PLCE: Explosion in Desperation Discounts Forecast Tepid Outlook

   23 Nov 2023

Our promotional ensemble has been successful at undercover rapidly decaying organic demand for Children’s Place. While other alt data such as credit card data and web traffic pointed to a revenue beat, our process detected desperation. PLCE reported 7% decline in SSS and reduced its earnings outlook. While PLCE has been on our slowing list shares have declined nearly 50%. Desperation Index exploded higher in Q3 as Children’s Place used more negative keywords in its campaigns such as “one more day”, “extended”, “extra” and “sitewide”.         Over the past few quarters, PLCE has been one of the most reliant retailers on increased discounting and email couponing.