U.K. Retail Sales Volumes Slide

U.K. sales volume for retail sales has been slipping roughly since mid-2024. The 3-month volume index is falling at a 4.4% annual rate over three months. Sales are up at a scant 0.2% annual rate over six months and by 3.5% year-over-year. Passenger car registrations show weakness falling at a 7.6% annual rate over three months, gaining at a 4.6% pave over six months, and then showing contraction at a minor -0.1% rate over 12 months.

Volume Trends Apart from the sequential data, the monthly volume results show a decline in December, a gain in November and a drop in October. The monthly nominal data show small nominal gain in November and December against a sharper nominal decline in October.

U.K. nominal sales QTD relative nominal decline in the fourth quarter with retail sales volumes also show decline dropping at a 2.9% annual rate overall. Passenger car registrations are falling at a 12.4% annual rate in the fourth quarter.

Surveys and Confidence U.K. surveys on retailing for the ‘time of year’ and the ‘volume of orders’ from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) show sputtering monthly results. The CBI reading for time of year (TOY) and volume of orders (VoO) both show net decline of three months. VoO also falls over six months whereas TOY sales are higher over six months. Both TOY and VoO sales are higher over 12 months. TOY sales are up by 2-index points while VoO sales are up by 28 of their index points. While the year-on-year survey results show short-term agreement, their year-on-year signals seem different. But their long-term ranking results alone again show similarity at the TOY sales log a 21.8 percentile standing vs. VoO that is even weaker at a14-percentile mark. It is an even weaker full-sample standing despite the better 12-month gain. We often see this sort of thing in data comparisons. But if surveys are well-constructed, they usually track but there often are still disparities. That is true here as well and we can nit-pick the details but the overarching message here is that conditions are weak. Consumer confidence from GfK has been volatile over the span but when we rank the confidence index, it stands at 40.5 percentile level, which is stronger than for the surveys but still below its median and barely over half the standing of real retail sales growth.

Rankings/Standings The consumer confidence standing is interesting at 40.5% but it is not ‘close’ to the volume ranking which is at its 77-percentile. The confidence ranking is still slightly below its median. The retail sales ranking is applied to real sales and their 12-month growth rate. The ranking of sales volume is much higher than any ranking registered by CBI surveys or by consumer confidence. Passenger car registrations are weak, too, at a 47.2 percentile standing. In contrast, nominal retail sales have a 60.6 percentile standing. Part of that is the boost they get from the 80.9 percentile standing from the CPI-H, from inflation.