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Fly News Breaks for March 19, 2019
ETSY, FB, SHOP
Mar 19, 2019 | 16:25 EDT
Facebook's (FB) "Checkout on Instagram" announced today focuses on large sellers, which means it is not yet a competitor of Etsy (ETSY), BTIG analyst Marvin Fong tells investors in a research note titled "In Instagram, Sellers Could Soon Have a New Sales Channel, But We See Limited Impact to Etsy." However, Instagram mentions in its blog post that in the future it will work with Shopify-type (SHOP) platforms, indicating that it intends to reach into the small-to-medium size businesses, the analyst adds. He points out that BuzzFeed even identified Etsy as a future target of Checkout by name. Fong's quick analysis, which "pessimistically" assumes Instagram can convert 10% of an Etsy seller's Instagram followers, puts the impact to Etsy's volume at around 2%. The analyst estimates about 41% of large Etsy sellers are already able to integrate with Instagram. He also found that found that ~25% of large Etsy sellers have no Instagram presence. Fong keeps a Neutral rating on Etsy.