Why Wix Shares Dipped After Rival Elementor Announced Major Job Cuts
Shares of Wix (NASDAQ:WIX) fell 2.2% in afternoon trading Thursday after Elementor, a direct competitor in the website-building market, announced it was cutting 100 jobs — roughly 30% of its staff. The layoff news from a rival triggered a broader reassessment of the sector's health, with investors worrying that softening demand or margin pressures could extend beyond Elementor.
Elementor's restructuring, while company-specific, was widely interpreted as a potential red flag for the entire industry. When a peer takes such aggressive cost-cutting measures, the market often reads it as a sign of underlying headwinds, pulling down related names like Wix. After the initial decline, Wix shares partially recovered to $45.19, still down 2% from Wednesday's close.
The stock has been highly volatile over the past year, with 34 moves greater than 5%. Thursday's drop, while notable, remains within a range that the market considers reactive rather than structurally transformative. The last significant swing occurred just 24 hours earlier, when Wix surged 5.2% after reports that the U.S. and Iran had agreed to halt their military exchanges, easing fears of a wider Middle East conflict. That relief rally lifted the broader risk complex, including high-growth software stocks.
That macro-driven gain was preceded by a chip-to-software rotation that began in late June, when a report suggesting OpenAI might delay its IPO alleviated the so-called SaaSpocalypse fear — the notion that AI labs would quickly cannibalize incumbent software-as-a-service companies. The Iran news further boosted software names through the rates channel: lower oil prices eased inflation expectations, reducing the odds of a Fed rate hike later this year. That disproportionately benefits long-duration, high-multiple growth software stocks — the same cohort that was hit hardest in 2026. In short, a macro overhang lifted at the same time a micro narrative (OpenAI's constraints) reduced existential AI-disruption worries.
Despite those recent swings, Wix's longer-term performance remains under severe pressure. The stock is down 55.2% year-to-date and, at $45.19, trades 75.5% below its 52-week high of $184.24 set in September 2025. An investor who put $1,000 into Wix five years ago would now hold just $155.68.
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