What CEOs Are Saying: Consumers Are Stretched but Showing Up
Three earnings calls from AutoZone, Best Buy, and Abercrombie & Fitch
In this edition
• Cool weather in May affects profits
• Beyond LED TVs
• AI spikes laptop prices
• A CEO successor with 27 years at the company
• Testing AI for retail merchandising
Quote of the week
“If they do defer [car maintenance], then they have a larger failure, which costs more money.”
—Phil Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, on why declining DIY traffic doesn’t concern him
Phil has a point. It’s nice to be selling a relatively mandatory good, like car parts and maintenance, in a tough economy. Things like car parts and maintenance are inelastic, or at least only elastic to the point that something snaps. You either fix your car now… or deal with a bigger repair bill later.
In addition to hearing more from AutoZone’s CEO, we’ll also check in this week with a couple of other CEOs whose product is decidedly elastic, namely clothes and electronics. We’ll see that despite that, the US consumer is still showing up in those stores, for now.
