Macy's will report fiscal first-quarter results early Thursday, and investors will be keen to know if its shoppers' spending habits held up as well as they did at Nordstrom.
Analysts expect Macy's to earn 82 cents a share, more than double the 39 cents in the year-ago period, on revenue of $5.33 billion, up from $4.71 billion last year.
The results come on the heels of a better-than-expected report from fellow department store Nordstrom $(JWN)$, which bucked this earnings season's trend of gloomy outlooks with a robust increase to its forecast.
That said, Nordstrom tends to cater to a wealthier clientele than Macy's. Kohl's $(KSS)$, by contrast, disappointed when it reported results last week.
Retailers in general have been fairly split this quarter, as those with a lower-income core customer, like Walmart seeing shoppers pull back a bit. Those higher up the income scale haven't seen much demand destruction.
Macy's tends to fall somewhere in the middle, so the market will want to know how its consumers are handling the current environment, as well as whether or not the company has been able to navigate supply-side demands, like higher transit costs, that have weighed on so many retailers recently.
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