Data Point of the Day: Retail Stock Price per Popularity "unit"

Shockingly, this stemmed not from any attempts to actively seek-out data to support my foregone conclusion thesis that Aeropostale is grossly over valued, but rather from aimless fucking-around on Facebook around 2am the other night, but that's neither here nor there.

Insofar as social network popularity can be considered a proxy for "real world" popularity, ARO's position on the above chart represents a significant outlier compared to the rest of the sample set.

Its painfully clear that at least per this information, that Aeropostale lacks the brand equity, and likely the "stickiness" that some of its competitors may.  Unless they can find a way to develop longer-term brand loyalty, I'm inclined to guess that whenever we see sustainable economic "recovery" or whatever.

I'm working on some more "traditional" research into ARO, hopefully I should be done in a week or two time depending, so stay tuned kiddies.

Comments

[Anal_yst]

I should clarify that ANF = Hollister + ANF, GPS = The Gap + Old Navy + Banana Republic. Did not see any data available for Ruehl, etc.

[Jay (market folly)]

Also don't forget that AEO includes: American Eagle, Aerie, and Martin + Osa.

Look forward to reading what else you come up with. ARO has always been the "cheaper" option to ANF and AEO, but the brand loyalty (or lack thereof) is definitely an interesting thing to watch.

[The Reformed Broker]

nicely done...aeropostale is highly popular with the french mail-carrier set.

[Anal_yst]

@ Jay

Ruehl and the smaller subs didn't have much/any "following," so they're not included. I was pretty surprised to see Gap and American Eagle co's have so large a following online, considering the generally sour outlook for both.

@ TRB

I'm not sure WHO ARO stuff is popular with, I was checking out their website the other day and its like they're selling the same garbage they did when I was still actually in their target demo. Just cheap, uninspired, crap. Of course, having never really liked any of their stuff even then I'm sure my view is a bit biased, but as this chart seems to indicate, I'm still very skeptical of their ability to keep the incremental customer's they've attracted recently once the economy shows some upward momentum (if/whenever that may be).

[Bulging Bracket]

My comment got eaten - wanted to hit the point that ARO seems likely to always underperform wrt ANF since it's not a brand to be proud of. It's an inferior good, like buying your clothes at wal-mart, so the price per fan is likely to be higher. Urban's relatively high price per fan looks to prove this, since they're targeting a market that doesn't like to brag about where they shop. They're hip individuals wearing and furnishing all the same stuff as all the other hip individualists, dammit!

Another possibility - ARO still hasn't done the line expansions of ANF/GPS. They're working on PS and killed Jimmy's but could be claimed as a growth story (though with 900 stores...)

I like the concept, but seems too gimmicky, what a consultant or a social marketing evangelist would come up with. Since I've resembled those remarks...

[Anal_yst]

@BB

A chicky friend of mine has done some work on the little tikes line(s) for some of these places, and they seem to think that'll be a big driver of growth (get 'em while they're young, I suppose).

Also, I realize this isn't exactly the "hard" data we like to analyze, but wtf, if someone wants to pay me (please?) to come up with "unique" analyses and metrics like this all day, hell, sign me the hell up!

[FYI]

For what its worth, Aeropostale had a relationship with the Big East Conference. Every year, every athlete at every Big East school received some kind of Aeropostale jacket/sweatshirt embroidered with the Big East logo. (That is a lot of athletes.) I believe they also had a sponsorship relationship with the Big Ten. (That is even more athletes).

Not sure if this branding relationship is still in place but I never saw GAP, ANF or AEO doing anything like this.

The jackets and sweatshirts were hideous.

[elephant]

Doesn't this chart rely a little heavily on the irrelevant price per share? What does the chart look like if ANF did a 5-1 reverse stock-split? It seems like using (P/E)/facebook "fan" would be a bit stronger.

Or maybe I missed the point..

[Anal_yst]

@ elephant

Why would you call price/share irrelevent if the idea is to determine the multiple investors are paying for "popularity" or "brand loyalty" when they buy shares of each company?

As you mentioned, Earnings/"popularity" could work also, but it captures different information.

[elephant]

@ Anal_yst

Using price/share assumes people want to buy a specific number of shares instead of investing a $ amount, right?

I'm just saying if I want to invest $1,000 each in companies A and B, it's somewhat irrelevant if it's 5 shares of A for $200 each and 100 shares of B for $10 each. They might just have different amounts of shares o/s. But if company A only trades 2x earnings/share, and company B trades 20x earnings/share, then I'm paying a much higher premium for company B.

P/E would be a better measure of the "premium" you're willing to pay. Divide that by facebook fan numbers and things change a bit - American Apparel doesn't have the facebook fans to justify paying a p/e of 26.