Throwback to a Novel November for BBWI

Specialty retailer Bath & Body Works (NYSE: BBWI), a part of L Brands, offers exclusive fragrances for the body and home, body lotions, candles, home fragrance diffusers, and similar wellness and beauty products. The BBWI stock analysis shows that in the past year, the stock has returned 79.71% on investment.

The company’s impressive profit-generating capability and high level of insider ownership make the stock attractive for investors. Moreover, it is also a favorite of Wall Street, with most of the analysts rooting for a Buy, making the consensus rating for the stock a Strong Buy based on 12 Buys and 3 Holds.

Last month, Goldman Sachs analyst Kate McShane, too, initiated coverage for Bath & Body with a Buy rating and $93 price target. The average Bath & Body Works price target is $90.67.

There are a lot of fundamental strengths to be discussed about the company. However, here we will look into its website traffic details a little more deeply to understand how the company is doing from the point of view of customers, and why it features in the list of TipRanks’ top trending websites currently.

The 2020 Website Traffic Boom

Before diving into the details, let us refresh our memory about the remarkable sales that Bath & Body had witnessed in 2020. The onslaught of the pandemic and the series of lockdowns led people to make the most of their time indoors. The company’s hand sanitizer, soap, body care, and home fragrance categories drove impressive growth in 2020.

Obviously, the website traffic during 2020 had spiked, as most of the shopping was being done from home worldwide due to the series of lockdowns. However, once the economies started to reopen, there was a sharp drop in visits to the Bath & Body website. The website visits remained consistently low throughout 2021, starting January 2021.

2021 Ended on a Better Note?

That said, website traffic trends from November last year looked encouraging after almost a year of a lull. During the month, a sequential rise of 63.93% in website visits globally from unique users was recorded.

Moreover, if we take website visits from the U.S. out of the equation, traffic inflow from unique visitors was up 36.14% from October levels, to 1.3 million.

Possible Reasons Behind the Rally

This increase in website visits is likely due to two factors: the rising cases of the Omicron variant making shoppers wary of going out, and the holiday season coming up in a few weeks from that time.

The Black Friday sale of 2021 was probably the biggest crowd puller, with attractive discounts, gift packages, gift coupons, etc., promising a merry Christmas and a happy new year to its customers.

Also, the higher level of thriftiness among shoppers due to uncertainty across economies may also have led them to the Bath & Body website to try some “affordable luxury” ahead of the holiday season.

Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether the uptrend is sustainable, once the data for December of 2021 is out. Watch this space for more.

Disclosure: At the time of publication, Chandrima Sanyal did not have a position in any of the securities mentioned in this article.