Electricals group Dixons, Argos-owner Home Retail Group and entertainment specialist HMV are among the retailers most likely to be affected by snow and icy conditions broker Numis believes.
Kingfisher, Marks & Spencer and Next are likely to prove resilient to the Arctic weather.
Numis analyst Andy Wade said that the snow would have an “asymmetric” impact on store groups and that low margin retailers whose trading is heavily weighted towards Christmas were most at risk.
He said that sales are running as much as 50% down in areas where there has been most snow disruption and that, on average, sales are down by between 10% and 15% per week where there has been snow.
Wade noted: “Clearly some retailers will suffer from being more geared into Christmas, in particular those focused on non-food gifting items in the UK. Moreover, the proportionate impact on earnings will be more pronounced for lower EBIT margin businesses.”
He said: “We would add the caveat that the potential earnings impact assumes that all sales impacted by the snow are lost rather than delayed.
“Depending on the type of product we would expect over half of purchases to be delayed – the iPad for example – so any actual downgrades are likely to be much smaller.”
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