There’s no crystal ball when it comes to predicting a company’s quarterly financial results, but when it comes to Target, foot traffic data from Placer.ai over the last five quarters might be mistaken for clairvoyant.
Target, which has struggled to find its mojo since thriving during the height of the pandemic, and which has faced backlash and a boycott since backtracking on its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in January, reports Q2 financial results on Wednesday.
In the past five quarters (beginning Q1 of 2024), what Placer.ai has reported as Target’s year over year foot traffic changes have differed from Target’s year over year total revenue changes by an average of just 1.2 percentage points. In the first quarter of this year, for example, the analytics firm reported Target’s YoY foot traffic decline to be 4.1%, and Target subsequently reported a YoY total revenues decline of 2.8%, a difference of 1.2 percentage points. (Going back further, to the 13 quarters beginning Q1 of 2022, the difference between the firm’s YoY traffic estimates and Target’s YoY revenues differed by an average of 2.3 percentage points.)
For the second quarter of 2025, Placer.ai reports that foot traffic at Target is down 3.1% YoY. That means that if the correlation between its foot traffic reporting and Target’s total revenues reporting in the previous five quarters is consistent, Target will report a total revenue decline compared to the second quarter of 2024 of between 1.8% and 4.4%.
Retail Brew asked Target to comment on Placer.ai’s estimate that its foot traffic is down 3.1% for Q2, and whether it will report YoY revenue declines close to that. Target did not respond.
This correlation between its foot traffic estimates and Target’s revenues came as no surprise to RJ Hottovy, head of analytical research at Placer.ai.
“They’re generally pretty highly correlated,” Hottovy told Retail Brew, referring to the correlation between foot traffic and revenues generally, not just with Target.
When the foot traffic and revenues are less correlated, Hottovy continued, is when retailers make significant gains with e-commerce, in which case the revenue change will be more impressive than the foot traffic change.
“If the company has seen a big shift to online retail, the sales number should probably outperform the in-store visitation number,” Hottovy said.
This report was originally published by Retail Brew.
