11:27 AM EDT, 10/01/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Best Buy ( BBY ) , Wayfair ( W ) , Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS), Academy Sports and Outdoors ( ASO ) and Williams-Sonoma ( WSM ) face disruptions to holiday sales from dockworker strikes at East and Gulf Coast ports, Wedbush Securities said Tuesday in a report.

"Those with the highest mix of imports that are holiday-centric retailers" may grapple with depleted inventories and delays from replenishing stocks, Wedbush said. "Large retailers are better positioned to navigate the strike" than smaller companies, the report said.

Shipping cargo to the West Coast and then transporting goods to the east may add at least a week to delivery times and increase costs, and West Coast ports "lack the capacity to fully absorb disrupted volume," Wedbush said.

Industry research firm Sea-Intelligence estimates a one-day strike might spur five days' worth of backlog cargo, while a weeklong strike might trigger delays into mid-November, Wedbush said.

Inventory days at the end of Q2 at Best Buy ( BBY ), Dick's Sporting Goods and Academy Sports and Outdoors rose 4% from a year earlier and climbed 8.4% at Williams-Sonoma ( WSM ), Wedbush said.

Companies "learned some lessons" during the COVID pandemic "by becoming more precautionary and developing more flexible supply chains," Wedbush said.

Best Buy ( BBY ) shares fell 2.6% in recent Tuesday trading. Wayfair ( W ) slumped 5.4%, both Williams-Sonoma and Academy Sports and Outdoor declined more than 3.1% and Dick's Sporting Goods dropped 1.9%.

Price: 100.54, Change: -2.76, Percent Change: -2.67