“A funny thing happened recently, which at least suggested – mildly – that, in the retail world, the worst may be over.”

That was the fi rst sentence of our arti-cle in the Keypoints July issue, entitled Is Stability in the Air? In the article we cited that several major retailers reported modest comp store gains, or at least some fl attening in the sales trend, for the fi rst time in a long time. In recent years we’ve became accustomed to comp store sales declines as internet sales accelerated, so seeing some fl attening in those trends was welcome sign.

RETAIL SALES REPORT COMMERCE DEPARTMENT MONTHLY SALES

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE INDEX

PURCHASING MANAGERS INDEX

Continued on Page 2

Continued on Page 3

Brick and Mortar Clawing Back

All material in KeyPoints is provided solely for your private information, and we are not soliciting or recommending any action based upon it. This material is based upon information from a variety of news sources that we consider to be reliable, but we do not represent that such in-formation is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied upon as such. Opinions expressed herein are our current opinions as of the date appearing on this material only, and are subject to change without notice. Copyright KeyPoint Partners, LLC, Burlington, MA, 2017.

Retail sales increased 0.2% in October, the Commerce Department said, after a healthy 1.9% gain in the previ-ous month. Excluding gas stations, retail sales rose 0.4% last month. Restaurants and bars reported a healthy 0.8% increase, the biggest gain since January.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce - commerce.gov

The Conference Board Consumer Confi dence Index®, which had improved marginally in September (an up-ward revision), increased again in October. The Index now stands at 125.9 (1985=100), up from 120.6 in Sep-tember. The Present Situation Index increased from 146.9 to 151.1, while the Expectations Index rose from 103.0 last month to 109.1.

Source: The Conference Board - www.conference-board.org

Manufacturing expanded in October as the PMI® regis-tered 58.7 percent, a decrease of 2.1 percentage points from the September reading of 60.8 percent. This indi-cates growth in manufacturing for the 14th consecu-tive month and continues expansion consistent with pre-hurricane levels. A reading above 50 percent indi-cates that the manufacturing economy is generally ex-panding; below 50 percent indicates that it is generally contracting.

Source: Institute for Supply Management - Manufacturing Report on Business - www.ism.ws

Notes: figures gathered from individual company websites, press releases, and Federal filings. Not all companies report all figures; results not reported will be marked “n/r”. Quarterly results will be updated when available; quarterly figures are shown in italics. Figures from companies not calculated to one decimal point automatically received an ending digit of 0.

Send comments or questions about this article or any part of KeyPoints to KP@KeyPointPartners.com

Treasury Yield Sources: federalreserve.gov; ustreas.gov

Monthly Quarterly Latest QChain Frequency Comp Sales Comp Sales End Date

National

U.S. retail sales rose at a solid pace last month, as consumers bought more cars, furniture and clothes. Retail sales increased 0.2% in October, the Commerce Department said, after a healthy 1.9% gain the pre-vious month, the largest in 2 ½ years driven by big increases in auto and gas sales in the wake of Hur-ricanes Harvey and Irma. Excluding gas station sales, which fell sharply as prices dropped, retail sales rose 0.4% last month. Consumers spent more at electron-ics, grocery, clothing and sporting goods stores. Res-taurants and bars reported a healthy 0.8% increase, the biggest gain since January. Among retailers re-porting monthly sales, L Brands was up 2.0% and Costco was up 7.5%. See sales reports on Page 4.

Accelerating

Clothing retailer Soft Surroundings opened its fi rst New Mexico store this month, the chain’s 57th store.

KEYPOINT PARTNERS COMPANY NEWS

Term Yield Term Yield 3 Month

6 Month

1 year

2 year

3 year

1.30%

1.45%

1.62%

1.77%

1.88%

5 year

7 year

10 year

20 year

30 year

2.11%

2.27%

2.36%

2.58%

2.76%

PMI: 58.7%, down from last monthCCI: 125.9, up from last month

Details on Page 4, plus Treasury Matrix, Retail CompSales Chart, and Commerce Dept. Sales Report

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7

TREASURY YIELDS

New Business: Sr. Associate Michael Branton is handling leasing for Governor

Francis Center, a retail property in Warwick, RI. VP of Leasing Don Mace is handling Capitol Shopping Center, a 198,000 s/f Shaw’s anchored center at 11 Western Ave. in Augusta, ME. Don Mace also negotiated the sale of Route 1 Marketplace, a 68,530 s/f center at 216 Newbury St. in Peabody, to the owner and operator of FUNCITY and Aero Trampoline Parks. The buyer plans to open a FUNCITY facility at the property. Don Mace also negotiated two leases at University Mall (UMall) in South Burlington, VT: Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, both long-time tenants, will relocate and expand in the mall; and Target will open its fi rst Vermont store at UMall, in a 60,000 s/f anchor space currently occupied by The Bon-Ton. Construction will begin in February, with an October planned opening.

Booth #2605Appointment: KSmith@KeyPointPartners.com or 781.418. 6242

We’re Looking At MallsIn our October issue, alert readers will have no-ticed a new Industry News section: Mall News (Page 3). You’ll also note that our Commentary last month was mall-related. That’s because we’re sharpening our focus on what’s happen-ing at the nation’s malls, with new publications, new data tools, and new insights. There’s much more to come - watch for it soon.

Can we help you with your mall?

Follow Our New Daily Mall News Digest:

Malls.KeyPointPartners.com

For several reasons I am even more encour-aged that we may be approaching a bottom. In just this past week, reports from GAP, Ab-

ercrombie & Fitch, and Foot Locker all in-dicated comp store improvement. What may be even more promising is the fact that all are mall-based retailers.

The report on GAP showed a 3% comp store increase in Q3 compared to a 1% decline a year ago. Although value-priced Old Navy

had the strongest performance, up the same 4% as a year ago, the namesake division still enjoyed a 1% sales increase against a 4% comp store sales decline in Q3 2016. And al-though Banana Republic dropped 1% in comp store sales, it was a vast improvement from the 6% decline last year. GAP increased its full year forecast for comp stores as a result.

Abercrombie & Fitch, which has struggled mightily in recent years for a variety of reasons, experienced a comp store sales gain in Q3 of 4%, pow-ered by an 8% gain in Hollister comp sales (although comp sales at the namesake division dropped 2%). At the same time, direct-to-consumer sales, which include online, showed some fl attening, growing to approximately 24% of total company net sales, compared to approximately 23% last year.

While Foot Locker results weren’t quite as favorable, it still reported sales that exceeded estimates. Overall sales declined slightly by 0.8% while comp stores declined 3.7%. But a positive tone from its CEO indicated that the company can achieve, and perhaps modestly exceed, the top- and bottom-line guidance given for the fourth quarter back in August.

Even JCPenney showed comp store gains in Q3, increasing 1.7%, albeit at the expense of gross margin. Right now, however, retailers need to focus on maintaining market share, even if profi t suff ers a bit.

While brick and mortar news may be starting to turn around, another promising trend may be forming. For years now we’ve seen double-digit year-over-year gains in nonstore retail sales become the norm. In 2017, however, that trend is beginning to slow down. In the past three months, sales outside of stores have been below 10%. August sales were only 8.4% ahead of last year. While September inched up to a 9.2% year-over-year gain, signifi cant cooling occurred in October with only a 6.8% gain. Coupled with recent improvement at the brick and mortar level, we may be experiencing some bottoming out in the swing toward internet retail sales.

However, landlords should not consider this as a signal that we are out of the woods just yet, and thus far it seems that they aren’t. In fact, a recent survey among both retail landlords and retailers conducted by FTI Consulting found landlords far more concerned than retailers about the shift to online shopping and changing consumer preferences: 80% of landlords, compared to 57% of retailers, who are able to react much more quickly to the digital age than landlords can. In fact, retailers expect e-commerce to account for 23.6% of their sales in three years, up from 16.1% today, as they shift more attention toward omnichannel retailing.

While it is far too early to call it a bottom, the tide is defi nitely starting to turn.Bob Sheehan, VP of Research

BSheehan@KeyPoint Partners.com

What’s the most pressing commercial real estate challenge you’re facing? And how can we help you with it? Clients like you trust us to meet their biggest CRE challenges on retail, offi ce, industrial, and other properties totaling more than 27 million square feet in 17 states. They include fi nancial institutions, pension fund advisors, REITs, and private investors, as well as national, regional, and local retailers. We’ll be glad to put you in touch with them, so you can fi nd out fi rst-hand how we turned those challenges into success stories. Please read our daily news digest, the KeyPoint Retail RoundUp; our monthly newsletter KeyPoints; and our annual KeyPoint Reports on real estate activity in key New England markets, based on our GRIID™, a powerful retail research tool that we can put to work for you. Call Managing Partner Bob Lemons at 781.418.6201 to fi nd out more. Have a CRE challenge that needs extraordinary service? What can we do for you?

Extraordinary Commercial Real Estate Services

COMMENTARY INDUSTRY NEWS Continued from Page 1Continued from Page 1

Send comments or questions about this article or any part of KeyPoints to KP@KeyPointPartners.com One Burlington Woods Drive, Burlington, MA, 01803 Tel 781.273.5555 Fax 781.272.8408 KeyPointPartners.com

Formerly a catalog-only brand, Soft Surroundings is opening 16 stores this year...Lidl will open its fi rst New Jersey store this month. Lidl fi rst established its US headquarters in Virginia in 2015. The company operates more than 10,000 stores in 28 countries…Danish retailer Flying Tiger is ramping up its US expansion. The company will open a 2,400 s/f store at Garden State Plaza, New Jersey this month, the company’s sixth US location. 4 additional stores are set open soon. Flying Tiger operates more than 800 stores in 30 countries...Starbucks opened its fi rst US Princi bakery and café location at its Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle. Princi, which operates stores across Milan and in London’s SoHo neighbor-hood, will become the exclusive food off ering in all new Starbucks Reserve Roastery locations. In addition, Starbucks plans to open freestanding Princi stores in the US starting in 2018... Panera Bread will buy Au Bon Pain. The companies did not disclose how much Panera was paying for Au Bon Pain. St. Louis-based Panera now has more than 2,000 restaurants. Boston-based Au Bon Pain has about 300 locations. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year... Amazon will set up Amazon Pop-Up stores in a handful of Whole Foods Market stores nationwide. The fi rst locations will open in November in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, California, and Colorado. All locations will be staff ed by Amazon employees…Sears Holdings announced the opening of two Sears Appliances & Mattresses stores, in Camp Hill, Pa. and the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu...American Girl has unveiled its new retail concept, the 37,000 s/f American Girl Place, at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan. The store features the brand’s lineup of American Girl dolls and accessories, plus a design studio where girls can play doll designer; a salon where girls and their dolls can get matching hairstyles; manicures, and ear-piercing, movies and videos showcased in an area called the “content hub;” and the brand’s pop-ular American Girl Cafe.... Wings Etc. Inc. will expand to 9 additional Michigan communities. From there, the company anticipates opening a new location every six months across western and central Michigan, as a part of the company’s rapid expansion strategy throughout the Midwest.

Decelerating

Sears Holding Co. announced it will close an additional 18 Sears stores and 45 Kmart locations to those already announced. Also, Sears Hold-ings has reached a deal with a US government pension board that will allow it to sell up to 140 additional properties, likely setting the stage for another round of closures. The company is expected to use all of the proceeds from the sales or fi nancing deals, estimated at $407 million, to fund a pension plan that supports about 100,000 benefi ciaries....Target has decided to close a dozen underperforming stores across Michigan, Florida, Illinois and Texas — as of February 2018. Meantime, Target is in the midst of vastly expanding its portfolio of smaller-format stores. This year, Target will have opened 32 smaller stores, with 35 openings planned for 2018. Target also plans to remodel 1,000 of its 1,800 stores by 2020... After disclosing plans to shrink its chain after it fell behind on rent payments and other bills, plus-size retailer Fashion to Figure fi led for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this month. The company operates 26 stores and listed $1 to $10 million in assets and the same amount in liabilities, ac-cording to the fi ling... Bon-Ton will close at least 40 of its 260 stores next year as it works to cut costs.

New England

Chilacates, a locally-owned taqueria with locations in Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill, will open next spring in Chestnut Hill’s The Street shopping center…Friendly’s is about to open its second new restaurant in a year, at the Apex Center in Marlborough. The restaurant is a prototype new concept for the Massachusetts-based chain. The company will begin retrofi tting restaurants with the new look and adding drive-thrus at 10 ex-isting locations. All new locations will feature drive- thrus as well. Friendly’s expects to be opening between fi ve and 10 new restaurants a year by 2019…Wegmans has opened its newest MA store at 3850 Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford... Sierra Trading Post and HomeGoods are open-ing locations at the site of an old Sports Authority store at the Royal Ridge Center shopping plaza, located off Daniel Webster Highway in South Nashua, NH. The HomeGoods store will be 25,000 s/f and the Sierra Trading Post store will be 18,000 s/f. Sierra Trading Post and HomeGoods are operated by The TJX Companies, Inc. The Royal Ridge Center currently includes Shaw’s, Marshalls, PetSmart, buybuyBaby and The Paper Store…Market Basket will anchor tenant a yet-to-be-built retail plaza at the former Pike Industries quarry on Main Street, Westbrook, ME. The grocery chain operates 79 stores across New England, but only one in Maine.

NEW SECTION: Mall News

Brookfi eld Property Partners has bid $14.8 billion bid to acquire the remaining shares in General Growth Properties that it doesn’t already own. Brookfi eld has off ered to pay $23 per share for the remaining 66% of GGP - half in cash and half in equity. The transaction would create one of the largest listed property companies in the world, with an ownership interest in almost $100 billion of premier real estate assets globally and annual net operating income of approximately $5 billion. GGP has formed a special committee of independent directors to review the bid. It has retained Goldman Sachs as a fi nancial advisor... Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth, TX, announced that SeaQuest Interactive Aquarium opened this month, in space formerly taken up by seven stores. Ridgmar lost two anchors, Neiman Marcus and Macy’s, in the past year. Owner GFK Develop-ment expects the new aquarium will boost the mall’s appeal beyond shopping.

Follow Our New Daily Mall News Digest:

Malls.KeyPointPartners.com

For several reasons I am even more encour-aged that we may be approaching a bottom. In just this past week, reports from GAP, Ab-

ercrombie & Fitch, and Foot Locker all in-dicated comp store improvement. What may be even more promising is the fact that all are mall-based retailers.

The report on GAP showed a 3% comp store increase in Q3 compared to a 1% decline a year ago. Although value-priced Old Navy

had the strongest performance, up the same 4% as a year ago, the namesake division still enjoyed a 1% sales increase against a 4% comp store sales decline in Q3 2016. And al-though Banana Republic dropped 1% in comp store sales, it was a vast improvement from the 6% decline last year. GAP increased its full year forecast for comp stores as a result.

Abercrombie & Fitch, which has struggled mightily in recent years for a variety of reasons, experienced a comp store sales gain in Q3 of 4%, pow-ered by an 8% gain in Hollister comp sales (although comp sales at the namesake division dropped 2%). At the same time, direct-to-consumer sales, which include online, showed some fl attening, growing to approximately 24% of total company net sales, compared to approximately 23% last year.

While Foot Locker results weren’t quite as favorable, it still reported sales that exceeded estimates. Overall sales declined slightly by 0.8% while comp stores declined 3.7%. But a positive tone from its CEO indicated that the company can achieve, and perhaps modestly exceed, the top- and bottom-line guidance given for the fourth quarter back in August.

Even JCPenney showed comp store gains in Q3, increasing 1.7%, albeit at the expense of gross margin. Right now, however, retailers need to focus on maintaining market share, even if profi t suff ers a bit.

While brick and mortar news may be starting to turn around, another promising trend may be forming. For years now we’ve seen double-digit year-over-year gains in nonstore retail sales become the norm. In 2017, however, that trend is beginning to slow down. In the past three months, sales outside of stores have been below 10%. August sales were only 8.4% ahead of last year. While September inched up to a 9.2% year-over-year gain, signifi cant cooling occurred in October with only a 6.8% gain. Coupled with recent improvement at the brick and mortar level, we may be experiencing some bottoming out in the swing toward internet retail sales.

However, landlords should not consider this as a signal that we are out of the woods just yet, and thus far it seems that they aren’t. In fact, a recent survey among both retail landlords and retailers conducted by FTI Consulting found landlords far more concerned than retailers about the shift to online shopping and changing consumer preferences: 80% of landlords, compared to 57% of retailers, who are able to react much more quickly to the digital age than landlords can. In fact, retailers expect e-commerce to account for 23.6% of their sales in three years, up from 16.1% today, as they shift more attention toward omnichannel retailing.

While it is far too early to call it a bottom, the tide is defi nitely starting to turn.Bob Sheehan, VP of Research

BSheehan@KeyPoint Partners.com

What’s the most pressing commercial real estate challenge you’re facing? And how can we help you with it? Clients like you trust us to meet their biggest CRE challenges on retail, offi ce, industrial, and other properties totaling more than 27 million square feet in 17 states. They include fi nancial institutions, pension fund advisors, REITs, and private investors, as well as national, regional, and local retailers. We’ll be glad to put you in touch with them, so you can fi nd out fi rst-hand how we turned those challenges into success stories. Please read our daily news digest, the KeyPoint Retail RoundUp; our monthly newsletter KeyPoints; and our annual KeyPoint Reports on real estate activity in key New England markets, based on our GRIID™, a powerful retail research tool that we can put to work for you. Call Managing Partner Bob Lemons at 781.418.6201 to fi nd out more. Have a CRE challenge that needs extraordinary service? What can we do for you?

Extraordinary Commercial Real Estate Services

COMMENTARY INDUSTRY NEWS Continued from Page 1Continued from Page 1

Send comments or questions about this article or any part of KeyPoints to KP@KeyPointPartners.com One Burlington Woods Drive, Burlington, MA, 01803 Tel 781.273.5555 Fax 781.272.8408 KeyPointPartners.com

Formerly a catalog-only brand, Soft Surroundings is opening 16 stores this year...Lidl will open its fi rst New Jersey store this month. Lidl fi rst established its US headquarters in Virginia in 2015. The company operates more than 10,000 stores in 28 countries…Danish retailer Flying Tiger is ramping up its US expansion. The company will open a 2,400 s/f store at Garden State Plaza, New Jersey this month, the company’s sixth US location. 4 additional stores are set open soon. Flying Tiger operates more than 800 stores in 30 countries...Starbucks opened its fi rst US Princi bakery and café location at its Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle. Princi, which operates stores across Milan and in London’s SoHo neighbor-hood, will become the exclusive food off ering in all new Starbucks Reserve Roastery locations. In addition, Starbucks plans to open freestanding Princi stores in the US starting in 2018... Panera Bread will buy Au Bon Pain. The companies did not disclose how much Panera was paying for Au Bon Pain. St. Louis-based Panera now has more than 2,000 restaurants. Boston-based Au Bon Pain has about 300 locations. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year... Amazon will set up Amazon Pop-Up stores in a handful of Whole Foods Market stores nationwide. The fi rst locations will open in November in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, California, and Colorado. All locations will be staff ed by Amazon employees…Sears Holdings announced the opening of two Sears Appliances & Mattresses stores, in Camp Hill, Pa. and the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu...American Girl has unveiled its new retail concept, the 37,000 s/f American Girl Place, at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan. The store features the brand’s lineup of American Girl dolls and accessories, plus a design studio where girls can play doll designer; a salon where girls and their dolls can get matching hairstyles; manicures, and ear-piercing, movies and videos showcased in an area called the “content hub;” and the brand’s pop-ular American Girl Cafe.... Wings Etc. Inc. will expand to 9 additional Michigan communities. From there, the company anticipates opening a new location every six months across western and central Michigan, as a part of the company’s rapid expansion strategy throughout the Midwest.

Decelerating

Sears Holding Co. announced it will close an additional 18 Sears stores and 45 Kmart locations to those already announced. Also, Sears Hold-ings has reached a deal with a US government pension board that will allow it to sell up to 140 additional properties, likely setting the stage for another round of closures. The company is expected to use all of the proceeds from the sales or fi nancing deals, estimated at $407 million, to fund a pension plan that supports about 100,000 benefi ciaries....Target has decided to close a dozen underperforming stores across Michigan, Florida, Illinois and Texas — as of February 2018. Meantime, Target is in the midst of vastly expanding its portfolio of smaller-format stores. This year, Target will have opened 32 smaller stores, with 35 openings planned for 2018. Target also plans to remodel 1,000 of its 1,800 stores by 2020... After disclosing plans to shrink its chain after it fell behind on rent payments and other bills, plus-size retailer Fashion to Figure fi led for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this month. The company operates 26 stores and listed $1 to $10 million in assets and the same amount in liabilities, ac-cording to the fi ling... Bon-Ton will close at least 40 of its 260 stores next year as it works to cut costs.

New England

Chilacates, a locally-owned taqueria with locations in Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill, will open next spring in Chestnut Hill’s The Street shopping center…Friendly’s is about to open its second new restaurant in a year, at the Apex Center in Marlborough. The restaurant is a prototype new concept for the Massachusetts-based chain. The company will begin retrofi tting restaurants with the new look and adding drive-thrus at 10 ex-isting locations. All new locations will feature drive- thrus as well. Friendly’s expects to be opening between fi ve and 10 new restaurants a year by 2019…Wegmans has opened its newest MA store at 3850 Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford... Sierra Trading Post and HomeGoods are open-ing locations at the site of an old Sports Authority store at the Royal Ridge Center shopping plaza, located off Daniel Webster Highway in South Nashua, NH. The HomeGoods store will be 25,000 s/f and the Sierra Trading Post store will be 18,000 s/f. Sierra Trading Post and HomeGoods are operated by The TJX Companies, Inc. The Royal Ridge Center currently includes Shaw’s, Marshalls, PetSmart, buybuyBaby and The Paper Store…Market Basket will anchor tenant a yet-to-be-built retail plaza at the former Pike Industries quarry on Main Street, Westbrook, ME. The grocery chain operates 79 stores across New England, but only one in Maine.

NEW SECTION: Mall News

Brookfi eld Property Partners has bid $14.8 billion bid to acquire the remaining shares in General Growth Properties that it doesn’t already own. Brookfi eld has off ered to pay $23 per share for the remaining 66% of GGP - half in cash and half in equity. The transaction would create one of the largest listed property companies in the world, with an ownership interest in almost $100 billion of premier real estate assets globally and annual net operating income of approximately $5 billion. GGP has formed a special committee of independent directors to review the bid. It has retained Goldman Sachs as a fi nancial advisor... Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth, TX, announced that SeaQuest Interactive Aquarium opened this month, in space formerly taken up by seven stores. Ridgmar lost two anchors, Neiman Marcus and Macy’s, in the past year. Owner GFK Develop-ment expects the new aquarium will boost the mall’s appeal beyond shopping.

Follow Our New Daily Mall News Digest:

Malls.KeyPointPartners.com

“A funny thing happened recently, which at least suggested – mildly – that, in the retail world, the worst may be over.”

That was the fi rst sentence of our arti-cle in the Keypoints July issue, entitled Is Stability in the Air? In the article we cited that several major retailers reported modest comp store gains, or at least some fl attening in the sales trend, for the fi rst time in a long time. In recent years we’ve became accustomed to comp store sales declines as internet sales accelerated, so seeing some fl attening in those trends was welcome sign.

RETAIL SALES REPORT COMMERCE DEPARTMENT MONTHLY SALES

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE INDEX

PURCHASING MANAGERS INDEX

Continued on Page 2

Continued on Page 3

Brick and Mortar Clawing Back

All material in KeyPoints is provided solely for your private information, and we are not soliciting or recommending any action based upon it. This material is based upon information from a variety of news sources that we consider to be reliable, but we do not represent that such in-formation is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied upon as such. Opinions expressed herein are our current opinions as of the date appearing on this material only, and are subject to change without notice. Copyright KeyPoint Partners, LLC, Burlington, MA, 2017.

Retail sales increased 0.2% in October, the Commerce Department said, after a healthy 1.9% gain in the previ-ous month. Excluding gas stations, retail sales rose 0.4% last month. Restaurants and bars reported a healthy 0.8% increase, the biggest gain since January.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce - commerce.gov

The Conference Board Consumer Confi dence Index®, which had improved marginally in September (an up-ward revision), increased again in October. The Index now stands at 125.9 (1985=100), up from 120.6 in Sep-tember. The Present Situation Index increased from 146.9 to 151.1, while the Expectations Index rose from 103.0 last month to 109.1.

Source: The Conference Board - www.conference-board.org

Manufacturing expanded in October as the PMI® regis-tered 58.7 percent, a decrease of 2.1 percentage points from the September reading of 60.8 percent. This indi-cates growth in manufacturing for the 14th consecu-tive month and continues expansion consistent with pre-hurricane levels. A reading above 50 percent indi-cates that the manufacturing economy is generally ex-panding; below 50 percent indicates that it is generally contracting.

Source: Institute for Supply Management - Manufacturing Report on Business - www.ism.ws

Notes: figures gathered from individual company websites, press releases, and Federal filings. Not all companies report all figures; results not reported will be marked “n/r”. Quarterly results will be updated when available; quarterly figures are shown in italics. Figures from companies not calculated to one decimal point automatically received an ending digit of 0.

Send comments or questions about this article or any part of KeyPoints to KP@KeyPointPartners.com

Treasury Yield Sources: federalreserve.gov; ustreas.gov

Monthly Quarterly Latest QChain Frequency Comp Sales Comp Sales End Date

National

U.S. retail sales rose at a solid pace last month, as consumers bought more cars, furniture and clothes. Retail sales increased 0.2% in October, the Commerce Department said, after a healthy 1.9% gain the pre-vious month, the largest in 2 ½ years driven by big increases in auto and gas sales in the wake of Hur-ricanes Harvey and Irma. Excluding gas station sales, which fell sharply as prices dropped, retail sales rose 0.4% last month. Consumers spent more at electron-ics, grocery, clothing and sporting goods stores. Res-taurants and bars reported a healthy 0.8% increase, the biggest gain since January. Among retailers re-porting monthly sales, L Brands was up 2.0% and Costco was up 7.5%. See sales reports on Page 4.

Accelerating

Clothing retailer Soft Surroundings opened its fi rst New Mexico store this month, the chain’s 57th store.

KEYPOINT PARTNERS COMPANY NEWS

Term Yield Term Yield 3 Month

6 Month

1 year

2 year

3 year

1.30%

1.45%

1.62%

1.77%

1.88%

5 year

7 year

10 year

20 year

30 year

2.11%

2.27%

2.36%

2.58%

2.76%

PMI: 58.7%, down from last monthCCI: 125.9, up from last month

Details on Page 4, plus Treasury Matrix, Retail CompSales Chart, and Commerce Dept. Sales Report

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7

TREASURY YIELDS

New Business: Sr. Associate Michael Branton is handling leasing for Governor

Francis Center, a retail property in Warwick, RI. VP of Leasing Don Mace is handling Capitol Shopping Center, a 198,000 s/f Shaw’s anchored center at 11 Western Ave. in Augusta, ME. Don Mace also negotiated the sale of Route 1 Marketplace, a 68,530 s/f center at 216 Newbury St. in Peabody, to the owner and operator of FUNCITY and Aero Trampoline Parks. The buyer plans to open a FUNCITY facility at the property. Don Mace also negotiated two leases at University Mall (UMall) in South Burlington, VT: Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, both long-time tenants, will relocate and expand in the mall; and Target will open its fi rst Vermont store at UMall, in a 60,000 s/f anchor space currently occupied by The Bon-Ton. Construction will begin in February, with an October planned opening.

Booth #2605Appointment: KSmith@KeyPointPartners.com or 781.418. 6242

We’re Looking At MallsIn our October issue, alert readers will have no-ticed a new Industry News section: Mall News (Page 3). You’ll also note that our Commentary last month was mall-related. That’s because we’re sharpening our focus on what’s happen-ing at the nation’s malls, with new publications, new data tools, and new insights. There’s much more to come - watch for it soon.

Can we help you with your mall?

Follow Our New Daily Mall News Digest:

Malls.KeyPointPartners.com