Bloomberg on Thursday reported that its Consumer Comfort Index had risen to its highest level since 2001.
With other signs of robust U.S. economic growth, this is a good time to highlight the makers and sellers of consumer products that have already been posting strong sales growth.
Here’e Bloomberg’s latest report about the Consumer Comfort Index. The U.S. leading economic indicators point to a strong second half of 2018, and bond investors are also showing confidence that the nearly nine-year U.S. economic expansion will continue.
So which consumer companies are showing the best sales growth? We’ll get to that in a moment. First, here’s an illuminating summary of how all 11 S&P 500 SPX, +0.78% sectors have performed so far this year, followed by two related lists of winners and losers:
These numbers are fascinating. The consumer discretionary sector — which includes Netflix NFLX, -0.44% and Amazon.com AMZN, +0.93% among its high flyers of 2018 — leads all sectors, Meanwhile, the consumer staples sector — with several venerable companies burdened by the chipping-away of market share by private-label brands — is bringing up the rear.
Here are the 10 S&P 500 consumer stocks with the highest total returns of 2018, along with changes in sales for the companies’ most recently reported quarters:
Sales per share are also shown to reflect the dilution from the issuance of new shares for any reason, including to fund acquisitions or for stock-based compensation to executives. The per-share numbers will be boosted by net share buybacks.
As you can see, tremendous increases in share prices this year have not necessarily been driven by rising sales. For Macy’s M, -1.04% for example, a 25% decline for the shares in 2017 helped convince enough investors that the stock was ripe for recovery.
Here are the 10 S&P 500 consumer stocks with the worst returns this year:
Consumer sales winners
Here are the 10 S&P 500 companies in the consumer discretionary or consumer staples sectors showing the largest increase in sales for their most recently reported quarters:
