Black Friday Highlights Trouble In US Retail Lending

Black Friday has far-reaching implications beyond retail’s brick-and-mortar and virtual aisles. As Reuters reported headed into the holiday weekend, loan investors are eyeing shopping traffic and spending as a number of retailers in which they have invested face headwinds.

The newswire reported that some of those firms include sporting retailer Bass Pro Shops and Toys”R”Us, and despite the overarching theme that retail sales will grow year over year by as much as 3.6 percent this month and next, as predicted by the National Retail Federation, leverage is a tough thing to shake. Brick-and-mortar firms have been hit by the shift to online sales. As a result, Thomson Reuters data has shown that bids on debt in the secondary loan markets have been around 95 percent of face value, down from 98 percent last year.

One additional impact to retailers, adding to the lower bids and to worries over those firms: A stronger dollar would hit costs and margins for some of these firms and tourism would slide as well, reducing spending.