What Happened?
Shares of online grocery delivery platform Instacart (NASDAQ:CART) jumped 13.2% in the morning session after the company reported strong fourth-quarter revenue that beat analyst estimates and provided a robust forecast for the upcoming quarter, overshadowing a miss on earnings per share.
Instacart's quarterly revenue came in at $992 million, exceeding analyst expectations. While its earnings per share of 30 cents missed the street's estimate of 51 cents, investors appeared to focus on the company's growth momentum. The company reported its strongest quarterly Gross Transaction Value (GTV) growth in three years, with the value of products sold rising 14% year-over-year.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
Instacart’s shares are very volatile and have had 20 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for Instacart and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 17 days ago when the stock dropped 7.5% on the news that analysts from Wedbush expressed a bearish view on the company, citing fierce competition and reports of declining performance metrics. Wedbush assigned the company an "Underperform" rating, pointing to the threat from major retailers like Amazon and Walmart.
Instacart is down 18.1% since the beginning of the year, and at $36.01 per share, it is trading 32.3% below its 52-week high of $53.15 from February 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Instacart’s shares at the IPO in September 2023 would now be looking at an investment worth $1,068.
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