Options News
Alternative data wins in $W
Our BattleFin partner SimilarWeb said Wayfair (W) international web traffic seemed to be a trouble spot, despite overall positive metrics: · Website traffic market share in the US grew 4.12ppt YOY in Q3 2019 to 23.4% · The UK accounted for the most site visits that ended in a sale in Q3 2019 compared to the other […]
Our BattleFin partner SimilarWeb said Wayfair (W) international web traffic seemed to be a trouble spot, despite overall positive metrics:
· Website traffic market share in the US grew 4.12ppt YOY in Q3 2019 to 23.4%
· The UK accounted for the most site visits that ended in a sale in Q3 2019 compared to the other international markets
· Germany experienced the highest YOY growth in site visits that end in a sale in Q3 2019
· In Q3 2019 Wayfair’s Android app in Germany experienced a 746% YOY growth in the percentage of devices with the app installed
· Wayfair is continuing to spend in international markets to improve brand awareness – seen by an upward trend in traffic to Wayfair sites from paid search
At MarketRebellion we are focused on whether investors will give Wayfair the Amazon pass on spending to gain that international brand awareness, or whether investors will instead care more about revenue growth.
Wayfair is continuing to gain online market share in the US, its biggest market, however its troubles lie in international markets. Even though Wayfair’s site is experiencing YOY growth in converted visits and its app is experiencing strong growth in all three international markets, paid search is not only continuing to account for a large percentage of traffic to the company’s international sites, but is also experiencing YOY growth.
The alternative data (AD) read in Wayfair was amazingly accurate, We covered our shorts around the $85 level, which we had targeted as the January 2019 low. I believe this proves the data does matter, if web traffic is slowing, if spending on web advertising is up dramatically, if apps are being deleted all this can lead to debacles like this one we are witnessing today in shares of W.
When we first published to our subscribers that W would likely miss, shares fell from $119 to $109. The next session they hit $102. All told, shares fell an amazing 35% ($119 to $84). And as impressive as that is, it took second place this week to our alt data negative call in GRUB, which fell 43% in a single session!
Our hats off to our partner BattleFin which powers our alt data as well as SimilarWeb, which was responsible for the web analysis.