Broadlines & Hardlines Retailing: August Retail Sales: Broad-Based Strength; HD/LOW/ BBY Data Laterals

Research evidence excerpt

J P M O R G A N

North America Equity Research

16 September 2026

Broadlines & Hardlines Retailing

August Retail Sales: Broad-Based Strength; HD/LOW/

BBY Data Laterals

Overall, August came in above expectations with broad-based strength.

Indeed, specific to our world, 7 out of 11 categories accelerated vs. July on a YOY

basis, led by home furnishings, electronics, and nonstore. Looking at the 1Y/2Y

trends, autoparts, electronics, restaurants, home furnishings, gen merch, nonstore,

and sporting goods improved on both metrics, while home improvement

deteriorated on both.

Retail August Laterals

HD/LOW laterals. The sequential change in the home improvement 1Y

suggests August comps of +1.3% for HD and -2.1% for LOW (vs. flat JPMe),

respectively. This compares to July comps of +2.2% for HD US and -1.2% for

LOW. We note that LOW had a harder July comparison on multi-year changes,

which is likely skewing the lateral. On the 2Q call, HD and LOW spoke to

demand being consistent with 2Q (HD +1.3% US, LOW +0.2%), with HD

specifically noting yesterday at a conference that it does not see an inflection

in demand, while LOW indicated 2H will look like 1H.

BBY lateral. The sequential change in the CE 1Y suggests BBY comps +2.4%

in August.Recall, BBY called out QTD (through 8/27) running at the high end

of the +1-3% 3Q guide with “robust” demand aided by BTS and the 60th

anniversary sale. Notably, smoothing it out by comparing August to retail 2Q

indicates +4.5% SSS in August, though COST’s August commentary indicated

that CE trends were relatively sluggish as price increases affected volume

trends.

Retail sales in August were +6.0% YOY (vs. +5.0% in July) and +1.2%

sequentially, above the Street’s forecast per Bloomberg (+0.8%). Core

retail sales grew +7.1% vs. +6.1% in July. July’s data saw mixed revisions,

with home furnishings (-150 bps), home improvement (-70 bps), apparel (-60

bps), autoparts (-40 bps), grocery (-25 bps), sporting goods (-15 bps), and

department stores (-5 bps) all saw downward revisions, while electronics (+75

bps), nonstore (+60 bps), restaurants (+15 bps), and gen merch (+5 bps) saw

upward revisions.

…