Retail Strategies Amid Rising Costs and Inflation

As U.S. retailers manage the impacts of increased tariffs, they have taken a number of approaches to avoid raising prices for customers. Our Head of Corporate Strategy Andrew Sheets and our Head of U.S. Consumer Retail and Credit Research Jenna Giannelli discuss whether they can continue to do so.

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Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley.

Jenna Giannelli: And I'm Jenna Giannelli, Head of U.S. Consumer and Retail Credit Research.

Andrew Sheets: And today on the podcast, we're going to dig into one of the biggest conundrums in the market today. Where and when are tariffs going to show up in prices and margins?

It's Friday, July 11th at 10am in New York.

Jenna, it's great to catch up with you today because I think you can really bring some unique perspective into one of the biggest puzzles that we're facing in the market today. Even with all of these various pauses and delays, the U.S. has imposed historically large tariffs on imports. And we're seeing a rapid acceleration in the amount of money collected from those tariffs by U.S. customs. These are real hard dollars that importers – or somebody else – are paying. Yet we haven't seen these tariffs show up to a significant degree in official data on prices – with recent inflation data relatively modest. And overall stock and credit markets remain pretty strong and pretty resilient, suggesting less effect.

So, are these tariffs just less impactful than expected, or is there something else going on here with timing and severity? And given your coverage of the consumer and retail sectors, which is really at the center of this tariff debate – what do you think is going on?

Jenna Giannelli: So yes, this is a key question and one that is dominating a lot of our client conversations. At a high level, I'd point to a few things. First, there's a timing issue here. So, when tariffs were first announced, retailers were already sitting on three to four months worth of inventory, just due to natural industry lead times. And they were able to draw down on this product.

This is mostly what they sold in 1Q and likely into 2Q, which is why you haven't seen much margin or pricing impact thus far. Companies – we also saw them start to stock up heavily on inventory before the tariffs and at the lower pause rate tariffs, which is the product you referenced that we're seeing coming in now. This is really going to help mitigate margin pressure in the second quarter that you still have this lower cost inventory flowing through.

On top of this timing consideration, retailers – we've just seen utilizing a range of mitigation measures, right? So, whether it's canceled or pause shipments from China, a shifting production mix or sourcing exposure in the short run, particularly before the pause rate on China. And then really leaning into just whether it's product mix shifts, cost savings elsewhere in the PNL, and vendor negotiations, right? They're really leaning into everything in their toolbox that they can.

Pricing too has been talked about as something that is an option, but the option of last resort. We have heard it will be utilized, but very tactically and very surgically, as we think about the back half of the year. When you put this all together, how much impact is it having? On average from retailers that we heard from in the first quarter, they thought they would be able to mitigate about half of the expected tariff headwind, which is actually a bit better than we were expecting.

Finally, I'll just comment on your comment regarding market performance. While you're right in that the overall equity and credit markets have held up well, year-to-date, retail equities and credit have fared worse than their respective indices. What's interesting, actually, is that credit though has significantly outperformed retail equities, which is a relationship we think should converge or correct as we move throughout the balance of the year.

Andrew Sheets: So, Jenna, retailers saw this coming. They've been pulling various levers to mitigate the impact. You mentioned kind of the last lever that they want to pull is prices, raising prices, which is the macro thing that we care about. The thing that would actually show up in inflation.

How close are we though to kind of running out of other options for these guys? That is, the only thing left is they can start raising prices?

Jenna Giannelli: So closer is what I would say. We're likely not going to see a huge impact in 2Q, more likely as we head into 3Q and more heavily into the all-important fourth quarter holiday season. This is really when those higher cost goods are going to be flowing through the PNL and retailers need to offset this as they've utilized a lot of their other mitigation strategies. They've moved what they could move. They've negotiated where they could, they've cut where they could cut. And again, as this last step, it will be to try and raise price.

So, who's going to have the most and least success? In our universe, we think it's going to be more difficult to pass along price in some of the more historically deflationary categories like apparel and footwear. Outside of what is a really strong brand presence, which in our universe, historically hasn't been the case.

Also, in some of the higher ticket or more durable goods categories like home goods, sporting goods, furniture, we think it'll be challenging as well here to pass along higher costs. Where it's going to be less of an issue is in our Staples universe, where what we'd put is less discretionary categories like Beauty, Personal Care, which is part of the reason why we've been cautious on retail, and neutral and consumer products when we think about sector allocation.

Andrew Sheets: And when do you think this will show up? Is it a third quarter story? A fourth quarter story?

Jenna Giannelli: I think this is going to really start to show up in the third quarter, and more heavily into the fourth quarter, the all-important holiday season.

Andrew Sheets: Yeah, and I think that’s what’s really interesting about the impact of this backup to the macro. Again, returning to the big picture is I think one of the most important calls that Morgan Stanley economists have is that inflation, which has been coming down somewhat so far this year is going to pick back up in August and September and October. And because it's going to pick back up, the Federal Reserve is not going to cut interest rates anymore this year because of that inflation dynamic.

So, this is a big debate in the market. Many investors disagree. But I think what you're talking about in terms of there are some very understandable reasons, maybe why prices haven't changed so far. But that those price hikes could be coming have real macroeconomic implications.

So, you know, maybe though, something to just close on – is to bring this to the latest headlines. You know, we're now back it seems, in a market where every day we log onto our screens, and we see a new headline of some new tariff being announced or suggested towards countries. Where do you think those announcements, so far are relative to what retailers are expecting – kind of what you think is in guidance?

Jenna Giannelli: Sure. So, look what we've seen of late; the recent tariff headlines are certainly higher or worse, I think, than what investors in management teams were expecting. For Vietnam, less so; I'd say it was more in line. But for most elsewhere, in Asia, particularly Southeast Asia, the rates that are set to go in effect on August 1st, as we now understand them, are higher or worse than management teams were expecting.

Recall that while guidance did show up in many flavors in the first quarter, so whether withdrawn guidance or lowered guidance. For those that did factor in tariffs to their guide, most were factoring in either pause rate tariffs or tariff rates that were at least lower than what was proposed on Liberation Day, right?

So, what's the punchline here? I think despite some of the revisions we've already seen, there are more to come. To put some numbers around this, if we look at our group of retail consumer cohort, credits, consensus expectations for calling for EBITDA in our universe to be down around 5 percent year-over-year. If we apply tariff rates as we know them today for a half-year headwind starting August 1st, this number should be down around 15 percent year-over-year on a gross basis…

Andrew Sheets: So, three times as much.

Jenna Giannelli: Pretty significant. Exactly. And so, while there might be mitigation efforts, there might be some pricing passed along, this is still a pretty significant delta between where consensus is right now and what we know tariff rates to be today – could imply for earnings in the second half.

Andrew Sheets: Jenna, thanks for taking the time to talk.

Jenna Giannelli: My pleasure. Thank you.

Andrew Sheets: And thank you as always for your time. If you find Thoughts to the Market useful, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen. And also tell a friend or colleague about us today.