The pandemic-era pause on student-loan repayments ends this fall, and Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. are the retailers most exposed to the fallout on consumer spending, according to an analysis by Jefferies.
Customers who took out student loans spend nearly a fifth of their discretionary cash on Amazon AMZN and around 12% at Walmart WMT , the analysts said. At Target TGT , that figure stands at around 6%. Costco Wholesale Corp. COST and TJX Cos. TJX , which runs TJ Maxx and Marshalls, round out the top five.
BofA analysts have said the return of the student-loan repayments could lead to “serious delinquencies” on other bills. JPMorgan analysts, in a note on Monday, said the restart could become a $10 billion-a-month headwind. Nearly 44 million people have federal student-loan debt in the U.S., for a total amount of nearly $1.8 trillion, according to the Education Data Initiative.