Earnings Call Transcript - CARG Q2 2021

Operator, Operator

Good day, and welcome to CarGurus Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kirndeep Singh, Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kirndeep Singh, Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon. I’m delighted to be welcoming you to CarGurus Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call for the first time as the Head of Investor Relations. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued today after the market closed and posted on our Investor Relations website. With me on the call today are Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer; Scot Fredo, Chief Financial Officer; and Sam Zales, President and Chief Operating Officer. During the call, we will make statements regarding our business that may be considered forward-looking within applicable securities laws, including statements concerning our outlook for the third quarter 2021, management’s expectations for our future financial and operational performance and innovation, our business strategies and growth strategies, our expectations for our car offer acquisition, the value proposition of our product offerings, our growth investment performance and profitability in international markets, the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other macro-level industry issues on our business and financial results and other statements regarding our plans, prospects and expectations. These statements are not promises or guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause them to differ materially from actual results. Information concerning those risks is available in our earnings press release distributed after market close today and in our most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which, along with our other SEC filings can be found on the SEC’s website and in the Investor Relations section of our website. We undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Further, during the course of today’s call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our press release issued today. Our updated investor presentation can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I’ll now turn it over to Jason.

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Kirndeep, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. Before I begin, I’d like to officially welcome Kirndeep as our new Head of Investor Relations. She joined us in May, and we are excited to have her join our CarGurus team. At CarGurus, our vision has evolved beyond being the most trusted and transparent marketplace to being the single best platform for consumers and dealers to buy and sell vehicles. We’re well positioned to do this by adding digital retail and digital wholesale end-to-end transaction capabilities to our industry-leading listings marketplace. The power of a transaction-enabled marketplace allows consumers to confidently shop, finance, buy and sell from the comfort of their homes, and dealers to instantly acquire, market and sell at competitive prices with nationwide reach. With this vision as our backbone, I’m thrilled to report CarGurus delivered outstanding results for the second quarter 2021. Our core Listings business demonstrated durability and resiliency despite industry-wide macroeconomic headwinds, while growth accelerated in digital wholesale with our CarOffer platform. The semiconductor chip shortage has impacted new and used vehicle inventory globally and is expected to continue to do so in the near term. Nevertheless, our business exceeded our expectations and had the most profitable quarter to date. We are pleased to see improved margins from our foundational core business. CarOffer’s tremendous growth and non-GAAP profitability, increased dealer adoption of our digital retail capabilities, and last week, we launched CarGurus’ instant Max cash offer. As we continue to expand our product portfolio, we believe we are well positioned to capitalize on these offerings and provide our dealers and consumers with end-to-end solutions to meet their evolving needs. Now, I’ll walk through our results, beginning with our foundational core Listings business. Our U.S. Listings business demonstrated remarkable resiliency and efficiency despite industry-wide headwinds. We remain incredibly efficient in our marketing spend, which helped drive improved margins both year-over-year and sequentially. While the chip shortage caused us to pause our normal renewal rate increases and also resulted in a decline in paying dealers, overall, we’re pleased with the durability of the core business and are thrilled to have achieved our marketplace subscription and revenue plans this quarter. As we mentioned last quarter, we remain focused on attracting lower-funnel, high-intent shoppers to our site who are more informed and ready to purchase. CarGurus’s upcoming 2021 Buyer Insights report revealed CarGurus is three times more likely than other major U.S. automotive marketplaces to be the final auto shopping site visited by consumers before purchase, further solidifying the value proposition we provide to dealers. As we continue to drive lower funnel traffic to our site, we have seen an increase in leads to paying dealers year-over-year of 7%. Our ability to provide more leads, while the number of average monthly unique visitors and sessions are down year-over-year, demonstrates the quality of our traffic and improved efficiency in our consumer acquisition strategy. As we focus on high-intent consumers and providing more targeted and relevant consumer content, we believe we are generating higher-quality leads for our dealer base. We also continue to realize durable efficiencies by spending judiciously. In line with our strategy to monetize leads via growing paying dealers and increasing quarterly average revenue per subscribing dealer, or QARSD. In Q2, we spent marginally less on marketing compared to last quarter, driven primarily by a reduction in our APA spend. While we plan to remain prudent in our consumer marketing spend going forward, we anticipate that we will need to invest more in marketing as inventory constraints ease in the coming quarters. As the number one trafficked U.S. automotive marketplace for Q2 2021 according to comScore, CarGurus is an integral part of the dealer ecosystem and remains the preferred Listings platform. Even while dealers materially pulled back on marketing and advertising spend in aggregate, we saw a minimal net dealer decline of 421 paying dealers in the U.S., down just 2% quarter-over-quarter. Recognizing the uncertainty dealers face, we once again supported dealers by generally pausing rate increases during renewals despite our growing lead volume. Even so, we saw improved QARSD both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. QARSD was $5,550 for Q2, representing a 2% increase quarter-over-quarter, primarily attributable to revenue expansion within our existing dealer base, including same product rate increases as well as upgrades to our premium Listings products even during a period of challenged inventory. Turning to our international markets, we are thrilled to report that we delivered on our commitment of reaching profitability in Canada and expect to continue to grow top line revenue and remain profitable in that market. The momentum from our international business in Q1 propelled our Q2 growth. Our achievements in Q2 were primarily the result of improved unit economics amid rapid lead growth and increased efficiency in our traffic acquisition strategies akin to our U.S. business. As we grow our presence as the household Listings name internationally, we continue to capture greater consumer mind share. Average international monthly sessions were up 3% year-over-year. Like in the U.S., we are focused on bringing high-intent shoppers to our site to provide higher value to our dealer base. We grew total international leads by 12% quarter-over-quarter, and leads to paying dealers grew 21% during the same period. We continue to provide enhanced value to paying dealers by improving both the quality and quantity of our leads, while capping leads for those utilizing the premium package. This approach has incentivized dealers to join our paid platform, resulting in increased dealer enrollment year-over-year. Despite the global chip-related inventory issues, we saw net new dealer adds in Canada with some modest churn in the UK quarter-over-quarter. We saw strong QARSD growth as a result of revenue expansion from international paying dealers after having provided dealers in the UK discounts in the month of February due to extended lockdowns as well as improved adoption for listing add-on products. International QARSD was up 34% quarter-over-quarter. Even during an ongoing global chip shortage, the international markets exceeded our expectations in Q2. We remain excited about the opportunities in both Canada and the UK and about providing our international dealers and consumers with transparent, efficient and competitive solutions. Our profitability in Canada validates our hypothesis that our model can be successful in other markets, and we look forward to growing and investing in our international business further. CarGurus is the market leader in the U.S. listings business. And as the macro environment normalizes, we look forward to our core business, both in the U.S. and internationally, meaningfully reaccelerating as we seek to resume renewals, upsell additional products and capture an even larger percentage of dealer share of wallet. Moving on to our wholesale business, we could not be more thrilled with the rapid growth and adoption of CarOffer. CarOffer’s instant trade platform allows dealers to transact automatically and at any time, using rules-based strategies rather than time-consuming auction to create a buying and selling experience that is unlike any other dealer-to-dealer wholesale marketplace today. The matrix enables dealers to buy and sell using limit orders, saving on the time and expense of physically going to an auction. In addition, CarOffer offers a flat fee pricing structure to save dealers hundreds of dollars per unit in option fees, especially from more expensive frontline-ready units. With efficiency at its core, every CarOffer transaction is supported by robust back-end operations, including a thorough inspection process, reliable and timely transportation, and seamless payment processing. Having completed our acquisition only two quarters ago, we are still in the early stages of leveraging the power of the combined CarOffer and CarGurus platforms, creating a more efficient and transparent solution that better integrates the retail and wholesale segments in powerful ways. The need for the industry’s first instant trade platform for vehicles is evidenced by CarOffer's rapid growth and adoption. We are incredibly impressed to see a business that has been operating for less than two years achieve strong top and bottom line growth. In Q2, CarOffer’s momentum drove sequential month-over-month revenue and transaction growth. As the business continues to scale, we are investing heavily in hiring dealer sales and training and implementation teams to onboard and support dealers to gain the most leverage from this innovative platform. The increase in demand is further validated by the 210% quarter-over-quarter growth in revenue and the approximately 50% increase in enrolled rooftops quarter-over-quarter. At the end of Q2, we had approximately 5,500 enrolled rooftops. We also reported the Q2 aggregate sale price of all vehicles sold by dealers on the CarOffer platform, also known as gross merchandise sales, of approximately $1 billion, a material increase of 289% quarter-over-quarter. Similarly, we saw transaction volume increase approximately three times quarter-over-quarter as well as heightened adoption for ancillary products as dealers continue to look for solutions to source inventory and drive profit. We do anticipate these trends will stabilize as the semiconductor chip shortage is expected to normalize later this year. We are beginning to see early signs of this with a number of transactions in July, modestly declining month-over-month. The true potential of CarOffer is unlocked when you combine the Instant Trade technology with CarGurus’s vast networks of dealers and consumers to create a truly differentiated offering. As we tap into our collective power to provide consumers and dealers with enhanced capabilities and product offerings, we recently announced the launch of CarGurus’ instant max cash offer. Beginning in select markets, consumers in Florida, Massachusetts, and Texas can sell their vehicles to our participating dealers 100% online. We are harnessing the CarOffer buying matrix technology and our combined network of dealers with their standing buy orders for vehicles to instantly present consumers with the highest offer available through thousands of dealerships. Matched vehicles are conveniently picked up via a white glove concierge service, inspected, and delivered to the dealer’s lot, helping save both time and money. This new offering disrupts the way consumers and dealers think about vehicle trade-ins and sales. CarGurus’s Instant Max offer is an efficient inventory acquisition channel that will give dealers nationwide access to a previously unattainable source of inventory, allowing them to compete with online retailers. Meanwhile, consumers can sell confidently online by receiving the highest instant offer from a network of dealers, minimizing the need to haggle or question if there are better offers. Consumers now have a more competitive online sales option with CarGurus’s instant max cash offer, the industry’s newest solution to an outdated, inefficient and opaque process. Here’s what our happy customer, Erica from Florida, had to say about the experience, 'I am just over the moon excited about the process. I’m very thankful. I would do it again if I have a vehicle again to sell in the future. CarGurus is the only company that I will contact. You guys are amazing.' Collectively, with CarGurus’ Instant Max cash offer and our retail wholesale pricing tool, we believe we are uniquely positioned to capture a considerable portion of the peer-to-peer, consumer-to-dealer, and dealer-to-dealer markets. CarGurus is the only U.S. marketplace where the largest network of dealers and the largest consumer audience can transact instantly and at scale using our instant trade and pre-bid technology. Our differentiated capabilities allow dealerships to remain competitive and thrive as the landscape for car buying evolves. COVID-19 dramatically accelerated the adoption of digitally initiated transactions by consumers interested in completing more elements of car shopping online. We believe these new offerings, along with our digital retail toolkit level the playing field for dealerships and will help them not only gain access to a new source of inventory but also gain a competitive position amid this new digitally initiated environment. So now let’s discuss digital retail. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the paradigm for vehicle purchases and accelerated both consumer desire and dealer adoption of digitally initiated retail capabilities. With more than 60% of consumers interested in completing some element of the car buying process online, we have expanded our toolkit to enhance the car buying process for consumers, while providing dealers with resources to best capture this growing subset of the consumer audience. We are pleased with the growth and adoption of our digital retail capabilities to date. Area Boost has seen considerable adoption, with 78% of U.S. households defined by consumers in a designated market area, having access to at least 30,000 delivery-enabled listings and up to 60,000 vehicles available for delivery in many major metropolitan areas. This equates to a vast selection of vehicles available for delivery nationwide that we believe favorably measures up to other platform offerings. Additionally, we continue to see meaningful dealer uptake of consumer financing capabilities as they look to capture more prequalified leads. Prequalified financing leads are 60% more likely to result in a purchase and close faster upon engaging with the dealer. With growing adoption for both Area Boost and consumer financing combined revenue increased 47% year-over-year. Charles Smith, General Sales Manager at Mac Hake Auto Group, recently said, 'CarGurus’ prequalified leads move through the sales process quicker than consumers who aren’t prequalified. They’ve mentally taken ownership already. They come in more committed to close and finalize their transaction.' It’s by far an easier sales process. In April this year, we announced early access for our latest offering, CG Convert. CG Convert allows car shoppers to start their purchase from a CarGurus vehicle detail page and get to a near penny predict personalized deal on the vehicle they are interested in purchasing. Shoppers can then schedule an appointment on our site with the dealership to finalize their purchase quickly and transparently. We are pleased to see a continued increase in dealer adoption for CG Convert. Consumers utilizing CG Convert are three times more likely to apply finance in advance as a part of their digital checkout, improving the overall quality of down-funnel prequalified leads provided to dealers. Moreover, of the CarGurus shoppers that completed their personalized deal online in June, chose to have their vehicle delivered, further bolstering our ability to monetize our digital retail capability. This is just the start for digital retail. In the near term, we are continuing to invest in digital retail from a partnership, technology, and headcount standpoint. Driven by consumer and dealer demand for digitally initiated solutions, we view this as a sizable market opportunity. We believe we are best positioned to capture significant market share with our unmatched selection of inventory and competitive purchase and trade-in pricing. Couple that with a vast consumer audience empowered by freedom of choice, convenience, and trust and we believe we have a platform that is poised for success as a transactional marketplace. We expect 2021 will mark the transformation of the digital retail opportunity for dealers who are unable to provide these solutions to consumers on their own and/or wish to acquire more shoppers through our platform. We look forward to releasing more of our digitally initiated offerings later this year as we further advance our digital retail capabilities. We are thrilled with our Q2 results. While we did anticipate some headwinds this quarter from the global chip shortage and depleted auto inventory, we are pleased with the efficiency and resiliency of our core business and that the momentum of CarOffer offset these headwinds and exceeded our expectations. Now more than ever, we feel that CarGurus is becoming a fully integrated transaction-enabled marketplace for consumers and dealers. As we continue to build out our capabilities, we believe our consumer and dealer audiences, unrivaled ROI and an unparalleled digital wholesale and digital retail solutions have led us to an inflection point in the company’s history, and we are excited to unlock a truly differentiated offering for consumers and dealers over the near term as a retail and wholesale shopping experience. As we complete another quarter of remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are hopeful at the prospect of reuniting our team together once again. We are keenly aware of the difficulty experienced by everyone in the last 1.5 years. I’m beyond grateful for the team we have at CarGurus and CarOffer for their relentless dedication and commitment. We’ve hit many milestones since we began working remotely and these achievements would not have been possible without our incredible employees globally who embody our core values day in and day out. With that, I’ll turn it over to Scot to discuss our financial results.

Scot Fredo, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jason. I will provide a detailed overview of our second quarter performance, followed by our guidance for the third quarter of 2021. Before discussing the details of the quarter, I would like to highlight that all year-over-year values are compared to as reported Q2 2020 numbers which include COVID-19 induced billing discounts given last year of approximately $47 million. Our second quarter 2020 press release has an adjusted pro forma reconciliation of those discounts added back for comparison purposes. Total second quarter 2021 revenue was $217.7 million, up 130% year-over-year and nearly $26 million ahead of the high end of our most recent guidance range. Our marketplace subscription revenue grew 80% versus the year ago period to $144.2 million. As Jason mentioned earlier, this was in line with our expectations for the quarter based on the inventory issues affecting the industry and our dealer customers. Other revenue in the second quarter grew 397% year-over-year to $73.5 million. This is where we demonstrated outsized performance driven by CarOffer that significantly exceeded our forecast for the business. Our guidance included an estimate that CarOffer would roughly double from Q1’s $18.5 million pro forma revenue. But as you can see in our investor presentation and as reported in our 10-Q, the revenue for the quarter was $57.3 million, a 210% increase from Q1. That’s a remarkable result from the CarOffer team as well as the efforts from the CarGurus team that is helping accelerate growth while demand for inventory solutions remains a priority for most dealers. Our U.S. business generated $134.1 million in marketplace subscription revenue in the second quarter, and our international business generated $10.2 million in marketplace subscription revenue. The U.S. accounted for 95% of total revenue in the second quarter. U.S. revenue increased 130% versus the year ago period to $206.6 million. And our international revenue increased 124% year-over-year to $11.2 million. The increase in U.S. revenue is largely attributable to increased revenue in the quarter from CarOffer. Additionally, the year-over-year growth in both U.S. and international revenue is also in part due to the fee reductions we provided our paying dealers in Q2 2020 and in response to the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic created for our dealers. Turning to paying dealer count. We ended Q2 with 3,727 total paying dealers, representing a decrease of 486 dealers from Q1 and an increase of 469 versus the year ago period. In the U.S., we finished the quarter with 23,950 paying dealers, which is a decrease of 421 dealers from the end of the first quarter. The decrease in paying dealer count is primarily due to the macroeconomic conditions related to the semiconductor chip shortage which caused dealers to pull back on their marketing spend as they remained inventory constrained. It’s worth noting that in Q2, dealer retention was in line with Q1 when we grew paying new accounts. The primary driver behind declining counts from the end of Q1 is that we saw fewer new dealers join the CarGurus platform as a paying dealer while inventory remains constrained. In our international business, we finished the second quarter with 6,777 international paying dealers, a decrease of 65 from the end of the first quarter. Our international business saw strong dealer adoption in Canada with modest dealer churn in the UK. We continue to monitor the chip issue and inventory shortage closely and expect that inventory levels are likely to return to more normal levels later this year. In July, we saw U.S. and international paying dealers remained relatively stable with Q2 ending counts, and we are encouraged by this recent trend. In the second quarter, U.S. QARSD was $5,550, representing a 2% increase compared to the prior quarter and an 82% increase compared to the year ago period. The quarter-over-quarter growth in QARSD was primarily driven by revenue expansion among existing franchise dealers, including dealers that upgraded to our premium Listings products featured or featured priority. International QARSD was $1,491 representing a 34% increase compared to the prior quarter and a 132% increase compared to the year ago period. Quarter-over-quarter international QARSD growth was primarily driven by discounts provided in Q1 to UK dealers as well as revenue expansion among dealers in Canada. I will discuss our expenses and profitability on a non-GAAP basis, which backs out our stock-based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangible assets, restructuring expenses acquisition-related expenses and net income attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest. Second quarter non-GAAP gross margin was 77%, down roughly 900 basis points compared to the previous quarter and 1,383 basis points versus the year ago quarter. Change in non-GAAP gross margin quarter-over-quarter was due to two primary factors: First, CarOffer accounted for a larger percentage of our business this quarter. And second, gross margin for CarOffer is and will be lower than gross margin for our core Listings business. Nonetheless, our CarOffer gross margin roughly doubled quarter-over-quarter to 32% on a non-GAAP basis, and our core business gross margin remained flat. The gross margin contraction from the prior year is primarily attributable to the addition of the CarOffer business. Total second quarter non-GAAP operating expenses were $98.6 million, up 61% year-over-year. Non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses increased 85% year-over-year to $62.6 million and represented 29% of revenue, down from 36% of revenue in the year ago period. The increase in sales and marketing is a result of increased consumer marketing spend, which was minimized in the prior year due to cost savings efforts implemented in the second quarter of 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In comparison to the prior quarter, we remained incredibly efficient in our traffic acquisition strategies, resulting in savings quarter-over-quarter, primarily driven by the reduction in our marketing spend. Our second quarter non-GAAP product, technology, and development expenses grew 35% versus the year ago period to $21.4 million. The investments we are making in our technology team support several initiatives, including our core Listings marketplace business, both domestic and international as well as CarOffer and digital retail. We continue to allocate resources as needed to manage near-term business needs and support longer-term growth initiatives across all three areas of our business: listings, digital wholesale, and digital retail. We generated non-GAAP operating income of $68.9 million, representing a margin of 32% and roughly $29 million ahead of the high end of our guidance range. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share attributable to common stockholders was $0.41 for the second quarter, $0.16 above the high end of our guidance range. On a GAAP basis, we generated first-quarter gross margin of 77% and incurred total operating expenses of $129 million, up roughly 69% year-over-year. The increase in operating expenses was primarily driven by an increase in our expenses compared to the prior year’s cost monetization efforts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second quarter GAAP operating income increased 342% year-over-year to $38.5 million. Second quarter GAAP net income attributable to common shareholders totaled $28.1 million. Geographically, second quarter U.S. GAAP operating income was $40.2 million, up 162% year-over-year. We had a GAAP operating loss of $1.7 million in our international business compared to a $6.6 million loss in the year ago quarter. We ended the second quarter with $269.6 million in cash and investments, an increase of $28.9 million from the end of the first quarter. Increase in our cash balance was driven primarily by our second quarter profitability. We generated $37.5 million in cash from operations in the second quarter and $32.9 million of non-GAAP free cash flow, which includes capital expenditures and capitalized website development costs of $1.1 million. I’ll close my prepared remarks with our outlook for the third quarter of 2021. We expect our third quarter revenue to be in the range of $210 million to $216 million, non-GAAP operating income in the range of $53 million to $57 million and non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $0.30 to $0.32. After such a large beat of our Q2 guidance, I want to expand on why our Q3 revenue guidance is not increasing quarter-over-quarter. First, the inventory constraints continue to create a challenging environment for dealers in the near term, and we ended Q2 with net paying dealer declines, which in a subscription business sets a lower run rate for Q3 than Q2. Second, with the anticipated seasonal slowdown in car shopping in the second half of the year, our core Listings business as well as the CarOffer wholesale business may be directly impacted. As I mentioned earlier, we are encouraged by recent trends of paying dealer counts in July, and as inventory returns to anticipated normal levels over the near term we believe we will eventually see net positive paying dealer count additions each quarter like we saw in Q1. One final comment as you adjust your models: I would like to point out that transactions from our recently announced CarGurus Instant Max cash offer will be accounted for on a gross basis, meaning we would include the gross value of the vehicle in the transaction as well as the transaction fees. This has the potential to meaningfully impact revenue numbers in upcoming quarters. But since this product just launched in three states, these transactions are excluded from our Q3 guidance figures and could result in upside if we see significant consumer and dealer adoption in our initial limited market release. With that, I will echo Jason’s sentiment that we are incredibly excited for the future and growing the business as a fully integrated transaction-enabled marketplace for consumers and dealers. Now I’ll turn it back over to the operator, and we can open up the call for Q&A.

Operator, Operator

And the first question comes from Dan Kurnos with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Dan Kurnos, Analyst

Great, thanks. Good evening. Obviously, nice quarter, guys. Unfair question, Jason, I guess, just out of the box, Instant Max, just help us think about sort of roadmap, what you’re looking for timing, kind of how you set the buy box relative to what is on the CarOffer platform margins? Is anything that just helps us think about the way that you are setting it up. And then obviously, being consumer-facing, you guys, again, maybe a little early to ask this, but just in terms of the way that you guys look at kind of marketing spend and your historical acknowledge sort of lower unaided brand awareness. This obviously brings a whole new leg to the stool for you guys has been excellent at customer acquisition. Does this end up driving incremental marketing efficiencies? You put some more money behind this depending on how the pilot goes, just help us think through the way that you get this program into the marketplace and maybe some of the follow-on effects it could have on sort of the quarter, the core business.

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Dan. This is Jason. There’s a lot to unpack here. Regarding the Instant Cash Max offer, we have launched it in three states and plan to expand soon. We are thrilled with the early traction we're seeing in those states. It provides a seamless concierge service for consumers, allowing them to receive the offer instantly, upload their documents, and schedule pickups easily. You mentioned a buy button, and while this is more like a sell button, it indeed can drive marketing. We intend to promote this service, as we believe it provides people with another reason to choose us. From a broader perspective, it could enhance marketing efficiency since we now have additional solutions to market to consumers, increasing reasons for them to visit our site. We anticipate that when we assist someone in selling a car, we will naturally become their partner when it comes to buying a car. We view this as significant in its own right and believe it complements our efforts to help consumers find the cars they wish to purchase.

Dan Kurnos, Analyst

That’s helpful. To clarify, since you have owned CarOffer for about six months, could you provide insights on how we should model its performance? I appreciate Scott's comments on the 3Q guidance, but should we expect similar seasonality? I understand it’s early, but might there be factors that affect this if we assume a normalized environment? I’m trying to strategize how we should view CarOffer's performance throughout the year.

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Yes, I’ll provide some feedback, and Sam can add if he’d like. I would say that if they were fully established, which they are not given the hyper growth we’ve experienced in the last six to nine months, typical seasonality would likely begin to show in the second half of the year. Since it operates on a completely transactional basis rather than a subscription model, you might notice a decline in the second half compared to the first half. These are unusual times, and as the company evolves, we are seeing strong adoption. However, it's a combination of dealer adoption and performance per dealer that we’re examining closely with the team. These are not normal circumstances. The company is still in its early stages. But under standard conditions, with a more mature business, I would expect to see the usual decline in the second half of the year.

Dan Kurnos, Analyst

Got it. Super helpful. Thanks, guys.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Jason, in the prepared remarks, you talked about the business reaching an inflection point with some of the products and services today. Then on the call, you talked about, I think, adding some more services or products. Maybe you can kind of just frame the opportunity going forward, what would some of those products and services be perhaps if I think about sort of a consumer going to a dealership? You have tax title plates, etc. So just trying to understand if you’re one day trying to be sort of a one-stop shop for a white label for a dealership and/or is the consumer to do all the transactions on your website or your marketplace.

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Ralph, it’s great to hear from you. Thank you. Yes, when we discuss digital retail, we are focused on empowering dealers to sell their inventory online through our platform. This involves managing all transaction aspects, such as tax and title, the actual transaction, finance and insurance products, trade-ins, and all related steps. Our aim is to assist dealers in completing these processes seamlessly for consumers on our site. When people refer to the buy button, that's what we are striving for. A prime example is our trade-in process with CarOffer as the foundation, which we believe gives us a competitive advantage by offering consumers more choices through a wider selection of inventory from multiple dealers, rather than being limited to a single dealer's inventory.

Sam Zales, President and Chief Operating Officer

We plan to offer consumers more financing options and choices across different dealers. Typically, with more choices comes better pricing. Consumers will have the convenience to complete transactions fully online or visit a dealer if they prefer. We are also focused on building trust with consumers, providing them with benefits from a wide selection and a reliable point of contact, which will be us. Regarding trade-ins, the example of trading in a vehicle to a dealer from whom you're purchasing works well when it’s a seamless transaction. If the transaction isn't seamless, we also offer other options like peer-to-peer transactions and Cash Max offers. We aim to create the most comprehensive platform for both consumers and dealers to buy and sell cars, whether it be dealer to consumer, consumer to dealer, or dealer to dealer. We want to be the platform people think of when buying or selling a car.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Could you remind me about the CarOffer gross margin scaling? I'd like to know where we expect those margins to go in the long term and what the COGS component looks like within that business compared to the listing business.

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Sure. We haven’t said where it’s going, so I can’t really comment there. Within that business on the people side, there are onboarding service folks that we have that basically bring the dealers up to speed, and give the training on the matrix and so forth. Then there are pass-through costs for inspections and delivery. Those are the major items.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Okay. Actually, if I could sneak one more in just on the instant cash offer that’s in three states. Can you provide maybe any color or a sense of the rollout plan? I guess, why those three states? And are there any sort of regulations as you go from state to state with the other product?

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

I can address that. Sam may want to add as well. There are some regulatory factors to consider, but we chose three states for the pilot to ensure we were delivering a great operational experience. These states include two larger ones where we have significant dealer presence, representing a substantial portion of the country, over 350 dealers for sure. We anticipate expanding to more states fairly soon, so we expect to make considerable progress in geographic expansion this year.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Right. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Scott.

Jed Kelly, Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Scot, could you explain what contributed to the gross margin improvement in CarOffer? Additionally, regarding CarOffer over the next couple of quarters, should we anticipate it growing beyond typical seasonal trends due to the speed at which you can add new dealers? How should we assess that in relation to seasonality?

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Yes. From a growth perspective, I’ll let Sam address that later since it's something the team and I are working on. Dealer adoption has definitely received a boost. There are some inventory challenges, and there are probably dealers who may not have previously engaged with us but are now exploring options while seeking inventory. Sam can elaborate on that. Regarding the improvement in margins, part of it comes from scale. We've had many dealers come onboard, and the team has enhanced its capacity for onboarding. We've made progress there and allocated more resources towards account management, customer success, and sales, rather than traditional onboarding costs. This has also involved some reclassification of resources.

Sam Zales, President and Chief Operating Officer

Jed, I appreciate your question about future growth with CarOffer. I don’t want to specify exactly where that growth is heading. It's important to note that the major players in the auction industry experience a seasonal decline in the later months of the year. However, I can say that they are exceeding some of our initial expectations, particularly regarding customer enrollments in that program. It’s a truly innovative capability with no comparable instant trade platform available in the marketplace. The enrollments and installations have far exceeded our expectations. The transactions dealers are conducting are noteworthy, highlighted by the $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in the last quarter. These results are remarkable. While I can't predict how early in the adoption phase this will overcome seasonal trends, it’s clear that CarGurus is just beginning to onboard customers to the CarOffer platform. The CarOffer team is excelling at signing up dealers daily. We still have a lot of optimization to do with CarGurus' adoption of the platform. We are making progress in the initial phase of integration, but there is much more ahead. As enrollments increase, so will transactions, transaction fees, and revenue, and we are truly excited about the next phase of the integration.

Jed Kelly, Analyst

That’s very helpful. As you think about getting more vertical or further down the transaction funnel with the consumer, how are you managing your relationships with the dealers? Are you experiencing any pushback, or are they generally accepting of this? The dealers do prefer to own the customer, so how are you navigating that challenging aspect of the relationships?

Sam Zales, President and Chief Operating Officer

Jason, are you going to take it? Or do you want me to jump in?

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

No, go ahead.

Sam Zales, President and Chief Operating Officer

I believe the Instant Max cash offer exemplifies a beneficial situation for everyone involved. It assists dealers who are facing competition from larger retailers in attracting consumer sales. When it comes to selling vehicles, dealers need a tool that aids them in achieving favorable outcomes. They now have the chance to access a potential $35 million, $32 million, or $38 million each month from our site, where people are interested in selling their vehicles, thus enhancing their inventory sources. As consumers increasingly prefer selling their vehicles online and benefit from our comprehensive services for inspection, payment, and pickup right from their driveways, dealers have a tremendous opportunity. They are currently experiencing significant challenges in acquiring inventory. If they can connect with those 35 million consumers, they will be extremely satisfied. We are successfully opening a channel faster than anticipated. This creates a win-win situation as consumers can comfortably sell online, receiving maximum cash offers since dealers are actively participating in the pricing process, allowing them to gain more than what a single retailer could provide. Consequently, dealers are now competing with major players in the market who are purchasing consumer vehicles. This is advantageous for the entire marketplace. As Jason mentioned, we're advancing digital retail in a comparable manner. We're enabling dealers to connect with pre-approved consumers and facilitating transactions, which will help them sell more vehicles. These scenarios are beneficial for both sides of the marketplace, and we're playing a crucial role in facilitating these transactions.

Jed Kelly, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

The final question today comes from Nick Bacchus with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Nick Bacchus, Analyst

Hey, guys, congrats on a good quarter. Thanks for taking my question. So on the number of paying dealers in the U.S., you talked about the chip shortage driving a lack of inventory and hurting that number driving that sequential decline. Could you just give more detail on your thoughts on the supply situation moving forward? It seems like you think it’s going to start to improve into the back half, kind of how are you thinking about that? And what does guidance build in for dealer count kind of directionally in the third quarter? And how are you thinking about that metric into the back half of the year in general?

Scot Fredo, Chief Financial Officer

Nick, it’s Scot. I’ll take that. We don’t get too specific on our guidance, but for the quarter, as I mentioned earlier, we are starting from a lower basis due to a decrease in dealer count within our core business. This explains some of the revenue. However, the positive aspect is that our retention rate with dealers remained stable from Q1 to Q2, meaning our churn did not worsen. The key change from Q1 to Q2 was triggered by the inventory issue, leading to fewer new dealers joining the platform. Hence, our paying dealer count shifted from a net positive in Q1 to a net negative in Q2. In our international operations, we ended the second quarter with 6,777 paying dealers, a drop of 65 from the first quarter's end. Our international business performed well in Canada, even with slight churn in the UK. We are closely monitoring the chip issue and inventory shortages, expecting a return to normal inventory levels later this year. In July, the number of U.S. and international paying dealers remained stable compared to Q2's ending counts, which is encouraging. In the second quarter, the U.S. QARSD was $5,550, showing a 2% increase from the previous quarter and an 82% increase from the same period last year.

Sam Zales, President and Chief Operating Officer

We’re being thoughtful about how aggressively we can grow our consumer audience. We’re doing it really efficiently and very well for dealers, and that lead volume has been really successful. Dealers are now saying, as inventory comes back, as Scot just said, I’m more interested in spending and we’re seeing that as a hopeful trend as we go forward.

Jed Kelly, Analyst

Got it. Very, very helpful. Just quickly, sales and marketing. Obviously, you guys have made significant strides there in terms of marketing efficiency last year and into the first half of this year. How are you generally thinking about kind of the right level of sales and marketing percentage? And how durable are the gains you’ve made? Or do you get some of those back as you press the accelerator on marketing spend going forward?

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

I can take that. Thanks for the question. Yes, we are always focused on two key objectives: first, enhancing the efficiency of our consumer experience; and second, ensuring that the leads we provide to dealers are of the highest quality possible, from traffic acquisition through to dealer connection. Our goal is to deliver valuable leads that help dealers without wasting their resources on low-quality ones. We have made significant progress in both efficiency and quality, and while you’ve seen some of our advancements in efficiency, we believe that the quality has also improved considerably. We have data suggesting better prequalification lead quality and increased likelihood of leads converting to sales. Both efficiency and quality have shown positive trends. However, there are times when external factors, such as COVID and inventory supply issues, impact our spending decisions. We analyze numerous metrics related to dealer growth rates to ensure we provide products and services that are consistently valuable and allow dealers to plan their business effectively.

Operator, Operator

The final question today comes from Doug Arthur with Huber Research Partners. Please go ahead.

Doug Arthur, Analyst

Yeah, thanks. Just Scot, on the revenue guidance for the third quarter, and I understand the caution on the subscription business based on everything you’ve talked about on the macro level. What I don’t quite get is the implied number for CarOffer. I mean you’re growing. You talked about the auction business, the seasonality and all of that, but you’re growing at a very rapid rate and your guidance for the third quarter basically assumes a full stop in growth, I mean, sort of flat sequentially. Is that what you’re intending to imply?

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Doug. It's a strong statement, but I believe the inventory challenge became significant starting in April. This shift significantly affected dealer behavior and contributed positively to a business that was already expanding quickly. However, we're noticing early signs of seasonality. Additionally, dealers are being cautious due to high pricing, leading some to be selective about their inventory purchases and uncertain about the sustainability of consumer demand. We are currently in a unique situation with peak pricing and the lowest inventory. Dealers are closely watching both wholesale prices and consumers’ willingness to pay these record-high prices for used vehicles. Looking at our findings from July, we experienced month-over-month increases throughout the year for CarOffer, but as Jason mentioned, the growth from June to July was slightly less than in previous months. Given this information, we're taking a more cautious approach. But the operative word is you saw growth in July over June.

Operator, Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Jason Trevisan, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much. So this is Jason. I just want to thank everyone for joining us today on the call and for your thoughtful questions. I want to thank again all of the CarGurus, CarOffer employees for all your hard work. We’re so proud of the team and what we’ve accomplished. And we appreciate your interest in CarGurus, and we look forward to talking with all of you again next quarter. Thank you very much for your time.

Operator, Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.