Etsy: House of Brands, Revisited.

(ETSY: Q4 2021 Earnings)

The last time I wrote a stand-alone memo about Etsy (“House of Brands”) in Q2, my thoughts were as follows:

“The biggest question for me rests upon how buyer frequency and retention pans out over the coming 12 months. I am in no doubt that Etsy is a greater business today than it was pre-pandemic. Brand exposure, buyers, sellers, are all more significant and more widely dispersed. Whilst the next 12 months may be choppy, a great deal of insight as to whether or not this business has longevity will be extracted from the results.”

It is my opinion that the pull-forward exhibited in this business stands to be a net positive, regardless of how the share price might behave in the interim.

The last 24 months have brought in 43M new active buyers to the Etsy ETSY 0.00%↑ marketplace, as well as 2.6M new sellers for a grand total of 90.1M buyers (+9.2M YoY) and 5.3M sellers (+900K YoY). Including Reverb, Elo7, and Depop, the consolidated business stands at 96.3M buyers (+18%) and 7.5M sellers (+72%). Et…