90 West Data Cross Country Insights

Hope we had a chance to say hello at the Eagle Alpha conference this week…if not, respond to this email so we can connect via zoom.

This short weekly email includes interesting charts from our unique panel of US Consumer Transaction Data & our unique panel of US Consumer Gift Card data.

Generally: One Micro, One Macro, and One Just Interesting

Informational Purposes Only — Not Investment Advice

Three Interesting things I’ve seen this week in 90 West’s data:

1- Cruise Ticket Floating Higher

2- How Much Does It Cost To Date

3- Open Loop vs Closed Loop; Open Loop Cards Higher Initial Balance & Gaining Popularity for Holiday Gift Giving

Review of spending at the three major cruise companies, Royal, Norwegian, Carnival. You can clearly sea the average ticket steadily climbing since mid-2021.

The number of monthly transactions indexed to January 2019.

Source: 90 West Data, LLC

For our panel of US consumers, E-Harmony & Match.com have the highest average ticket while Bumble has been the lowest until recently.

Overall, across the online dating transactions we monitor, spend is trending up while number of transactions is flat/down. Dating price elasticity?

Source: 90 West Data, LLC

Recall, Open Loop1 cards are gift cards that can be spent anywhere. Closed Loop2 cards are single merchant gifts cards.

The first chart compares the average initial balance of these cards at time of purchase (or initial funding).

Open loop average initial balance dips at the holidays when many more gift cards are purchased & given.

Closed loop average initial balance (regardless of merchant) has been steady over the past 7+ years of history.

A more pronounced spike is evident in the number of transactions around the holidays for Open Loop cards, particularly in the past two years.

Source: 90 West Data, LLC

This is not investment advice