When Uber first began trying to grow into smaller markets, some venture capitalists scoffed and didn’t think that its business model was scalable. Years later, the company has certainly proven naysayers wrong. The company has successfully expanded into business lines such as food delivery and just recently alcohol delivery with its purchase of Drizly. It has succeeded in expanding geographically as well, with operations in over 10,000 cities around the world. In parallel with Uber’s success at expansion, CE data has proven successful at capturing the company’s growth across both business lines and geographies.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into the performances of Home Depot and Lowe’s to see if two of the top retail performers during the COVID era continued their dominance into Q4 and early 2021. Since the onset of the pandemic, Home Depot and Lowe’s have been among the best retail performers. And late 2020 and January 2021 showed that this trend is still going strong.
Upon going public last week, America’s No. 2 dating app gained 63% on the day to close at an $8+ billion valuation. The company is trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol “BMBL.” Bumble founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, launched the app in 2014 with the intent of creating an online dating space that puts women in control. Bumble has since expanded beyond dating to friendship with their Bumble BFF service and professional networking with Bumble Bizz.
Total construction starts dropped 4% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $794.3 billion. Nonresidential building starts were flat in January, while nonbuilding starts dropped 10% and residential starts were 4% lower. From a regional perspective, starts were lower in three of the five regions – the Midwest, South Atlantic, and South Central. Starts rose, however, in the Northeast and West. With only one month of 2021 completed, a year-to-date analysis will provide little useful information.
Cross-border flows into Australian commercial real estate sank in 2020, but the magnitude of the drop was moderated by a European champion: German institutional investment. Spending by groups headquartered in Germany alleviated fears that overseas investors would desert Australia, as occurred in the last global downturn. During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), investors across the world retreated to the sanctuary of their home territories.
In contrast to what many anticipated in the earlier days of COVID, the off-price retail space has witnessed a significant recovery pattern throughout the pandemic, both in foot traffic and reported revenue. But as the sector quickly paves its way back to normalcy, leading off-price brands face new challenges and pandemic-driven shifts that can significantly impact their growth rate. In our latest Off-Price Retail Dive whitepaper, we dove into some of the significant shifts shaping the industry during the pandemic and their impact on its impressive rise. Below is a taste of what we found.
We start the year on a familiar trajectory with job listings increasing in the month of January, just as they did last year. (Here’s hoping this is where the similarities to 2020 end.) Nationwide, job listings are up 4.6% overall, with created job listings up 17.8%. January saw an impressive 82% of states’ job listings grow, with the most substantial increases in Alabama (9.73%), Alaska (8.55%), and Texas (8.44%). States with the most decline in job listings last month were Maine (-13.79%), Montana (-7.25%), and Vermont (-3.64%).
Consumer Edge’s recently launched UK dataset is very complimentary to our existing US data, and has proven to be highly predictive for US-based companies, such as AMZN, in both markets. In today’s Insight Flash, we examine how trends in the two countries have differed, including spend growth, average ticket, and the importance of Prime Day.
Walmart felt the same offline effects as other retailers in late 2020 as the holiday season was hit hard by a resurgence of COVID cases. The result was a November year-over-year visit gap of 13.8%, the largest since April. But December saw the visit gap shrink to 10.6%, and January saw that drop to just 7.2% year over year – the best since October’s mark of 6.7%. And while this is a success in and of itself, when combined with the mission-driven shopping trend that has boosted basket size, the impact could be even more significant.
Footfall across British clothes shops has been lower than the rest of Europe for the entire pandemic as tough lockdown measures push customers to online retailers. While footfall across UK clothing retailers has flatlined during this second lockdown, it’s significant to note that equivalent levels in Europe have been tracking at 30pts since early December.
The Oil & Gas sector was in trouble even before the first Covid lockdown, and it was one of the worst credit performers in 2020. A perfect storm of falling oil prices, the spectacular rise of alternative energy sources, and the effective collapse of global tourism took many oil companies to the brink of bankruptcy and pushed some of them over the edge. Recent agency downgrades have cited climate change and permanently higher oil price volatility; agency ratings for some of the US majors are now aligned with the more conservative bank consensus.
While apartment demand was dismal through the first half of last year, absorption rebounded in the third and fourth quarters. Over the last few months many markets, in particular those across California and Florida, managed to significantly surpass their demand performance from the same period a year ago. The resurgence in national absorption has been timely as new projects continue to be added to the new construction pipeline at a rapid pace. All told, ALN is tracking more than 2.5 million pipeline units, though more than half of that total have yet to break ground.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into pharmacy giant CVS and one of the biggest surprises in retail, Floor & Decor. With CVS beginning in-store vaccinations, there is reason to be excited about the brand’s prospects in the coming months. But this is especially true considering the strength it’s already shown. Visits to CVS locations were down just 0.1% in October before a surge in COVID cases drove the visit gap to 6.8% in November. Yet, even with that challenge, visits rebounded in December and were down just 3.6% year over year that month.
We just published LinkUp’s 2020 Jobs Report, within which we explore the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on labor market conditions, as well as how jobs and industries have shifted in response and how far we’ve traveled on the road to recovery. In this new report we also showcase our S&P 500® LinkUp Jobs Index and share a graph of how each sector index changed last year.
Lex Machina’s analysis of employment litigation in federal district courts revealed an increase in employment cases caused by COVID-19 (“COVID Employment Cases”) during November to December of 2020. There was a significant increase in the number of total employment cases filed in federal district courts in November and December of 2020 compared to the same months in 2019 and 2018.
A second round of stimulus checks issued by the US government has led to a boost in spending across the US economy. In today’s Insight Flash, we dig into trends by income level in order to understand where the biggest impact has been – by shopper, by geography, and by subindustry. An analysis of overall spending by income group shows that the stimulus really hit its mark.
DIY destination Lowe’s has announced plans to hire at least 53,000 new employees ahead of the upcoming spring home improvement season. The retailer plans to hold hiring events in all of its more than 1,700 U.S. locations over the next three months in hopes of filling both full and part time openings for cashiers, stockers, loaders and merchandising associates.
On a recent article published by Kate Gibson, Kroger, one of the most prominent grocers in the US, is expected to shut down two California stores to avoid offering workers ‘hazard pay’. Both of these stores are located in the Long Beach area, one is under the Ralph's franchise while the second one under Food 4 Less(both brands are Kroger subsidiaries). When big firms like Kroger decide to close a store, they are taking into consideration many parameters; the first one comes to mind is the profitability of the store itself.
2020 was certainly not the greatest year ever for offline retail, but its effects may already be driving strength for some brands in 2021. While this year will hopefully be marked by a strong recovery amid COVID’s declining effects, some brands are already showing clear strength. Which retailers have had some of the fastest starts to 2021? We looked at the data to find out.
Consumer Edge’s recently launched UK dataset has already proven to be very predictive for several company earnings reports. One such company is easyJet, where a strong correlation provides confidence in Consumer Edge airline data overall. In today’s Insight Flash, we take a deep dive into UK travel trends, digging into how low-cost players like easyJet are holding up.
