Earnings Insights Q2 2020: AAPL, PYPL, SPOT, SHOP, EXPE, NEXT

Last week, Microsoft led the charge of the mega-corporations reporting their 2Q earnings, and it is followed this week by more of the world’s largest companies.

In the upcoming week, an estimated 890 public companies will report their 2Q performance. While next week will have even a larger number of companies reporting, the world’s leading companies – including Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook – will be reporting this week.

As always, we’ve prepared digital insights on the companies that are reporting. This week, we have earnings insights on Apple, Paypal, Spotify, Shopify, Expedia, and Next UK. Keep in mind that all the data below is desktop data only.

AAPL Earnings Insights

Apple Earnings Date: July 30, 2020

Apple experienced significant digital growth in 2Q, particularly in the iPhone and Mac sections of its website.

• US visits to URLs including /buy-iphone/ on apple.com grew 46.6% YOY in 2Q. In April these URLs were visited 3.8 million times, the most traffic on these pages since the launch of the iPhone 11 in September 2019.
• US visits to /buy-mac/ saw even a bigger increase, with 64.4% of YOY growth in 2Q. For Mac computers, traffic was especially high in May, as the 4.6 million visits to these URLs was the highest monthly traffic to /buy-mac/ URLs since November 2018.
• Purchases on apple.com are routed through the subdomain store.apple.com, and this subdomain experienced a 52.9% YOY increase in visits. QOQ, traffic to this subdomain grew 78.3%, which seems to indicate that store closings did not prevent US consumers from buying Apple products in 2Q.

PYPL Earnings Insights

PayPal Earnings Date: July 29, 2020

As the world’s economies have largely operated online in 2Q due to the pandemic, Paypal seems to be playing a larger role than ever in worldwide commerce.

• Worldwide visits to paypal.com hit an all-time high in 2Q. Paypal averaged 305 million monthly visits on desktop, which was the first time it crossed the 300 million mark.
• Worldwide referral traffic to PayPal increased 23.8% YOY as consumer activity online grew in the past quarter due to the COVID pandemic. In all four previous quarters, referral traffic to paypal.com had shrunk.
• The US, and PayPal’s other top 5 markets (DE, UK, FR, IT, AU), had split almost evenly in terms of traffic and growth. YOY, US visits to PayPal grew 16.1% to the other top markets’ 15.8%.

SPOT Earnings Insights

Spotify Earnings Date: July 29, 2020

Podcasting continues to take off on Spotify following multiple acquisitions and announcements in 2Q.

• Worldwide monthly unique visitors (MUVs) to open.spotify.com, Spotify’s online music platform, increased by 26.3% YOY in 2Q. The 34 million MUVs to the platform in April 2020 was the all-time highest number of unique visitors to the platform.
• Worldwide visits to Spotify’s podcaster subdomain grew 204% YOY in 2Q, as the company continues to work on its podcasting offering. The QOQ growth of 40% to the subdomain was the highest QOQ growth in the past 5 quarters.
• US visits to URLs containing /purchase/, where users can sign up to Spotify Premium, grew 36.5% QOQ.

SHOP Earnings Insights

Shopify Earnings Date:

Shopify’s various subdomains all indicate significant YOY and QOQ growth spurred by the shift to online commerce.

• US MUVs to myshopify.com are up 33.3% YOY and 26.9% QOQ. 2Q had the highest growth rate in the past 5 quarters both YOY and QOQ.
• US visits to pay.shopify.com, a relatively new subdomain, launched in October 2018 grew 514% YOY and more than doubled from 1Q to 2Q, as the number of visits grew from 1.34 million to 2.72 million.
• Worldwide visits to Shopify’s account management subdomain, accounts.shopify.com, increased 91% QOQ to 15.6 million visits, which was the highest number of visits ever to this subdomain.

EXPE Earnings Insights

Expedia Earnings Date: July 30, 2020

Although online travel as a whole is suffering from restrictions and a lack of demand, one Expedia holding is surprisingly overperforming.

• According to a new Similarweb travel dataset, online bookings for the Expedia group fell 73.5% YOY in 2Q. In June, bookings fell 57.5% YOY, indicating that the trend is slowly improving as consumers consider their options for a summer vacation.
• US visits to Expedia.com, the group’s main website, fell similarly in 2Q, as visits fell from 33.7 million visits in 2Q 2019 to 9.1 million visits in 2Q 2020.
• The surprising winner is VRBO, Expedia’s own vacation rental platform. While US visits to the platform fell 8.3% YOY in 2Q, June was marked by a 30.1% YOY increase in US visits to VRBO, signaling strong demand from consumers. Interestingly, VRBO has now overtaken expedia.com as Expedia group’s biggest asset in terms of US visits.

NEXT Earnings Insights

Next UK Earnings Date: July 29, 2020

Next UK shut down its operations from late March to mid-April, negatively impacting its 2Q results. However, the online shopping website rebounded towards the end of the quarter.

• YOY, UK visits to next.co.uk fell 20.6%, as the website was closed for the first two weeks of the quarter and proceeded to operate at limited capacity. However, traffic only fell 3.4% YOY in June, indicating a return to normalcy towards the end of the quarter.
• Analyzing Next’s funnel with Funnel Analysis tells a similar story: there was a drop of 79.1% YOY in converted visits in April, due to the self-imposed limitations, but a less severe drop of 17.5% in June as the website ramped up the business again.
• UK visits to /register/ URL are up 26.9% QOQ and 5.2% YOY in June, reinforcing the thesis of a hard negative impact followed by a strong recovery for Next UK throughout the month of June.

Next Week’s Earnings Insights

We’ll be back next week with more digital insights on many more companies that are about to report.

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Have a great week!