Financial Insights Overview
The Weather Never Stops
HOW DOES WEATHER AFFECT DEMAND THROUGHOUT THE SEASON? Weather strongly influences consumer buying behavior, and is a major cause of volatility in sales and earnings for retailers and restaurants. Planalytics’ Financial Insights is the only research service for effectively and accurately tracking, quantifying, interpreting and anticipating the effects of weather on retail and restaurant sales. MEASURE THE IMPACT Last year’s weather is “baked into” last year’s sales data and is then carried forward into this year’s sales and earnings estimates. It’s an unintentional error that leads to unwanted surprises. When you look at a business as a whole, the weather only repeats itself year-to-year about 15-20% of the time. If the market-by-market, week-by-week weather volatility is left untouched when building sales forecasts, you are essentially expecting last year to repeat. It rarely does. Financial Insights provides weekly, monthly, and quarterly coverage of 78 public retailers and restaurants in the United States, calculating “weatherdriven demand” based on each company’s store locations and weather drivers specific to the type of merchandise or service they provide. This quantification of the impact of weather on sales is provided back to 2009 and 11 months into the future.
Take Action to Improve Weather’s Impact MOVING BEYOND WEATHER DATA There is no shortage of weather data. However, collecting and quality checking the data, cleansing and summarizing the information are all challenging, time-consuming undertakings. And guess what? This weather data has no real value until it is converted into a straightforward and usable business context. What does 53°F and light rain mean to a business? The answer is different in Boston than in Baltimore; different in Baton Rouge than in Birmingham. The answer also changes if such a day comes in March, June or October. Weather’s influence on the purchases consumers make or the activities they choose to pursue is complex and nuanced. Weather data alone will not provide the actionable insights to make better decisions.
IT’S ALL IN THE ANALYTICS Planalytics has analyzed over 10 trillion point-of-sale transactions across 8,500 product categories. It is only through detailed analytics that combine sales and weather data that the weather’s influence on consumer purchasing can be isolated and accurately measured. Planalytics’ deep experience enables us to quickly and accurately identify primary weather drivers, understand weather sensitivity by location and time, and calculate exactly how much demand will be affected by the weather. WE PROVIDE ANSWERS Our weather-driven demand analytics, online tools, reports, and client services team empower businesses to effectively manage weather’s impact. We provide more than a surface-level, subjective view of the weather. We put weather in a business perspective and provide numbers a company can use (% change or unit change) to more effectively plan. Our institutional investor clients use Financial Insights to more correctly understand and anticipate upside and downside surprises in monthly/quarterly comp sales, as well as quarterly earnings. NEW TO PLANALYTICS? Sign up for our complimentary Business Weather updates at www.planalytics.com/register-for-updates or contact Jaclyn Stratten at [email protected] or 610.854.2269.
GET WEATHERIZED 920 Cassatt Road Suite 300 phone 800.882.5881 fax 610.640.0147 www.planalytics.com
Berwyn, PA 19312
100 Pall Mall St James London SW1Y 5HP phone +44 (0) 20 7321 3715 fax +44 (0) 20 7321 3880
UK
HOW DOES WEATHER AFFECT DEMAND THROUGHOUT THE SEASON? Weather strongly influences consumer buying behavior, and is a major cause of volatility in sales and earnings for retailers and restaurants. Planalytics’ Financial Insights is the only research service for effectively and accurately tracking, quantifying, interpreting and anticipating the effects of weather on retail and restaurant sales. MEASURE THE IMPACT Last year’s weather is “baked into” last year’s sales data and is then carried forward into this year’s sales and earnings estimates. It’s an unintentional error that leads to unwanted surprises. When you look at a business as a whole, the weather only repeats itself year-to-year about 15-20% of the time. If the market-by-market, week-by-week weather volatility is left untouched when building sales forecasts, you are essentially expecting last year to repeat. It rarely does. Financial Insights provides weekly, monthly, and quarterly coverage of 78 public retailers and restaurants in the United States, calculating “weatherdriven demand” based on each company’s store locations and weather drivers specific to the type of merchandise or service they provide. This quantification of the impact of weather on sales is provided back to 2009 and 11 months into the future.
Take Action to Improve Weather’s Impact MOVING BEYOND WEATHER DATA There is no shortage of weather data. However, collecting and quality checking the data, cleansing and summarizing the information are all challenging, time-consuming undertakings. And guess what? This weather data has no real value until it is converted into a straightforward and usable business context. What does 53°F and light rain mean to a business? The answer is different in Boston than in Baltimore; different in Baton Rouge than in Birmingham. The answer also changes if such a day comes in March, June or October. Weather’s influence on the purchases consumers make or the activities they choose to pursue is complex and nuanced. Weather data alone will not provide the actionable insights to make better decisions.
IT’S ALL IN THE ANALYTICS Planalytics has analyzed over 10 trillion point-of-sale transactions across 8,500 product categories. It is only through detailed analytics that combine sales and weather data that the weather’s influence on consumer purchasing can be isolated and accurately measured. Planalytics’ deep experience enables us to quickly and accurately identify primary weather drivers, understand weather sensitivity by location and time, and calculate exactly how much demand will be affected by the weather. WE PROVIDE ANSWERS Our weather-driven demand analytics, online tools, reports, and client services team empower businesses to effectively manage weather’s impact. We provide more than a surface-level, subjective view of the weather. We put weather in a business perspective and provide numbers a company can use (% change or unit change) to more effectively plan. Our institutional investor clients use Financial Insights to more correctly understand and anticipate upside and downside surprises in monthly/quarterly comp sales, as well as quarterly earnings. NEW TO PLANALYTICS? Sign up for our complimentary Business Weather updates at www.planalytics.com/register-for-updates or contact Jaclyn Stratten at [email protected] or 610.854.2269.
GET WEATHERIZED 920 Cassatt Road Suite 300 phone 800.882.5881 fax 610.640.0147 www.planalytics.com
Berwyn, PA 19312
100 Pall Mall St James London SW1Y 5HP phone +44 (0) 20 7321 3715 fax +44 (0) 20 7321 3880
UK
