December 10, 2025
Warby Parker Inc. (NYSE: WRBY) has just turned into one of the market’s loudest tickers. By late trading on Wednesday, the eyewear retailer’s shares were changing hands around $28.40, up more than 20% versus the prior close and sitting near their 52‑week high of about $29.73. Volume has exploded to more than 11 million shares, several times the recent daily average near 2.3 million. [1]
This surge caps a remarkable stretch driven by two big storylines:
- A high-profile AI-powered smart glasses partnership with Google, targeting a 2026 launch. [2]
- A fresh analyst upgrade and mounting talk of short-squeeze potential, which have poured fuel on an already hot chart. [3]
Below is a detailed breakdown of what’s happening with Warby Parker’s stock today, what the newest forecasts say, and how the company’s fundamentals stack up against the hype.
Warby Parker Stock Today: Price, Momentum, and Context
As of December 10, 2025, Warby Parker stock (WRBY) is:
- Trading around $28–29
- Up more than 20% on the day
- Near its 52‑week high (~$29.73) and well above its 52‑week low of $13.63
- Carrying a market cap of roughly $3.3 billion [4]
Data services peg Warby Parker’s price-to-earnings ratio in the thousands (roughly 2,700–3,000 based on trailing EPS of about $0.01) and a price-to-sales ratio just under 4 with price-to-book near 9, all hallmarks of a richly valued growth story. [5]
Warby Parker also trades with a beta around 2.0–2.3, meaning the stock has historically moved about twice as much as the broader market—good news if you like volatility, less fun if you don’t. [6]
Catalyst #1: Analyst Upgrade Sparks a Volume Surge
The most immediate driver for Wednesday’s move is a rating upgrade from Citizens JMP, which raised Warby Parker from “market perform” to “outperform” and slapped a $30 price target on the stock. [7]
Key points from the latest coverage of that call:
- Citizens JMP’s $30 target implies modest upside from the mid‑$20s but is now roughly in line with where the stock is trading intraday. [8]
- The upgrade helped trigger “unusually strong trading volume”, with trading activity running roughly 50%+ above prior sessions and then expanding further as momentum traders piled in. [9]
- AInvest, a trading-focused outlet, highlights short-squeeze potential, noting intraday gains of about 17.6% at one point, a spike to $27.31, and a test of the $29.73 52‑week high, alongside aggressive options activity. [10]
At the same time, MarketBeat data shows the broader analyst community sitting at a “Moderate Buy” consensus, with roughly 11 Buy ratings and 8 Holds, and a consensus 12‑month price target around $24–25—now below the current market price. [11]
In other words, the stock has run past what Wall Street thought it was worth just days ago, forcing analysts and investors alike to reassess their models.
Catalyst #2: Google AI Glasses Partnership for 2026
The other major story is Warby Parker’s biggest tech swing yet: a partnership with Alphabet’s Google to build lightweight AI-powered smart glasses, targeting a 2026 launch. [12]
According to Reuters and Investing.com:
- The collaboration was showcased at “The Android Show | XR Edition”, where both companies publicly set a 2026 timeline for the first product. [13]
- The glasses will run on Google’s Android XR platform and leverage the Gemini AI model for multimodal (text, voice, vision) intelligence. [14]
- Google is working with Warby Parker, Samsung, and Gentle Monster on different smart glasses designs, aiming for devices that look like regular eyewear but behave like always-on assistants. [15]
- Two main device types are in development:
- Screen-free AI glasses with microphones, speakers, and cameras for hands-free Gemini interactions.
- Display glasses with in‑lens projections for navigation, translations, and subtle on‑eye notifications. [16]
Coverage from Investing.com notes that the partnership sent Warby Parker stock up around 12% on Monday as investors treated it as a high-profile entry into the smart eyewear race, where Meta (Ray‑Ban smart glasses) and Apple (Vision Pro) already loom large. [17]
Importantly, Warby Parker hasn’t shared pricing, distribution, or margin details yet, so the deal is best understood as strategic optionality—a long-dated call option on a new category, not an instant EPS engine.
Under the Hood: Q3 2025 Earnings and Guidance
Behind the headlines, Warby Parker’s latest quarter — Q3 2025 — gives a clearer picture of what the business is actually doing.
Revenue and customers
For Q3 2025, Warby Parker reported roughly: [18]
- Net revenue: about $221.7–222 million, up 15.2% year over year
- Active customers:2.66 million, up 9.3%
- Average revenue per customer: about $320, up 4.8%
The company continues to lean heavily on retail:
- Retail revenue grew around 20% year over year, while contact lens sales were up 21% and eyeglasses sales about 13%. [19]
Profitability
Q3 2025 also showed meaningful profitability improvements:
- GAAP EPS: about $0.05, versus analyst expectations closer to $0.08, leading some outlets to frame the report as an EPS “miss.” [20]
- Adjusted / normalized EPS: around $0.11–0.12, beating consensus estimates near $0.09 on many normalized metrics. [21]
- Net income: about $5.9 million, a swing from a loss in the prior-year period. [22]
- Adjusted EBITDA: roughly $25.7–26 million, an 11.6% margin, with margins expanding by about 260 basis points year over year. [23]
- Gross margin: about 54.1%, slightly down from 54.5% the prior year, pressured by tariffs on glasses and mix shifts toward contacts and shipping. [24]
The company ended Q3 with roughly $280 million in cash and cash equivalents, plus year‑to‑date operating cash flow of $87.5 million and about $35.6 million in free cash flow—solid liquidity for a company still in scaling mode. [25]
2025 guidance
Warby Parker updated its 2025 full-year guidance to: [26]
- Net revenue:$871–874 million, about 13% growth year over year
- Adjusted EBITDA:$98–101 million, implying margins around 11–12%
For Q4 2025, management expects:
- Revenue of $211–214 million, about 11–12% growth
- Adjusted EBITDA of $18–21 million
Several analysis pieces described the quarter as a “mixed” result: revenue modestly below Street expectations while profitability outperformed, but full-year sales guidance came in below earlier consensus near $900+ million, initially weighing on the stock before the AI glasses news and upgrades rekindled enthusiasm. [27]
The Offline Bet: 45 New Stores and Target Shop‑in‑Shops
Warby Parker may have started life as a direct-to-consumer darling, but 2025 is all about stores, stores, and more stores.
Recent data points:
- The company opened 15 net new stores in Q3, including its first five shop‑in‑shops inside Target, ending the quarter with 313 stores across the U.S. and Canada. [28]
- Across 2025, Warby Parker plans to open around 45 new locations, including five Target shop‑in‑shops, pushing beyond the 300‑store milestone celebrated earlier this year. [29]
- Third‑party analyses suggest Warby Parker stores generate roughly $3,000 per square foot in sales, comparable to productivity at top-tier retailers like Tiffany & Co. and Apple, with typical footprints around 1,600 square feet. [30]
That aggressive physical expansion goes hand‑in‑hand with a strategic shift: Warby Parker has wound down its original home try‑on program and reoriented around full-service eye‑care hubs offering exams, glasses, and contacts in one visit. [31]
From a market-share perspective, Warby Parker still commands only about 1% of the roughly $68 billion U.S. eyewear market, leaving a large runway if it can keep scaling profitably. [32]
AI Behind the Scenes: Operational Efficiency, Not Just Gadgets
The Google smart glasses deal grabs the headlines, but Warby Parker’s AI ambitions run deeper than one hardware product.
At the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, co‑CEO Neil Blumenthal said he expects Warby Parker to end 2025 more profitable than earlier forecasts, crediting investments in AI that free eye doctors from administrative tasks and let them spend more time with patients. [33]
This theme shows up in other coverage as well:
- Warby Parker is hiring aggressively for its U.S. stores and optometry staff, using software and AI tools to streamline scheduling, records, and back-office workflows. [34]
- The Q3 EBITDA margin expansion and improved net income suggest that these efficiency efforts are starting to show up in results, even as tariffs and shipping costs weigh on gross margin. [35]
So investors are effectively buying into two AI stories at once:
- Operational AI that could gradually lift margins in the core eyewear business.
- Product AI via smart glasses, which could — if adoption materializes — open a new high‑margin product category.
Wall Street’s Warby Parker Stock Forecast: Targets and EPS Estimates
Despite Wednesday’s squeeze higher, most published Warby Parker stock forecasts still look more conservative than the current price.
Price targets and ratings
Across multiple analyst-tracking sites, you see a fairly consistent picture: [36]
- Consensus rating: “Buy” to “Moderate Buy”
- Average 12‑month price target: roughly $24–25
- Target range: $20 (low) to $31 (high)
- Key recent moves:
- Goldman Sachs raised its target to $31 with a Buy rating in October.
- UBS trimmed its target to $20 and kept a Neutral rating in November.
- Citizens JMP just upgraded to Outperform with a $30 target, sparking today’s rally. [37]
ETFChannel data earlier flagged that WRBY had traded through the prior average analyst target of $22.92, prompting the question of whether analysts will raise their targets or call valuation stretched. [38]
Earnings forecasts
On the earnings side, the Street is expecting dramatic EPS growth off a tiny base:
- Current trailing EPS is about $0.01. [39]
- For full‑year 2025, various sources cluster around $0.37–0.41 EPS, depending on methodology. [40]
- For 2026, consensus centers near $0.47 EPS, with estimates ranging roughly $0.34–0.62. [41]
Those forecasts imply triple‑digit percentage EPS growth over the next couple of years — but from a very small profit base, which is why the headline P/E remains so extreme.
What Today’s Commentators Are Saying (December 10, 2025)
Coverage of Warby Parker today is strikingly split between excitement and caution:
- MarketBeat focuses on the Citizens JMP upgrade, elevated volume, and the “Moderate Buy” consensus, but notes revenue lagged expectations in Q3 even as earnings and margins improved. [42]
- GuruFocus describes WRBY as a “speculative growth” name, flagging:
- Trailing‑12‑month sales around $850 million
- A 3‑year revenue growth rate of about –5.5% (reflecting earlier deceleration)
- Negative operating margin and very thin net margin (~0.08%)
- A P/E in the 2600+ range, and P/S ~3.9, P/B ~8.8
- Insider selling of roughly 275,000 shares in the past three months [43]
- AInvest leans into the short‑squeeze narrative, highlighting overbought technicals (RSI in the mid‑70s, price blowing through Bollinger Bands and key moving averages) and eye‑catching potential returns on near‑dated call options. [44]
Across these takes, the shared theme is volatility: Warby Parker stock has become a magnet for both long‑term growth investors and short‑term traders trying to ride the wave — sometimes in opposite directions.
Key Risks: What Could Go Wrong from Here?
Even with the upbeat narrative, several risks are front and center in today’s analysis.
- Valuation risk
- With a P/E in the thousands and the stock now above the average analyst target, much of the near‑term good news appears priced in. If revenue growth slows or EPS misses even slightly, the reaction could be sharp. [45]
- Execution on store expansion
- Opening 45 stores in a single year is operationally heavy. Poor site selection, underperforming locations, or rising build‑out costs could pressure margins, especially with tariffs and shipping already nibbling at gross margin. [46]
- Smart glasses uncertainty
- The Google AI glasses story is still a concept, not a P&L line. There’s no visibility yet on pricing, unit volumes, or whether consumers actually want AI in their everyday frames. The category is crowded with giants (Meta, Apple, Google) and could be slower to mainstream than bulls hope. [47]
- Thin margins and competition
- Despite improving EBITDA, net margins remain razor-thin, and competitors from traditional optical chains to online upstarts are all targeting the same consumers. Any stumble in pricing, mix, or traffic could quickly compress EPS. [48]
- Volatility and sentiment swings
- With a beta above 2 and active speculation around short squeezes and options, WRBY can move much faster than fundamentals alone justify — in both directions. [49]
The Bottom Line
Warby Parker’s stock is suddenly trading like a high‑beta AI and retail hybrid:
- Near-term narrative: An AI‑driven re‑rating story with a marquee Google partnership, a powerful analyst upgrade, and heavy trading activity pushing WRBY above many published targets. [50]
- Fundamental backdrop: A still‑small but growing profit base, double‑digit revenue growth, rising EBITDA margins, and a disciplined push into physical stores and full‑service eye care. [51]
- Risk profile: Premium valuation, competitive markets, and a smart‑glasses opportunity that is strategically exciting but financially unproven. [52]
For now, December 10, 2025 will go down as one of those days when sentiment, story, and price action all aligned in Warby Parker’s favor. Whether WRBY’s current level becomes a new base or a short‑term spike will likely depend on two things: how quickly earnings grow into the valuation, and whether the Google AI glasses turn out to be a niche accessory or a genuinely mass‑market product.
References
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