New York-based Coresight Research has released a report showing that while other major retailers suffered losses during the first fiscal quarter of 2022, warehouse clubs reported strong sales.
BJ’s Warehouse Club and Costco both posting double-digit sales growth year over year, according to Coresight. BJ’s sales at the start of 2022 were up 14.4% year over year, and comp sales, excluding gasoline, increased 4.1%, "driven by significant gains in traffic and market share," according to the report. Further, they wrote, BJ's comp sales in groceries, perishables and sundries were up 7% year over year.
Costco saw its U.S. comp sales, excluding fuel, climb 10.7% year over year. In its recently released June results, Costco reported sales for June vs a year ago rose 20.6% and in the past 44-week period ending July 3, the company reported U.S. sales rose 16.9%.
Other retailers showed more modest growth. Walmart reported sales grew 3% while Target’s sales increased 3.3% in the first quarter of the retailers’ respective fiscal years. Coresight Research believes this trend will continue. With inflation remaining at high levels and continued global supply-chain headwinds anticipated into 2023, "elevated costs will continue to affect profitability in 2022," Coresight's analysts wrote in the report.
Several traditional grocery retailers, including Albertsons Cos. and Sprouts Farmers Market, struggled with gross margins in the first quarter. Coresight reported margin for Sprouts was flat year over year at 37.3%, and Albertsons' fell 20 basis points year over year to 28.7%. Both results were due to spikes in product costs from inflation and supply-chain pressures, the report concluded.