Wayfair's CEO Quotes Warren Buffett To Explain The Drastic Fall In Stock Price

The e-commerce store Wayfair Inc W had a spectacular debut in the markets in early October, opening well above $35 per share. However, in the two months of trading since then the stock lost 50% of the value and currently trades at $17.6 levels.

Niraj Shah, Wayfair’s CEO, was recently on CNBC to discuss the company’s growth and the decline in its stock prices.

“Business is doing great, you know last quarter we grew over 40% in total, our direct retail business grew over 57%, we just continue to grow at a great rate,” Shah said.

On the decline in stock price, Shah said, “My view has always been pretty simple on that in the sense that you do not control the stock price over the short-run and over the long-run it reflects the real value, Warren Buffet’s quote, ‘Short-run it’s a voting machine, long run it’s a weighing machine’, that’s what we believe. I am a big Wayfair shareholder owning between 20 and 25 percent of the stock. My co-founder, Steve Conine owns a similar amount and we are super excited about what we are seeing in the business.”

How Do Your Gauge The Awareness Of Your Brand?

“We take awareness measurement, aided and unaided awareness measurement. Google search counts, we do a lot of sentiment consumer survey work as well. As of August, after marketing the site for a little over two years from a brand marketing stand point, we are up to 52% aided awareness and that’s a number that has continued to grow overtime.”