NEW YORK – U.S. retail sales probably fell last month compared with a year earlier as “a confluence of factors” including an early Easter and the coldest April in a decade diminished sales of gifts, garden supplies and spring clothes, the International Council of Shopping Centers and UBS Securities LLC said in their report for the seven days ended May 5.
The nation’s last year-over-year monthly retail sales decline was a 0.2-percent drop in March 2003, Bloomberg News said. This year, March sales rose 5.9 percent compared with March 2006, aided by the early Easter and warmer than usual weather.
“The environment is ripe for a sharply disappointing month,” Scott Bernhardt, a spokesman for weather-consulting firm Planalytics Inc., told Bloomberg.
Sales at retail stores open at least one year declined 0.6 percent over the past week after rising 0.5 percent the week before, the ICSC said. Compared with year-ago levels, sales rose 1.7 percent last week after rising 1.9 percent the week before.
The ICSC’s final results for April retail sales are due on Thursday.
The International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade group, and investment bank UBS Securities LLC track same-store sales at about 60 chains representing about 10 percent of U.S. retail sales.
