Displaying items by tag: retail

Tuesday, 11 August 2020 15:58

The Best ETF for Playing COVID Retail

(New York)

There has been a lot of negative press about the fate of retail under COVID, and with good reason. Brick and mortar businesses have been devastated and the bankruptcies have been relentless. However, one of the less noticed aspects is that many ecommerce businesses are doing very well. In fact, some retail ETFs, like the Amplify Online Retail ETF (IBUY) have been surging as stocks like Carvana, Overstock.com, and Peloton have seen their shares soar.


FINSUM: Ecommerce is a great bet for right now and for the foreseeable future. In its most basic sense, all COVID did to retail was accelerate the shift to ecommerce into a much faster gear. It was like a five-year jump in four months. There is no reason to expect that to revert any time soon.

Published in Eq: Value

(New York)

Morgan Stanley put out a very direct research report this week. In it, it tells investors which stocks they definitely should not buy. The bank selected 22 “Secularly Challenged Stocks” which it says no one should own right now. Here is a selection: Alcoa, AMC Networks, Abercrombie & Fitch, CenturyLink, Macerich, Cheesecake Factory, H&R Block, Michael’s, and Molson Coors Beverage.


FINSUM: A lot of names one would expect here, but some that are a bit of a surprise. We certainly would not want to own Macerich given the state of commercial retail real estate, but CenturyLink would not seem nearly so dangerous.

Published in Eq: Total Market

(New York)

The stock market may be complicated right now, but some things are abundantly clear. One of those is how the retail sector, and retail stocks in general, are going to react to the crisis. The answer is that big players are going to continue to grow, largely at the expense of smaller retailers. Bigger companies, with sophisticated websites and massive free shipping operations, have been thriving as small companies falter.


FINSUM: Think Amazon and Walmart, maybe Shopify (see other story about Shopify from today), as these companies will be the ones winning orders from customers over the short and long-term.

Published in Eq: Value
Friday, 08 May 2020 10:11

Stay Away from These Sectors

(New York)

This COVID crisis has made whole areas of the economy uninvestable. Many companies have had to halt operations entirely and as the lockdown drags on it has become more clear that many may not reach their previous levels for years (if ever). One problem is that many stocks and sectors appear to be “stubs”, or stocks that have very binary value propositions. Unless things go very right, they are worth almost nothing. Energy is a good example. If oil prices don’t come back and demand for oil stays low, what is the US oil sector worth? Big brock and mortar retailers are the same—what are they worth if the re-opening doesn’t go well?


FINSUM: This is a useful way to think about some sectors, but the outcomes are probably not as binary as they may seem right now.

Published in Eq: Energy
Wednesday, 06 May 2020 12:21

A Commercial Real Estate Crisis is Brewing

(New York)

Hotels are increasingly in trouble. About a quarter of all hotels in the US are now behind on their loan payments. COVID has obviously had a huge effect on hotel occupancy rates, which is now causing financial difficulties for the hotels and their lenders. The situation echoes other data from across the commercial real estate sector. For instance, Vornado Realty Trust yesterday said that it had only collected 53% of retail rents in April, and 90% of office rents.


FINSUM: We think it is critical to remember that re-opening is not a sign that all is clear in commercial real estate. Even once they re-open, restaurants and retail stores are still very likely to be doing MUCH less business than before they closed, and since a lot of cash reserves have probably been used up, their financial situation and thus the sector are just going to grow more precarious.

Published in Eq: Real Estate
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