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Friday's Exclusive Story Instacart's Pricing Tests Spark Backlash... But Investors Didn't CareAuthor: Jordan Chussler. Article Posted: 12/22/2025. 
Article Highlights - Instacart’s AI-enabled price tests drew backlash and regulatory attention, but the company says the tests weren’t based on personal data.
- The FTC’s $60 million settlement is a significant blow to Instacart's trust, yet it doesn’t directly alter Instacart’s core demand drivers or unit economics.
- After a brief pullback, the stock rallied to within reach of where it was before the news broke as investors shook off the news and focused on the future.
America's favorite grocery ordering and delivery app came under pressure earlier this month after a consumer advocacy investigation raised concerns about its pricing practices and transparency. A joint investigation conducted by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative and published on Dec. 9 found that Maplebear (NASDAQ: CART), which does business as Instacart, ran pricing experiments that resulted in different customers seeing different prices for identical items. Consumer Reports said those experiments do not meet the definition of surveillance pricing. If you've built substantial wealth, capital gains taxes may quietly erode far more of your investment returns than you realize.
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Here are three high-impact areas where strategic planning may help minimize your capital gains tax. Try SmartAsset's Financial Advisor Matching Tool The scrutiny came just days before the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Dec. 18 that it was levying a $60 million penalty against the company for "deceiving consumers with false advertising, failure to provide refunds and unlawful subscription enrollment processes" in an unrelated enforcement action. This year the stock has generally underperformed the market, along with much of the consumer staples sector. But since its year-to-date (YTD) low on Nov. 6, Instacart is up more than 31%. When news of the Consumer Reports investigation broke earlier this month, the stock dipped nearly 6%, then recovered almost as quickly in the following days. Here's why investors largely shrugged off the controversy over the company's pricing experiments and why the FTC's penalty didn't significantly alter shareholders' long-term expectations. How Instacart's Pricing Tests Created Price Differences Instacart, the largest online grocery ordering and delivery app, serves roughly 14.9 million customers—up from 14.4 million in 2024—and employs about 600,000 shoppers. Like other companies leveraging AI, Instacart has used short-term, randomized A/B pricing tests to evaluate aggregate consumer price sensitivity. The AI model, implemented as early as 2022, supported short-term pricing experiments rather than real-time, demand-based dynamic pricing. Consumer Reports' report found that "many U.S. shoppers who order grocery deliveries through Instacart are unknowingly part of widespread AI-enabled experiments that price identical products differently from one customer to the next." Those prices differed by as much as 23% per item between customers—a technique the company refers to internally as "smart rounding," according to an inadvertently released email. To some insiders and shareholders, the strategy wasn't entirely new. Consumer Reports noted that "Instacart has disclosed its pricing experiments in corporate marketing and investor materials," even though shoppers were generally unaware they were participating in such tests. Instacart says retail partners control base prices on the platform and that Instacart provides the infrastructure used to run pricing tests. Why Investors Shrugged Off the Bad News In response to the Consumer Reports investigation, Instacart denied using surveillance pricing, saying it does not use—and does not allow partners to use—personal, demographic, or user-level behavioral data to set prices. Charging different prices for the same product across customers is not illegal in the United States, nor is it a new practice. The distinction between dynamic pricing and surveillance pricing can be blurry, but many platforms adjust prices based on demand, location and other factors. For example, rideshare companies like Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) use dynamic—or surge—pricing during periods of high demand, adjusting fares for supply, demand, traffic, time of day, location and even weather. Investors also considered Instacart's recent financial performance. The company was profitable before its Sept. 19, 2023 IPO and has averaged 10.15% revenue growth over the last four quarters, while net cash from operating activities rose by nearly 88%. From an earnings perspective, the track record is solid: Instacart has beaten expectations in seven of the past eight quarters, missing revenue expectations only twice in that span. Wall Street Remains Bullish on CART Industry analysis firm Grand View Research estimates the global online grocery market was worth more than $67 billion in 2024 and is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.8% from 2025 to 2033. That growth would bring the market to an expected value of more than $992 billion by the end of the forecast period, and Instacart is positioned as a major participant in that expansion. As a result, Wall Street's view remains generally positive. The 27 analysts covering CART give it a consensus Moderate Buy rating and a 12-month average price target roughly 14% above the current share price. Institutional ownership exceeds 63%, with institutional investors contributing $3.73 billion in inflows over the past 12 months compared with $1.4 billion in outflows. And although short interest stands at 6.58% of the float (about $537 million), that is down nearly 29% from the previous period, when short interest was $734 million.
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