Consumer Cos Down Amid Holiday Shopping Concerns -- Consumer Roundup
December 06 2017 - 4:54PM
Dow Jones News
Shares of retailers and other consumer-services companies ticked
down amid concerns about the outlook for off-Internet holiday
spending. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer by
sales, said it will shorten its legal name to Walmart Inc., in a
move that reflects its two-fronted war against increasingly
powerful competitor Amazon.com.
In a good sign for Friday's Labor Department report, a survey
from payroll processor Automatic Data Processing and credit firm
Moody's Analytics estimated that private employers across the
country added 190,000 workers to their ranks in November.
One brokerage said the housing market has room to run, even
after a strong couple of years for home prices. "We estimate there
are five years left in the cyclical housing recovery with industry
growth averaging about 10% compound-annual-growth-rate through 2022
(slower growth would stretch out the length of recovery and vice
versa)," said analysts at brokerage Nomura Securities, in a
research note. "We expect housing activity will match our
definition of normalized long-term housing demand of about 1.4
million units in 2018 and then follow with a typical overshoot to
counterbalance the nearly 2 million home shortfall produced during
the post-downturn credit crunch."
Retail giant Steinhoff International Holdings, which owns
American mattress brand Sleepy's and a string of chains across
Europe, said its chief executive has resigned amid an investigation
into accounting irregularities.
-Rob Curran, rob.curran@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 06, 2017 16:39 ET (21:39 GMT)
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