Public equity investors use Apptopia's app data estimates to identify leading indicators and trend shifts in tickers six to eight weeks ahead of consensus. Check out several examples we've shared in the past where Apptopia's estimates began changing in real time (our data updates daily), but sales estimates did not catch up until later. Time is money, as they say.
Apptopia's Director of Equity Research, Tom Grant, recently sat down with Neudata to discuss trends we're seeing in our data across the travel industry— covering airlines (excluding low-cost carriers), online travel apps, and cruise lines. Despite rising concerns over the new Omicron variant, Apptopia's data estimates indicate significant growth across the travel sector in Q4 2021. Let's dive into it.
Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean continue their above-market growth in 4Q21, QTD
I've never been on a cruise (perhaps because I've watched Titanic one too many times) but even with the threat of COVID, it appears cruisers are going to cruise. We saw very strong US downloads growth YoY for cruise lines across the board, with an increase of 458%. Our analysis included Carnival, Norwegian, Disney, Royal Caribbean, Viking, MSC and Celebrity.
Celebrity, a smaller cruise line owned by Royal Caribbean (NYSE: RCL), is leading the way with an impressive 814% downloads growth in Q3 2021, and 990% downloads growth in Q4 2021 YTD. Royal Caribbean is also estimated to have impressive downloads growth at 551% in Q4 2021 YTD, and growing faster than the group as a whole.
While Carnival is growing as well, it's trailing the industry as a whole, and still losing mobile app download market share to Royal Caribbean.
RCL mobile activity diverges from estimates
Now comes the fun part—investors can use Apptopia's Bloomberg Terminal App to overlay Bloomberg fundamental data on top of Apptopia mobile app data to uncover even more insights and opportunities. Let's take a closer look at Royal Caribbean (NYSE: RCL):
The yellow indicates Apptopia downloads estimates for the Royal Caribbean mobile app, wheres as the blue represents the consensus sales estimates.
We can see the downloads of the app (which, investors should note, is highly correlated with Royal Caribbean passenger ticket revenue) is rising very quickly in 4Q21, while sales estimates continue to fall. While Wall Street cuts estimates, consumers are increasingly downloading the mobile app.
This is a signal that not everyone has access to or is paying attention to. These types of signals that Apptopia data uncovers present an opportunity for investors to research further and determine if an investment is the right move for their portfolio.
Invest smarter with mobile data
To stay up to date on the travel industry, access the Apptopia application on the Bloomberg Terminal via {APPS MOBILE <GO>} and get a free two-week trial. Terminal users can also access via this link. The application is available for individual use and via firm-wide licensing.
