Nice bunch of reports and some interesting letters. You do realize that CMA is looking into competition in the Editorial Market, not our pay or contracts? So if you wanted to write letters and protest the merger based on fruit bat health or the threat to their survival, that would be just as relevant. But have your fun. This merger will become reality within three months.

"1.10 The IR's assumption that [REDACTED]. Excluding Splash News and Backgrid, Shutterstock's
core editorial business is operating at minus [REDACTED] EBITDA and losing on average
~£[REDACTED] in each of the past three years globally.14 Editorial is peripheral to Shutterstock's
core operations, accounting for less than [REDACTED] of global revenues particularly as the
company faces significant pressures in its creative business (as acknowledged by the IR). Such
losses are a significant burden on a company that had a total net income of ~£[REDACTED] and
~£[REDACTED] in 2024 and 2025 respectively15 and has lost [REDACTED] of its market
capitalisation since October 2024."

Getty is acquiring a loser, not taking over to create a more profitable monopoly.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 29, 2026, 17:05
Getty is acquiring a loser, not taking over to create a more profitable monopoly.

Even if acquiring whats currently a "loser" - by acquiring and thus eliminating a major competitor that they're planning on eventually becoming a more profitable monopoly.

Stockmarket last month:
SS down 3.71%
Gettys down 8.45%

This upon their incredible losses the last few years. No investor has faith anymore in these companies. In five years SS lost 82% of it's value and Getty's 92%.

Even the merger will not solve it. There is nothing to salvage. No money (investors), no company.

We should be happy with the plus 90 cents sales from Adobe and hope they won't slash it once the other two are gone.

Quote from: SimonSays on March 29, 2026, 20:24
Stockmarket last month:
SS down 3.71%
Gettys down 8.45%

This upon their incredible losses the last few years. No investor has faith anymore in these companies. In five years SS lost 82% of it's value and Getty's 92%.

Even the merger will not solve it. There is nothing to salvage. No money (investors), no company.

We should be happy with the plus 90 cents sales from Adobe and hope they won't slash it once the other two are gone.

You have to wonder if the downtrend they are experiencing is due to the "race to the bottom" with stock pricing.

Quote from: wds on March 29, 2026, 21:54

Quote from: SimonSays on March 29, 2026, 20:24
Stockmarket last month:
SS down 3.71%
Gettys down 8.45%

This upon their incredible losses the last few years. No investor has faith anymore in these companies. In five years SS lost 82% of it's value and Getty's 92%.

Even the merger will not solve it. There is nothing to salvage. No money (investors), no company.

We should be happy with the plus 90 cents sales from Adobe and hope they won't slash it once the other two are gone.

You have to wonder if the downtrend they are experiencing is due to the "race to the bottom" with stock pricing.

Yes, I would assume investors invest $$$ to make $$$. If the stock is making less $$$ no matter what tricks are done, then investors would naturally withdraw from investing in the stock. Value of the stock goes down following the decline in profits.   

Quote from: SimonSays on March 29, 2026, 20:24
Stockmarket last month:
SS down 3.71%
Gettys down 8.45%

This upon their incredible losses the last few years. No investor has faith anymore in these companies. In five years SS lost 82% of it's value and Getty's 92%.

Even the merger will not solve it. There is nothing to salvage. No money (investors), no company.

We should be happy with the plus 90 cents sales from Adobe and hope they won't slash it once the other two are gone.

Yes, because SSTK has lost money for the last few years. That's not just a trick because we're underpaid, or being cheated and lied to, the company is losing customers and losing money.

Getty is another story. Getty was already in debt. went private, sold, H&F took all they could out of the business and dumped them. But the stock holders in H&F made money and got dividends. Getty bought themselves back, in a round about way. They couldn't easily go public again, because of the amount of debt still owed, and the profits were less than the debt payments. Getty got some investors to finance a SPAC = (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is a "blank cheque" company created to raise capital through an IPO with the sole purpose of acquiring a private company and taking it public. Without long details, it's a promise that the company will be worth a specific amount on a future date. Then after the SPAC Getty went public. I believe the promised value was $10 a share. It's not there.

If either of these was making money, they wouldn't be interested in a merger like this. My view is, this is an effort to save SSTK from going under. As for Getty they have some good backing and deep pockets and a good library with their archives. Not just the news service, but in the long term, Getty bought many collections and historical archives. They own a majority of the important artist photos, news photos, records and documentary images, and can make some profits from that, over time.

On an aside Getty is also digitizing photo collections that they acquired and has bee doing that for years. They are preserving history and photos from many exclusive and interesting sources.

Quote from: Pacesetter on March 30, 2026, 11:19
Yes, I would assume investors invest $$$ to make $$$. If the stock is making less $$$ no matter what tricks are done, then investors would naturally withdraw from investing in the stock. Value of the stock goes down following the decline in profits.   

Yes it's that simple. Investors are not blind and are not idiots. SSTK has been losing money for three years. The only way they made anything look good when Jon left and Stan came in, was to cut our commissions, and feed us a line of BS about how the better people would be rewarded. Anyone who believed that pay us dimes was going to make anyone more, or the phony commission scheme based on artificial levels, with pretty percentages, needs to look at real dollars, not promises and percentages.

The race to the bottom is over. They have ruined the entire market by price cutting and competition, that was based on who's has the most at the lowest price. We are selling a commodity, in most cases, not quality or art. AI just made it easy for the image factories to pump out more product, to compete with any of us individuals. Who would have ever thought that getting a flat 25¢ for a download was "good". And now, I get 33-66-99 cents (round number) from Adobe and that's the quality agency.

This merger will help us in the long run, by eliminating one more competitor. SSTK will be gone. For those who always hated them for the subscriptions, you should be cheering that the subscription model has died. The rest of the parasite agencies are just working on minimal staff to make what they can. They will be shutting down soon. Those agencies are already making us little and doing nothing beneficial except diluting the market.

Here's the bottom line:

Adobe
Alamy
Getty

Will be dividing the Microstock business.

Adobe 30-33%
Alamy 20-40%
Getty 15-20%

The standard contract terms for the near future.

Final CMA Verdict: Ultimatum for Shutterstock and Getty Images

Official Sources:
— UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Official Release
— Shutterstock Annual & Quarterly Reports (SEC Filings)

1. Creators' Voices Heard

• The regulator rejected the lawyers' arguments regarding "Relevant Customer Benefits" and protection from AI.
  
• The CMA acknowledged: there is no evidence of benefits to contributors.
  

2. Ultimatum: Sale of the Entire Editorial Business

• The merger is permitted only under the condition of the sale of Shutterstock's entire editorial business: the Rex Features, Backgrid, and Splash News brands.
  
• Shutterstock will lose $32.7 million in global Editorial revenue (based on 2025 results). Of this: $11.7 million — Rex Features and Shutterstock brands; $21.0 million — Backgrid and Splash content.
  

3. Financial Troubles and Lawsuits

• Merger Costs (Shutterstock): $34.9 million spent in 2025. An additional $7.2 million went to regulatory and legal processes in Q1 2026.
  
• Merger Costs (Getty Images): Direct merger-related expenses in 2025 reached $45.7 million (plus $36.4 million in debt refinancing fees). $640.7 million remains locked in escrow accounts for the deal.
  
• Total Capital Burned: To date, the two corporations have collectively spent $124.2 million on direct transactional costs.
  
• Shareholder Lawsuits: The Johnson and Weiss cases were filed in the New York Supreme Court following the April 30, 2025 proxy statement. The board is accused of withholding material information.
  
• FTC Fines: Due to subscription manipulation, Shutterstock reserved $28 million in Q1 2026 for upcoming regulatory penalties.
  
• Debt Burden: Getty Images' total debt stands at $2 billion.
  

4. The Real Goal — Datasets

• The primary strategy driver through 2027 is selling the combined content database as legal datasets for AI training.
  
• The main targeted method for cutting operational costs remains slashing contributor payouts.
  

Bottom Line for Creators: Risk of Royalty Cuts is at an All-Time High
The corporations are caught in a vise: lawsuits from their own investors, fraud investigations, $2 billion in debt, and the forced divestment of an entire business segment. Under these conditions, the risk that they will attempt to protect their profit margins through further cuts to creator royalties is higher than ever.

Here's an idea. Since there are so few players and they are seemingly having a tough time making a profitable business. How about raising the price of their product?
Especially in a world where the "premium stock" suppliers charge a lot more for a similar product and seem to be able to make a business out of it.

Actually, Shutterstock has agreed to pay $35 million to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that it misled consumers about its subscription plans and made cancellation difficult. Decided three days ago.

I can't find any Johnson or Weiss cases, but just another point: You file with the County Clerk's Office, depending on the case type and your status, and the Supreme Court is not the direct filing point. The Clerk assigns the case to the correct judge once it's processed.

If they cut royalties even more, where is the good quality content going to come from?

Just look at the crap SS is now forced to accept, because a lot of good content is no longer going there.

Ai companies don't need junk, they can scrape that for free from social media and the public internet. They coem to stock agencies because they want quality images.

If the ais are trained on crappy images, the output will be crappy.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 16, 2026, 17:49
I can't find any Johnson or Weiss cases, but just another point: You file with the County Clerk's Office, depending on the case type and your status, and the Supreme Court is not the direct filing point. The Clerk assigns the case to the correct judge once it's processed.

Johnson v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al., Index No. 682860/2025
Weiss v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al., Index No. 652853/2025
(filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Commercial Division (the "Johnson Action") and Weiss v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al., 652853/2025 at ECF No. 1, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Commercial Division (the "Weiss Action", and together with the Johnson Action, the "Stockholder Actions")

Quote from: cobalt on May 16, 2026, 18:24
If they cut royalties even more, where is the good quality content going to come from?

Just look at the crap SS is now forced to accept, because a lot of good content is no longer going there.

Ai companies don't need junk, they can scrape that for free from social media and the public internet. They coem to stock agencies because they want quality images.

If the ais are trained on crappy images, the output will be crappy.

Search results on Shutterstock are flooded with junk already. This is a deliberate financial policy by the company to squeeze maximum profit for their shareholders.

If you read their official SEC filings and investor presentations, the whole truth about the algorithm and royalty tiers comes out:

Top-tier creators are bad for their margins. Shutterstock explicitly states in its reports that contributor payouts are their largest operating expense (SEC Form 10-K, Item 7). If the algorithm puts a top-tier contributor on the first page, SS has to pay them up to 40% per sale. But if they push a newcomer's junk content to the front, they only pay 15%. The search algorithm is tuned for the company's wallet, not for artistic quality.

The tier reset policy. In their reports, SS openly admits that earnings are now strictly tied to annual volume (Form 10-K, Item 1). This reset was invented for one purpose only: to slash our earnings and redirect those millions of dollars into investor dividends and stock buybacks. They are intentionally stopping us from growing our tiers.

The "Shutterstock 2027" strategy cuts contributors out completely. Look at their official long-range targets. They write in black and white that integrating GenAI is aimed directly at "lower cost of content creation." They don't plan to sell your premium work. Their goal is to shift buyers to their own AI tools, where SS keeps 100% of the money without sharing it with anyone.

They don't care about quality, they just want data. SS no longer worries that the marketplace has turned into a dump. They are now selling the raw database (our images, tags, and keywords) to tech giants for AI training. Even the millions of images rejected during review are essentially free data capital for them.

These are the biggest suppliers with the biggest and best collections. If they raise prices, what recourse will their customers have but to shell out a little more money?

Yes, but they re unable to retain and grow their customer base. They spent over 500 million dollars buying up places like envato, pond5 and others, but if you read the reports they have less customers than before.

They are masking it a little with ai training money but it is not preventing them slipping down.

Now they are ,,merging" with getty, basically getty is taking over.

Their entire library is poisoned with mass amounts of ai. They supposedly do not take ai from contribtors, but shutterstock is absolutely flooded with it.

But if ai is trained on ai content it destroys the quality.

So even the we only want to be an ai dataset business is not working.

They also don't have a good ai generator.

So, they have a library filled with crappy files, customers cannot filter out ai with one click like on Adobe.

It is simply very badly run.

Adobe and istock changed nothing and customers are moving there.

Once these two merge everything will go to Getty management and Getty payment systems. We'll be 15% no levels no more Shutterstock cheating us. Look at the history of everything iStock has done since they were bought by Getty.

"Johnson v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al." is listed in Shutterstock's May 30, 2025 SEC 8‑K filing as one of the litigation matters related to the company's proposed merger with Getty Images SEC.gov. The filing identifies it alongside other shareholder and individual actions, but does not provide the full factual or procedural details of the case.

Quote from: Recards on May 17, 2026, 00:51

Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 16, 2026, 17:49
I can't find any Johnson or Weiss cases, but just another point: You file with the County Clerk's Office, depending on the case type and your status, and the Supreme Court is not the direct filing point. The Clerk assigns the case to the correct judge once it's processed.

Johnson v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al., Index No. 682860/2025
Weiss v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al., Index No. 652853/2025
(filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Commercial Division (the "Johnson Action") and Weiss v. Shutterstock, Inc., et al., 652853/2025 at ECF No. 1, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Commercial Division (the "Weiss Action", and together with the Johnson Action, the "Stockholder Actions")

Thank you, they are both stockholders filing for information that was missing/left out of the financial disclosure. At least that's the way I read it.

Getty is still and has been in debt for more than what they earn. Or in other words, paying off their debt, what they owe in payments, is more than what they earn. SSTK is not going to make more, they keep making less each year. The merger is better than what they have now and potentially better than what we have now. SSTK isn't going to pay us more, while they keep losing money and owing. At least Getty has a set commission schedule with the 15% and 20% instead of the fake SSTK how we'll, make more by being paid less. The big lie that very few of us or anyone else, ever believed when Stan announced the "Exciting News".