Texas Border Business

Airbnb warns 2020 revenue can fall by half amid COVID-19 hit

Home rental company Airbnb has projected its revenue can fall about 54% to some $2.2 billion this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The projection, made in a scenario shown to investors, is preliminary as the length of the pandemic’s impact on the travel industry cannot be predicted, according to the report. Airbnb said earlier this week it had raised $1 billion from private equity firms Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners. The investment’s terms, however, implied reduced valuation of the company. Source: Reuters.

What’s causing empty grocery store shelves and what to expect in the weeks ahead

As the coronavirus pandemic reached American shores, grocery chains — both large and small — experienced an unexpected surge in demand for many products, triggered by a wave of panic buying on the part of consumers. Not only have there been demand spikes for products like sanitizing wipes, cleaning agents and toilet tissue, but also for staple food items.

Nallan Suresh, Ph.D., University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of operations management and strategy in the University at Buffalo School of Management, says the industry was unprepared due to the more-lean grocery Supply Chain model that has become the standard over the past 10-15 years. Source: Newswise

Coronavirus Shortage: Looking for a Webcam? Webcams hard to find as we all work from home

It’s not just toilet paper that’s hard to find. For tech-savvy consumers, webcams, those little plug-in cameras for letting you broadcast to the internet, are now missing in action, too. Logitech, the company that dominates webcam sales, is sold out of everyone it makes. Amazon and Best Buy are out of stock. And price gougers on eBay are selling used models for as high as $420, or more than twice as much as the most expensive Logitech model, the $199 Brio. “Global demand for webcams is needed from all remote workers, students and in the health care space,” notes analyst Jeremiah Owyang, who himself was able to snag a unit in early March, before they sold out. Source: USA Today

Netflix rolls out more features for parental control globally

Netflix Inc on Tuesday rolled out a number of features for parental control on its streaming platform, including options to filter out select titles and review what children are watching.

The company also added a feature to protect individual profiles by using a passcode to prevent children from accessing content not suited for them. The company’s latest move is aimed at gaining more trust from parents, who are looking for options to limit screen time as well as choose programs that can be watched by their children. Netflix also said parents can remove individual series or films on their kids’ profiles, and review those under “profile and parental controls” within account settings. Source: Reuters

We need to stop panic buying – expert comment

Pictures of empty supermarket shelves, and stories of supermarkets putting limits on items dominates the news as people stockpile due to Coronavirus. Jan Godsell, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy at WMG, University of Warwick offers her expert comment on why it needs to stop. With more consumers shopping online, and rationing in place, donations to food banks have fallen at a time when they are needed more than ever. Perhaps it is time to consider, how we can move food banks on-line too. Donate food, as part of our on-line shop or as a direct donation. With digital food bank vouchers, enabling the most vulnerable to get direct supply from a retailer. These are unprecedented times. The basic principle of good supply chain management is to balance demand and supply. The retailers are working really hard to ensure that we have all the essential items that we need. We can help too, by buying responsibly and supporting the more vulnerable. Source: Newswise

Google Reveals Location Data to Help Public Health Officials

Google is revealing anonymized location data on the movements of people in 131 countries as a guide for public health officials during the coronavirus pandemic. The reports, available in PDF format, show how visits to broad categories of places—such as retail and leisure establishment, grocery and pharmacy stores, and residential areas—have changed in the past two months. The data show median daily visits to those categories for the three days ending March 29, compared with the median number of visits between January 3 and February 6. The idea is to help public health officials around the world evaluate how well social distancing measures are working and identify places where new policies might be needed. For example, if too many people are gathering at public transit stations, it may be a sign that more frequent bus or train service might be needed. Source: Wired

The post April 2020: News Briefs appeared first on Texas Border Business.