By Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Wix.com, which helps small businesses build and operate websites, reported a higher-than-expected rise in quarterly net profit, and said Israel's war with Islamist militant group Hamas in Gaza was not impacting its business.
The Israeli company posted earnings of $1.10 per diluted share, excluding one-time items, compared with 6 cents per share a year earlier. Revenue for the July-September quarter grew 14% to $394 million.
Analysts expected Wix to earn 67 cents per share excluding one-time items on revenue of $383 million, LSEG data showed.
RESERVISTS CALLED UP
President Nir Zohar said that just 5% of its global workforce has been called up to reserve duty in Israel as a result of the war that began on Oct. 7, although the number is higher in Israel.
"In terms of product and software development and progression, that obviously had some impact, especially in the first few weeks," he told reporters.
"Luckily ... because we have we have teams outside of Israel that also do deal with development, we managed to counterbalance a lot of it in a way that I wouldn't say that nothing has been disrupted but we deemed a disruption and the delays to be relatively insignificant."
Zohar noted that "all of our services have been up and running as usual" since Wix is a service company, while most of its customer care and sales teams are outside of Israel.
The company projected fourth-quarter revenue of $400 million to $405 million, representing annual growth of as much as 14%.
Citing an "outperformance in the first three quarters" Wix raised its 2023 revenue estimate to $1.558 billion to $1.563 billion - growth of 12-13% - from a range of $1.543 billion to $1.558 billion.
"Another quarter of results that exceeded expectations, positions us well to achieve positive GAAP net income in full year 2023 with GAAP profitability achievable in 2024," CFO Lior Shemesh said.
He added that Wix had previously projected GAAP profitability in 2025 but revenue has been higher than expected while expenses have been lower, while the company will end the year with strong free cash flow.
Its Nasdaq-listed shares have gained 17% in 2023 after a 51% drop last year.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer; editing by Jason Neely and David Evans)
