New York based independent research firm, Gordon Haskett Research Advisors (GHRA), recently announced the launch of its new proprietary data service called Gordon Haskett Jet Tracker which tracks and analyzes corporate jet movements.
New Product Launch
GHRA launched it new alternative data product, Gordon Haskett Jet Tracker, after leveraging the expertise Don Bilson and the firm’s Event-Driven Research team to identify the jets they wanted to track. GHRA has been using the new product for the past six months to track possible signs of merger and acquisition activity, strategic partnerships, merger arb situations, media trial balloons, and other potential signs of activist activity.
To develop the new dataset, GHRA curated the flight activity of the corporate aircraft of 750+ public and private companies (Private Equity, Venture Capital, Activists, SPAC sponsors, etc.) which can be tracked on a daily basis. The Gordon Haskett Jet Tracker database also provides access to ~20,000 aircraft, enabling the firm to quickly add any additional jets to the database based on client demand.
The GHRA database contains flight data for jets from the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Caribbean, is updated daily, and includes historical data going back to 2019. Clients can search the database by ticker, corporate name, airport, city, ownership type, etc. Another popular search for clients (seen above) is to search by “abnormal” flights. These are flights where a plane hasn’t been to a particular airport in 180+ days. In addition, clients can set up a custom watchlist and receive daily alert emails.
Our Take
GHRA’s launch of its new Jet Tracker service makes sense as the firm was able to leverage its experienced Event-Driven research team to develop the dataset, and the new product is being marketed to the same type of investors who use this research service. These factors have enabled GHRA to offer the new product at an extremely attractive price when compared to other vendors like Quandl or JetTrack.io.
It is particularly interesting that GHRA did not originally intend to build such a product. The firm’s Event-Driven research team was a user of jet tracking data provided by one of the other major data providers. Unfortunately, buy-side clients of these vendors weren’t happy about the fact that GHRA was identifying and publishing research on attractive M&A opportunities. Consequently, GHRA was forced to find new supplier. Ultimately, the firm realized it could build the dataset enabling it to solidify the data for its own use, and giving it a new product offering for their clients.
While GHRA’s research team are big users of alternative data, the firm currently has no plans to build and market other alternative datasets. However, the fact that GHRA has already built its first alt data service, it would not be a surprise to us if they added new datasets in the future – particularly if they can find new data that their own analysts find valuable.