The Kellogg Company ($K) has its first earnings call of the decade Thursday morning, and Zacks Investment Research has the EPS forecast pegged at $0.86 for the quarter. But after looking at the alternative data for the famous brand, we have to say, things aren't looking so grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat.

After seeing the stock fall for three and a half years, things started moving in the right direction over the summer of 2019. But once our friends at LinkedIn updated their employee counts and purged thousands of profiles, we can see that not as many people are working at Kellogg as once previously thought.

That's all thanks to recent lows in hiring across all departments. In 2016, Kellogg's was looking for over 700 employees, and now that number has dropped 76% in 2020. Either they have everyone they need, or they can't afford to pay all those extra people. The real answer is neither of those suggestions, but we'd like to know more when the earnings call happens tomorrow.

The final point we'll make after researching Kellogg's alternative data is that the company's Twitter account has completely flatlined in follower growth and user engagement. When compared to Planter's brilliant Baby Nut campaign, it's hard to just not do anything to improve these numbers. The same goes for its Facebook Talking About count, but you'll have to buy our data to dive into that further.

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

Ad placeholder