In this Placer Bytes, we dive into Tractor Supply’s continued surge, analyze Chipotle’s Q3 and look into Albertsons impressive grocery performance. In a sector where giants like Home Depot and Lowe’s have dominated headlines, Tractor Supply has continued to perform well beyond expectations in its own right.
One of the trademarks of some hip new brands, including Away Travel and Everlane, has been an avoidance of the entrenched practice of marking items up just to mark them down, with many older brands known for having “sales” almost every other week. Yet, in the face of depressed shopping activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both brands launched uncharacteristic fixed price sales this past summer.
Amazon Prime Day 2020 took place on October 13-14, marking the internet retailer’s sixth annual sale celebration, and its first to occur outside the month of July. In addition to its shift in timing, Prime Day 2020 saw a shift in ad strategy, a slight shake-up to the top items list, and moderate changes in consumer behavior-- including a move towards holiday gift purchasing.
The past week, high-flying CDN-turned-edge-computing vendor Fastly announced that its 3Q'20 revenues would be 5% lower-than-expected due primarily to significantly lower than anticipated revenues from its largest customer, which it had previously disclosed as ByteDance, the operator of TikTok.
Best way to measure adoption is by looking at number of downloads. Downloads, or "new installs," equate to new users. This summer, Shopping apps were downloaded most in China, U.S., India, Brazil, Russia and the U.K. These countries, combined, make up 62% of global Shopping app downloads.
If this year has shown us anything, it’s that politics seems to be about EVERYTHING. From racial inequality to the coronavirus, healthcare, women’s rights, supreme court vacancies, or the economy, the upcoming election is one of the most important in modern history.
There’s no question that the retail sector has been hit hard this year. Foot traffic at Macy’s, which was already struggling prior to the pandemic, was down 64% last quarter compared to the same quarter in 2019. Like many of its peers, Macy’s has relied on its online business to bolster revenues during a period when many of its stores were closed.
Retail sales may be rising, even if the pace in August was lower than anticipated, but retailers themselves continue to struggle. The number of store closings in the US has remained higher than openings most weeks, bankruptcies are at a notable high and there’s potential for more in the months ahead, including many well-known brands.
In our latest whitepaper, we took a deep dive into grocery foot traffic data uncovering many of the fascinating shifts the industry has seen since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. To get a bird’s-eye-view of the broader grocery sector trends, we analyzed a sample group of over 15 leading grocers.
In 2019 there were 4.54 billion scheduled passengers worldwide. Analysts expected 2020 to set a new record of over 4.72 billion passengers, but instead, the coronavirus pandemic spread its tentacles across the globe, practically bringing international travel to a standstill.
Console gamers have not been sitting on the sidelines, patiently awaiting next generation Xbox and PlayStation systems to arrive. Envestnet | Yodlee COVID-19 Spending trends have shown that console spending has continued to maintain high levels throughout the pandemic.
The latest data from Real Capital Analytics shows that the European logistics sector continues to attract plenty of capital amid the myriad of uncertainties caused by the Covid-19 crisis. The flow of investment into logistics properties has buttressed the industrial sector overall and it is the only major property type to register higher deal activity so far this year than 2019.
Voodoo was the hypercasual games publisher with the most new installs of its games in Q3 2020, having its games downloaded 105% more than its closest competitor in Lion Studios. The bottom half of the top 10 are grouped pretty close together but after #10, Rollic Games, there is a bit of a dropoff to Kwalee with 63 million installs. As a grouping, the top 10 hypercasual game publishers grew downloads 31% YoY. Only two of the top 10 declined during this period.
Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has, on more than one occasion, promoted the idea that the automotive company is uninterested in pedigree. In a noteworthy string of tweets in February, Musk wrote, “Don’t care if you even graduated high school… Educational background is irrelevant, but all must pass hardcore coding test.”
We probably don’t have to tell you that social media is a big deal. The average person spends 2 ½ hours per day on social media. 3.8 billion people use social media worldwide. 84% of people with Internet access use social media. So with stats like those, advertising on social media is a no brainer. Let’s pull some insight to see which social media sites are the cream of the ad crop.
If you have over 100 aircraft scheduled for delivery in 2020/21 and a further 106 that are currently inactive then you have plenty of capacity. But where do you operate those aircraft? Southwest seems to have found part of the solution with their recent announcement of entering the Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and Houston Intercontinental (IAH) markets from early next year.
Traditionally the next week is one of the most impressive displays of the success of the airline industry, the Big Three US carriers announce their third quarter earnings which cover the July to September period; the peak months of travel in many markets. Last year United Airlines reported net income of US$1.0 Billion, Delta Air Lines adjusted revenues of US$12.6 Billion and American Airlines paid some US$44 million in dividends in the quarter.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into the pharmacy sector with a focus on Walgreens before taking a look at H&M following its announcement it’ll be closing 250 stores.
In addition to increased purchases of flour and furniture, the early spring lockdown in many states led to more consumption of video streaming services as consumers looked for alternative sources of entertainment under stay-at-home orders.
With the U.S. elections and the coronavirus pandemic diverting consumers’ attention away from the national to the regional level, understanding who’s winning and who’s moving up the ranks is crucial for both publishers and advertisers. Our infographic visualizes which news outlets in each state are seeing the strongest traffic numbers for August 2020, as well as the top keywords driving traffic to their sites.
