The COVID-19 outbreak and national quarantines have devastated companies, businesses, and whole sectors over the national economies across the globe. Nevertheless, there are some parties benefiting from the crisis, sectors, and companies which thrive and make a huge amount of profit.
Here is a list of the sectors and companies benefiting from the COVID-19 crisis:
Local pharmacies
In times when a lot of business was closed – the local pharmacies not only remained open, but most of them reported increased revenue due to the higher demand in protection against COVID-19 items (as gloves, masks, etc..) purchase.
Grocery and consumer goods
The supermarkets’ business has not seen any decline. In fact, the majority of the stores report increased demand due to people stocking up on any sort of goods.
Grocery delivery
Companies in the sector are experiencing increase in their services. Those companies are blooming and have difficulties to support the extra demand. For example, the online shop and delivery company Ocado stopped their website at some time, as the demand greatly exceeded the capacity to deliver. The company reopened later, putting some limits over some of the most demanded goods. It’s not a surprise the share price for Ocado increased and will probably continue to grow.
E-payments
In many countries, physical cash has already become something in the past, and the COVID-19 crisis accelerate the trend everywhere. Many shops started accepting only digital payments, although some people from the traditional generation resist the change. Physical cash will sooner or later be sent forever into the past as physical money tends to attract and keep all sorts of germs, viruses, and bacteria.
And it’s a good opportunity for everybody, wishing to stay healthier and safer. The change will inevitably be permanent for many who recognized the convenience of modern digital payment options. The obvious beneficiaries are Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, etc...
Cloud Computing
Although the cloud computing segment has been on the rise for years, some traditional industries refused to embrace the change. COVID-19 crisis will definitely help them accelerate their digital transformation as more employees are now restricted to their homes. A lot of workloads have to be migrated to the cloud for many companies to ensure their business continuity and function at all.
Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure are the top winners on the market, as leaders. Other older, traditional companies will have to rethink their digital strategy and policy to enable the transformation faster. Once the rolling over started, it’s highly unlikely those companies will ever decide to go back and turn back.
Online apps and stores
As more people remain at home, it is no surprise they would cure their boredom with fancy cool stuff purchased safely online. More and more people tend to buy online with the saved money from not going outside. Amazon seems to be the top beneficiary of the situation.
Conferencing & team collaboration tools
As more and more teammates work from home and most of the teams are either remote or distributed – the conference and collaboration tools demand is at its peak. Teams need to stay in touch multiple times a day, alignment and reporting meetings are held every minute. Although video cannot be a substitute for face-to-face connection, it is close, and the majority of the teams prefer using it over email or telephone.
Microsoft reported the daily active users for its Teams collaboration suite increased by 12 million. Other companies like Zoom Video Communications have seen a share price increase of 130% since the beginning of the year. Many promoters, salesmen, and marketeers are turning to companies like WebEx to ensure they have fully enabled their capabilities for webcasting and webinars - to ensure business sustainability and promotion. Many companies forced into business transformation also resort to buying online conference and collaboration tooling suites.
Fertilizers and agro-chemical
As Chine is one of the major producers and exporters of chemical components, disruptions could result in a breakdown in the chain supply. As a reaction, many local companies are happy to start producing the missing components and support the local sector, providing tremendous opportunities for the companies in the sector to operate and benefit, while taking back the markets from China’s producers.
Mobile and telecommunications
The industry is critical to social success and functioning. This seems to be true more than ever. Nowadays, everybody has an Internet connection over their mobile devices and use them to stay in touch with teammates, co-workers, clients, relatives, and friends.
The sector experience demand like never before. As people stay home – looking to work, educate, or just entertain themselves the pressure over the networks is higher than ever. The demand for a higher speed net and network capabilities is growing rapidly. Many buy premium packages to ensure stable connection and the revenue increased accordingly for all the players.
Gaming, streaming, video, audio, and photo content
The obvious winner here - Netflix is already immensely popular. With more people stuck at home in the evenings – it is no surprise the demand skyrocketed, and subscriptions raised rapidly. All streaming platforms (like Twitch) benefit. Some channels like Disney+ started launching at a different time to capture the attention of European viewers. YouTube is also enjoying great success. There is so much information on COVID-19 over the services and there is a lot of entertainment for everybody, who like watching videos.
The gaming sector flourished like never before. Companies and products like Microsoft Xbox, Google Stadia, and PlayStation are going to secure a lot of additional subscriptions as well as in-game purchases.
Clever financial strategies for clever companies
Many companies with extra cash saw a decline in the financial markets as the opportunity of the century. As an example, Softbank sold some unnamed assets to fund a second share-buyback initiative. Combined with their previous initiative Softbank was able to retire 45% of Softbank shares on the open market.
The core idea is that fewer shares on the open market, the less exposed a company is to external influences. Therefore, share-buyback initiatives are the way to protect the corporate strategy and business model from short-term investors.