U.S. Hardlines & Grocery Retail "UBS Evidence Lab: What's the Latest on ..."

Research evidence excerpt

U.S. Hardlines & Grocery Retail "UBS Evidence Lab: What's the Latest on ..."

roved sachin.verma@ubs.com

execution in certain areas of their operations. This progress should support +1-212-713 3492

stronger financial performance, helping to offset or mitigate the impact of

external pressures.

Our detailed store audits of 101 Dollar General and Dollar Trees across the country show

signs of progress, especially in areas such as in-stock levels, store cleanliness or customer

experience. In particular, Dollar General has made meaningful improvements in store

cleanliness, in-stock levels, staffing levels, and customer satisfaction. While Dollar Tree

also improved in select areas (cleanliness), there were other areas where it could improve

(staffing levels, product availability, shelf organization).

This latter takeaway is notable since Dollar Tree is reaching an inflection where it

will have less of a benefit of pricing changes to drive its comp. We think it can

sustain its growth by executing better. This might require some modest

incremental investment, but the potential is there.

In this report, we examine several facets of the dollar store debate, with a

particular focus on execution

To assess execution at DG and DLTR, the UBS Evidence Lab conducted a mystery

shopping survey focused on key elements of the in-store experience. The study included

101 total store visits across the U.S., with 51 visits at Dollar General and 50 visits at Dollar

Tree (see methodology section for further details). We also conducted a similar survey for

DG and DLTR last year, allowing for year-over-year comparisons throughout this report.

Dollar General saw across-the-board improvement in our survey

While DG is on the verge of a CEO transition, the succession comes amidst rising