The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in Getty Images Holdings on September 29, 2026 and began proceedings to strike the company's Class A common stock from its list, ruling that the shares had sunk to abnormally low selling price levels. The decision freezes the equity of one of the largest suppliers of stock and news photography to advertisers, agencies and publishers, just over four years after it began trading in New York, and it lands two days before a 30-day grace period on bond interest runs out.

In Short

The New York Stock Exchange stopped trading in Getty Images shares on September 29, 2026 and started the process of removing the company because its stock had fallen to a few cents. Getty licenses the photos and video clips that brands, ad agencies and news publishers put in campaigns and articles, and it is carrying roughly $1.5 billion of debt with little cash left after a failed merger and expensive court cases. Getty's websites keep selling images for now, but the company is reported to be negotiating a court-supervised reorganisation that could put its lenders in charge.

A discretionary rule, not the dollar test

NYSE Regulation, the exchange's oversight arm, said trading would stop at once and that it had judged the stock no longer suitable for listing under Section 802.01D of the Listed Company Manual, according to the exchange's statement. That provision gives the exchange discretion to act when a security trades at an abnormally low price. It is separate from the better-known $1 minimum in Section 802.01C, which Getty had already failed. Getty keeps a right to have a committee of the exchange's board review the staff decision, and the NYSE said it would apply to the Securities and Exchange Commission to remove the shares only after all procedures, including any appeal, are complete.

No price threshold appeared in the statement. The shares traded at $0.12 on September 28, down 12% in the session and at their lowest level on record, according to Benzinga, which put Getty's market value at about $59 million at that price and the fall over the preceding year at roughly 93%. Measured from the listing, the loss exceeds 99%, according to a Bloomberg report summarised by Investing.com.

The slide had been visible for months. Getty's annual report for 2025, filed on March 16, 2026, disclosed that its 30-day average closing price had dropped below $1.00 on March 9. The formal notice followed on March 17, and Getty made it public two days later, according to the company. Under that standard a company has six months to cure; compliance returns if, on the last trading day of any calendar month, both the closing price and the average over the preceding 30 trading days are at or above $1.00. Counted from March 17, the window ran to mid-September. The exchange's September 29 statement did not mention it.

A stricter floor is already on the calendar. The SEC approved on August 14, 2026 a rule under which a single close below $0.25 will trigger immediate suspension and delisting proceedings with no cure period, according to law firm Lowenstein Sandler. That rule does not take effect until July 1, 2027. For Getty, the exchange relied on the discretionary language that was already in force.

Where did the shares start? Getty returned to public markets through a merger with CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II, a special purpose acquisition company, and its stock began trading under the GETY ticker on July 25, 2022, according to Getty Images. The transaction carried an aggregate equity value of about $2.9 billion, according to the combined company's prospectus. By mid-September the price had already fallen below the coming 25-cent floor: a Form 144 notice filed by Chinh Chu, a former director and founder of CC Capital, one of the SPAC's backers, covered up to 15,060,230 shares with an aggregate market value of about $3.56 million and an approximate sale date of September 14, according to the filing as published by StockTitan. That works out to roughly 24 cents a share.

The merger that set the debt load

Much of the present strain traces to a deal that never closed. Getty and Shutterstock agreed in January 2025 to combine in a transaction valued at about $3.7 billion, with Getty chief executive Craig Peters slated to run the combined group. The US Department of Justice ended its review without conditions, a milestone disclosed on February 23, 2026, according to Getty's first-quarter 10-Q.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority took longer and reached a different view. It referred the deal to a Phase 2 investigation on November 3, 2025. Its interim report of February 19, 2026 found no expected substantial lessening of competition in the global stock content market, but a possible one in UK editorial content. On May 15, 2026 its final report concluded that the merger could proceed only with the divestiture of Shutterstock's entire editorial business to one or more CMA-approved buyers, according to Getty's second-quarter 10-Q. Getty's board resolved unanimously on June 30 not to pursue that sale and delivered a termination notice to Shutterstock on July 7, after the agreement's second extended end date of July 6 had passed.

The merger financing was unwound once the deal ended, but it was expensive while it lasted. In October 2025 Getty sold $628.4 million of 10.500% senior secured notes due 2030 to fund the merger, with the proceeds held in escrow. Termination triggered a special mandatory redemption at par, funded from that escrow. Through June 30, 2026 the company recorded about $30.1 million of interest expense on the merger financing, net of interest earned on the escrowed funds, plus $13.5 million of financing fees, on top of roughly $60.4 million in legal, accounting and other direct deal costs, according to the 10-Q. Cash interest paid in the second quarter alone included $37.4 million on the 10.5% notes, according to Getty's second-quarter results.

Warrant judgments

A second drain also dates to the SPAC. Getty issued 20,700,000 public warrants under a warrant agreement dated August 4, 2020 and redeemed them in October 2022; former holders sued for breach of that agreement. In October 2023 the US District Court for the Southern District of New York found for Alta Partners and CRCM Institutional Master Fund, awarding $36.9 million and $51.0 million respectively, plus 9% annual pre-judgment interest. The Second Circuit affirmed on January 15, 2026 and denied rehearing on April 16. Getty paid $110.9 million in judgment and interest on April 23, after drawing $120 million from its revolving credit facility, partly for that purpose. The two filings disagree on the draw date: the 10-Q gives April 22, while the earnings release gives April 23.

More judgments are pending. A New York state court directed on July 27, 2026 that judgment be entered for $67.8 million in consolidated suits by other former warrant holders, with 9% pre-judgment interest running from August 22, 2022, and a federal judgment in the Berner and Lapp actions totals $7.8 million including interest. Getty is appealing both. It held a litigation reserve of $99.5 million at June 30.

The debt stack

At June 30, face-value debt stood at $2.07 billion against cash of $51.6 million, according to the second-quarter results. It comprised $1.17 billion of senior secured notes (the $628.4 million of merger notes and $539.9 million of 11.250% notes due 2030), $510.6 million of term loans, of which $470.5 million was denominated in euros, $270.0 million of senior unsecured notes, and $120.0 million drawn on the revolver. Remove the redeemed merger notes and add the final $30.0 million drawn from the revolver in July, and the same face-value measure falls to roughly $1.47 billion, before any currency movement on the euro loans. The unsecured portion consists of $264.7 million of 14% notes due 2028 and $5.3 million of 9.75% notes due 2027. The $150 million revolver, maturing on May 4, 2028, is now fully drawn.

Interest expense reached $57.3 million in the second quarter, against $36.6 million a year earlier, and $111.5 million for the first half. Operating income for the quarter was $32.4 million. On those numbers, the business did not earn its interest bill.

The 10-Q, filed on August 10, contained the formal warning. Management concluded that the size and timing of current and future obligations, set against limited liquidity, raised substantial doubt about Getty's ability to continue as a going concern for a year from the date of the statements. The company withdrew financial guidance and said it had engaged Guggenheim Securities in July to evaluate strategic financing alternatives.

Thirty days

On August 31, Getty said it would use the 30-day grace periods in its indentures instead of paying interest due on September 1 on its 9.750% senior notes due 2027 and 14.000% senior notes due 2028, according to an 8-K filing. The company said it had enough cash to make the payments and meet day-to-day obligations, that it kept the right to pay during the grace period, and that the election was not an event of default. The same filing said a group of majority equity holders had organised to advance discussions on a potential capital solution.

Ratings followed quickly. Moody's cut Getty's corporate family rating on September 2, according to Bloomberg Law, to Caa3 from Caa1, with the unsecured notes lowered to Ca, according to Benzinga. S&P Global Ratings lowered the company to CCC and signalled a move to selective default if the interest remained unpaid at the end of the grace period, Benzinga reported. The 14% notes due 2028, which traded near face value in the spring, were quoted at about 47 cents on the dollar in late September, according to the same Benzinga report, which cited FINRA data.

Credit-market publications have since described preparations for a court process. Debtwire reported on September 11 that Getty was preparing for a possible Chapter 11 filing and working with restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal. Octus reported that a filing could come as soon as the end of September, and that lender groups had hired their own advisers: Gibson Dunn and Houlihan Lokey for term lenders, Akin Gump and Perella Weinberg for unsecured noteholders. On September 28, Bloomberg reported confidential talks with lenders about new money, potentially through a debtor-in-possession loan, and about lenders taking control of the company through a bankruptcy, with the Getty family also considering an investment, according to Investing.com's account of that report. Getty is advised by Guggenheim and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. As of September 30, the company had not disclosed a filing.

Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code generally provides for reorganisation, with the business continuing to operate while it restructures its debts, according to the federal judiciary. The grace period that opened on September 1 closes around October 1.

Where the revenue is slipping

Strip out financing, and the operating business is smaller than a year ago but not collapsing. Second-quarter revenue was $229.1 million, down 2.5% year on year and 4.1% on a currency-neutral basis, according to Getty's August 10 results; first-half revenue was $455.7 million, against $459.0 million. Creative revenue, the stock image business, fell 2.6% to $127.4 million. Editorial revenue, covering news, sport and entertainment, rose 9.2% to $96.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $62.3 million, a margin of 27.2%, and annual subscriptions accounted for 58.8% of revenue, up from 53.5%.

The detail sits in the 10-Q. Within Creative, iStock e-commerce revenue fell $7.4 million, Premium RF ALC and Ultra Pack offerings fell $2.1 million, Premium Access subscriptions fell $1.7 million and Getty Images video fell $1.5 million, partly offset by an $8.9 million increase in Custom Content. Customer measures deteriorated faster than revenue. Purchasing customers over the trailing twelve months fell 10.0% to 636,000, active annual subscribers dropped 25.2% to 240,000, and the annual subscriber revenue retention rate slid to 88.4% from 93.4%. Asia-Pacific revenue fell 22.1% on a currency-neutral basis, which the company tied to one-off project spending in the prior year.

Peters named two pressure points on the August 10 call, according to a transcript published by The Motley Fool. Revenue from advertising agencies fell 13%, which he attributed to secular headwinds, consolidation among agencies and a business model that encourages production in-house, including with AI. At iStock, referral traffic from search engines kept declining as those engines rolled out AI-generated answers, with a knock-on effect on affiliate traffic. Getty ended iStock's free trial acquisition programme in June 2025. Separately, Other revenue, which includes data access and licensing for machine learning, fell to $5.2 million from $15.7 million; the 10-Q cites lower volume and the timing of those agreements, and the call attributed the prior-year figure to three new deals with large upfront revenue recognition.

Is this, then, a company undone by AI? The filings point to a split answer. Generative tools and AI search are eroding the self-serve microstock end of the market and the agency channel, while the enterprise and news businesses held up. Yet Getty's own going-concern analysis lists the warrant litigation, the merger costs and the interest bill as the forces that drained its liquidity. Benzinga reached a similar conclusion: AI shrank the revenue base that was meant to carry the debt, but the debt, the court payments and interest costs close to $200 million a year emptied the till.

The would-be partner

Shutterstock's numbers show where the pressure on stock imagery is sharper. Its second-quarter revenue, reported on August 4, fell 17% to $221.8 million, with content revenue also down 17%, to $165.7 million, because of weaker new-customer acquisition, according to Shutterstock's results. Paid downloads dropped to 98.7 million from 112.6 million. A $173.7 million goodwill impairment tied to the ended merger pushed the net loss to $155.9 million. Its shares had fallen about 80% over twelve months by late September, according to Benzinga. Unlike Getty's, they still trade on the NYSE.

Search referrals and the paid side of the ledger

For search marketers, the iStock line from the earnings call will sound familiar. PPC Land has tracked the same mechanism across the open web. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode now answer a growing share of informational queries on the results page, and a randomised field experiment found the summaries cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8%, the first causal estimate of the effect. The losses are not confined to news sites: Stack Overflow's monthly question count fell to 1,442 in July, 99% below its 2014 peak. An image marketplace fed by generic searches for a handshake or an office meeting sits on the same exposed surface.

The paid response has taken two directions. Publishers spent $113 million on paid search in July 2026, up 274% in three years, in effect buying back traffic that organic listings once delivered. Getty went the other way. Its marketing costs fell to $9.4 million in the second quarter from $12.3 million a year earlier, and to $19.2 million in the first half from $24.2 million, according to the segment disclosure in the 10-Q. Management told analysts it would cut spending in channels that miss its payback requirements and steer iStock toward premium products, Yahoo Finance reported.

The creative supply chain advertisers rely on

Getty sells to media outlets, advertising agencies and corporations as well as individual creators, according to its 10-Q. Its library holds 625 million images and 39 million videos, and the company says it covers more than 160,000 news, sport and entertainment events a year with over 600,000 content creators. Ad platforms have long plugged into that supply: Taboola integrated Getty's stock video library into its Taboola Ads buying platform in November 2021 under a multiyear deal.

The same platforms now generate images inside the buying tools. Google rolled out Asset Studio in Google Ads on September 10, 2025, with Imagen 4 image generation and editing built in. More than 4 million advertisers were using Meta's generative AI ad tools by late 2025. Disclosure rules have followed: on July 9, 2026, Google updated its advertising policies to let advertisers label AI-generated or AI-edited creative inside campaign tools, with a visible overlay on ads targeting the European Union, India or New York. The labelling attaches to generated or edited assets, not to unaltered licensed photography.

Agency consolidation, the other headwind Peters named, has continued in parallel. Omnicom completed its acquisition of Interpublic on November 26, 2025, creating the largest agency holding company by revenue.

Getty has tried to sell on both sides of that shift. Its standard company description says Getty Images and iStock customers can create images with text-to-image tools trained on permissioned content, sold with indemnification and perpetual worldwide usage rights. For brands worried about intellectual property claims, that indemnity is the product. Whether it survives a restructuring on the same terms is a question for whoever controls the company next.

Licensing to the model builders

The other route to AI revenue runs through the AI companies themselves. Getty signed a multi-year display agreement with OpenAI on June 21, 2026, bringing licensed images into ChatGPT search and discovery, after a similar arrangement with Perplexity on October 31, 2025. The OpenAI agreement covers display rather than model training, according to Getty Images, and neither side disclosed financial terms. The shares rose as much as 145% in June on the news, according to Benzinga, a gain that has since fully reversed.

In court, the record is mixed. The High Court of England and Wales ruled on November 4, 2025 that Stability AI's Stable Diffusion model did not infringe Getty's copyright on the secondary infringement theory, finding only narrow trademark violations tied to watermarks in older versions. At a December 2025 hearing Getty obtained an injunction and permission to appeal the secondary infringement ruling, with the appeal expected in November 2026, according to the 10-Q. In the United States, a suit filed on August 14, 2025 in the Northern District of California alleges that Stability AI copied about 12 million images with their captions and metadata; the parties are in fact discovery. Shutterstock's data revenue has also proved volatile, falling 63% in the first quarter and 11% in the second, which the company attributes to the timing of metadata licence deliveries.

Why this matters for marketers

Three consequences run beyond Getty's shareholders.

The first is supply. Editorial photography of real events is the part of Getty's business that grew fastest this year, and it is the part the CMA considered important enough to UK news organisations to demand a divestiture. Brand teams and publishers that license editorial and archive images depend on contracts with an entity whose ownership may change. Chapter 11 generally keeps a business operating, but lenders who take control set the priorities.

The second is the archive itself. PPC Land reported in August that bankruptcy courts have become a route for data holdings to change hands, as when Google won Spirit Airlines' deidentified corporate data for $10 million. Getty describes its photographic archive as one of the largest in private hands, with images dating to the beginning of photography, and its content and data are the kind of material AI companies have paid to display or to use for model training, according to the 10-Q. How any restructuring treats those rights, and the display agreements with OpenAI and Perplexity, is not yet known.

The third is measurement of the AI effect. Getty's filings offer an unusually specific read of where AI hurts a content business: self-serve search acquisition and agency production, rather than enterprise subscriptions or live news. The warning signs for ad-funded and content businesses have been accumulating; BuzzFeed disclosed going-concern doubt in March 2026 with $8.5 million in unrestricted cash. Getty's case adds a lesson that sits outside the AI debate altogether. A business losing 2.5% of its revenue can survive; one carrying merger debt, SPAC-era litigation and double-digit coupons at the same time has far less room.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Getty Images Holdings, the Seattle-based licensor of stock, editorial and archive imagery operating the Getty Images, iStock and Unsplash brands; NYSE Regulation; the company's secured lenders, unsecured noteholders and majority equity holders; and the advertisers, agencies and publishers that license its content.

What: The NYSE suspended trading in Getty's Class A common stock and began delisting proceedings under Section 802.01D, citing abnormally low selling price levels, as the company faces roughly $1.47 billion of face-value debt, a going-concern warning and reported talks over a Chapter 11 financing.

When: September 29, 2026, following a $1.00 noncompliance notice on March 17, 2026, the collapse of the Shutterstock merger on July 7, 2026, and an interest grace period that began on September 1 and ends around October 1, 2026.

Where: The New York Stock Exchange, with parallel pressure from the UK Competition and Markets Authority's merger conditions, US federal and New York state courts in the warrant litigation, and the search and advertising platforms through which Getty's iStock business acquires customers.

Why: The shares fell to about $0.12 after the failed merger left Getty with merger-related costs, heavy interest and warrant judgments, while AI-generated search answers and in-house AI production by agencies eroded the self-serve and agency revenue that the debt was meant to rest on.