MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Pauws99 on August 29, 2019, 00:48

Title: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: Pauws99 on August 29, 2019, 00:48
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4288413-shutterstock-continues-deteriorate#alt1

Probably they are getting feedback about their poor quality portfolio hence the similars policy.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: PZF on August 29, 2019, 01:55
Anybody know what Enterprise Revenue is?

Watch out though - the easiest way to boost profits in the short term to make shareholders happy would be to edge the algorithm towards 25c sales....
customers then leave due to having to search pages of dross for a good image...
general revenues fall....
commissions get cut to boost profits....
rinse and repeat.

Or am I just in a negative mood today?
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: Pauws99 on August 29, 2019, 02:49
Anybody know what Enterprise Revenue is?

Watch out though - the easiest way to boost profits in the short term to make shareholders happy would be to edge the algorithm towards 25c sales....
customers then leave due to having to search pages of dross for a good image...
general revenues fall....
commissions get cut to boost profits....
rinse and repeat.

Or am I just in a negative mood today?
Its selling the "premium" images at high prices to big corporates largely through "offset" and similar. Probably people realising that often theres nothing special about many of  these images. The easiest way is actually to pay a flat rate and abandon tiers. I think one of their many mistakes is  believing their own hype about AI being able to to filter out the dross presenting customer with only relevant quality images.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: ShadySue on August 29, 2019, 04:12
<tangent> What does "I am long Adobe" mean? I'm guessing they are in favour of Adobe / have shares in Adobe, but I don't know that construct.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: dirkr on August 29, 2019, 04:24
<tangent> What does "I am long Adobe" mean? I'm guessing they are in favour of Adobe / have shares in Adobe, but I don't know that contstruct.

Stock market language...
"I'm long" means I'm buying or holding a position or general positive about a certain stock.
"short" is obviously the exact opposite.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: Noedelhap on August 29, 2019, 04:28
Well, this constant need for growth is an unrealistic expectation anyway (of both investors and the company itself). Growth has to diminish at some point, especially in a competitive market. To be honest I expect Shutterstock to plateau a lot sooner. As long as the market is stable and their market share remains constant, it's all good. But the insane hunger for more profits will probably result in commission cuts.

Adobe will probably emerge as the new market leader, within a few years.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: HalfFull on August 29, 2019, 04:37
<tangent> What does "I am long Adobe" mean? I'm guessing they are in favour of Adobe / have shares in Adobe, but I don't know that contstruct.

Stock market language...
"I'm long" means I'm buying or holding a position or general positive about a certain stock.
"short" is obviously the exact opposite.

Not quite

Short/shorting a share

"When an investor or speculator engages in a practice known as short selling, also called shorting a stock, he or she borrows shares of a company from an existing owner through his brokerage, sells those borrowed shares at the current market price, and pockets the cash."

It is basically a form of betting against a share.

1. Borrow the stock you want to bet against. ...
2. You immediately sell the shares you have borrowed. ...
3. You wait for the stock to fall and then buy the shares back at the new, lower price.
4. You return the shares to the brokerage you borrowed them from and pocket the difference.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: dirkr on August 29, 2019, 04:45
<tangent> What does "I am long Adobe" mean? I'm guessing they are in favour of Adobe / have shares in Adobe, but I don't know that contstruct.

Stock market language...
"I'm long" means I'm buying or holding a position or general positive about a certain stock.
"short" is obviously the exact opposite.

Not quite

Short/shoring a share

"When an investor or speculator engages in a practice known as short selling, also called shorting a stock, he or she borrows shares of a company from an existing owner through his brokerage, sells those borrowed shares at the current market price, and pockets the cash."

It is basically a form of betting against a share.

1. Borrow the stock you want to bet against. ...
2. You immediately sell the shares you have borrowed. ...
3. You wait for the stock to fall and then buy the shares back at the new, lower price.
4. You return the shares to the brokerage you borrowed them from and pocket the difference.

Yup, that's short selling or shorting a share.
But when somebody says "I'm short on Shutterstock" that doesn't neccessary mean he engages in short selling, he may only have a negative outlook and doesn't recommend buying the shares.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: HalfFull on August 29, 2019, 05:07
<tangent> What does "I am long Adobe" mean? I'm guessing they are in favour of Adobe / have shares in Adobe, but I don't know that contstruct.

Stock market language...
"I'm long" means I'm buying or holding a position or general positive about a certain stock.
"short" is obviously the exact opposite.

Not quite

Short/shoring a share

"When an investor or speculator engages in a practice known as short selling, also called shorting a stock, he or she borrows shares of a company from an existing owner through his brokerage, sells those borrowed shares at the current market price, and pockets the cash."

It is basically a form of betting against a share.

1. Borrow the stock you want to bet against. ...
2. You immediately sell the shares you have borrowed. ...
3. You wait for the stock to fall and then buy the shares back at the new, lower price.
4. You return the shares to the brokerage you borrowed them from and pocket the difference.

Yup, that's short selling or shorting a share.
But when somebody says "I'm short on Shutterstock" that doesn't neccessary mean he engages in short selling, he may only have a negative outlook and doesn't recommend buying the shares.

That's referred as "Short-Term", which is holding a share for less than a year. The word "term" is required in order to avoid confusion. At the bank I worked for, if some one said they were going short on a share it was always a case of betting against it. If you google,  going short, short , shorting etc all refer to betting against the stock. Holding, Short-Term, Long Term refer to your position. You can get away with shortening Long-Term as there isn't another use for "Long".

Edit, for instance.... google "I'm short on a share" and you'll see straight away.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: Pauws99 on August 29, 2019, 05:54
Well, this constant need for growth is an unrealistic expectation anyway (of both investors and the company itself). Growth has to diminish at some point, especially in a competitive market. To be honest I expect Shutterstock to plateau a lot sooner. As long as the market is stable and their market share remains constant, it's all good. But the insane hunger for more profits will probably result in commission cuts.

Adobe will probably emerge as the new market leader, within a few years.
Good for who? Certainly not contributors if the supply continues to increase exponentially which can only mean reduced income on average to contributors.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: jonbull on August 29, 2019, 06:17
it was clear that this is gonna happen soon..they messed up with collection, they diluted the quality accepting zillions o crap just to ty sell cheaper for them files...everything returns in life...soon they will sto growing at all and began losing money and stock will fall down as a rocks.
they did all this with their appalling strategy.
the worst thing is probably they will strongly support newbie files to save 13 cent of royalty per photo sold. they need to earn money somewhere.
personally i'm seeing a tremendous amount of sales in esp this month. stock nee matching ss while 2 months ago was 20% of sales of ss. probably getty is bouncing back strongly, with connect they are killing the need or many small business and editorial to buy from ss.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: georgep7 on August 29, 2019, 06:55

Adobe will probably emerge as the new market leader, within a few years.

All major leaders hold an ace on pocket.
In contrast or similar with other agency marketplaces, when prices go down they should have to offer more. From thousands buildin free to low cost assets in cloud apps to free app access on a specific stock buying package or plan maybe?

I love Adobe and it's software, really impressing and amazingly growing / getting better and better. but they have to have profit one way or the other and the future in not bright for anyone. Perhaps I am wrong though.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: Noedelhap on August 29, 2019, 15:19
Well, this constant need for growth is an unrealistic expectation anyway (of both investors and the company itself). Growth has to diminish at some point, especially in a competitive market. To be honest I expect Shutterstock to plateau a lot sooner. As long as the market is stable and their market share remains constant, it's all good. But the insane hunger for more profits will probably result in commission cuts.

Adobe will probably emerge as the new market leader, within a few years.
Good for who? Certainly not contributors if the supply continues to increase exponentially which can only mean reduced income on average to contributors.

A stable market is good for us if there are no...
- major shifts in market share
- excessive price wars
- agencies achieving monopoly position
- new technologies disrupting the industry (and our revenue stream)

Of course increasing supply is currently a threat for existing contributors, but that supply will plateau too, eventually. Shutterstock's current dip shows us that buyers prefer quality over quantity, therefore agencies will probably start to increase quality requirements for new contributors as well as implement better quality control for stock submissions.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: Pauws99 on August 30, 2019, 08:59
Well, this constant need for growth is an unrealistic expectation anyway (of both investors and the company itself). Growth has to diminish at some point, especially in a competitive market. To be honest I expect Shutterstock to plateau a lot sooner. As long as the market is stable and their market share remains constant, it's all good. But the insane hunger for more profits will probably result in commission cuts.

Adobe will probably emerge as the new market leader, within a few years.
Good for who? Certainly not contributors if the supply continues to increase exponentially which can only mean reduced income on average to contributors.

A stable market is good for us if there are no...
- major shifts in market share
- excessive price wars
- agencies achieving monopoly position
- new technologies disrupting the industry (and our revenue stream)

Of course increasing supply is currently a threat for existing contributors, but that supply will plateau too, eventually. Shutterstock's current dip shows us that buyers prefer quality over quantity, therefore agencies will probably start to increase quality requirements for new contributors as well as implement better quality control for stock submissions.
A stable market is one where both supply and demand are stable this isn't it.

Major shifts in market share can be good or bad...if for example SS buyers flock to a small site that I happen to have lots of images in that would be good for me.
Title: Re: Is the penny starting to drop for investors?
Post by: gnirtS on August 30, 2019, 09:41
Nowhere microstock wise is stable from a contributor point of view.
As well as competition and so on you're at the mercy of the algorithm.
If SS decides it'll make more money by slightly tweaking the algorithm so $0.25c sub contributors are prioritised over $0.38 in searches for example you can instantly see massive drops in earnings.  This can happen with no warning or no admission at all.  Ultimately it depends how cynical a company wants to be and what they think they can get away with without too much push back.