We’ve spent a lot of time of late talking about the retail implosion currently underway in the United States courtesy of a massive oversupply of retail square footage and a simultaneous shift in demand toward more online purchases. In fact, we recently highlighted a report from Credit Suisse which suggested that nearly 9,000 retail locations could permanently close their doors in 2017, the most since at least 2000.
According to the Swiss bank’s calculations, on a unit basis, approximately 2,880 store closings were announced YTD, more than twice as many closings as the 1,153 announced during the same period last year. Historically, roughly 60% of store closure announcements occur in the first five months of the year. By extrapolating the year-to-date announcements, CS estimates that there could be more than 8,640 store closings this year, which will be higher than the historical 2008 peak of approximately 6,200 store closings, which suggests that for brick-and-mortar stores stores the current transition period is far worse than the depth of the credit crisis depression.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 28, 2017.
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