Spending Monitor: Spending outperforms last year's reopening

Danish card and MobilePay spending, shows spending significantly above normal last week. However, the distortions from Easter 2019, shops closed for General Prayer day last Friday, and not least pay day just before the long weekend makes this week's data very hard to interpret. Overall data still looks strong following the reopening, and spending is well on track to outperform the reopening last spring, even after taking into account that it took place a few weeks later than this year.
Last week we got the first full week of restaurants being open. The classic restaurants showed spending at 10-15% below normal (when accounting for holidays and payday). That is an improvement of around 5%-point compared to the first days of the reopening. Take away continues to perform well, whereas spending in bars is down by 35% compared to normal. Overall restaurant spending looks surprisingly strong in light of all the restrictions that remain in place.
The reopening of department stores also had a significant effect, lifting non-grocery spending to more than 10% above normal levels when accounting for the pay-day effect. In light of there being one less shopping day last week, the performance is significantly stronger. Overall we continue to see a normalisation of the split between online and offline spending.
There is a lot of noise in the data during the spring holiday season, but overall data continues to be very encouraging, pointing to a somewhat stronger reopening effect than what we saw last year when bars and restaurants reopened.

Danske Research Team Danske Bank A/S

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Danske Research Team

Danske Bank A/S

Research is part of Danske Bank Markets and operate as Danske Bank's research department. The department monitors financial markets and economic trends of relevance to Danske Bank Markets and its clients.

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