Friday's Retail Sales Print Is Not a Preview of Next Week's Retailer Comps

by Leah Avraham · August 14, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

At 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday the Census Bureau publishes its advance estimate of July retail and food services sales, and for a moment it will be the most-watched number on the tape. Three trading days later, Home Depot opens the heaviest retail reporting week of the quarter, followed by Target and Lowe's on Wednesday and Walmart on Thursday. Reading the first as a preview of the second is a mistake. The two series are built differently, cover different calendars, and last quarter pointed in opposite directions for four companies selling to the same consumer.

Start with what is confirmed. Home Depot said in an August 4 release that it will hold its second quarter earnings call on Tuesday, August 18, at 9 a.m. ET, the date and time its investor relations events page also carries. Target's events page lists its second quarter announcement for Wednesday, August 19, from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. EDT, and Lowe's said on August 12 that its call is at 9 a.m. Eastern the same day. Walmart's fiscal 2027 second quarter listing puts its earnings materials at approximately 6 a.m. Central on Thursday, August 20, with the call an hour later. Only Walmart publishes a release time in advance, but no call in the group starts after the 9:30 a.m. open, and the other three issued first quarter results early: Home Depot's and Lowe's at 6:00 a.m. ET, Target's at 6:30 a.m. ET.

Now the macro number. The advance survey samples approximately 4,800 retail and food services firms to represent a universe of more than three million, according to the Census release itself, and its estimates are adjusted for seasonal variation and for holiday and trading-day differences but, the report states plainly, not for prices. June total retail and food services sales were $768.6 billion seasonally adjusted, up 0.2 percent, plus or minus 0.4 percent, from May and up 6.7 percent from a year earlier, with nonstore retailers at $142.7 billion, up 1.4 percent on the month. July's advance estimate is the next scheduled release; as of Friday's open it does not exist. MNI's preview puts consensus at 0.1% month-over-month on the headline, 0.3% ex-autos-and-gas and 0.3% on the control group, against June readings of 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.5%.

That control group is where the disconnect starts. It is a market construct, not a Census one, and per CME Group's explainer it strips out receipts from auto dealers, building-materials retailers, gas stations, office supply stores, mobile homes and tobacco stores, on the reasoning that the residual is a cleaner gauge of consumer spending. Home Depot and Lowe's sit inside a category economists delete before they trade the print.

The nominal-versus-real problem cuts the same way. MNI notes that the Chicago Fed's advance retail trade summary projects a 0.1% monthly gain in ex-auto sales that it expects to translate into merely flat real sales growth, and that Bank of America card data showed total card spending growth easing to 5.0% year-over-year in July from 6.3% in June. A company comp is nominal too, but a retailer decomposes it into transactions and average ticket on the face of its release. Census cannot: as the Federal Reserve's October 2024 FEDS Note on decomposing retail spending explains, the survey has establishments reporting monthly sales rather than consumers reporting monthly spending, so the aggregate cannot be split by household group. That note found that as of August 2024, real spending by low-income households was up 7.9% from January 2018 against 16.7% for high-income households.

The last reporting round is the proof. In their fiscal first quarters, reported in May, Walmart posted Walmart U.S. comparable sales excluding fuel up 4.1%, with transactions up 3.0% outpacing average ticket at 1.1%, and eCommerce sales up 26% globally, contributing roughly 530 basis points to the Walmart U.S. comp. Target reported total company comparable sales up 5.6% on comparable traffic up 4.4% and average transaction amount up 1.1%, with comparable digital sales up 8.9%. Home Depot reported total comparable sales up 0.6% and U.S. comps up just 0.4%, and the composition was inverted: comparable customer transactions fell 1.3% while comparable average ticket rose 2.2%. Lowe's total comparable sales rose 0.6%. That is a five-point spread inside one industry in a single quarter, and no monthly aggregate produces it. Home Depot chair, president and chief executive Ted Decker said in the release that “Our first quarter results were in line with our expectations. The underlying demand in our business was relatively similar to what we saw throughout fiscal 2025, despite greater consumer uncertainty and housing affordability pressure.”

The fiscal calendars do not line up either. Walmart's fiscal 2027 first quarter covered the three months ended April 30, 2026, putting its second quarter close at the end of July. Home Depot's first quarter ended May 3, Target's May 2 and Lowe's May 1. July is one of three months in the period they will describe.

What is knowable ahead of next week is the guidance in force. Walmart guided fiscal 2027 second quarter adjusted EPS to $0.72 to $0.74, with constant-currency net sales growth of 4.0% to 5.0% and operating income growth of 7.0% to 10.0%, and left full-year adjusted EPS at $2.75 to $2.85. Home Depot reaffirmed fiscal 2026 total sales growth of about 2.5% to 4.5%, comparable sales flat to up 2.0%, and adjusted diluted EPS growth of flat to 4.0% from a $14.69 adjusted base. Lowe's affirmed sales of $92.0 billion to $94.0 billion and adjusted diluted EPS of $12.25 to $12.75. Target raised, guiding to net sales growth around 4%, two points above its prior range, and saying both GAAP and adjusted EPS would land near the high end of the prior $7.50 to $8.50 range.

Against those bars, the published estimates are narrow. Barchart, which does not name the provider behind the number, puts consensus for Home Depot's Tuesday report at $4.71 per share on revenue of $47.5 billion. For Walmart, the Zacks consensus is $0.73 on $186.32 billion, which Zacks frames as EPS growth of 7.4% and revenue growth of 5%, inside the company's own adjusted guide. Bank of America Securities analyst Christopher Nardone models 74 cents with Walmart U.S. comparable sales excluding fuel of 3.5%, trimmed from a prior 4%, citing the end of tax-refund benefits, less help from general merchandise pricing and moderation among lower-income consumers.

One line where Friday's report and next week's releases genuinely rhyme is nonstore retailers. MNI's preview warns the online category may revert in July after the jump it posted in June, which Census put at 1.4% month-over-month and which MNI links to Prime Day and competing promotions. Set that against Walmart's 26% global eCommerce growth, Lowe's 15.5% online sales growth and Target's 8.9% comparable digital sales, and the read-through is about share rather than level. Everything else Friday is an industry average in current dollars; everything next week is company-specific and judged against guidance already in writing.

Two scheduling notes are worth holding. FactSet's August 7 update, the most recent available as of Friday's open, had 88% of the S&P 500 reported for the second quarter at a blended earnings growth rate of 50.4%, up from 47.4% a week earlier. That headline is heavily distorted: FactSet says the rate would fall to 32.0% excluding Alphabet and Amazon.com, which booked a $98 billion unrealized gain on securities and a $53.4 billion gain tied to an Anthropic investment. Either way, retail is closing a season rather than opening one. And on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern the minutes of the July 28-29 FOMC meeting land, from a meeting that produced a 9-3 vote to hold in which all three dissenters favored a quarter-point hike, according to Kraken's economic brief. Wednesday, not Friday, is when the consumer tape and the rate tape collide.