Uber and Lyft have, for a long time, been the market leaders in the growing rideshare industry, but their competitive dynamics have been anything but constant. In many ways, they can be thought of as a duopoly, fighting for dominance, but in other ways, they are competing simultaneously in many local submarkets. Uber’s overall market share, relative to Lyft, has been falling over the last ten years. By breaking down this market into the territories it serves, we’re able to see this share broken down further. It appears that Uber dominates smaller markets without much competition, but Lyft has a much larger relative footprint in larger cities.
When U.S. cities and states faced shelter-in-place orders to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Americans’ reduced mobility resulted in plummeting sales at rideshare companies. With the exception of a late 2020 dip, sales have been gradually recovering since April 2020. However, Uber sales were still down 21 percent year-over-year and Lyft sales were down 19 percent year-over-year as of March 2021.
When many Americans sheltered in their homes early in the coronavirus pandemic, meal delivery sales reached new heights. Our data reveals that in March 2021, sales for meal delivery services grew 116 percent year-over-year, collectively. Shelter-in-place orders may also be driving more Americans to make their first meal delivery purchase. In March 2021, 47 percent of U.S. consumers had ever ordered from one of the services in our analysis, up from 38 percent a year ago.
Apartment resident retention rates went on a wild ride during the course of the past year or so, but the ability to hold onto renters at lease expiration now is returning to more typical levels for the country as a whole. Looking at what happened for leases that expired in 1st quarter 2021, 53.7% of households opted to stay in place, rather than move. That figure exactly matches results seen when averaging the share of households renewing their leases in the initial quarters of 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Landlords of shops in Hong Kong have had a rough ride over the past two years. The political unrest in the middle of 2019 had already exacted a heavy toll on retailers, with businesses disrupted by the clashes and overseas visitors unnerved. (This author too put his own family’s vacation plans on ice.) Then tourist numbers all but evaporated with the onset of Covid-19 less than a year later. Resultantly, prices of CBD shops plummeted, as average quarterly yields headed upwards by 100 basis points between the middle of 2018 and the second quarter of 2020. (This analysis is based on retail assets trading at a value of HK$20 million — $2.5 million — and greater.) Throughout the whole of 2020, no shop assets traded at a sub-2% yield, according to Real Capital Analytics records. The last time the yield floor for such assets was this high was in 2008.
Materials for the early new mRNA vaccines are becoming harder to get, and they are hard to manufacture and store. But there’s another vaccine on the horizon that could solve some of those problems, and keep vaccination efforts moving. A vaccine created by Maryland-based biotech company, Novavax, showed 89.3% efficacy in a Phase III UK trial with 15,000 participants. The company is anticipating receiving emergency-use authorization from the FDA in May, and is set to expand vaccine trials in Q2 to include children and teens, and to begin crossover trials that will ensure all participants, including U.S. study participants, receive an active vaccine candidate.
British over-50s have had a vaccine-induced spring in their step over the last few weeks, with the number of park visits amongst this demographic doubling since the start of the year. The acceleration in parks’ usage is significantly greatest for those in this demographic: rising at 51% more than those aged 30-40, and 85% more than those aged 20-30, having begun the year 17% below all other age groups.
The home improvement and home goods sectors have been among the strongest in retail throughout the pandemic. When COVID initially hit, home improvement leaders like Home Depot and Lowe’s benefitted from essential retail status allowing consumers to embark on DIY projects with their newfound time at home. Visits in Q1 2021 for the sector were up 22% year over year when compared to the same period in 2020. This was actually the largest visit increase over the last four quarters, something that can be attributed to both Q1 not being a normal peak period for the sector, and the comparison to 2020’s dip in March.
INRIX continues to monitor vehicle miles traveled (VMT), the amount people drive, as the country re-emerges from COVID-19. VMT across the United States has continued to surge since the beginning of March. Yet growth in VMT has not been evenly disbursed. Kentucky saw the largest growth in VMT vs four weeks ago with a 31% unadjusted growth in travel. Vermont has seen the lowest growth at 4%. Overall, travel in the Southern United States has seen large increases in VMT over the past 4 weeks as indicated in the map below.
In January 2021, 5.6% of home mortgages were in some stage of delinquency (30 days or more past due, including those in foreclosure)\[1\], a small decrease from December 2020, and the fifth consecutive monthly decrease. While this is good news, the overall delinquency rate remained high and was 2.1 percentage points above the year ago level, according to the latest CoreLogic Loan Performance Insights Report. The share of mortgages that were 30 to 59 days past due – considered early-stage delinquencies – was 1.3% in January 2021, down sharply from a post-pandemic high of 4.2% in April 2020 and the lowest rate recorded in at least 22 years.
Spring is here and the first quarter is behind us. It was around this time last year that the COVID-19 pandemic really began to significantly affect life and the economy with effects reverberating throughout the rest of 2020. A strong, though not ubiquitous, resurgence in apartment demand in the latter half of last year created a question for industry participants at the turn of the new year – to what extent would the multifamily recovery continue into 2021? At the national level, new construction activity continued at a feverish pace to the tune of more than 96,000 new units delivered in the quarter. This level of new supply outpaced that from the opening quarters of 2020 and 2019 by a significant margin. The 2021 deliveries equaled around 10,000 units more than in the opening quarter of 2020 and almost 25,000 units more than that portion of 2019.
Mass COVID-19 vaccination programs are underway across the globe and providing the tourism and hospitality industry a much-needed confidence boost following 12 months or so of seismic declines. However, with lockdowns still in place for some regions and the emergence of new virus variants, predicting future travel demand remains challenging. To track evolving consumer trends in the sector, and examine everchanging attitudes on travel, STR conducted a quantitative survey in February 2021 among 1,333 respondents from its Traveler Panel. According to our latest research, consumers did not lose their appetite to travel as most (66%) had planned, booked, or undertaken travel since the start of the year. Moreover, despite national and regional lockdowns, and widespread advice to avoid non-essential travel across the globe, underlying demand for travel remains strong as three quarters of travelers intend to undertake an overnight trip by the end of 2021.
More than almost any other sector, the restaurant industry suffered one of the hardest COVID-19 hits. Yet, location data provides a hopeful sign of recovery across dining segments, with some, like the QSR and coffee sub-sectors, expected to reach a full recovery faster than others. The change that the pandemic brought to the daily schedules of many impacted the various dining segments differently. Those relying more heavily on daily routines, like the coffee and breakfast space, were affected more. But despite the differences, there was one strong pandemic-related trend experienced by all segments – a significant rise in the overall proportion of mid-day visits. As flexible work became more common, mid-day lunch outings to a local cafe or restaurant – either as a short escape from the work-from-home monotony or as a refreshing place to work for a few hours – became a more valuable asset.
Travel between the UK and the Republic of Ireland has shown resilience over the course of the last year with levels 50pts greater than between the UK and all other countries, as high-frequency mobility data suggests that Brexit has had little impact on the volume of traffic since January 1st 2021. The Index reveals that travel to and from Ireland saw a sharp drop at the start of the pandemic, however, it quickly recovered to 80% of pre-pandemic levels and has since remained 50pts greater than that of journeys between the UK and the rest of the world.
The video game space has evolved massively from the original Pong release to consumer. As gaming has moved online, new models have emerged to capture consumer leisure time and dollars. Roblox has been able to capitalize on one of the newest trends, user-generated content. But is the company just riding an industry wave? In today’s Insight Flash, we combine our US and UK Transact data with our newly-launched Roblox CE Web data to examine the company’s prospects.
Comscore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a trusted partner for planning, transacting, and evaluating media across platforms, today shared new audience insights that provide context behind online social gaming platform Roblox’s strong DPO performance in March 2021, and the strong growth in online gaming communities’ reach and engagement, especially amongst younger age groups. In February 2021, Roblox saw 34 million unique U.S. consumers spend 6.3 billion minutes accessing its desktop and mobile gaming platform, a growth of 32% and 39%, respectively. Comparatively, Zynga’s desktop and mobile platforms saw 28 million monthly unique digital visitors.
Weekly RevPAR rose to US$65.34, which was a 4.2% increase week over week and the industry’s highest level of the past 56 weeks when indexed to 2019. RevPAR has increased week over week all but three times this year. STR’s Market Recovery Monitor reflected the country’s stronger overall RevPAR performance with 73 markets either in Recovery or Peak categories. More encouraging, only 20 markets were in the Depression category, the least of the past 53 weeks. Top 25 Markets are also improving, and as a group, entered the Recession phase for the first time.
While consumers have often looked to on-the-go breakfast options, breakfast at home has been making a comeback during COVID-19. But it’s not just cereal and pancakes that are now in demand. Similar to the trend of surging meal kit sales, consumers have been flocking to smoothie subscription boxes. Consumer spending data reveals how sales for smoothie kits have skyrocketed throughout the pandemic, as well as which smoothie box companies are leading the pack in terms of market share growth and customer retention. Since January 2019, the market size for smoothie subscription boxes has tripled. Sales accelerated the most in the early months of the pandemic, and monthly year-over-year sales growth in 2020 averaged 97 percent.
ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s premier property database, today released its 2020 property tax analysis for almost 87 million U.S. single family homes, which shows that $323 billion in property taxes were levied on single-family homes in 2020, up 5.4 percent from $306.4 billion in 2019. The average tax on single-family homes in the U.S. in 2020 was $3,719 — resulting in an effective tax rate of 1.1 percent. The average property tax of $3,719 for a single-family home in 2020 was up 4.4 percent from $3,561 in 2019 while the effective property tax rate of 1.1 percent in 2020 was down slightly from 1.14 percent in 2019.
The food and beverage industry was the most impacted and devastated business during the COVID pandemic, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue loss and millions of jobs shuttered across the globe. Haidilao (6862.HK), the most dominant hot pot chain in China with 1,298 stores globally and employing a workforce upwards of 15,000, was not spared from this devastation. But the famous hot pot chain’s losses due to the pandemic was short-lived and was largely confined to the first half of 2020. During the latter part of 2020, Haidilao saw a full recovery of its overall performance. Sandalwood data indicates a bounce back for the company’s overall daily sales value in late December 2020 to the same period a year ago.
