Breakfast spending is back to near pre-pandemic levels at Starbucks, but midday and afternoon are the fastest growing dayparts. Visits to Starbucks locations in suburban, drive-thru formats outperformed downtown visits up to 50% in some New York City locations. Starbucks’ average ticket growth accelerated in 1Q22 sharply as inflation adjustments were passed along to customers. Starbucks North American revenue grew 23% YoY in 1Q22 on a 12% YoY increase in transactions and a 6% YoY increase in average ticket, directionally consistent with Earnest Research transaction data.
An unexpected side effect of the pandemic has been the extraordinary rise in home prices during 2021. That has increased the need for jumbo loans — mortgage loans that exceed the loan limits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When mortgage rates dropped at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the effects were felt immediately in the market for conforming loans — mortgages that can be packaged into federally backed mortgage securities. Mortgage rates on jumbo loans were slower to come down and reached an all-time low during 2021.
UK shoppers over the years have taken advantage of ordering online to save themselves the time and effort of going to stores. Yet, the joy of cooking is one effort they’re still willing to make. Grocery delivery services like Ocado and meal kit purveyors like HelloFresh and Gousto have managed to take advantage of both sides of the coin to give consumers fresh foods delivered straight to their homes.
Los Angeles hoteliers enjoyed a strong lift but underperformed due to the Omicron impact. Since 2011, STR has analyzed the top-line hotel performance impact for the Super Bowl host city, both in terms of absolute performance and year-over-year change. As usual, STR also made a prediction about Los Angeles hotel performance weeks before the event, forecasting revenue per available room (RevPAR) of US$396 for the weekend of the big game (Friday-Sunday).
In its Q4 2021 financial results report, Chipotle announced that it was raising its long-term target to 7,000 U.S.-based locations – up from the previous goal of 6,000 stores. The company reported that its small-town locations have been “delivering unit economics at or better than traditional Chipotle locations.” The report also stated that 80% of the new venues will include Chipotlanes, as these digitally-enabled drive-thru/pick-up windows “continue to perform very well and are helping enhance guest access and convenience, as well as increase new restaurant sales, margins, and returns.”
It’s been more than two decades since Netflix’s founding and more than a decade since Hulu and Amazon Video entered the picture. However, it wasn’t until the last two years that the streaming world really started getting crowded. We can attribute a lot of that to the push from media companies into the OTT world, with the likes of Disney+, HBO Max and Paramount+ all fresh off their launches. One media company was slower to join the movement: NBCUniversal (NBCU). That changed in 2020 when NBCU introduced Peacock and began its quest to attract both consumers and advertisers away from other platforms.
The latest data from ForwardKeys reveals that the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted an instant spike in flight cancellations to and from Russia. On 25th February, the day after the start of the invasion, every booking that was made for travel to Russia was outweighed by six cancellations of pre-existing bookings. The source markets exhibiting the highest cancellation rates, in order of volume, were Germany 773%, France 472%, Italy 152%, the UK 254%, India 285% and Turkey 116%.
As many Americans are returning to the office, pet owners are faced with the question of what to do with their pets while at work. That’s potentially good news for pet care companies, which struggled early in the pandemic as more people were staying home. In fact, the dog-walking platform Wag announced in February 2022 that it is planning its public debut via a SPAC deal. Its main rival, Rover (NASDAQ: ROVR), went public in August 2021, also through a SPAC merger. But pandemic recovery has differed for these two canine care companies.
Amid the escalating crisis in Ukraine, we wanted to take the opportunity to pay homage to the impressive tech hub that Ukrainian people have built in the last few decades. First, looking into the most common occupations in Ukraine, we see that the majority of jobs are in the tech industry, with software development taking the lead. This wouldn’t come as a surprise to those who follow Ukraine as a tech hub in Europe. In fact, TechUkraine, a tech platform supported by Ukraine’s Ministry of Development and Trade has been warning about the ripple effects of this invasion on the budding tech industry.
There is a first time for everything, and such was the motto of some investors in the U.S. as they made their first purchases outside of their traditional geographic footprint in 2021. A list of the top markets for new entrants provides some insight as to where investors headed and what factors lured them there. For some first-time market participants, the decision to expand their geographic horizons had less to do with geography and more to do with access to a specific asset class.
The Omicron wave drove record numbers of COVID cases throughout the country. And the impact the variant had on retail was also unique, creating some of the most notable COVID related side effects since the early stage of the pandemic. We dug into the effects of the Omicron wave, and what the early recovery data shows. The wider brick-and-mortar retail sector had seen a steady recovery through the summer with the combination of declining cases, renewed demand and vaccination driven confidence driving visits.
Shopify’s ( $SHOP ) software and services provide relatively simple solutions for helping people and businesses sell things online. This was a power position in the early days of the pandemic when businesses were strongly compelled to embrace e-commerce. During that time, Shopify provided the path of least resistance and it quickly became the default choice.
National home prices increased 19.1% year over year in January 2022, according to the latest CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI®) Report. The January 2022 HPI gain was up from the January 2021 gain of 9.4% and was the highest 12-month growth in the U.S. index since the series began in 1976. While home price growth is expected to slow over the next 12 months, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast shows that the year-over-year change in the HPI will remain in the double digits for at least the first seven months of 2022.
Despite the COVID and supply chain challenges of 2021, several major retailers chose to go public last year. We looked at some of the companies – including Warby Parker, Arhaus, Allbirds, and Dutch Bros. – in our Top 10 Retail Brands to Watch white paper. Here, we dive into two more recently public brands – Joann and First Watch – to see how they finished off 2021 and where they stand in 2022.
If it seems like your Facebook feed is suddenly full of diet and workout ads, you’re not imagining things. Pathmatics data from January 2022 tells us that fitness and weight loss brands like Noom, Peloton, and iFit have been investing heavily in Facebook ads. In fact, all three brands have spent more on this channel than any other in January 2022, and far more than they did in January 2021. So which devices are these three companies advertising on, and just how much have they beefed up their ad spend?
Dollar Tree is due to report earnings Wednesday and seems to be in a very interesting position. On one hand, they announced last quarter they would be raising their prices, after testing and finding customers would tolerate these price increases. On the other hand, reports have been recently released that they will have to shut down 400 stores indefinitely due to a rodent infestation.
Interest in the multifamily commercial property sector has skyrocketed during the Covid era. Global investment volume in 2021 was almost double 2019’s level, with record spending in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada. Japan was one of only two major residential markets to buck this trend, tumbling year-on-year. Based on deal volume alone, it would seem that interest in the Japanese sector is receding. However, other indicators tracked by Real Capital Analytics and MSCI point in a different direction.
The CoreLogic Home Price Insights report features an interactive view of our Home Price Index product with analysis through January 2022 and forecasts through January 2023. CoreLogic HPI™ is designed to provide an early indication of home price trends. The indexes are fully revised with each release and employ techniques to signal turning points sooner. CoreLogic HPI Forecasts™ (with a 30-year forecast horizon), project CoreLogic HPI levels for two tiers—Single-Family Combined (both Attached and Detached) and Single-Family Combined excluding distressed sales.
One of the most interesting questions when it comes to consumer behavior is how city dwellers spend differently from those living in the suburbs or rural areas. Our newly launched UK cohort dashboards allow a deep dive into spend for the London region to complement our existing CSA-level analysis in the US. In today’s Insight Flash, we do a side-by-side comparison of spending in London, Los Angeles, and New York to see whether cities worldwide are more similar to each other than they are to surrounding areas.
News app downloads are spiking in the United States as people tune into Russia's war on Ukrainian sovereignty. News providers are being used for this much more than aggregators. CNN and Fox News are the largest in terms of absolute numbers, however, the Washington Post app was downloaded more on 2/19/22 (before the invasion) than any other day in its lifetime, with about 15k new installs globally.
