Fiverr International (NYSE:FVRR) used its fourth-quarter earnings call to outline a multi-year plan to reposition the company toward higher-value, more complex work as lower-end, transactional services face increasing pressure from AI-driven automation. Management said 2025 was an “execution year,” highlighted by faster revenue growth and expanding profitability, while also describing 2026 as a “transformational year” that will likely bring near-term revenue and margin pressure as the company redirects resources and increases foundational investment.
2025 results and fourth-quarter performance
Founder and CEO Micha Kaufman said Fiverr delivered on targets set at the start of 2025, with revenue up 10% for the year, accelerating from 8% growth in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA reached $92 million, up 23% year-over-year, for a 21% margin.
Katz also noted that a convertible note with a principal amount of $460 million was fully repaid during the fourth quarter.
Shift toward high-value projects amid AI disruption
Kaufman framed the company’s strategy around structural changes in work driven by AI. He said AI compresses task duration, increases project ambition, and “democratizes capability,” but does not eliminate the need for human talent. In his view, value shifts toward “context, judgment, orchestration, trust, and ownership of outcomes,” while lower-value transactional work faces displacement.
Fiverr pointed to internal indicators of momentum in larger engagements. Kaufman said spend per buyer increased 13% year-over-year in 2025, accelerating from 9% in 2024. He also said buyers spending over $10,000 annually grew 7% and GMV from projects over $1,000 increased 23%.
Kaufman noted that projects over $1,000 represent less than 15% of marketplace GMV today, but are growing quickly. Katz added that in Q4, GMV from transactions over $1,000 grew 22.8% year-over-year and “continued to accelerate,” even as marketplace trends remained mixed due to softer SMB sentiment and muted freelancer hiring demand.
Transformation plan: four pillars and investment focus
Management said Fiverr has developed a comprehensive multi-year plan following a restructuring initiated “a few months ago,” with the goal of evolving from a transaction-oriented marketplace into a “trusted work platform” that supports complex, high-value outcomes through intelligent matching and integrated workflows.
Kaufman said the plan is built on four pillars:
- Matching: building an advanced semantic and reasoning layer powered by proprietary data for AI-native talent matching
- Product: improving matching, fulfillment, collaboration, and talent management capabilities for larger projects
- Go-to-market: expanding into enterprise and AI-native distribution channels
- Operational excellence: becoming an AI-native organization across engineering, product, and operations
Kaufman said Fiverr expects “tangible impact within four to six quarters,” including a stronger high-value work flywheel and “proven AI-native growth loops,” with 2026 positioned as the transformation year and 2027 and beyond targeted for accelerated growth.
During Q&A, Kaufman said the company is not discontinuing products, but is “deprioritizing” ongoing optimization of lower-end transactions to reallocate resources toward higher-end work. He described rebuilding and reinvesting in parts of the platform that have been developed over 16 years to better support nuanced business needs and larger, more sophisticated fulfillment and collaboration requirements.
Asked about “Fiverr Go,” Kaufman said assets developed for that initiative have been integrated into parts of the product and will be incorporated further into the customer experience, rather than being treated as a standalone product.
Services growth, marketplace outlook, and vertical trends
In Q4, Katz said marketplace revenue was $71.5 million, supported by 3.1 million active buyers, $342 spend per buyer, and a 27.7% marketplace take rate. Services revenue was $35.6 million, up 18% year-over-year, and represented 33% of total Q4 revenue, with strength in Fiverr Ads, subscriptions, and e-commerce solutions.
For 2026, Katz said services revenue growth is expected to be “more moderate” as the impact from the AutoDS acquisition normalizes and as expansion for Fiverr Ads and Seller Plus moderates compared with 2025.
Management acknowledged continued weakness in simpler categories. Kaufman cited “simple website building” in programming as an area where decline is accelerating due to new AI-driven solutions. He also noted that Writing and Translation was down 20% year-over-year and that Music and Audio was down in the teens, with voice-over a meaningful component of that vertical. He contrasted this with areas such as digital marketing, where he said Fiverr is seeing “nice growth.”
Guidance, margins, and capital allocation
Fiverr guided to 2026 revenue of $380 million to $420 million, which Katz said implies year-over-year growth of negative 12% to negative 3%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $60 million to $80 million, with an 18% margin at the midpoint. For the first quarter of 2026, the company guided revenue of $100 million to $108 million (negative 7% to positive 1% year-over-year) and Adjusted EBITDA of $19 million to $23 million (20% margin at the midpoint).
Katz said the wider-than-normal revenue guidance range reflects “elevated uncertainty” as Fiverr executes the transformation plan and navigates evolving market conditions. He added that the company expects foundational investment to pressure Adjusted EBITDA by roughly 200 basis points in 2026, while maintaining “structural profitability” in the core marketplace north of 20%.
In response to a margin question, Katz said the company anticipates lower EBITDA margins in the short term but expects long-term EBITDA to return to the level described as “25 long-term EBITDA” shortly after, while gross margin is expected to remain the same. He also noted that appreciation of the Israeli shekel versus the U.S. dollar has created more than $10 million of headwind on EBITDA guidance for the year.
On capital allocation, Katz and Kaufman reiterated a disciplined approach that balances growth investment, buybacks, and opportunistic M&A. Katz said Fiverr ended the year with about $300 million in cash and expects cash to grow, while noting the company is looking at both tuck-ins and larger transactions that support moving upmarket. The company reported $67.5 million remaining under its buyback authorization as of December 31, 2025.
The company also announced leadership transitions: Katz said this was his final earnings call as CFO, though he will remain president with a focus on strategic investments and M&A. Management said Esti (previously EVP Finance) will become CFO, and Jinjin (previously leading IR and strategy) will assume a newly created Chief Business Officer role overseeing revenue, talent, fulfillment, and business operations.
About Fiverr International (NYSE:FVRR)
Fiverr International Ltd. operates an online marketplace that connects businesses and individuals with freelance talent across a wide range of professional services. Through its platform, Fiverr enables clients to procure work such as graphic design, digital marketing, writing and translation, video and animation, programming and tech, and business services. By offering a streamlined interface for ordering and delivering gig-based work, the company seeks to simplify the procurement of specialized skills on a project-by-project basis.
Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Fiverr serves clients and freelancers around the globe, with a particularly strong presence in North America and Europe.
