesfarmers share price sank to around $30.

At the time of writing this, the company's share price is $51.05.

Harvey Norman Holdings Limited (ASX: HVN)

Harvey Norman also tore into 2021 touching a multi-year high earlier this month. Back in November, the company announced that its aggregated sales revenue for the 1 July 2020 to 21 November 2020 period was up 28.2%. This nice spike includes gains experienced across stores operating in New Zealand, Slovenia, Croatia, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia.

Notably, Australian franchise sales jumped 29.7% during this time period regardless of operating disruptions caused by COVID. Over the past month, the Harvey Norman share price has zoomed 9.43% higher. This is a testament to the numbers revealed in the ABS retail report, with the sale of electrical goods rocketing up 23.4%.

The Harvey Norman share price is presently trading around $5.17.

Kathmandu Holdings (ASX: KMD)

Unfortunately, not all retail shares have been able to make a flashy comeback following COVID's initial thrashing last year. The Kathmandu share price has taken a 12-month beating of over 47%. After reaching a high of around $2.47 in February 2020, the company tumbled down to trade at 48 cents by the end of March 2020 and is still slowly clawing its way back up.

The Kathmandu share price is $1.20 at the moment. According to the retail report, November clothing sales experienced a 27.4% gain month-to-month. Kathmandu shares bumped up 7.4% over the same timeframe.

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