Retail Sales MoM

What is Retail Sales MoM?

Retail Sales MoM, change from the prior month, is Eurostat monthly volume of retail trade in the euro area. Volume means quantities of goods sold after removing price changes through a price deflator, an index tracking sales prices excluding VAT. It covers kind-of-activity units, shop-based parts of firms, in retail excluding motor vehicles, plus food, non-food, online and fuel subgroups. It excludes nominal turnover, wholesale, vehicle sales and the services margin earned by shops, for which it serves as a proxy.

When is it released and what happens each release?

The reference period is the calendar month, with national main aggregates due after 1 month and other series after 2 months. Eurostat releases results each month in the second month after the reference month at 11:00 Luxembourg time on pre-announced dates.

Each release shows MoM on seasonally and calendar-adjusted data and YoY, change from 12 months earlier, on calendar-adjusted data. It includes index levels with base 100 and sector and country tables with charts. European aggregates are revised each month with the release, while national data are revised when new information arrives. Late data, seasonal adjustment and benchmarking drive routine revisions, errors are corrected immediately, and releases are delayed only by weekends or holidays.

What moves Retail Sales MoM?

Headline growth is a weighted sum, so larger categories count more, of divergent shop groups. Sales spread across the following groups, which often move in different directions.

• Food, drinks, tobacco: Captures supermarket and food-store volumes and is often the least volatile group.
• Non-food products except automotive fuel: Captures clothing, electronics, household goods and similar lines and often swings most.
• Mail orders and internet: Captures online sales, which have followed their own fast-rising path.
• Automotive fuel in specialised stores: Captures filling-station fuel volumes, which can drop sharply when driving stops.
• Total excluding fuel: Strips fuel to read the trend without its effect.

A flat headline can hide offsetting moves across groups and split national paths, so composition matters more than the headline alone. Food can fall while non-food and fuel rise, with online strength adding a further offset.

How is Retail Sales MoM calculated?

1. National turnover: Each Member State totals invoiced retail sales, including charges like packaging and transport, excluding VAT and discounts.

1. Deflation to volume: Turnover is divided by a sales-price deflator, a price index excluding VAT, or built directly from quantities sold. For example, a turnover index of 112.0 with a deflator of 108.0 gives 103.7, scaled so base equals 100.

1. Activity aggregation: Higher indices weight part-indices by base-year shares, so larger parts count more. For example, 0.4 x 101.0 plus 0.6 x 105.5 equals 103.7.

1. Euro-area aggregation: Eurostat averages national indices by country shares of retail activity, scaled so base equals 100, published only when coverage tops 60%. For example, 0.3 x 103.7 plus 0.7 x 104.0 equals 103.9.

1. Estimation for gaps: Missing parts are estimated only when available parts cover at least 80% of weight, with the gap shared proportionally. Seasonally adjusted gaps are never estimated directly and are instead derived from calendar-adjusted data.

1. Adjustment and growth rates: Calendar adjustment removes working-day and holiday effects, while seasonal adjustment also removes regular seasonal patterns, applied indirectly from national adjusted series. National methods belong to Census X-11 and TRAMO/SEATS families. MoM compares the fully adjusted index to the prior month, while YoY compares the calendar-adjusted index to 12 months earlier. For example, 103.9 after 104.0 means a fall of 0.1%.

Key point: A rise does not mean shops earned more money; it means more goods were sold. When prices rise faster than turnover, volume falls even as revenue grows. It also tracks goods sold, not the retail-services margin.