Days after Black Friday and Cyber Monday - and as many websites still try to stretch out the gimmicky sales promotions – American investment bank Goldman Sachs has warned that online retail is cannibalising store based sales.
“As European online sales penetration rates rise towards 15%, store-based sales cannibalization by the online channel is becoming the norm,” said analyst Richard Edwards.
“If current leading retail online penetration rates become the standard (c.40%), tough times lie ahead for many.”
Goldman today downgraded Primark owner Associated British Food (LON:ABF) and Debenhams (LON:DEB), but upgraded Next (LON:NXT).
Elsewhere, Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) was upgraded by Macquarie to ‘neutral’ from ‘underperform’.
UBS upgraded Morgan Advanced Materials (LON:MGAM) to ‘neutral’ from ‘sell.
And Irish building materials group Kingspan (LON:KSP) was downgraded by Investec to ‘hold’ from ‘add’.
Investec also downgraded Spire Healthcare (LON:SPI) to ‘sell’ from ‘hold’.