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Why Wayfair Inc. Stock Popped 37.7% in May

By Steve Symington – Jun 8, 2017 at 2:30PM

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The online home furnishings specialist rose after a great quarterly report.

What happened

Shares of Wayfair Inc. (W 6.63%) skyrocketed 37.7% in the month of May, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, after the online home furnishings specialist posted strong first-quarter results.

So what

Shares popped more than 22% on May 9, 2017 alone, the day after Wayfair revealed that quarterly revenue had climbed 28.6% to $960.8 million. On the bottom line, Wayfair remained unprofitable, posting an adjusted net loss of $41.4 million, or $0.48 per share. But analysts, on average, were modeling an even bigger net loss of $0.58 per share on revenue of just $935.6 million.

Game room decorated with Wayfair goods

IMAGE SOURCE: WAYFAIR.

Niraj Shah, Wayfair's CEO, co-founder, and co-chairman, noted that the company had maintained "strong momentum" to kick off the year as it forsakes bottom-line profitability to increase its share of the $600 billion home category in North American and Europe.

"With technology and innovation as the backbone of our business," Shah added, "we feel confident that we have built a category-leading retail brand that is exceptionally well positioned for long term growth and continued success."

Now what

Looking forward to the second quarter, Wayfair anticipates revenue of $1.03 billion to $1.055 billion, which was again well ahead of Wall Street's models at the time of the report for second-quarter sales of just over $990 million.

All things considered, there was nothing not to like about Wayfair's quarter, and investors were right to continue driving up the stock in the weeks following its announcement.

Steve Symington has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Wayfair. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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