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Subscriber Base Growth to Drive Wix.com's (WIX) Q1 Earnings

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Wix.com Ltd.’s (WIX - Free Report) is slated to report first-quarter 2021 results on May 12.

For the first quarter, the company expects revenues to be $291-$296 million. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues is pegged at $295.34 million, suggesting growth of 36.7% from the prior-year quarter’s levels.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter bottom line is pegged at a loss of 73 cents, narrower than loss of 79 cents over the past seven days. The company had reported loss of one cent per share in first-quarter 2020.

Wix.com Ltd. Price and EPS Surprise

Wix.com Ltd. Price and EPS Surprise

Wix.com Ltd. price-eps-surprise | Wix.com Ltd. Quote

Factors Likely to Have Influenced Q1 Performance

Continued strength in adoption of innovative digital services like Editor X, Wix Editor, Ascend by Wix, Corvid by Wix, Wix ADI, Wix Logo Maker, Wix Answers, Wix Turbo and Wix Payments is expected to have aided Wix’s first-quarter performance.

Further, the company is undertaking measures to expand subscriber base with new product roll outs and enhancement of existing portfolio of services amid coronavirus-crisis triggered digitalization. Wix is also working on increasing monetization of existing users. These, in turn, might have contributed to the to-be-reported quarter’s top-line growth.

Besides, the re-imposition of shelter-in-place guidelines across several countries due to rising COVID-19 cases is likely to have led to an increase in the number of new registered users, premium subscriptions and cohort collections across many of its geographies. This, in turn, is likely to have positively contributed to the company’s top-line performance in the first quarter.

In fourth-quarter 2020, Wix had added 7.4 million new registered users. Registered users as of Dec 31, 2020 were 196.7 million, up 19% year over year. This is likely to have continued in the first quarter on the heels of ongoing momentum in online selling activity due to the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom. Notably, the consensus mark for registered users for the first quarter stands at 202.6 million.

The company added a total of 185K net premium subscriptions in the fourth quarter, up 107% year over year, to reach 5.5 million as of Dec 31, 2020. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for number of net premium subscriptions is pegged at approximately 5.7 million for the quarter under review.

Expanding subscriber base is instilling investors’ optimism in the stock. Notably, shares of Wix have returned 15.5% year to date, compared with the industry’s return of 8.4%.

During the quarter under review, Wix launched Editor X out of its beta version. Further, the company added that theplatform now features concurrent editing capability, which facilitates multiple team members to work simultaneously on a website.

The company also announced the buyout of SpeedETab for an undisclosed amount. With the buyout of SpeedETab, Wix intends to bolster functionalities of its Wix Restaurants solution.

For first-quarter 2021, the company projects Collections in the range of $340 million to $350 million. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Collections is pegged at $348 million, suggesting growth of 39.8% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.

Meanwhile, the consensus estimates for Creative Subscriptions revenues and Business Solutions’ is currently pegged at $224 million and $71 million for the first quarter of 2021, suggesting year-over-year growth of 26.9% and 80%, respectively.

Nevertheless, focus on small-and-medium sized (SMB) businesses, which are hit hard by the macroeconomic headwinds amid coronavirus-induced slowdown, is likely to have limited margin expansion and bottom-line performance in the first quarter.

Moreover, higher investments on product development and marketing amid intensifying competition from other cloud-based software and payments platforms may have weighed on the company’s margin in the quarter to be reported.

What Our Model Says

Our proven model predicts an earnings beat for Wix this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat.

Wix has an Earnings ESP of +65.58% and a Zacks Rank #3. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Other Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are some stocks worth keeping a tab on, as our model shows that these too have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings this reporting cycle:

Pure Storage (PSTG - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +10.81% and a Zacks Rank of 2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +2.51% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Agilent Technologies (A - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +1.57% and a Zacks Rank #2.

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