Companies and Brands

How Etsy Is Boosting Sales With Machine Learning

Chris Lange

Published: May 14, 2019 12:10 pm

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 8:48 pm

The Wall Street Journal reports that online crafts firm Etsy Inc. (NASDAQ: ETSY) is using machine-learning technology from Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to boost sales.

In 2017 Etsy signed a five-year deal to make Google its primary cloud provider. Mike Fisher, chief technology officer, joined the company in August 2017 and initiated a shift to the cloud. The goal was for Etsy’s engineers to “start working on problems closer to customers,” which includes how artificial intelligence can be used to improve search function.

Since 2017, the company has moved all of its customer-facing websites and applications to the cloud.

According to the report, Etsy’s engineers are developing complex machine-learning models that can look at a product category, such as home décor, and automatically assign it a specific style.

Also, engineers are looking at ways to use more contextual data, such as location and time of year, to suggest relevant products.

In its most recent quarterly report, Etsy said that it had $0.24 in earnings per share (EPS) and $169.3 million in revenue. Consensus estimates had called for $0.14 in EPS and $170.06 million. In the same period of last year, Etsy said it had EPS of $0.10 on $120.91 million in revenue.

Gross merchandise sales (GMS) increased 18.9% year over year to $1.02 billion. GMS per active buyer on a trailing 12-month basis was up nearly 2% and had generated growth of nearly 2% or higher for the past three consecutive quarters.

Shares of Etsy were last seen up about 2% at $58.39, in a 52-week range of $28.60 to $73.35. The consensus price target is $74.62.