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NEW: Promotional Heat Maps by Subsector

Posted at 24 Jun 2023 , blog, Greg Robin Random Walk, Negative Inflections

June 28

We recently launched a new product that examines trends of promotional activity within subsectors.

Highlights:

  • Footwear promotional volume continues to accelerate higher. 9 of the 13 tickers in our footwear index exhibited a “worsening” promotional trend last week with 12 of 14 worsening on a monthly basis.
  • Luxury Retail demand appears weak as significant promotional volume has worsened on a YoY rate of change basis at several major companies in our subsector index.
  • The Sporting Goods subsector has emerged as another addition to the worsening list. All 8 companies in this index have sent out substantially higher promotional volume in the most recent week compared to the prior year.
  • Outdoor Apparel promotions continue to stand out as significant promotion volume YoY growth for this subsector exceeded 100% in three consecutive weeks recently.
  • Demand doesn’t appear to be returning at home improvement retailers. Promotional volume is substantially higher at all 5 companies in our index compared to the prior year.

AEO, ANF, GES: Promotional Ensemble Reveals Sharp Decline in Discounting

Posted at 05 Jun 2021 , blog, Case Study, Positive Inflection

Our promotional email ensemble helped investors better understand and quantify the magnitude of changes in the intensity and aggressiveness that apparel brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), American Eagle (AE) and Guess (GES) are sending. As weather has warmed, our promotional ensemble reveals robust demand growth as consumers previously stuck at home load up on “going out” summer apparel.

Our promotional ensemble quantifies the changes such as key declines in the volume of email campaigns, the distribution discounts offered.

ANF: 93% decline in discounting email volume this May
Significant Promotion heat map measures changes weekly

Successfully channelling rebounding demand for swimwear, AEO’s Aerie has further throttled back its promotions.

  • AEO’: 80% drop in indentive emails

Our tracking on an sector basis reveals AEO has become one of the least aggressive promotors compared with its peers compared with just a year ago.

  • AEO: Sharp decline in total promotional activity compared to peers

For Guess, our email intelligence allows investors to quantify the exact campaign frequency and intensity. As can be seen below, Guess is pushing out significant promotions and discount coupons much less frequently than a year ago as organic demand has rebounded.

DOCU, WIX, FVRR, UPWK: Unique Data Sets Uncover Secular Changes before the Street

Posted at 19 Jan 2021 , blog

Tracking New Customer Acquisition: 2020 was our most successful year in uncovering demand changes undetected by ‘big data’ credit card and transactional sellers. As COVID forced Americans inside, consumers discovered existing virtual solutions were superior to legacy in person dependent platforms.

For Docusign (DOCU), Fiverr (FVRR), Upwork (UPWK), Wix (WIX) our email intelligence captured exponential explosive growth in new customer acquisitions a full quarter ahead of pricy ‘big data’ transactional providers. By focusing on unique leading indicators such as “Welcome to Docusign” and “Your Wix site is published” instead of chasing coincident revenue proxies such as receipts we provided our investor subscriber parters a big jump on their competition. Docusign (DOCU) shares have appreciated more than 150% since growth in consumers receiving these confirmations triggered our identification in MARCH. Similarly, our methodology identified Upwork(UPWK) to start May with shares quadrupling.

If consumer preferences changes again as Americans leave their homes our investor partners will be the first to know.

The Promotional Spotlight:

Posted at 13 Jan 2021 , blog

We recently made substantial upgrades to our email categorization system. As as result of this, we can now better understand which brands and businesses are changing how they communicate with consumers and leads.

Our weekly ‘Promotional Spotlight’ report highlights the brands whose discounting and promotional activity have diverged the most since the prior year. We can provide custom analysis for investors in brands of interest. Which brands increased their steep discounts? Which brands are sending their seasonal sale related email offers more frequently? Are brands slowing their sending pace based on strong demand.

30% Annual Returns: Random Walk Portfolio Utilizing Promotional Intelligence

Posted at 25 Oct 2019 , blog, Blog, Greg Robin Random Walk

Robust 5 year returns with no correlations to the major averages

Superior Performance from 2017-2021

Walking Earnings Signals, performance is as follows for entering a trade on the day before the earnings event and exiting on the earnings event date. In practice, the signal would be available shortly after the end of the fiscal quarter and an investor would have a few weeks between the end of the quarter and the earnings announcement date to build this position

Promotional Activity Predicts Share Performance

In this study we’ve illustrated a use case in which a company’s promotional activity data can be used to successfully predict how that company’s stock will move at its next earnings announcement. With strong standalone performance, this study demonstrates that the promotional data can be a valuable input into the decision making process of both discretionary and systematic investors who wish to adjust positions, confirm positions, or discover new trading opportunities heading into earnings events.

Discretionary investors may also wish to use this data to identify inflection points (both positive and negative) in consumer stocks for opportunistic strategies or use this data to identify downside risk for existing positions. Systematic investors may wish to derive ranks with monthly or weekly frequency based on these inputs to drive a long/short decile portfolio.

contact us to inquire about adding the promotional ensemble as a data feed

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