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Shares of Fiverr International Ltd. (NYSE: FVRR) are dropping significantly this morning after the freelance marketplace platform reported its Q4 2025 financial results. While the company reported modest revenue growth, its 2026 outlook sent the stock plunging, even as Fiverr executives put a positive spin on the impact of artificial intelligence on its business. Heres what you need to know. Revenue increases, but outlook sends investors fleeing On Wednesday morning, Fiverr reported its fourth-quarter 2025 results. And those results, for the most part, were mixed. The company saw modest growth in total revenue, which rose to $107.2 million in the quartera 3.4% increase from a year earlier. Its revenue actuals fall on the lower end of the $104.3 million to $112.3 million range that the company had projected. However, once you get past the modest revenue growth, you see that Fiverr disappointed on many other key metrics. For example, its marketplace revenue for the quarter was $71.5 million, which was 2.7% lower than the same quarter a year earlier. Perhaps more worrying, and looking out across its entire fiscal 2025, Fiverr reported that its annual active buyers as of December 31 totaled 3.1 million. Thats down from 3.6 million annual active buyers a year earliera decline of half a million buyers, or 13.6% year over year. Interestingly, though, this 13.6% decline in the number of annual active buyers was offset to a large degree by an increase of 13.3% in annual spend per buyer. For the 2025 fiscal year, Fiverr says that the average annual buyer spent $342 compared to the average of $302 they spent in the previous year. What this suggests is that while there were fewer buyers in 2025, they spent more on average than they did in 2024. Yet this mixed bag of results isnt what seems to have sunk Fiverrs stock price this morning. Instead, the main catalyst for Fiverrs stock price decline seems to be its 2026 guidance. For its current Q1 2026, the company says it expects to make between $100 million and $108 million. That would represent a decline of anywhere from 7% to a modest increase of 1%. And for all of fiscal 2026, the company says it expects to make between $380 million and $420 million in revenue, which would represent a decline of anywhere between 12% and 3%. As noted by investing.com, analysts had been expecting Q1 2026 guidance to be around $112.26 million and full-year 2026 guidance to be around $456.80 million. When these expectations werent met, the stock sank. Fiverr shares are currently down nearly 21% in premarket trading as of the time of this writing. AI uncertainty abounds Of course, the elephant in the room for Fiverr investors is artificial intelligence. For over a decade and a half, businesses have turned to Fiverr to source freelancers who could help them carry out projects, from design to coding. But in recent years, those same businesses have begun embracing AI tools for many of those tasks. This has led many investors (and freelancers who sell services on Fiverr) to ponder the platform’s future in a world where AI tools are increasingly commonplace. Fiverr itself didnt say if the rise of these AI tools were the reason for its declining Q1 marketplace revenue, but the company did touch on the topic of AI, attempting to put a somewhat positive spin on it. Address the topic, Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman said that is was clear that we are living through a significant shift in AI adoption, but he argued that this AI adoption would make humans more essential, not less. By moving toward an agentic economy, where AI helps navigate complexity, we are ensuring that we remain the bridge between businesses and the most exceptional human talent, Kaufman argued. With our expansive global talent network, outcome based hiring model, and depth of proprietary data, Fiverr has a unique right to win in this new age of AI.” Whether or not AI actually has a positive impact on Fiverrs marketplace remains to be seen. It will likely be one of the main points of focus for Fiverr investors in 2026. FVRR has had a horrible 2026 so far As of the time of this writing, FVRR stock is down nearly 21% in premarket trading to $10.79 per share. As of yesterday, the companys stock price had already fallen more than 33% for the year to $13.10. Unfortunately, looking back further doesnt help the companys position. Over the past year, FVRR shares have lost more than 60% of their value as of yesterdays close. Last May, the stock was trading at over $33 per share at one point. During the same 12-month period, the New York Stock Exchange composite index has risen by nearly 6%.
Category:
E-Commerce
The future looks green for Mikes Red Tacos. The San Diego-based taco restaurant currently has only two locations, but it has caught the attention of the restaurant investors who made Daves Hot Chicken a scorching success. This week, the restaurant announced that it has secured franchise development agreements for more than 200 new locations around the country. Mikes Red Tacos was founded as a food truck in 2021 by Mike Touma, followed by a brick-and-mortar location in 2022. The brand is gaining a fast-growing following on social mediaand now it’s primed for nationwide expansion. Fast casual with a taco twist Mikes Red Tacos specializes in birriaa traditional, slow-cooked Mexican stew dish thats typically made from beef, lamb, or goatwhich has exploded in popularity in recent years, largely due to social media trends. It can now be found, in various forms, on menus at numerous Mexican chains, including Taco Bell, Del Taco, and others. Mikes Red Tacos is receiving support from early-stage investors and advisors Bill Phelps and Andrew Feghali. Phelps is executive chairman of Daves Hot Chicken, cofounder of Wetzel’s Pretzels, and a founding investor in Blaze Pizza. He tells Fast Company that very few restaurants catch his eye, but Mikes ticked all the boxes. I love entrepreneur-started businesses, and guys that have figured things out,” Phelps says. “The product is just amazing. Its so good, its like a breakthrough within a category.” He adds that in the strata of Mexican chains, Mikes sits in the fast-casual lane, closer to a chain like Chipotle, rather than a fast-food chain like Taco Bell. Weve learned over the years how to do the model for a fast-casual rollout in the franchise world, so we were able to put a team together very quickly of people we worked with before. ‘There’s a lot of competition’ Phelps says that he first walked into a Mikes Red Tacos around a year ago, and immediately saw the potential. Thats a relatively rare occurrence. Its been once every five years we see something that looks really great and then we go for it, Phelps says. We like founder-created businesses that have incredible quality, but dont know how to scale themthats what we bring to the party. We make a deal that is great for the founder and for us (investors). He knows success isnt guaranteed, of course. You need to leave your ego at the door,” he says. “Theres a lot of competition. A lot of work to do. You need to work your ass off. A lot of that work will fall on Vincent Montanelli, a seasoned industry executive, who was named the companys president. Previously, he held various leadership roles at Wetzels Pretzels. All told, the 200 or so Mikes Red Tacos locations will be spread across 25 markets around the country, including Seattle, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Miami, Boston, and other locations around Southern California. The first new location is expected to open in San Diego in March, with a new, corporate-run location opening in Pasadena later this spring.
Category:
E-Commerce
Corey duBrowa spent much of his career advising some of the worlds most scrutinized leadersfrom Marc Benioff at Salesforce to Sundar Pichai at Google. Now, as CEO of global communications firm Burson, hes helping executives navigate a charged marketplace shaped by AI disruption, ICE activity, and nonstop reputational risk. He explains why reputation remains one of the most powerful (and most misunderstood) assets in business, and how leaders should decide whether, when, and how to speak up. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You and I have talked privately in recent months about how hard it is in this environment for brands and leaders to figure out what to say, where the risks are, and where the opportunities are when so much seems like it’s up in the air. Is that what you’re hearing from your clients? They’re asking, looking, or trying to find that clarity? 100%, Bob. We’re in year two of Trump’s second presidency. And so, there’s renewed protectionism. Certainly, tariffs are one aspect of this. Deregulation, the America First Trade Policy. And so, helping companies to navigate these shifting priorities, and be thinking about global trade, and, frankly, regulatory uncertainty, that’s one thing. There’s been a global shift to the right. There’s a conservative resurgence across Japan, France, Germany, U.K., to name but a few. Helping clients to be able to navigate that volatility, that societal polarization that everybody is dealing with. . . . We, in this country, because we pay attention to our own news, we’ll be focused on things like Minnesota, but you could also point to Iran, Gen Z-led protests across Asia, budget protests in Bulgaria, which were huge, and probably not on most people’s radar here. So, guiding clients through social listening and activist engagement, and brand neutrality. How do you stand for things without necessarily putting yourself in the line of fire? Like, that’s a thing. There’s the global AI governance race. There’s competing rules about how to shape AI’s futures. It was so fascinating, to me, to watch Google, of all companies, a company that has never really lacked for resources, go into the bond market, and raise more than $30 billion worth of 100-year debt. That’s a whole new thing. Yes. Because AI is expensive. And so, how that’s governed and the way that investments work in that world is a whole separate thing. There’s erosion of trust in traditional media. The Washington Post, you and I both have friends at The Post. Yes. A third of their staff is gone . . . at the same time that only 28% of U.S. adults trust mainstream media. . . . This was the Gallup poll that came out last year. That number was in the 70s in the 70s72% in 1972. Even the entities that are financially solvent, people have very strong feelings about. Absolutely. And what we’re observing more and more, Bob, I, certainly, saw it at Davos, and I saw it again with the Super Bowl, 4 in 10 U.S. adults, according to that same Gallup poll, get their news from digital influencers. And I’m not saying influencers are fake news at all. Many of them, frankly, come from the world of traditional media. But the fact that the trust is so upside down now where you have fewer than one in three Americans saying they trust traditional media forms, you realize that company-owned media channels and storytelling are becoming more important than they ever have been. Clients have to navigate all of this at the same time that they’re thinking about things like the erosion of institutional credibility, their own institutions, not necessarily conferring confidence in the AI. For all the advantages that it has, it actually amplifies mis and disinformation at scale. I think there’s a lot for clients to wrap their heads around, and that’s the job that we have is helping them to navigate a very confusing, and, frankly, pretty fragmented landscape. As you go through all of these disruptions and changes, in some ways, it’s a great time to be in the business you’re in, because you’re needed more, and the stakes have never been higher. But at the same time, the pressure’s also never been higher. Right? There is more that is at risk based on the way you communicate than it ever has been before. That’s totally true. For 15 years as a client, I had boards and C-suites asking me like, “Hey, if this thing goes really sideways, what does it cost us?” Or, “If this thing goes really well, this initiative, what’s the upside for us?” And so, we, at Davos, launched a study that proves that corporate reputation actually has quantifiable value, that companies with strong reputations realized almost 5%, 4.78% unexpected additional shareholder returns creating a reputation economy that’s worth almost $7 trillion. The stakes are a lot higher. We knew they were a lot higher, but now we can actually affix a value to those stakes. What defines a strong reputation in this environment? For years, I think we have been told, or it was received wisdom that there was this binary relationship of trust. Like, to be trusted or not trusted. And what I always knew is that reputation was actually comprised of different things. There’s a lab within the University of Oxford that helped us to develop this model. It takes into account eight different levers that comprise modern reputation. Citizenship, the degree of good that a company may or may not do in the world, but also creativity. How creative are your solutions? Governance, the structures and policies and integrity that help the company to be managed. Innovation, how forward-thinking are you? What new technologies or ideas are you putting forth? Leadership, how you manage at scale, the way that you navigate things. Performance, the financial results. Products, the quality, reliability, and perception of your products. And maybe more importantly, although I’m not sure it gets the play that it should, workplace. The culture, the well-being of your employees, the way that you manage talent. So, if you think about how companies manage these eight levers, it’s pretty bespoke. Right? Like, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model. . . . Like, the way Starbucks would have thought about these eight levers would be pretty profoundly different than the way that Google would think about those eight levers. The lens of this research was around financial impact. But do business leaders have responsibility to think beyond just financial impact? Is there a connection between reputation and courage? Every company has the opportunity, and, frankly, responsibility to think about among these eight levers how they show up. Right? It’s your citizenship, how creative or innovative you are, the products or services you put out in the marketplace. You, as a company, have to determine what is your unique value that you can offer in that space, and the extent to which you really choose to pull that lever hard or don’t pull that lever hard. Because citizenship is one of these eight levers, I think all companies have both an opportunity to think about that, and also some risks attached to that. They have to think about, Are we picking a side? A political side. Or, Are we doing something that may really please our employees, but for our customer base it may be a different thing? This gets into the whole realm of stakeholder management, the way you start to think about how the actions that you take . . . Because you only really get to communicate, Bob, after you’ve taken action. Your actions give you the hall pass to communicate, and those actions . . . sure, they can very well be related to things like corporate citizenship out in the world, but you have to be mindful of the way that people are receiving things. The way that we did things at Starbucks back in the mid 2010s, in a different political environment with a different administration, would be received I suspect in a very different way in this administration, in this year of our Lord 2026, compared to what we did then. Choosing to do exactly the same things. And you might not necessarily choose to do them the same way, because of that environment. Exactly. Or you might choose to communicate about them in a different way. Context matters. Right? I think you have to start thinking about things like context and the actions in that context before you’re thinking about message. The message is almost the last thing that you’re thinking about.
Category:
E-Commerce
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