The Billionaires, Dollar Stores and Soup Companies Cashing in on Coronavirus

I was recently quote by Vice’s Geoff Dembicki in “The Billionaires, Dollar Stores and Soup Companies Cashing in on Coronavirus.”

Here’s an excerpt:

There is no disputing that the coronavirus is a social and economic catastrophe—as many as 47 million Americans could lose their jobs amid a crash some experts fear could rival the Great Depression. But like any crisis throughout history, some people are cashing in.

“In a nutshell, if people are able to use a company’s products or services from their home, then this is a field day for these companies,” Charles Lewis Sizemore, a Dallas-based investment advisor, told VICE over the phone from Peru, where he was stranded due to the country’s airports shutting down because of coronavirus. “Not only are those companies not affected, they actually benefit.”

Among others, we discussed the prospects for Campbell’s Soup and DocuSign. In one case, the benefits are likely to be fleeting. In the other, more or less permanent.:

With millions of people working from home, a company that lets you sign documents without leaving your front door or having to interact with people seems poised for massive gains. “Something like DocuSign is fantastic because it allows business to go on as usual,” Sizemore said. The company’s revenue is up 38 percent since last year and may keep growing even as the pandemic wanes. “Are you going to want to go back to printing out paper and signing it and Fedexing it?” he said. “That doesn’t really make a lot of sense.”

This company falls into the “unexpected windfall” category. A year ago, Campbell Soup posted a quarterly net loss of $59 million, in part caused by the longer-term trend of people wanting to eat fresh food instead of canned meals. But with all the panic-buying, hoarding and stocking up taking place because of COVID-19, the company’s fortunes are temporarily turning around, resulting in it recently posting net income of $1.2 million in its most recent earnings report. This is probably just a one-time bump, however. “When life gets back to normal we’re not going to be eating canned goods in our houses anymore,” Sizemore said.

To read the full article, see The Billionaires, Dollar Stores and Soup Companies Cashing in on Coronavirus.

This article first appeared on Sizemore Insights as The Billionaires, Dollar Stores and Soup Companies Cashing in on Coronavirus