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Online Crafts Retailer Etsy Lays Off 11 Percent Of Workforce
The Etsy mural is seen at its NYC headquarters building (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Etsy tumbles as consumers prefer cheap products to personalized

The brief momentum in AI-enhanced artisanal selling recommendations sputtered.

Etsy’s fourth-quarter revenue miss on declining holiday sales sent the stock tumbling by more than 7% in the premarket.

The online marketplace reported a record $852.2 million in quarterly revenue ahead of market open on Wednesday, eking out a 1.2% gain from a year before but missing forecasts of $861.9 million, according to analysts polled by Bloomberg.

The volume of sales on the company’s marketplaces, which include secondhand clothing site Depop and musical instrument retailer Reverb, fell 6.8% year over year to $3.74 billion, missing estimates of $3.86 billion and marking a third year of declining holiday sales for the company.

The Etsy marketplace itself saw particularly steep declines, with sales down 8.6% from a year earlier. Investors had hoped the site’s AI-powered “gift mode,” which suggests presents from the site’s listings based on the occasion and recipient’s interests, might help reinvigorate holiday sales. The feature, released early last year, helped fuel a brief surge in the company’s stock after showing early signs of success in Q3 results.

The sales miss comes as Etsy’s sales and shares have come under pressure in recent years amid surging popularity for ultracheap retailers like Temu and Shein, with the stock losing about 80% of its value since a pandemic-era peak in 2021. In response, Etsy has aimed in recent quarters to differentiate itself as a strictly handmade marketplace, but an uncertain economic outlook and inflation-weary consumers have remained a challenge. As it turns out, people aren’t keen to make discretionary purchases like personalized art or a hand-knit scarf when their budgets are already stretched.

Going forward, the company expects total gross merchandise sales to decline by a similar year-over-year rate in the first quarter, with “several factors” that should align for improved performance afterward, according to the company’s new CFO Lanny Baker, who offered no details on what those factors might be.


Kelly Cloonan is a journalist who has written for Business Insider and Fast Company.

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Luke Kawa

Opendoor surges on bullish options bets as traders look to potential real estate tokenization

Opendoor Technologies is surging on Friday amid bullish options bets and social media posts referencing unconfirmed rumors about the company.

The stock moved higher in the premarket session after the soft inflation report boosted stocks and briefly pushed long-term bond yields lower (positive for a real estate company). But the real gains came after the opening bell rang and options demand picked up.

As of 12:11 p.m. ET, roughly 664,000 call options have changed hands versus a 10-day average of about 364,000 for a full session.

What seems to be galvanizing members of the “$OPEN Army” is the potential for the company to pursue the tokenization of real-world assets, with Robinhood often bandied about as a potential partner in this endeavor.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

Opendoor bulls have often pointed to signs that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev appears to be fond of the company, from what appeared on-screen during a demo of a social trading feature at HOOD’s conference in Las Vegas in September to offering support to Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian in setting up an opportunity for retail shareholders to ask questions during the online real estate company’s next earnings call.

Opendoor is currently in a quiet period ahead of earnings, which restricts what type of announcements a company can make.

The call options seeing the most demand expire this Friday with strike prices of $8, $8.50, and $9.

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Luke Kawa

Beyond Meat gains amid slightly better-than-expected Q3 sales, positive commentary on legal issues

Shares of Beyond Meat built on their premarket gains after the plant-based meat seller reported preliminary Q3 sales a bit ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, before paring this advance after the market opened.

For the three months ended September 27, management said net revenue would be approximately $70 million. That’s in line with their guidance range of $68 million to $73 million, but Wall Street was expecting sales to skew toward the lower end of that range, at $68.7 million.

However, its anticipated gross margin of 10% to 11% is lower than analysts had been expecting (13.8%). That’s still the case even adjusting for expenses related to its downsizing of operations in China, which would have left margins around 12% to 13%, per Beyond.

Perhaps more importantly, the company provided positive commentary regarding arbitration discussions with a former co-manufacturer that appear to bring it closer to a resolution while limiting potential damages:

“As previously disclosed, in March 2024, a former co-manufacturer brought an action against the Company in a confidential arbitration proceeding claiming that the Company inappropriately terminated its agreement with the co-manufacturer and claimed damages of at least $73.0 million. On September 15, 2025, the arbitrator issued an interim award (the ‘Interim Award’) and found that the Company had a valid basis to terminate the agreement with the Manufacturer. The details of the Interim Award are confidential, and a final arbitration award has not been issued. Additional proceedings will be held to determine the award of attorneys’ fees, prejudgment interest and costs, if any, before a final arbitration award will be issued. On September 25, 2025, the Manufacturer filed a request with the arbitrator to re-open the arbitration hearing. On September 29, 2025, the Company opposed this request. On October 20, 2025, the arbitrator denied the Manufacturer’s request.”

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