"Let there be songs to fill the air"/Moody's warns/Overseas stuff

I want to start by saying that the Grand Slam Breakfast comes from Denny's as I mistakenly said IHOP yesterday. The combination though is great at both establishments.

Rather than wait until November 16th to hear Target's assessment of the US consumer, Brian Cornell was able to give it to us yesterday in an interview with Becky Quick on CNBC. "Their managing that budget really carefully and it's certainly pressuring discretionary spending, they are buying less stuff, even within food and beverage. We look at overall retail spending, just look at the top line and you say, alright there is a healthy consumer and they are spending but, even in food and beverage categories, over the last few quarters the units, the number of items they are buying has been declining. So, they are even tightening up their spending in those categories but in discretionary goods we've seen 7 consecutive quarters of both dollars and units declining. So, you're buying less apparel, less items for your home, fewer toys. You're seeing some of the pressure in those categories. In categories like toys, we're seeing some pretty significant declines but the other trend we're seeing is, and we've seen for several years now is the American consumer is enjoying those seasonal moments. Whether it's halloween, or the summer moments going back to mother's day and father's day, they are still enjoying those moments and they keep looking for newness."

That doesn't sound like a 5% economy and it's because we're not in one. 

Where consumers are spending, STILL, is on live entertainment. Here is what Live Nation said last night, a stock we still own,

"As you can see from our results, the structural tailwinds behind our business are accelerating faster than ever. And as the fan demand truly globalizes and artists are able to perform more broadly than ever, this is fueling an unprecedented global desire for concerts. This has happened in all levels with both casual and die-hard fans and from small clubs to massive stadium events."

To a question on how sustainable this is with worries about the spending habits of the consumer, the answer, "So, Q3 was a a very strong volume quarter...we're seeing that fan demand consistent globally. 90% of the growth came from concerts, which again tells you that the fans are looking to go to the concerts...the quarter was about the tremendous volume and tremendous fan demand that flowed through Ticketmaster. Looking then more specifically at just October, if we look at our Ticketmaster platform for the month of October, ticket sales were up again y/o/y relative to last year. They were up double digits in North America. So we're seeing no sign of weakness."

Also, "Another metric that we look at is we look at just for our US concerts division, we track every week y/o/y sales. And, again, over the past 5 weeks, since the end of the quarter, those sales continue to be up double digits. So, we're seeing no weakness at all."

From the CEO, "I have weekly booking calls with over 40 presidents around the world and we take both from clubs up to stadiums and festivals. And we have not seen anything taper off in any sense or on sales for next year, whether it's an early festival across the pond, or whether it's a club tour playing in Pittsburgh on a Tuesday...So we are not seeing any pullback in any way from a club to a stadium tour from Milan to Argentina right now. The consumer supply/demand seems to be consistent across the globe, small to big."