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Today's Bonus News Instacart's Pricing Tests Spark Backlash... But Investors Didn't CareSubmitted by Jordan Chussler. Published: 12/22/2025. 
Summary - 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 — a practice Consumer Reports said does not meet the definition of surveillance pricing. The scrutiny came 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 underperformed the market, as has much of the consumer staples sector. But since its year-to-date low on Nov. 6, Instacart is up more than 31%. When the news about the Consumer Reports investigation broke earlier this month, the stock pulled back nearly 6%. In the days that followed, shares recovered almost all of that loss. Here's why investors largely shrugged off the controversy over Instacart's pricing experiments and why the FTC's penalty didn't significantly alter shareholders' longer-term expectations. How Instacart's Pricing Tests Created Price Differences The largest online grocery ordering and delivery app, Instacart serves roughly 14.9 million customers—up from 14.4 million in 2024—and employs about 600,000 shoppers. Like other companies leveraging AI for competitive advantage, Instacart used short-term, randomized A/B pricing tests to evaluate consumer price sensitivity at an aggregate level. The AI model, implemented as far back as 2022, supported short-term pricing experiments rather than real-time, demand-based dynamic pricing. Consumer Reports 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." According to an inadvertently released email, those prices differed by as much as 23% per item — a technique the company calls "smart rounding." However, the report also noted that Instacart had disclosed these pricing experiments in corporate marketing and investor materials, even as shoppers remained unaware they were participating. Instacart says its retail partners ultimately control base prices on the platform, while 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 products depending on the customer isn't necessarily illegal, nor is it a new practice in the United States. The line between dynamic pricing and surveillance pricing can be blurred, but many companies routinely vary prices based on demand, location and other factors. For example, rideshare operators like Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) use dynamic (or surge) pricing during periods of high demand, adjusting fares in real time for supply, traffic, time of day, location and even weather. Investors also looked to Instacart's financials. The company was profitable before its IPO on Sept. 19, 2023, and it has averaged 10.15% revenue growth over the last four quarters. Meanwhile, net cash from operating activities increased by nearly 88%. From an earnings perspective, the company has been relatively consistent, beating expectations in seven of the past eight quarters and missing revenue estimates just twice in that span. Wall Street Remains Bullish on CART Industry research from 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 expansion would push the market toward an expected value of more than $992 billion by the end of the forecast period, and Instacart stands to play a central role. The result: a generally bullish stance from Wall Street. The 27 analysts covering CART give it a consensus Moderate Buy rating and an average 12-month price target nearly 14% above the current share price. Institutional ownership sits above 63%, with roughly $3.73 billion in inflows into Instacart over the past 12 months versus $1.4 billion in outflows. Short interest is about 6.58% of the float, or $537 million — a nearly 29% decline from the previous period when it was $734 million.
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