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By Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Wix.com, which helps small businesses build and run websites, beat fourth-quarter net profit expectations on Wednesday and said its artificial intelligence and Studio products for designing websites will help it reach revenue of $2 billion in 2025.
The Israeli company's earnings were $1.93 per diluted share, excluding one-time items, up from $1.22 per share a year earlier. Revenue for the October-December quarter grew 14% to $460.5 million, with sales from partners such as agencies and freelancers up 29%.
The company's Nasdaq-listed shares, up 6.2% so far in 2025 after a 74% jump in 2024, were up 6% in pre-market trading to $242.
Analysts expected Wix to earn $1.59 per share, excluding one-time items on revenue of $461.75 million, LSEG data showed.
Wix forecast 2025 revenue of $1.97-$2.0 billion, for annual growth of up to 16%, noting it expects "almost no contribution from new products" in 2025. It expects first-quarter revenue of $469-$473 million, up 13-14%.
In 2024, Wix's revenue rose 13% to $1.76 billion.
"AI gives us another way to (build websites) in a very, very effective manner," Nir Zohar, chief operations offer at Wix, told a news conference, adding it would drive further success in the next years.
The company had more than 282 million registered users at the end of 2024, 6.2 million of them premium subscriptions.
"A website today is not what a website used to be 15 years ago," Zohar said. "People today really use their websites as a full-on extension of their business capabilities."
Wix said it completed a $200 million share repurchase plan in January, bringing the total repurchases since August 2023 to$725 million. Zohar said he expected more buybacks.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer. Editing by Jane Merriman, Alexandra Hudson)