Panel SA: Shopkeepers delay disclosure of Christmas results

The disclosure of Christmas sales performance, which shopkeepers usually present right after the party, will be delayed this year.

Neither Alshop, an association of shopping mall tenants, nor Ablos (which represents smaller chains) have released their data for the time being. The prediction is that the numbers come out in January.

The decision to postpone comes after a merger that involved the two entities in 2019, when Ablos contested the robust growth data presented by Alshop, saying that sales had been a failure.

Ablos accused Alshop, at the time, of disclosing accounts without technical proof, with the risk of causing speculation in the market.

In the following years, the pandemic came, and Alshop stopped holding its traditional promotional event immediately after the date.

According to Luis Augusto Ildefonso, institutional director of the entity, the postponement in the delivery of results this year was a request from the members to avoid inaccuracy in the numbers.

“When we did it the very next day, there was a series of inferences, which were not total real data. And, sometimes, there is a distortion”, says Ildefonso.

The Alshop data should be released to the press next Monday (2). At Ablos, the survey with associates will only be carried out at the beginning of January.

Joana Cunha with Paulo Ricardo Martins and Diego Felix