The number of people visiting city centres jumped by 10% following Boris’ roadmap announcements on 22 February, suggesting that light at the end of the tunnel and more confidence in the vaccine programme could be causing lockdown compliance to slip.
The Coinbase initial public offering (IPO) is making headlines. Only the Coinbase IPO isn’t actually an IPO. Following in the footsteps of Slack and Spotify, the cryptocurrency trading platform opted to go public via a direct listing. With a direct listing, no new shares are created and there are no intermediaries – investment banks, brokerages, or underwriters. Once public, Coinbase shares will be available for trading on NASDAQ with the ticker CBASE. With a valuation expected to exceed $100 billion, there is a lot of hype around this company’s stock market debut.
Kuaishou’s meteoric rise to the top culminated during its February 5, 2021 Hong Kong debut that raised $5.4 billion from its initial public offering, raising its shares nearly 200%. The blockbuster deal placed Kuaishou at the top as the world’s biggest internet IPO since Uber Technologies Inc.’s $8.1 billion share sale in the US in May 2019.
The top global investors acquired more commercial real estate in 2020 despite the challenges of the pandemic. There are clear signals in what they bought, however, that these investors are reacting to the uncertainty presented by the Covid-19 turmoil. Net purchases by property sector indicate that concerns about the office sector surfaced in 2020.
Prior to the pandemic, Costco has been among the most consistently strong performers in all of retail with year over year visit growth essentially a given. On the other hand, BJ’s Wholesale had been the clear third wheel in the battle for wholesale club supremacy. Yet, since the pandemic, visits to the former have been up and down, while BJ’s has been one of the most impressive players with near ongoing year-over-year growth. So what does it all mean and how did traffic unfold in late 2020 and January 2021?
National home prices increased 10% year over year in January 2021, according to the latest CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI®) Report. The January 2021 HPI gain was up from the January 2020 gain of 4.1% and was the highest year-over-year gain since November 2013. Low mortgage rates and low for-sale inventory drove the increase in home prices, however affordability constraints may work to slow home price growth later this year.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into a critical lesson from Burlington’s recovery, the rebound potential for Nordstrom, and the opportunity for Dollar Tree. When Burlington removed its eCommerce capabilities the wider retail community was up in arms. This wasn’t helped by the onset of a pandemic that shut down Burlington locations, leading some to assume that it would affect Burlington in the long-run.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the popularity of third party delivery services, which have seen a surge in full-service restaurant partnerships as many restaurants turn to third-party delivery services to stay afloat. However, our consumer transaction data reveals that third party delivery services generate significantly more sales through quick-service restaurants than full-service restaurants, though they constitute a larger portion of total sales at full-service restaurants.
In previous outputs we have looked extensively at how footfall across UK urban centres has changed in response to Covid-19, and more recently at how catchment areas have undergone similar transformation over the same period. In this analysis we use our mobile geo-location data to explore how dwell time – the duration of visitors to high-streets and town centres – has changed in the past 14 months and contrast those differences by income group.
As consumer adoption of food delivery increases, the competition among food delivery companies on wallet share and loyalty continues. If a restaurant is available on all delivery apps, users get to choose which app to order from. To lure more users to their own platforms, food delivery companies need to adjust their pricing strategies, optimize the service, run various promotion campaigns, and even offer alternative services such as grocery deliveries.
European luxury brands pride themselves on their heritage. In the US, newer names have built brands on innovation like narrow ties and a jetsetter lifestyle. But how do the sales for these companies compare in their home markets versus abroad? In today’s Insight Flash, we look at luxury spending trends in the US versus the UK, peeling back the onion to get to industry, subindustry, and brand-level trends.
With snow covering much of the U.S. and wreaking havoc in many southern states, we looked at consumer behavior in Texas, where the cold snap triggered widespread power outages and acute hardship. As the mercury dropped in Texas so did spending: down 19% YoY a full 14 points lower than the rest of the country in mid-February. With all sectors except Big-Box retailers and Grocery trending down double digits in Texas, even usually buoyant Online Marketplaces and Food Delivery Aggregators underperformed there by over 25 points.
One of the major determining factors for multifamily performance is population and household change. 2020 appears to have brought about some dramatic shifts in population movement according to some early analyses such as one using LinkedIn data. Whether it was apartment demand results in suburban areas versus urban core, or the difference in demand between certain markets, signs of these shifts appear in the multifamily data.
Footfall across Europe’s clothing, hospitality and leisure industries has fallen by almost a third so far in February amid a broader consumer sector decline as the continent faces a new wave of the virus. All in-store activity indices are pushing lower as reports of tightening restrictions and slow vaccine roll-out appear to be hitting consumer confidence and mobility according to data from Huq Industries.
According to ATTOM Data Solutions’ new Q1 2021 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, there are just over 1.4 million U.S. residential properties sitting vacant in Q1 2021, representing only 1.5 percent of all homes. The report noted the number of pre-foreclosure homes sitting empty or “zombie foreclosures” is just 6,677. That figure is down 12.3 percent from 7,612 in Q4 2020 and 23.1 percent from 8,678 in Q1 2020.
In this Placer Bytes, we break down Target and dive into Kohl’s and Ross. It may be stating the obvious at this point, but Target seems poised for an exceptionally strong year. After seeing visits hover just under 2019 levels for most of the spring and summer, September and October drove visits that were up 2.6% and 5.2% year over year. Yet, like most other retailers, the resurgence of COVID cases impacted visits driving a year over year visit gap of 8.5% in November and 5.4% in December.
The pace of U.S. commercial property price growth accelerated in January, climbing back near the growth rates seen before Covid-19 struck, the latest RCA CPPI: US summary report shows. The US National All-Property Index rose 6.9% from a year ago and 1.2% from December.
Zoom Video Communications (ZM) is on the cusp of its fourth quarter earnings report for fiscal 2021 on March 1. Heading into the print, the key question for investors is: Will Zoom survive, or even thrive, in a post-pandemic world? Unsurprisingly, ZM shares have remained range-bound since the first vaccine was announced. Indeed on a three-month basis the stock is now trading down 5%.
With the COVID-19 pandemic leaving most shoppers sheltered in place, many Americans have turned to crafting to pass the time. JOANN is taking advantage of this fad to launch an IPO, but will the glitter of crafting stay glued once consumers are able to leave the house? In today’s Insight Flash, we examine JOANN’s prospects vs. other craft destinations based on overall growth, new customer acquisition, and demographics.
The digitization of money and banking was inevitable. The pandemic merely accelerated its adoption. 2020 forced us to finally download our bank's app (if we hadn't already) and take all of our transactions online. As a result, finance apps hit record highs for both downloads and user sessions in Q4. To unpack the recent growth of the fintech space, we sat down with mobile and banking experts from Adjust, MoEngage, Visa, Current and Kredivo. Together, we identified the key trends and success strategies of the past year.
