Wayfair (W) & Its Peers Critical Review

Wayfair (NYSE:W) is one of 285 publicly-traded companies in the “Specialty Retail” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its competitors? We will compare Wayfair to similar businesses based on the strength of its analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, valuation, dividends, earnings, profitability and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and target prices for Wayfair and its competitors, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Wayfair	1	12	15	3	2.65
Wayfair Competitors	3675	15594	21618	590	2.46

Wayfair currently has a consensus target price of $128.57, suggesting a potential upside of 14.71%. As a group, “Specialty Retail” companies have a potential upside of 7.35%. Given Wayfair’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Wayfair is more favorable than its competitors.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

89.7% of Wayfair shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 51.9% of shares of all “Specialty Retail” companies are held by institutional investors. 18.4% of Wayfair shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 20.5% of shares of all “Specialty Retail” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Wayfair and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Wayfair	-1.21%	-5.14%	4.63%
Wayfair Competitors	-3.62%	-13.67%	3.21%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Wayfair and its competitors revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Wayfair	$12.46 billion	-$313.00 million	-89.67
Wayfair Competitors	$7.06 billion	$386.47 million	29.92

Wayfair has higher revenue, but lower earnings than its competitors. Wayfair is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Volatility and Risk

Wayfair has a beta of 3.1, suggesting that its share price is 210% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Wayfair’s competitors have a beta of 1.91, suggesting that their average share price is 91% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Wayfair beats its competitors on 9 of the 13 factors compared.

About Wayfair

Wayfair Inc. provides e-commerce business in the United States and internationally. The company offers approximately thirty million products for the home sector. It offers online selections of furniture, décor, housewares, and home improvement products through its sites consisting of Wayfair, Joss & Main, AllModern, Birch Lane, Perigold, and Wayfair Professional. The company offers its products under the Three Posts and Mercury Row brand name. The company was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.