Perhaps this has something to do with it?
https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-changes-the-outlook-of-Getty-Images-to-Negative-from--PR_314730Thanks to another iStocker for pointing me at that report.
They are never explicit about what constitutes Midstock revenue in their book - given they mention SS and FT as competitors in that space, one would have to assume all of iStock is midstock. Then what is microstock in Moody's view? And is anything at Getty Images mothership midstock?
The mention that any spare cash will pay down debt (thank you private equity) and that the amount of debt is till way higher than they'd like. These are burdens their competitors don't have.
They said subs were 25% of total revenue - do you suppose that was 25% of all of Getty's revenue or just of iStock's? Given drastically lower prices, an increase in volume is all but a given - it's how much of an increase that determines if overall revenue grows healthily. Subs have to grow a lot in volume to grow your revenue and if the 25% was just of iStock's revenue, it could very well be that the non-subs revenue is weak or declining.
If you look at the annual Getty revenue they give of $879m, SS expects to be just under half that size ($329m) for its FY 2014
http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362...That's way up from $100m in 2013, but according to Moody's, Getty's 2013 income was $897m - down.