Getty Images (GETY)

Visual content marketplace Getty Images (NYSE:GETY) met Wall Streets revenue expectations in Q3 CY2025, but sales were flat year on year at $240 million. The company’s outlook for the full year was close to analysts’ estimates with revenue guided to $946.5 million at the midpoint. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.08 per share was 84.5% above analysts’ consensus estimates.

Company Overview

With a vast library of over 562 million visual assets documenting everything from breaking news to iconic historical moments, Getty Images (NYSE:GETY) is a global visual content marketplace that licenses photos, videos, illustrations, and music to businesses, media outlets, and creative professionals.

AI-driven content creation, personalized media experiences, and digital advertising are evolving, which could benefit companies investing in these themes. For example, companies with a portfolio of licensed visual content or platforms facilitating direct monetization models could see increased demand for years. On the other hand, headwinds include growing regulatory scrutiny on AI-generated content, with many publishers balking at anything that gets no human oversight. Additional areas to navigate include the phasing out of third-party cookies, which could make traditional ways of tracking the online behavior of consumers (a secret sauce in digital marketing) much less effective.

Getty Images competes with visual content marketplaces like Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK), Adobe Stock (part of Adobe Inc., NASDAQ:ADBE), and privately-held companies such as Alamy and VCG. The company also faces competition from user-generated content platforms and AI image generation services.

A company’s long-term sales performance can indicate its overall quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years.

With $946.3 million in revenue over the past 12 months, Getty Images is a small player in the business services space, which sometimes brings disadvantages compared to larger competitors benefiting from economies of scale and numerous distribution channels.

As you can see below, Getty Images grew its sales at a sluggish 2.7% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This shows it failed to generate demand in any major way and is a rough starting point for our analysis.

We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. Getty Images’s recent performance shows its demand has slowed as its annualized revenue growth of 1.3% over the last two years was below its five-year trend.

This quarter, Getty Images’s $240 million of revenue was flat year on year and in line with Wall Street’s estimates.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 2.1% over the next 12 months, similar to its two-year rate. This projection doesn't excite us and suggests its newer products and services will not catalyze better top-line performance yet.

Getty Images has been a well-oiled machine over the last five years. It demonstrated elite profitability for a business services business, boasting an average operating margin of 18.7%.

Analyzing the trend in its profitability, Getty Images’s operating margin decreased by 5.9 percentage points over the last five years. This raises questions about the company’s expense base because its revenue growth should have given it leverage on its fixed costs, resulting in better economies of scale and profitability.

In Q3, Getty Images generated an operating margin profit margin of 18.8%, down 5.1 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses increased relative to its revenue.

Although earnings are undoubtedly valuable for assessing company performance, we believe cash is king because you can’t use accounting profits to pay the bills.

Getty Images has shown impressive cash profitability, giving it the option to reinvest or return capital to investors. The company’s free cash flow margin averaged 8.8% over the last five years, better than the broader business services sector.

Taking a step back, we can see that Getty Images’s margin dropped by 11.1 percentage points during that time. If its declines continue, it could signal increasing investment needs and capital intensity.

Getty Images’s free cash flow clocked in at $7.89 million in Q3, equivalent to a 3.3% margin. This result was good as its margin was 4 percentage points higher than in the same quarter last year, but we wouldn’t read too much into the short term because investment needs can be seasonal, causing temporary swings. Long-term trends are more important.

Getty Images reported $113.6 million of cash and $1.36 billion of debt on its balance sheet in the most recent quarter. As investors in high-quality companies, we primarily focus on two things: 1) that a company’s debt level isn’t too high and 2) that its interest payments are not excessively burdening the business.

With $297.4 million of EBITDA over the last 12 months, we view Getty Images’s 4.2× net-debt-to-EBITDA ratio as safe. We also see its $65.78 million of annual interest expenses as appropriate. The company’s profits give it plenty of breathing room, allowing it to continue investing in growth initiatives.

It was good to see Getty Images beat analysts’ EPS expectations this quarter. Overall, we think this was still a solid quarter with some key areas of upside. The stock traded up 3.2% to $1.78 immediately after reporting.

Updated: December 4, 2025 at 9:32 PM EST

Before investing in or passing on Getty Images, we urge you to understand the company’s business quality (or lack thereof), valuation, and the latest quarterly results - in that order.

Getty Images isn’t a terrible business, but it isn’t one of our picks. First off, its revenue growth was uninspiring over the last five years, and analysts don’t see anything changing over the next 12 months. And while its astounding EPS growth over the last two years shows its profits are trickling down to shareholders, the downside is its diminishing returns show management's prior bets haven't worked out. On top of that, its declining adjusted operating margin shows the business has become less efficient.

Getty Images’s P/E ratio based on the next 12 months is 22.6x. Investors with a higher risk tolerance might like the company, but we think the potential downside is too great. We're pretty confident there are superior stocks to buy right now.

Wall Street analysts have a consensus one-year price target of $4.43 on the company (compared to the current share price of $1.48).

Although the price target is bullish, readers should exercise caution because analysts tend to be overly optimistic. The firms they work for, often big banks, have relationships with companies that extend into fundraising, M&A advisory, and other rewarding business lines. As a result, they typically hesitate to say bad things for fear they will lose out. We at StockStory do not suffer from such conflicts of interest, so we’ll always tell it like it is.