Another Thanksgiving is in the books, and Wall Street was generally pleased with how the long weekend went. Stock index futures eased lower as investors awaited the latest data on inflation due out later this week, but shoppers enthusiastically returned to shopping malls and spent money online for the holidays. With November having already seen such a huge rebound for the stock market, even holding its own on Monday morning was a victory.
Moreover, a pair of stocks got nice boosts, with one of them having a direct connection to how Black Friday and the rest of the weekend went. Shopify (SHOP 1.11%) benefits when consumers are willing to spend. Meanwhile, Crown Castle (CCI -0.67%) doesn't necessarily have much to do with holiday sales, but the real estate investment trust looks as though it might be on the shopping list of a well-known activist investor. Here's what you need to know.
Shopify climbs on record sales
Shares of Shopify were up 4% in premarket trading early Monday. The e-commerce platform provider got a boost on news that the merchants who use its services had a great weekend.
Shopify said that its businesses sold a combined $4.1 billion in goods and services on Black Friday. That was a new record, with the numbers climbing 22% from the same day last year. The best rate of sales came just after noon, with the digital cash registers ringing up $4.2 million in a single minute.
Shopify noted that the most popular categories on its platform were clothing, personal care products, and jewelry. Average cart size came in just over $110, with the U.S., U.K., and Canada representing Shopify's best-selling countries. Interestingly, about 15% of orders crossed international boundaries, and global sales on the Shopify POS platform climbed 33% year over year.
E-commerce has grown dramatically over the past quarter-century, but the positive trend in shopping likely has years further to go. As Shopify continues to improve the capabilities of its software platform, investors are hopeful that the gains will keep filtering through to the share price over time.
Crown Castle gets attention from Elliott
Shares of Crown Castle climbed 6% in premarket trading on Monday morning. Investors were excited to hear that a top institutional investor with activist intentions is taking interest in the REIT.
Elliott Investment Management released a letter that it sent to Crown Castle's board of directors, along with a presentation that went through the stock's recent history. In what it called its "Restoring the Castle" campaign, Elliott noted that it had already called on Crown Castle three years ago to take steps to evaluate the likelihood of success of its strategy to build out its fiber communications network. However, Crown Castle didn't take Elliott seriously in the institutional investor's eyes, which Elliott argued has led to substantial underperformance compared to Crown Castle's data REIT peers.
Elliott believes that it will take new leadership to turn the ship, along with a broader strategic review of Crown Castle's fiber business. Elliott also threatened a proxy fight in advance of the May 2024 shareholder meeting if Crown Castle doesn't engage the activist investment company in a meaningful way.
Even with the move higher, Crown Castle remains almost 50% below its highs from 2021. With so much happening in the cloud computing arena, it's easy to understand why Elliott is frustrated with Crown Castle's underperformance -- and why there might be ways to unlock some shareholder value with a change of direction.
