NEW YORK – Sales at U.S. retail stores open at least one year fell 0.5 percent over the past week after holding steady the week before, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers and UBS Securities LLC report for the seven days ended June 2, Bloomberg News said.
Compared with the same week of 2006, sales rose 2.3 percent, slowing from the previous week’s 2.9-percent year-over-year gain. Analysts credited Memorial Day holiday spending, warmer than normal weather and a long-awaited dip in gasoline prices.
For all of May, the ICSC estimated sales may have risen as much as 2.5 percent compared with May 2006. The trade group’s preliminary report said the May increase was at the “high end” of its 2 percent to 2.5 percent forecast.
“In May, we saw demand recover a lot from the April weakness,” ICSC Chief Economist Michael Niemira told Bloomberg in an interview yesterday. “May is a return to the underlying trend of a slowdown in consumer spending from 2006.”
The ICSC last month reported that April sales at 53 U.S. retail chains fell 2.4 percent as an early Easter pushed holiday sales back into March and the coldest April in a decade slowed sales of spring clothing and garden supplies. But last month, U.S. temperatures averaged 1.5 degrees above normal, according to Weather Trends International.
The International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade group, and investment bank UBS track same-store sales at about 60 chains that represent about 10 percent of U.S. retail sales. Additional information is available at www.icsc.org.
