Rite Aid ($RAD) topped earnings estimates and beat revenue expectations, sending the stock up before the market open on Thursday September 26. Which in laymans terms, basically means Rite Aid keeps trucking along and will continue to sell medication and Over The Counter drugs and other things you need in the middle of the night without fail.
The company has grown job postings over the course of the year, adding 65% since a low in March.
We also like the strong rise in "were here" counts. That's just the amount of people who check-in on Facebook when they go to any location, and the fact that the number keeps going up is fantastic. It's an increasing sign that Rite Aid continues to get customers, who are happy, and come back, and engage, and spend money, and yadda yadda, you know how this goes. More people more dough, very simple.
All that could hurt Rite Aid in the long run is the fact that it is shrinking its footprint at the same time competitors are consolidating. As Amazon ($AMZN) is expanding its reach throughout the healthcare business, we're interested to see how other brands like CVS ($CVS), Walgreens and Duane Reade ($WBA), and others will adjust to the market. And we only need look at sporting goods retailers and booksellers to see how that went in the long run.
In the past five months alone they've shuttered almost 1,400 stores, which is a -30% drop since April. If that can turn around, they would be golden. Of course, maybe identifying redundant or underperforming stores and eliminating them is a good thing for Rite Aid as long as they keep hiring and doing well in all other metrics we can track, and that's on top of the stock market. But we here at Thinknum love alternative data more than being yet another stock market quack.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- More opioid makers are going bankrupt - and it's showing up in the alternative data
- Johnson and Johnson may be slowing its roll globally - but not in the US
- Allergan's data suggested it was already weighing a $63 billion mega-deal
