People shop at a mall decorated with holiday lights in Manhattan on Dec. 18, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Some retailers provided early holiday results on Monday that showed the crucial shopping season was solid, but didn’t blow away expectations.
Lululemon, which is preparing for a new CEO and staring down a proxy battle with its founder, said in a release it expects its holiday quarter to be “toward the high end” of its previously released guidance. Shoe maker Birkenstock and thrift store Savers Value Village also released lackluster early holiday results.
Lululemon said it expects fiscal fourth quarter revenue to be close to $3.60 billion and earnings to be close to $4.76 per share. Both figures are at the high end of the guidance the company released in December when it announced fiscal third-quarter earnings.
It made no changes to its previous guidance for gross margin, effective tax rate and selling, general and administrative expenses.
Shares were slightly higher in premarket trading.
“We remain focused on executing our action plan to drive improvement in our U.S. business and look forward to the opportunities in front of us,” finance chief Meghan Frank said in a statement.
When announcing last quarter’s earnings on Dec. 11, outgoing CEO Calvin McDonald said the company was “encouraged” by its early holiday performance but acknowledged wide discounting had driven demand during the Thanksgiving holiday period. When the shopping stretch ended, trends slowed, he said at the time.
Like other higher-end brands, Lululemon has historically been very selective with discounts, but it has used them more liberally in recent quarters to offload old merchandise and styles that weren’t resonating with shoppers.
During its fiscal third quarter, margins fell by 2.9 percentage points, due primarily to higher tariffs and the bigger markdowns, it said at the time.
Birkenstock, which didn’t provide specific holiday-quarter guidance last year, said it expects sales in the quarter ended Dec. 31 to grow 11% to €402 million ($470 million). The results appeared to disappoint investors, with shares falling about 3% in premarket trading.
Savers Value Village saw sales grow 8.4% during its holiday quarter, with comparable sales up 5.4%, excluding the impact of an extra week the company had in its calendar. Despite relatively strong growth, the company only reaffirmed its fiscal 2025 adjusted net income and EBITDA outlooks. Shares were slightly higher in premarket trading.
The early results, which were announced ahead of the annual ICR conference in Orlando, Florida, show what many analysts had expected for the holiday shopping season. Wall Street largely anticipated results would be solid, but they wouldn’t show massive gains in consumer spending.
The National Retail Federation previously forecasted retail sales in November and December would rise between 3.7% and 4.2% compared to 2024. That’s solid growth, but when higher prices from tariffs are taken into account, some analysts expect volume growth to be largely flat.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/retails-early-holiday-2025-results-show-modest-growth.html
