Lower-income consumers are 'very stretched': Goldman Sachs

"The words we actually heard were steady, choiceful, value-seeking, that's the consumer," Goldman Sachs managing director Kate McShane says about how the US consumer has been described by the retail sector.

McShane sits down with Yahoo Finance senior reporter Brooke DiPalma at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference to talk about the state of increasingly price-sensitive consumers as they head into the holiday shopping season and the 2024 presidential election in November.

"There is a lot of emphasis on value no matter what strata you are in terms of demographic," McShane states about what she is hearing from industry leaders, but she finds lower-income consumers to still be seeking out better prices.

"When you look at where prices were just a couple of years ago, there's a compounding effect to inflation and those lower-income consumers that don't have a lot of dollars to play with are still very stretched. So, I think they're looking more for price versus the value," McShane says.

Discount retailers Dollar General (DG) and Dollar Tree (DLTR) have faced pressures recently, their respective stocks both diving on their latest earnings results and competition with big box stores.

The way Dollar General explained it to us is that they do cater to a much lower-income consumer, $30,000 and below [is] 60% of their business. That consumer is still shopping with them, but they're very stretched. Their three weakest quarters in the I'm sorry months in the quarter were the last week of each month, which shows that the consumer doesn't have enough money to keep purchasing through the end of the month," McShane tells DiPalma.

McShane goes on to address how home improvement retailers Lowe's (LOW) and Home Depot (HD) are responding to mortgage rates and the US consumer's biggest challenges expected for 2025.

Catch more of Brooke DiPalma's coverage from the 31st Annual Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference.

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.