The latest results are in from October activity in the Baird/Digital Commerce 360 Ecommerce Stock Index. The month saw little movement overall, mostly keeping pace with the S&P 500. Nevertheless, Carvana, Xometry and Klaviyo each stood out with significant price movement.
These shifts underscored several key trends at work in today’s markets.
October takeaways from Baird/Digital Commerce 360 Ecommerce Stock Index
- The Baird/Digital Commerce 360 Ecommerce Stock Index was flat in October, similar to the S&P 500, but is up more than 21% year to date on an equal-weighted basis.
- Among the index’s categories, Online Marketplaces saw the best performance, up 6% from the previous month’s close.
- Top performers in the marketplace and Online Retail categories included Carvana (30% increase), Xometry (up 28%) and Instacart (up 11%).
This index is a collaboration between Digital Commerce 360 and the wealth management, capital markets, asset management and private equity firm Baird. It is intended to provide perspective into how companies and technology providers that power digital commerce are being valued in public markets. The index contains four categories capturing activity extending throughout the Americas and China:
- Online Marketplaces
- Online Retail
- Ecommerce Tech
- International Companies
Readers should note that this index complements insights from Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000 data. That database specifically tracks online retailers and their web sales in North America. The Baird/Digital Commerce 360 Ecommerce Stock Index, meanwhile, covers both B2C retail and B2B ecommerce companies, in addition to the technology vendors that serve them, with a broader focus on global activity. All commentary and reporting is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be financial advice.
Read September’s ecommerce stock index results here.
October ecommerce stock index results
“The Baird/Digital Commerce Ecommerce Stock Index was flat for the month of October, mirroring the overall performance of the S&P index as investors awaited quarterly earnings from a large swatch of public companies,” said Colin Sebastian, Baird’s managing director and senior research analyst covering internet/ecommerce. “For the year to date, the index is up over 21% on an equal-weighted basis, which is slightly ahead of the S&P index.”
Nevertheless, performance varied by category, with Online Marketplaces outperforming other sub-sectors that the index tracks. Meanwhile, struggles could be seen in International Ecommerce stocks.
“With respect to sub-sectors of ecommerce included in the index, October was a mixed bag, with Online Marketplaces trading 6% higher, followed by Ecommerce Technology, which was flat, while Online Retail declined 2% and International Ecommerce declined 7%, each compared to the end of September,” Sebastian said.
Growth outliers among these stocks highlighted trends seen in the index’s previous two months, with the share price for Carvana, the ecommerce platform for used car sales, still up another 30% on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s move to ease interest rates.
In addition, Xometry traded up 28% month over month, recovering from a pullback in September. Meanwhile, the online grocery platform Instacart was up 11%. In Ecommerce Technology, the top performers were the marketing automation platform Klaviyo, up 12%, and Wix, a website-builder-as-a-service platform that supports ecommerce sites, up 4%.
“Baird views the overall October index performance as reflective of ongoing healthy growth trends across the ecommerce landscape, offset by some concerns over mixed online and consumer discretionary spending trends outside of the United States and worries over potential macro headwinds heading into the key holiday shopping season,” Sebastian explained.
Stocks leading the index in October
Carvana’s 30% increase in share price for October echoed movement from September. The company reported earnings results for its fiscal third quarter on Oct. 30. In those results, it cited $3.7 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 32% from the same quarter a year earlier, with 108,651 units sold. It credited strong demand, as well as its own work on three fronts:
- Improving its customer offering
- Increasing awareness, understanding and trust in its brand
- Increasing inventory selection and other benefits of scale
For Xometry, the digital manufacturing services company that operates an online business-to-business marketplace, third-quarter revenue that it reported in November increased 19% year over year to reach a record $142 million. Xometry credited growth of its marketplace revenue, which was up 24% year over year to reach $127 million for the quarter.
“Q3 2024 represented another record-setting quarter for our company,” said Randy Altschuler, the CEO at Xometry. “Powered by our AI-driven marketplace, we achieved record revenues, record gross profit and record marketplace gross margin while capturing additional market share globally.”
Instacart, which is scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings results Nov. 12, recorded $8.2 million in gross transaction value during its second quarter (a 10% increase year over year). The company has been adding new retailers to its last-mile delivery app in 2024, including names such as Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG), Hy-Vee and Kohl’s.
Instacart gross transaction volume by year
The demand Instacart is chasing is clear. Interest in fast delivery has persisted for shoppers in 2024, with more than 68% of 1,013 online consumers surveyed by Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights recently saying it was a priority when selecting delivery options.
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