Events
The National Bureau of statistics released the latest retail data of social consumer goods. In December 2021, the total retail sales of social consumer goods was 4.13 trillion yuan, a year-on-year nominal increase of 1.7%. Among them, the retail sales of consumer goods per unit above the quota was 1.67 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.6%; The retail sales of consumer goods other than automobiles amounted to 3.66 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.0%.
In 2021, the total retail sales of social consumer goods reached 44.08 trillion yuan, a year-on-year nominal increase of 12.5%, an average growth rate of 3.9% in two years, and an actual year-on-year increase of 10.7% after deducting price factors; The retail sales of consumer goods other than automobiles were 39.70 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%.
Analysis and judgment
The impact of covid-19 pneumonia epidemic on social consumption is mainly concentrated in the first half of 2020, especially Q1. The growth rate of social consumption in a single month in the first seven months of 2020 is negative until it turns positive and returns to the positive growth range for the first time in August; In 2021, the total scale of social consumption increased by 4.88 trillion yuan, an increase of 2.92 trillion yuan over the same period in 2019; Among them, the monthly scale in December increased by 70.3 billion yuan compared with the same period of the previous year and 0.25 trillion yuan compared with the same period of 2019. Since the bottom in August, the year-on-year growth rate of the single month showed a fluctuating trend, A new low occurred again this month (the minimum value of single month year-on-year growth in the first half of the year was 0.4 trillion yuan, the year-on-year growth in August once fell to 0.08 trillion yuan, and the average level of single month year-on-year growth in the second half of the year was 0.15 trillion yuan); However, compared with 2019, the growth trend is significant. The growth rate of this month exceeds the average level in the second half of the year and is equal to the annual average level.
Horizontal comparison of historical data shows that before the outbreak (taking the 10-year interval from 2010 to 2019 as the reference), the total social consumption in a single month in December will increase by about 0.26 trillion yuan on average compared with the previous year, and the specific scale fluctuates in the range of 0.12-0.30 trillion yuan; At the same time, the fourth quarter belongs to the traditional peak consumption season. November focuses on the “double 11” online consumption, and December corresponds to offline consumption such as Christmas, new year’s day and store celebrations. With the vigorous development of online consumption, its scale increases rapidly, Within the ten-year dimension, the scale of social consumption in a single month in December has been gradually reduced compared with the leading level in November (the central level is about 0.13 trillion yuan, the average level before 2015 is about 0.19 trillion yuan, up to 0.23 trillion yuan, and then it has basically remained stable at 0.06-0.08 trillion yuan). Here we also demonstrate our view again, The epidemic has brought about a preference for online consumption channels and an impact on offline channels, and the driving advantage of offline promotional activities on retail sales has been further weakened. This year, it is only 22.58 billion yuan higher than that in November, which is also a historical low; From this point of view, in the first half of 2021, social consumption has initially recovered to the historical growth range. Since July, with the advent of the consumption off-season and the repeated epidemic situation in small areas, the recovery degree has slowed down, which is lower than the historical average level. However, after entering the autumn and winter peak season of “golden nine silver ten”, the consumption recovery has accelerated again, Return to the level of historical center and above again; However, the epidemic may have an irreversible impact on consumers’ channel choice. The month on month change trend between months is significantly different from that in the early stage. In the fourth quarter, the gap between online retail sales in November and offline retail sales in October and December is gradually narrowing.
At the beginning of the year, we mainly focused on the new year’s day consumption at the beginning of the month and the Spring Festival consumption at the beginning of February. Based on our previous analysis, in normal years, the proportion of the sales of the Spring Festival Golden Week (seven days from New Year’s Eve to the sixth day of the Lunar New Year) in the total social consumption from January to February of that year has increased year by year, and the proportion has exceeded 15% by 2019 before the epidemic; In addition, its sales growth largely represents the growth limit of social consumption from January to February, which shows the importance of paying attention to spring festival consumption. On New Year’s day this year, the Ministry of Commerce disclosed holiday consumption data in key monitoring provinces and cities across the country. Compared with last year’s three-day small and long holidays, the Mid Autumn Festival and may day, the overall consumer market on New Year’s day basically achieved a stable start; Retail growth in all provinces and regions increased year-on-year, focusing on provinces and cities, with a year-on-year increase of 18.8% in Beijing, 12.8% in Shanghai and 6.5% in Chongqing. The equivalence ratio of major disclosure cities in Jiangsu and Sichuan, such as Nanjing and Chengdu, increased. Specifically, this year’s new year’s holiday consumption basically continues the market structural characteristics of the early stage: ① the positive role of high-end positioning and business district theme activities in restoring passenger flow and boosting sales; ② From a policy perspective, as an important means to promote consumption, local governments are jointly holding various consumption promotion activities. At the same time, they are not reducing the intensity of issuing consumption vouchers, boosting consumers’ consumption ability and enthusiasm from the demand side, and constantly leveraging the multiplier effect. On November 11, the Procurement Committee of China Chain Operation Association (CFFA) conducted a survey on the sales data of 61 supermarket enterprises in 2022. From the survey data, it can be seen that the sales of daily necessities of most enterprises in this Spring Festival are expected to be better than last year, the supply of rice flour, grain and oil, seasoning, vegetables and meat is guaranteed, and the supply of alcohol, aquatic products, dairy products, leisure food, convenience food For cooked food, most enterprises predict that sales will rise; Due to epidemic prevention and control, nucleic acid testing is strictly required for some imported commodities (fruits, aquatic products, etc.) in some regions, and the sales may be affected. In addition, relevant data show that most enterprises expect the peak sales time of the Spring Festival this year to be slightly longer than that of last year. The sales peak starts from Laba at the earliest and the day before New Year’s Eve at the latest. It is expected that the sales peak of the Spring Festival will last more than a week. The current consumer market environment and policy environment are positive and optimistic. Considering that the upcoming Spring Festival holiday (January 31 – February 6) is longer than New Year’s day, it will correspondingly increase consumption opportunities, and the overall consumption sentiment may continue or even rise further.
In conclusion, we believe that the current consumer market environment and policy environment are relatively positive and optimistic. After returning to the peak consumption season in the fourth quarter, the growth rate of the retail market in 2021 shows signs of stabilization and improvement, and the expected development goal of the Ministry of Commerce for the whole year’s social consumption has been completed. With the further promotion of China’s epidemic control effect and vaccine popularization, China’s economy is gradually returning to the previous growth track, residents’ consumption confidence and the vitality of China’s consumer market are steadily restored, and the growth rate of social consumption in 2022 will further approach the pre epidemic level. In order to reasonably guide the expectation of the consumer market, combined with the 2025 development plan of China’s consumer market in the “14th five year plan” business development plan of the Ministry of Commerce, we predict that the year-on-year growth rate of social consumption in 2022 may be 4.5% – 5.5%.
Necessary items related to supermarket channels: from the perspective of absolute value scale, grain, oil, food, beverage, tobacco, alcohol and daily necessities have increased in scale compared with the same period in 2019 and 2020; On the basis of the outstanding growth performance of the previous year, the monthly sales growth of the above categories of commodities can still continue to grow steadily, with strong consumer demand. Among them, the beverage category has the best performance. Affected by a certain impact at the beginning of 20 years, the growth rate has decreased to 3.1% (February), and the growth rate has remained above 10% since April. The average growth rate in recent 20 months is close to 18%, only in October, the growth rate has decreased to 8.8%, and the growth rate in other months has maintained double-digit growth, which is outstanding compared with that of other categories; Tobacco and alcohol also had a great impact at the beginning of the 20th century (negative growth from February to March), and then the growth rate increased rapidly. The average growth rate in recent 20 months was close to 17%, realizing double-digit expansion for 14 consecutive months. This month still achieved an increase of 7% from the high growth base of 20% in the same period of last year, which is consistent with our previous judgment, that is, holiday dinner The increasing demand for wedding banquet is consistent with the general trend.
Grain, oil and food may be greatly affected by CPI changes. Affected by the low base in the same period of last year, the CPI growth rate reached 1.5% in December. Although it decreased by 0.8 percentage points month on month compared with November, it is still at a high level in recent one year; Among them, the year-on-year increase in food prices changed from 1.6% last month to 1.2%. Correspondingly, the growth rate of grain, oil and food this month also decreased by 3.5 percentage points month on month, but it did not affect the prosperity of the whole year, with an average annual growth rate of nearly 11% in a single month. The performance of daily necessities is in line with our expectations in the early stage. Due to its certain mandatory storage attribute, it is less affected by the product shelf life. The growth boost effect brought by the “double 11” and the preparation at the end of the year is significant.
Optional items related to department store channels: the monthly retail sales of clothing, shoes and hats in this year had exceeded the same period in 2019 for five consecutive months (March to July), but only expanded slightly by 5.53 billion yuan in July compared with the same period in 2019, far less than the previous level of 11-44 billion yuan, For five consecutive months since August, the retail sales per month have been lower than the same period in 2020 (the absolute value is about 1-7 billion yuan less than the same period in 2020), and this month is even lower than the same period in 2019. Sales in the reporting period were mainly winter clothes, with clothing prices rising by 0.6% year-on-year and 0.1% month on month (CPI rose by 1.5% year-on-year and – 0.3% month on month in the same period). In contrast, clothing has certain price advantages; Considering the consumption habit of purchasing new clothes in the traditional Spring Festival and the listing of spring clothes in the future, the sales volume of relevant products need not be too worried. The growth rate of cosmetics showed an inflection point in September and further improved from October to November. After the “double 11” promotion, the growth rate fell this month; According to our monitoring data, the online growth rate of the Amoy tiktok platform has been slowing down, and Jingdong, jitter and other platforms have diverted the platform. In December, the sales of skin care and make-up of Amoy platform decreased by 24.91% / 22.92% respectively compared with the previous year. The change in the growth rate of cosmetics is in line with our early prediction. In autumn and winter, the demand for moisturizing products with high customer unit price has increased, and the volume and price jointly catalyze the growth of scale; At the same time, during the “double 11” period, the products with higher customer unit price have greater discounts. The products with high-frequency use also have mass selling packaging, which directly drives the growth of price and sales. However, considering the relatively low consumption frequency of cosmetics, consumers tend to store goods reasonably according to their own consumption at the time of promotion, so the monthly growth rate will slow down relatively after the promotion. The consumption of gold, silver and jewelry has recovered strongly since March, and gradually slowed down after the monthly growth rate reached a high point in September. The scale narrowed year-on-year this month, slightly lower than that of the same period last year, but still exceeding the 19-year level. The market price of gold fluctuated (with a slight downward trend since June). Although the compensatory consumption demand for wedding and other celebrations was high, and the demand concept of young consumers for their own use of gold jewelry gradually changed, the overall consumption enthusiasm decreased significantly compared with the previous period.
Durable goods related to professional chain channels: for household appliances and furniture related to the real estate cycle, there are still differences in the growth performance in this period. Among them, furniture is more affected by real estate. Referring to the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of housing construction area and completed area, it shows a similar trend with the growth rate of furniture retail sales; The retail sales of furniture has been lower than that of the same period of last year for five consecutive months (this month has even further negative growth on the basis of the low growth rate of last year), and the scale level of each month in the year is lower than that of the same period of 2019. The “double 11” promotion in the early stage has a great impact on the sales diversion of 3C products of household appliances; Therefore, it is understandable that there was a negative growth in this month under the high base of double-digit growth in the same period of last year. Although the monthly retail sales of household appliances were lower than the same period in 2020, they increased compared with 2019 and expanded steadily as a whole.
Investment advice
In 2020, the epidemic had a serious impact on the retail industry, and the overall retail market performance was differentiated, corresponding to the recovery performance from 2021. From the perspective of categories, the anti cyclical advantages of essential consumer goods appear. Among them, the basic living consumption represented by grain, oil and food, beverages and daily necessities has a stable growth rate and strong toughness; In addition, the upgrading consumption includes the consumption of non durable goods (cosmetics) in the offline channels, as well as the categories (catering, tobacco and alcohol, gold and jewelry, etc.) in the offline consumption scenes such as business banquets and wedding celebrations.
In terms of scale and volume, the retail sales of consumer goods above the quota increased by 13.4% in 2021, slightly better than the overall trend of social zero, and achieved positive growth in a single month as early as the second half of 2020, which reflects that companies with relatively large scale and volume have stronger risk prevention and pressure resistance during the epidemic and obvious advantages in maintaining operation; However, the range of comparative advantage has narrowed. In the long run, it may return to the strong growth of units below the limit, which corresponds to higher business flexibility.
In addition, the epidemic period will have a far-reaching impact on consumers’ consumption habits and consumption channels, and frequent online promotion activities will further improve channel performance. We maintain that even if offline consumption gradually returns to normal in 2021, its corresponding sales will rebound, and the general trend of increasing online share year by year will not change. On November 11, the Ministry of Commerce, the central network information office and the development and Reform Commission issued the “14th five year plan” for the development of e-commerce, which defined the three orientations of focusing on e-commerce connection Wuxi Online Offline Communication Information Technology Co.Ltd(300959) , connecting supply and demand, and connecting China’s foreign markets, giving e-commerce a new mission to promote “high-quality development of the digital economy” and help “achieve common prosperity”.
According to the retail format of offline channels, the retail sales of supermarkets, convenience stores, department stores, specialty stores and specialty stores in retail units above the designated size in 2021 increased by 6.0%, 16.9%, 11.7%, 12.8% and 12.0% respectively over the previous year. The development of the above business types is also basically consistent with our early judgment. As a relatively emerging and sunrise retail channel, convenience stores are in line with the trend of convenient and rapid consumption, and can also meet the basic and immediate mandatory consumption needs of consumers, so the growth rate is high; As optional channels, department stores, specialty stores and specialty stores were greatly affected by the epidemic, so the growth rate recovered faster in 21 years; As a traditional and necessary consumption channel, supermarkets have stronger growth toughness.
From the perspective of policy, in early July, the Ministry of Commerce studied and prepared and triggered the “14th five year plan” for business development, which puts forward expected indicators for consumption development from 2021 to 2025. The total social consumption is expected to be 50 trillion in 2025, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 5%; The national online retail sales will reach 17 trillion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 7.6%. The plan will have a guiding impact on the recent development of commodity and service consumption.
During the year, the growth rate of social consumption recovered in line with expectations. In the long run, the growth rate of social consumption in a single month will return to the average level in the early stage of the epidemic through the pendulum track, and the scale of the consumer market will continue to expand; However, the current high growth performance is more based on the restorative performance of the low base in the early stage, although some categories have achieved double growth
