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. Uber sales were up 103 percent year-over-year and Lyft sales were up 87 percent year-over-year in October 2021.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into the latest from AMC Theatres and GameStop and break down the latest Mall Index update. Though the hype surrounding AMC Theatres and GameStop was more Reddit-driven, public market intrigue and had less to do with actual performance, the two brands had indeed been recovering in terms of visits. And while a steady recovery is worth celebrating in this unique market environment, the latest data shows just how significant those returns have been.
U.S. single-family rent growth increased 10.2% in September 2021, the fastest year-over-year increase in over 16 years, according to the CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI). The index measures rent changes among single-family rental homes, including condominiums, using a repeat-rent analysis to measure the same rental properties over time. The September 2021 increase was nearly four times the September 2020 increase, and while the index growth slowed last summer, rent growth is running well above pre-pandemic levels when compared with 2019.
The hotel industry rebounded slightly after two weeks of declines, gaining nearly a percentage point in occupancy during the week ending 6 November. The uptick was expected given that history shows a similar pattern after a Halloween Sunday. Of course, due to Halloween, Sunday demand was down significantly with decreases also seen on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Week over week, average daily rate (ADR) was nearly flat (+0.2%) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) increased 1.8%.
In what many considered as a very bold move at the height of COVID-19 in 2020, Haidilao expanded massively — reaching a total of 1597 stores by June 2021. Unfortunately this delivered a disappointing blow to Haidilao’s bottomline. Stock price dropped continually at a staggering 74% from its peak on Feb 17 to Nov 8 this year. As an attempt to stop the bleeding, Haidilao announced shut down of 300+ stores by Dec 31, 2021. Sandalwood weekly sales data saw this coming, because data consistently showed weakness throughout 2Q21.
Visits to popular burger fast-food chains such as Portillo’s, In-N-Out, Shake Shack, and White Castle have been particularly strong over the past couple of months. We dove into the data to better understand foot traffic patterns to these cult favorites. Many of the burger brands analyzed are relatively regionally focuses – Portillo’s has a high concentration of Chicago locations, In-N-Out is strong in California, Shake Shack is particularly popular in the tri-state area, and White Castle has a loyal Midwestern and Northeastern following.
Just as we started to get comfy, the ever-changing 14-day average of daily COVID-19 cases flipped from negative to positive this week. Cases are increasing in 25 states, and the overall case numbers are hovering around 74,000 cases per day. The magnitude of this wave will depend on vaccination rates as well as the number of previous infections. Some areas that were spared earlier in the Delta surge are now being hit harder.
Glossier—the DTC beauty company that recently raised $80 million in Series E funding—has historically held one major sale each year, coinciding with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Consumer transaction data reveals that Glossier’s sales the week of Black Friday are continuing to grow year-over-year. At the same time, a comparative analysis of other major beauty retailers found that Sephora’s sales events correspond with a sharper increase in monthly sales per customer compared to sales events at Glossier and Ulta Beauty.
Global commercial real estate price growth accelerated in the third quarter of 2021, with the Asia Pacific region leading price gains, the latest _RCA CPPI Global Cities_ report shows. The RCA CPPI Global Cities Composite Index climbed 7.3% in the third quarter from a year ago, up from the 6.1% year-over-year pace seen the prior quarter and the 2.5% rate seen in the third quarter of 2020 amid the pandemic’s challenges.
It’s common understanding that the pandemic made years of expected eCommerce growth take place in just a matter of weeks. As consumers stayed home, delivery services for every product ranging from staple groceries to office supplies became the norm. Now that 2022 is almost here, we see that there simply is no going back to “normal” shopping patterns. People are accustomed to ordering their retail items online and want them delivered quickly, cheaply and sustainably.
Lululemon has been in Warrior Pose lately, maintaining strong post-pandemic growth as a continued work-from-home environment has supported athleisure purchases. And although Consumer Edge offers several datasets that closely track the company’s topline growth, our newly launched CE Receipt data and CE Web data allow additional analysis into a shopper’s basket. In today’s Insight Flash, we take advantage of both datasets to better understand how the company’s growth has been driven by number of items in a transaction versus the price per item
Most people (me, I am most people) now use multiple devices to stream content across all of them throughout the week, or even on a given day. In fact, 71% of streaming viewers in the U.S. say that, on average, they watch streaming video on at least 2 devices each day. This presents a huge opportunity for streaming video and entertainment providers to differentiate themselves from competitors by elevating their offering, and giving the people what they want: good content.
As the pandemic’s retail effects took hold, the off-price apparel sector was put in a particularly difficult position because of their heavy dependence on brick and mortar traffic. Yet, the recovery period had been the reverse, with many of the sector’s key strengths aligning perfectly with wider trends. The value the brands in the space provided was well suited to a period of wider economic uncertainty, while the treasure hunt experience drove interest in being back in stores. In addition, the orientation towards the suburbs and the wide geographic distribution also helped the sector ride the various waves of the recovery period.
US Airlines have a major role to play at Thanksgiving transporting literally millions of travelers across the country to reconnect with families and friends at one of the most important times of the year. 2020 was, despite the best intentions of everyone, not a good year for travel and many would-be travelers were advised to stay at home. Fortunately, 2021 is shaping up to be very different as airlines are ramping up for a busy week. It could even be better than 2019 for some!
Have you heard of Monday.com? (And, no, it’s not just an antidote to Sunday scaries.) If you missed all the subway ads, billboards and YouTube ads over the last couple of years, let us fill you in: Monday.com is a SaaS product that lets teams and companies create their own workflows and applications. Teams use it for everything from task management to product roadmaps to a simplified CRM. Originally launched in 2014, Monday.com didn’t make much of a splash in the US until the middle of 2019, right after it raised $150 million.
The tech sector is well known for ambitious, blue sky thinking. Web infrastructure and website security company, Cloudflare is no exception with their stated mission to “help build a better internet.“ Though this may seem like a lofty (if somewhat ambiguous) goal, the company’s reputation for innovation, reliability, performance, and highly scalable networking make them a solid contender to actually achieve it.
According to the United Nations, India is expected to become the world's fastest growing economy next year. It will grow by 6.7% in 2022. The number one tag also applies in the mobile context. New data from App Annie reveals India to be the 2nd largest market in the world for app downloads to date in 2021. This is building on an impressive 2020, in which Indian consumers installed 24 billion apps – up 28% year on year.
During “normal” years, hotel development delays are common due to construction problems, permit issues, or some other minor situation solved by bumping an opening date. In these “pandemic years,” plenty of opening delays have also come from hotels unwilling or unable to operate amid lockdown restrictions or find adequate staffing to service a property during its ramp-up. Those types of delays, along with limited cancellations of planned projects, have contributed to Europe’s hotel pipeline reaching historic highs for the next three years.
Christmas is around the corner, and it’s still anyone’s guess still how Santa’s trip will go, with supply-chain break downs, pent up consumer demand, the pandemic unresolved. But Standard Media Index’s forward-bookings data, and the perspective of several industry pundits we interviewed, provide reason for optimism that advertising is in for a strong 4th quarter. “The rebound and upward trends continue and I think it will be significantly better than 2020,” says David Shiffman, executive vice president of research at iHeartMedia.
Higher salaries in big cities do not always translate into higher standards of living because the cost of living varies greatly across cities. By tracking salaries by location, we’re able to see where employees can enjoy the highest standard of living. The matrix below illustrates the average salary of job postings and cost of living in an MSA. So what is the price tag of living in your city? We can use price indices across metropolitan areas and average salaries, to see the ‘premium’ you receive or ‘tax’ you pay on average by living in a city.
