Elle's Economy Archives - Tematica Research
Another aspect of our Connected Society is the datafication of nearly every aspect of our lives and the use of that data. As the cost of data storage and transmission rapidly slides towards zero and the cost of data collection devices also declines dramatically, more and more of our daily activities are being turned into opportunities for data collection.
A recent article on Bloomberg discussed how the aggregate number of mobile phone signals is being used to provide insight not just on consumer behavior, but on manufacturing plants and oil refineries.
As more and more data is produced from our every day activities and the devices that improve our lives, industries are developing to turn that data into actionable information. These are companies that sit at the intersection of our Connected Society and Disruptive Innovators investing themes.
Source: Oil Traders Are Now Watching Workers’ Phones to Spot Problems at Refineries
in: Digital Lifestyle,Elle's Economy,Middle Class Squeeze,Thematic Signals
A recent post on Recode reported that,
Airbnb, which is expected to go public next year, sits at the intersection of our Connected Society and Middle-Class Squeeze investing themes and illustrates that while we continue to point out why investors need to we aware of rising risk levels in the stock market, there are still plenty of areas that are experiencing significant growth.
According to data from Second Measure, Airbnb experience 30% growth in the US consumer market, with much of that growth coming from travels who live in the heartland area of the US with only a third of US consumers coming from the coastal states such as California and New York.
Even more impressive is that while many of these tech unicorns have failed to breakeven, Airbnb has reportedly generated positive EBITDA for two years.
While the overall markets look to be overpriced relative to fundamentals and if history is any teacher, the overall outlook for equity returns in the coming years is likely to be grim. That being said, there are still plenty of areas that will benefit from the long-term and powerful tailwinds in our investing themes.,
Source: Airbnb just beat Hilton in US consumer spending – Recode
in: Cleaner Living,Elle's Economy,Thematic Signals
Tags: Anheuser-Busch InBev, healthy eating, wine
We’ve all read the statistics on just how chubby Americans have become and all the lovely little health problems that come along with those extra pounds, from diabetes to heart disease not to mention the physical discomfort of lugging extra pounds around. Making healthier eating and drinking choices is part of our Clean Living investment theme and this week the Wall Street Journal ran an article discussing how as Americans increasingly lay off the booze, the world’s biggest brewers and liquor companies are having to push beyond their traditional fare and roll out teas, energy drinks, and nonalcoholic spirits.
As a confirmed wine lover who owns more wine fridges than I’m willing to publicly admit and who is also known to enjoy a great glass of scotch (travel tip British Airways offers Johnnie Walker Blue in first class) or a gin and tonic, (new favorite gin is Darjeeling) I’m struggling to wrap my head around kombucha or spiked coconut water (who knew there was such a thing) to replace the heaven of pouring a glass of Barolo, but I applaud the effort by a nation that clearly has room for improvement on the health front.
Americans’ consumption of ethanol, or pure alcohol, has declined sharply over the past couple of decades. Alcohol consumption stood at 8.65 liters per person in 2017—the most recent year for which data is available—compared with 10.34 liters in 1980, according to research firm Bernstein….
New data show that U.S. alcohol volumes dropped 0.8% last year, slightly steeper than the 0.7% decline in 2017. Beer was worst hit, with volumes down 1.5% in 2018, compared with a 1.1% decline in 2017, while growth in wine and spirits slowed, according to data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by industry tracker IWSR.
From an investors standpoint…
IWSR forecasts low- and no-alcohol products in the U.S.—still a small slice of the market—to grow 32.1% between 2018 and 2022, triple the category’s growth over the past five years.
And this trend has legs…
Diageo Chief Executive Ivan Menezes said last year that adults opting for lower alcohol options was “an important trend over the next many years” and that the company was “putting a lot of focus behind it.”
The bottom line is as consumers look to make healthier choices, companies are forced to respond by altering their offerings. Those that recognize the change and take advantage of it are part of our Clean Living investing theme, those that don’t… well … remember Blockbuster?
For the entire article go to: As Americans Drink Less Alcohol, Booze Makers Look Beyond the Barrel – WSJ
Retirement Plans Disappear When Parents And The Kids Return Home	
in: Aging of the Population,Elle's Economy,Middle Class Squeeze,Thematic Signals
Tags: Amazon (AMZN), baby boomers, Costco (COST), student debt, Walmart (WMT)
A recent Wall Street Journal article points out that the American dream is further out of reach for a growing number as plans for retirement go up in smoke thanks to the needs of aging parents and their adult children.
Rather than enjoying the fruits of their decades of labor, many are finding that their household burdens are growing as they enter their sunset years.
More Americans find themselves housing two generations simultaneously, just when they thought they could kick back and retire. Instead, they face the strain of added expenses, constant caregiving and derailed dreams.
This pressure is coming as our Aging of the Population investment theme sees more senior citizens with inadequate savings and a healthcare system that is unable to provide the care they need at a price they can afford. On the other end of the spectrum, adult children are struggling with student debt levels the likes of which this country has never before seen and years of lackluster wage growth.
This helps explain why discount retailers are expecting their customer base to continue to expand. Those companies that are able to help consumers push their dollars further [such as Amazon (AMZN), Costco (COST), Walmart (WMT)] have a growing set of tailwinds supporting them.
Source: ‘I Was Hoping to Be Retired’: The Cost of Supporting Parents and Adult Children – WSJ
in: Cleaner Living,Disruptive Innovators,Elle's Economy,Guilty Pleasures,Thematic Signals
Tags: LuluLemon (LULU)
I’ve written a few times this week here and here about how disruptive technologies can upend industries, quickly tossing leading companies into the back of the pack. Given that it is Friday afternoon where I am in Genova, Italy and we’ve had a week of horrendous storms, I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend that will see me spending a decent amount of time curled on the couch working through my required weekly reading. That brings me to the subject of this post, the disruptive technology of yoga pants.
Yoga pants? Seriously? Yep. I just read an article in Bloomberg entitled How America Became a Nation of Yoga Pants.
I personally think that all clothing ought to have at least some sort of stretch so yoga pants are right up my alley for everything from down dog to walking the dog to lounging when I’m dog tired and loving some doggone good wine. But I digress. How can yoga pants possibly reflect disruptive tech you ask? Bloomberg answers.
In 2014, teenagers began to prefer leggings over jeans. Then people started wearing athletic clothing (or athleisure, but it’s mostly just yoga pants) to run errands. Now they’re wearing yoga pants to the office. U.S. imports of women’s elastic knit pants last year surpassed those of jeans for the first time ever, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
To be fair, this preference for “elastic knit pants” may have some correlation to the health challenges of the American public resulting in expanding waistbands. But part of the shift in preferences is also reflective of our Clean Living (focusing on living a healthier lifestyle) and Guilty Pleasures investing themes. If you’ve seen the price of Lululemon Athletica (LULU) clothing you understand the guilt. Bloomberg reports that,
Yoga pants have similarly managed to plunge denim into an existential crisis, threatening Levi Strauss & Co. so deeply that it had to scramble to adapt. The company added stretch and contouring to its jeans while hoping to retain some of their rugged essence.
So where is the disruptive tech involved?
Ok, so that doesn’t sound terribly impressive, but then there is this.
Now there are fabric labs, especially in the athletic-wear space. Lululemon’s research arm does motion-capture testing and uses pressure sensors that allow researchers to test how garments work as they move. The team can even test “hand feel” to help it figure out how to “engineer sensations” for that critical commercial moment when you feel the fabric for the first time, said Plante.
Those labs have a large customer base to impress.
Those yoga pants account for a large portion of that spend.
Active bottoms and leggings are now a $1 billion industry, according to NPD Group analyst Marshal Cohen.
With a phenomenal range of available options.
The bottom line is that no industry, business model or product is immune from the threat of disruptive technology.
Source: How America Became a Nation of Yoga Pants – Bloomberg
Tags: Amazon (AMZN), groceries, Kroger (KR)
We’ve all heard endlessly about the death of brick and mortar, (we discuss how that death is overstated in our podcast with Katherine Cullen of the National Retail Federation next week) as online retailing continues to gain market share and is nearly equal that of brick and mortar as a percent of consumers’ spending. While online retailing has made enormous gains, brick and mortar is far from dead, but rather is evolving and disruptive technologies are part of that evolution, even in your local grocery store. A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed that an enormous amount of capital is being invested in improving the way the grocery industry operated, (emphasis mine).
Grocers are stocking their warehouses with robots and artificial intelligence to increase efficiency as competition for consumer spending on food picks up. Robots are relatively new to the food industry, where customer interaction is common and many goods like fruit are fragile and perishable. Startups are vying to sell supermarkets an array of robots that perform different tasks. Venture-capital firms have invested more than $1.2 billion in grocery technology this year, according to PitchBook, a financial-market data provider, double the total for 2017.
Online groceries retailing has been a relatively weak area for growth in online retail, despite the early efforts of now-defunct Webvan and HomeGrocer. But that looks like it will be changing as investments in disruptive technologies are increasing.
Altogether, spending on technology by many of the biggest U.S. food retailers could accelerate the adoption of online ordering for groceries. Deutsche Bank expects online orders to represent roughly 10% of the $800 billion grocery market by 2023, up from 3% today.
Learning from those who tried in the early dotcom era and failed, the WSJ article reports that according to Narayan Iyengar, senior vice president at Albertsons Cos., the second-biggest U.S. supermarket chain,
“We have to find a model where we can deliver groceries to customers’ homes and do it in a more profitable way,”
Beyond robotics, companies like Kroger are also getting into delivery.
Kroger also is testing a driverless grocery van with autonomous vehicle company Nuro Inc., and it entered the crowded meal-kit distribution market through a $700 million deal with startup Home Chef. The deals are expected to advance Kroger’s online prowess, but have hurt the company’s profits and weighed on recent earnings.
The bottom line is those disruptive technologies can and have upended all aspects of our lives. Our Disruptive Technology investing theme focuses on those companies providing the technologies that completely change the way we communicate, shop, eat, work, exercise and even play.
Source: Grocers Enlist Robots to Chase E-Commerce – WSJ
in: Disruptive Innovators,Elle's Economy,News,Thematic Signals
Tags: $KR, $OCDGF, Kroger (KR), Ocada Group
One of our investing themes is focused on Disruptive Innovators, those companies that are utterly upending the way the world works. This week we saw more signals concerning the major changes taking place in an industry infamous for its brutally low margins, grocery stores…. and it entails robots.
Kroger (KR) is working on improving its operations, and defending itself against Tematica Research all-star Amazon (AMZN), which in turn ought to translate into better cost management by replacing people with robots – a trend that is occurring across a wide range of industries and geographies. A recent article on Reuters reported that
Through the deal with its largest partner, Ocado will ratchet up its delivery business by building robotically operated warehouses for Kroger in the United States, raising the stakes in the battle with Amazon.com Inc. The Kroger deal is Ocado’s biggest yet, exceeding all of the warehouses the firm has built or plans to build with Morrisons in Britain, Casino in France, Sobeys in Canada and ICA Group in Sweden. … Kroger is expected to order 20 CFCs over the first three years of the agreement. Ocado shares rose as much as 6 percent on Tuesday, taking gains over the last year to 195 percent.
Source: Kroger set to place warehouse order with partner Ocado