Growth in all of Amazon’s reported revenue lines accelerated for Q2, save AWS, which held at +17% growth (its 2-year rate improved by +230 bps QoQ). Focusing on just US eCommerce, paid units increased around +12% with sales a couple points less due to lowered prices on general merchandise and a shift in the sales mix to consumables, which generally have a lower average price as well as a lower merchandise margin rate.

As the data implied, Caesars Entertainment’s Las Vegas segment results were down for Q2, including table drop falling -5%, food & beverage down -6%, other down -9% (which is last year’s strong concert programming), hotel occupancy down -190 bps, and EBITDA down -9%. That said, the higher-end (we put Caesar’s Palace in that category) pulled higher going through June, as shown in the chart below. (We filter for >1 hour visits when trying to estimate hotel and casino revenue.

Avis’ Q2 results allow for a glimpse into travel trends during this current period of softer demand, especially for big-ticket travel like Vegas and destination resorts . Rental Days for Avis’ Americas segment increased by +1% and rate fell by -2%. The volume increase drove an improvement in the fleet utilization by 50bps to 70.7%. That, combined with lower fleet unit cost (-14%), led to a strong increase in EBITDA (+18%).

On the surface of Starbucks’ quarterly results, little improvement is visible for the US segment; US comp-transactions were again down -4% and profits fell -36%. However, as we highlighted in our last review of Starbucks’ results, it is succeeding in reclaiming the third place in people’s lives. We draw that conclusion as the dwell time and visit frequency improved once again, and especially for those visits exceeding 30 minutes – as shown in the table below.

Auto part retail, and specifically, O’Reilly (ORLY), Advance (AAP), and NAPA (GPC), are interesting businesses from an alternative data estimate perspective given that commercial (or DIFM) is half of the industry’s revenue and that’s billed business vs. POS / credit card. (For NAPA it’s nearly 80%.) Mobility data captures both – the DIY visit to the store and the store’s delivery truck leaving the store to deliver parts to a repair shops.

Most will know that the telecommunications industry is converging and transforming via new networks. By converging, we mean that legacy wireless brands are rapidly encroaching on cable’s broadband business with both new fiber builds and wireless broadband (5G fixed wireless), and cable is using Verizon’s network (a wholesale relationship) to offer wireless service and encroach on legacy wireless. Interesting, this week T-Mobile opened its network to cable to sell wireless service to small- to mid-sized enterprises.

Tesla’s quarterly results and commentary allowed us to delve deeper into our Advan Buysider theme / use case on Tesla’s autos business (on its other sentiment drivers – ZEV credits, FSD, Robotaxi, Optimus, Gronk, etc, we have no data or opinions). Q2 deliveries / production were already known, as such, it was the 2H tone / feel that mattered, and on this, management only offered that the environment was “challenging.” Moreover, they shared that they have pushed back the new lower-cost new model, again, to maximize production on existing models before the EV tax credit expires, which is September 30th.

As anticipated, Chipotle reported soft results for Q2, including comp-transactions declining -4.9%; total revenue of $3.14B was marginally above Advan’s $3.11B estimate, i.e. darn close. (The -4.9% is -260 bps of deceleration QoQ; Advan’s visits estimate decelerated -245bps QoQ, or roughly the same.) As a reminder, the fast-food industry is facing cyclical and secular pressure on sales – a topic that we presented to UBS’ clients this week, where the cyclical is consumption shifting to less expensive channels like food-at-home and convenience , and the secular is fewer calories consumed due to weight loss drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc).

As previewed , June retail sales increased at a slower pace than May, which itself was down from April’s; additionally, CPI showed the beginning of tariff costs being passed through to the consumer. Both were modest shifts, and so far in July, things have broadly firmed up, which we suspect is early back-to-school activity. This back-&-forth in momentum has been a persistent pattern since 2022, with seasonal periods picking up nicely (last Christmas was a blow-out holiday, for example) followed by broader and deeper troughs in between.

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