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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Walmart, Amazon, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Target and The Michaels Companies

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – September 30, 2020 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Walmart Inc. WMT, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. FLWS, Target Corporation TGT and The Michaels Companies, Inc. MIK.

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s Analyst Blog:

A Rundown of Retail Hiring Plans for the Holidays

With 2020 inching toward an end, all eyes are on the busiest part of the year for retailers — the holiday season. No wonder, with the festive season looking quite unpredictable, thanks to the ongoing pandemic, retailers need to walk the extra mile to woo customers. They need to channelize their strength and make strategic investments to provide consumers a fast, convenient and safe shopping experience, be it offline or online. Well keeping all these aspects in mind and to keep pace with any unprecedented increase in demand, retailers are unveiling hiring plans for the holiday season.

The holiday season is a crucial time for retailers as it accounts for a sizeable chunk of yearly revenues and profits. Taking into account consumers’ product preferences and growing inclination toward online shopping, owing to social distancing and greater stay at-home trends, retailers are replenishing shelves with in-demand merchandise and ramping up investments in digitization this festive season. This could mean deployment of a reasonable number of seasonal associates to deal with curbside and in-store pickup of online purchases.

Additionally, retailers are likely to appoint more full-time and seasonal warehouse staff to ensure smooth supply of inventories to stores from distribution centers during the festive period. Moreover, to ensure safety measures amid the pandemic, retailers are looking to dedicate staff at its stores’ front to guide customers, and perform functions such as cleaning and disinfecting carts and baskets, among others.

Hiring Kicks Off

The retail biggie Walmart unveiled plans to deploy more than 20,000 seasonal associates at its countrywide e-commerce fulfillment centers to meet the expected surge in online shopping. Earlier this month, e-commerce behemoth Amazon announced plans to recruit as many as 100,000 full and part-time employees to meet the surge in online demand more efficiently.

Moving on, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM revealed plans to appoint more than 10,000 seasonal workers for its gourmet foods and gift brands for the festive season. This would mean quadrupling of the e-commerce retailer’s workforce to cater to the rising demand in the holiday season.

Recently, Target forecasts seasonal hiring to remain at par with the prior year, which is equivalent to around 130,000 seasonal workers. The seasonal staff are likely to get a minimum starting wage of $15 with a host of key coronavirus health benefits. The arts and crafts specialty retailer Michaels Companies expects to hire more than 16,000 associates for seasonal positions across the United States and Canada to prepare for the holiday season. The company expects to strengthen its buy-online, pickup in-store team to provide a safe and convenient shopping experience to customers during the holiday season.

Andrew Challenger, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. said, “Despite current high unemployment and ongoing uncertainty, Retailers, particularly those with a strong online shopping infrastructure, are anticipating high demand.”

Wrapping Up

The holiday season is nothing less than a battlefield for the retailers struggling to win over consumers. And to beat the COVID-19 blues, retailers are looking for an early start to the festive season with an extended promotional period to avoid rush at stores, given the health concerns. According to a report from CNBC, Deloitte envisions holiday sales between $1.147 trillion and $1.152 trillion, which suggests an increase of 1-1.5% during the November-January period. Per Deloitte, e-commerce sales are estimated to improve 25-35% to reach $182-$196 billion this festive period.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.


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