One-glance verdict
Undervalued
$51.95 our estimate vs market $4.89
91% below our estimate, below the bear case
Fundamentals snapshot
Shutterstock, Inc.
SSTK · NYQ · Communication Services · Internet Content & Information
Current price
$4.89
52-week range
$4.80 - $29.50
Market cap
$180.67M
Balance sheet
Watch
4.46x Stretched
Net debt $164.06M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
2 Rewards
2 Risks
2 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 9/10 years.
- Reward Dividend yield is 23.9% with 9-year payout history.
- Risk Return on equity was -43.4% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
- Risk Operating margin compressed from 13.6% to 12.3% over 3 years.
What this company does
Shutterstock, Inc.
Shutterstock runs a massive online library where businesses and creators buy the rights to use professional photos, videos, and music for things like websites and advertisements. The company makes most of its money from customer subscriptions, which creates a predictable and repeatable income stream. This is important because as more of the world moves online, the demand for fresh, high-quality digital content for marketing and media continues to grow.
How the company got here
Shutterstock was started in 2003 by a programmer and photographer named Jon Oringer, who initially uploaded 30,000 of his own photos. He created an online marketplace where people could pay a monthly fee to download and use stock photos. As demand grew, he began to bring in other photographers to contribute their work. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, which provided money to expand. Over the years, Shutterstock has grown by acquiring other companies, such as Bigstock (a rival photo agency), PremiumBeat (stock music), TurboSquid (3D models), Pond5 (video), GIPHY (animated GIFs), and Envato (creative assets and templates).
What it actually does
Shutterstock runs a global online platform that acts like a giant digital library for creative content. Businesses, marketing agencies, and individuals pay to license (get permission to use) things like photos, videos, music clips, illustrations, and 3D models for their websites, ads, presentations, and other projects. The company connects creators who produce this content with the people who need to use it. Shutterstock also offers editing tools and has recently moved into creating new images using artificial intelligence.
Content
This is Shutterstock's original and largest business, making up most of its revenue (the total money it brings in). It's where customers pay to license and download creative assets like images, video footage, and music tracks. People can either buy a subscription plan for a certain number of downloads per month or pay for individual items as they need them. This segment serves a wide range of customers, from large corporations to small businesses and individual creators.
Data, Distribution, and Services
This is a newer and faster-growing part of the company that goes beyond just selling individual downloads. A key part of this segment is licensing huge collections of Shutterstock's content and data to companies that are training artificial intelligence (AI) models. It also includes revenue from its GIPHY platform, which is known for animated images (GIFs) used in messaging and social media, and other services for large business customers. This segment represents a strategic effort to find new ways to make money from its vast library of content.
What management is betting on now
Management is focused on transforming Shutterstock from a simple marketplace for stock photos into a more diverse creative platform. A major priority is growing its 'Data, Distribution, and Services' business, especially by licensing its massive content library to companies developing artificial intelligence. They are also heavily investing in their own AI-powered tools that can generate new images from text descriptions, making content creation easier for their customers. Finally, through acquisitions like Envato, the company is aiming to attract more freelancers, small businesses, and hobbyists with all-in-one subscriptions that offer unlimited downloads of various creative assets.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Loading price history…
Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q3
$-26.35M
FY2024 Q4
$-952.00K
FY2025 Q1
$14.44M
FY2025 Q2
$15.52M
FY2025 Q3
$67.97M
FY2025 Q4
$25.90M
FY2026 Q1
$5.78M
FY2026 Q2
$-9.49M
Revenue
$221.80M
Net income
$-155.94M
Diluted EPS
-4.25
Operating cash flow
$621.00K
Free cash flow
$-9.49M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$199.17M
Net income
$-47.57M
Diluted EPS
-1.34
Operating cash flow
$17.37M
Free cash flow
$5.78M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$220.22M
Net income
$-16.02M
Diluted EPS
-0.47
Operating cash flow
$36.21M
Free cash flow
$25.90M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$260.09M
Net income
$13.39M
Diluted EPS
0.37
Operating cash flow
$78.39M
Free cash flow
$67.97M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$266.99M
Net income
$29.44M
Diluted EPS
0.82
Operating cash flow
$26.84M
Free cash flow
$15.52M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$242.62M
Net income
$18.69M
Diluted EPS
0.53
Operating cash flow
$25.25M
Free cash flow
$14.44M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$250.31M
Net income
$-1.43M
Diluted EPS
-0.04
Operating cash flow
$7.97M
Free cash flow
$-952.00K
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$250.59M
Net income
$17.61M
Diluted EPS
0.50
Operating cash flow
$-11.59M
Free cash flow
$-26.35M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $51.95 vs current price $4.89
Our most-likely fair value is $51.95 a share — about 962.3% above today's price of $4.89, so the stock currently looks cheap (undervalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Watch
Net debt $164.1M. Interest coverage 4.5x.
Net debt
$164.06M
Interest coverage
4.46x
Shutterstock, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 4.5 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here and 1 peers sit below 1x, which is the danger zone where profit does not fully cover the interest bill.
Watch
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
SSTK
BASELINE
Shutterstock, Inc.
Total debt $297.27M Interest coverage 4.46x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $2.06B Interest coverage 1.18x -74% vs SSTK Carries about 3.8x less debt cushion than SSTK.
Total debt $6.76B Interest coverage 33.10x +642% vs SSTK Carries about 7.4x more debt cushion than SSTK.
Total debt $2.04B Interest coverage 0.46x -90% vs SSTK Carries about 9.8x less debt cushion than SSTK.
Total debt $1.20B Interest coverage 21.03x +371% vs SSTK Carries about 4.7x more debt cushion than SSTK.
What you should know
The case for and against SSTK
2 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Free cash flow was positive in 9/10 years.
-
Dividend yield is 23.9% with 9-year payout history.
Risks
-
Return on equity was -43.4% last year — the company lost money on shareholders' equity.
-
Operating margin compressed from 13.6% to 12.3% over 3 years.
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
—
Forward P/E
5.49x
P/B
0.49x
P/S
0.20x
EV/EBITDA
2.44x
PEG ratio
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Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
56.9%
Operating margin
12.3%
Net margin
-22.9%
ROE
-43.4%
ROA
4.7%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
0.82x
Current ratio
0.48x
Quick ratio
0.40x
Total debt
$297.27M
Total cash
$133.21M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$901.29M
Revenue 5Y CAGR
6.4%
EPS TTM
-5.73
EPS 5Y CAGR
-15.6%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$132.59M
Free CF TTM
$123.83M
FCF margin
13.7%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
23.9%
Payout ratio
105.6%
Last ex-div date
2026-06-04