Retail billionaire upbeat on spending as Premier enjoys bumper Black Friday

Retail billionaire Solomon Lew says shoppers will still have plenty of cash to splash into 2023, as his company Premier Investments – which operates the Smiggle and Peter Alexander brands – enjoyed bumper Black Friday sales.

In a trading update on Friday, Premier said it had achieved record sales across the Black Friday sales period, which included booking its highest ever global online sales for a trading week. Overall sales for the first 17 weeks of this financial year were up by 23.6 per cent compared with the same period last year, and 24.9 per cent compared with this time of year pre-COVID.

Lew hosed down fears of a slowdown in consumer spending in 2023, as households tackle inflation and higher interest rates, telling this masthead that strong employment put consumers in a good position to spend.

“There’s full employment, and there’s an expectation of higher wages. So, there’s going to be more money in the pipeline. From our perspective, we’re very happy,” he said. Pointing to the nation’s unemployment rate, which was sitting at 3.4 per cent last quarter, the billionaire said:“it doesn’t get any lower.”

He noted that Premier was gearing up for strong pre-Christmas and Boxing Day sales, and the back-to-school period, which is a key period for youth stationery brand Smiggle.

Premier Investments chief executive Richard Murray said the company was focused on delivering a strong result over the Christmas period, noting it was difficult to predict consumers’ future behaviour.

“We look and it and go, ‘we’ve bought well, we’ve got our plans, we know how to trade it’. As a management team, we can only control the levers we’ve got,” he said.

Earlier this year, Murray said the retailer’s focus on core and basics clothing also put it in a good position even if there was an overall spending slowdown. 

Shaw and Partners said in a note to clients that the company’s latest update suggests the retailer is “well-placed to materially beat expectations in 1H23 vs consensus.

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