Wayfair CEO Says Furniture Business Similar Now to Great Financial Crisis

People aren’t buying furniture to a degree that hasn’t been felt since the Great Recession of 2008, according to Wayfair’s (W) CEO.

Shares of the online home furnishings retailer dropped after the company’s second-quarter results were hindered by “continued macro headwinds,” Niraj Shah said Thursday. “Customers remain cautious in their spending on the home, and our credit card data suggests that the category correction now mirrors the magnitude of the peak to trough decline the home furnishing space experienced during the great financial crisis.” 

That outlook manifested in Wayfair’s third-quarter revenue projection, with the company projecting a decline in in the low single digits. Analysts were expecting a roughly 1% decline, per estimates compiled by Visible Alpha. 

The news pulled Wayfair’s shares down 8% in Thursday’s session. The stock is down nearly 20% this year after a steep climb in May driven by better-than-expected first-quarter results.

It’s the latest company-level view into the state of the U.S. consumer, with a number of companies reporting different degrees of stress in American households. One recent report said the consumer was “increasingly tapped out.”

In the second quarter, the company reported revenue of $3.1 billion, down 1.7% year-over-year, and a loss of $42 million, or 34 cents per share.  Both results were in line with expectations, per Visible Alpha.