Getting away from it all is a top priority for many consumers as the school year draws to a close and summer approaches.
Optimism about airlines and online booking platforms helped these stocks last week, following positive earnings suspensions, boosting CE100™. category “transfer”.
Delta Airlines led the sector, names CE100™, up 15% over the past week. In its report, the company said there was a “rebound” in demand, and also noted that March was its best sales month ever.
See also: Travel refunds powered by Delta, American Airlines earnings reports
This is the connected economy, after all, and it stands to reason that other companies that make it possible to get away from it all should make money, too. Airbnb gained 5% for the week, and Booking Holdings is up 2.8%.
The upward movement in the names of the ‘movement’ was not enough to prevent the CE100™ general index from continuing its overall decline, falling 1.7% for the week.
This negativity fared slightly better than the broader markets’ performance, with the Nasdaq down just over 3%. After this week of relative outperformance, the CE100™ index is down 19.5% for the year.
CE100 performance vs. Wider indicators
Source: PYMNTS
If people were opening their wallets to book flights and book rooms (Marriott, a component of the “fun” pillar, rose 10%), they would probably back off. else areas to do so.
Beware of consumer spending
Headwinds continue to face consumer spending, both for online and offline retailers. Withdrawing here would give consumers the cash to work, book, and spend on summer vacations.
Overall headwinds continued to conflict with discretionary spending. As noted in this space in recent days, in “Digital Economy Payments April 2022 US Edition How Consumers Pay in the Digital World,” P2P payments have fallen off a bit. The share of consumers shopping for groceries fell one percentage point to 88% and retail shopping fell two percentage points to 60% as prices rose overall.
Our own data also found that 19% of consumers purchased travel services in March – a record number since the monthly survey series began in December.
See also: Price hikes stop consumers before they reach digital wallets and P2P apps
Connecting the dots here, then, shows that increased travel spending comes at the expense of spending in other channels. Thus, the three worst-performing names in the CE100 are all based on consumer spending. Last week saw Sezzle, a name within the “pay and receive” pillar, drop more than 20%. Within the “Shopping” hub, Vroom is down 10.3%, and MercadoLibre is down 8.7% over the week — helping to bring that connected economy down 35.8% for the year.
Retailers hope, of course, that inflation has peaked, but with everything more expensive, choices must be made. Businesses related to leisure, vacation and travel are the beneficiaries, but it remains to be seen if this trend is sustainable.
Read more: Today in the data: Inflation affects everything
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