Legalzoom.Com, Inc. Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good day, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to LegalZoom's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. I will now pass it over to Madeleine Crane, Head of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to LegalZoom's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today is Jeff Stibel, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Noel Watson, our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements on this call. These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as believe, expect, plan, anticipate, will, intend, and similar expressions, and are not and should not be relied upon as a guarantee of future performance or results. Such forward-looking statements are based on management's assumptions and expectations and information available to us as of today's date. These forward-looking statements are also subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risks and uncertainties are referred to in the press release we issued today and in the Risk Factors section of our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we do not plan to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of any new information, future events or otherwise. In addition, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. We use non-GAAP measures in making decisions regarding our business, and we believe these measures provide helpful information to investors. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of all non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are set forth in our investor presentation, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.legalzoom.com. I will now turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Madeleine, and thank you all for joining our call. 2026 marks LegalZoom's 25th anniversary, reflecting our longevity and evolution as a company. Our founders set out to democratize law by transforming how people navigate the legal system. Today, AI is making legal work easier to start. LegalZoom makes it safe and seamless to finish. Since I became CEO, we have been steadily refocusing our business to capture the AI opportunity while recognizing that certain tasks and complex legal matters will always require human judgment and supervision. We are winning by combining intuitive technology with trusted experts, strong execution, and ongoing compliance. In short, we solved the last mile with humans in the loop. Our performance in 2025 is an early validation of our strategy. I'm proud of our results, but I am even more excited for what's to come. We entered 2026 from a position of strength. Let me remind you of our strategy, how we're winning and why it's durable? Our goal is to be the trusted guardians of small businesses and individuals' lives and aspirations, enabled by the best technology available. We do this through our ecosystem of AI and expert-powered legal, compliance, and business management solutions that support small businesses as they form and grow. Our strategy is simple: automate what can be automated and then win through deep expertise and high-touch service where it matters most. AI can help you start. LegalZoom helps you get it done. Today, more customers are starting with AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, getting information, document reviews, and insights while increasingly trying to complete complex tasks. We believe AI tools are accelerating entrepreneurship by lowering barriers to starting and running a business, as evidenced by the data; U.S. business formations have accelerated over the last few quarters. We suspect some of this is anomalous, but we believe AI is a meaningful tailwind. Crucially, this is expanding our addressable market, and we plan to capture more of that market but not with the old software-only playbook. As our market expands, we will leverage AI to continue to lead in what can be automated, but we recognized early that long-term growth cannot come from automation alone. That's why in 2023, we moved our flagship automated formation product to free, choosing to cannibalize our own business before the market did. Here is the key insight: defense alone is not a strategy. We believe durable growth will come from what AI cannot automate: nuance, judgment, execution, and accountability. Over the past two years, we've laid the foundation for the shift by strengthening our subscription business, reorienting our go-to-market strategy to focus on higher-value customers, and scaling AI while strategically integrating human experts into the workflow at critical junctures. Better still, a human in the loop also increases conversion and attachment across our automated products because customers move forward with confidence knowing we stand behind that. This brings us to the opportunity ahead. We are expanding beyond formations to serve existing businesses. We are confident this will enable us to capture a greater share of our serviceable addressable market by broadening our customer base and driving higher wallet share. Human expertise applied where it matters most will drive our growth. We are capturing this opportunity through our human-in-the-loop strategy, which has two layers: expert and service. Our expert layer includes our legal advice subscriptions delivered through our nationwide attorney network, trademark and IP services delivered by our owned law firm, and most recently, our white-glove concierge offerings. We expect these products to be our fastest growing. This is where we solve the last mile for AI by inserting the right level of human review by building trust, ensuring quality, maintaining confidentiality, and meeting ongoing regulatory requirements. Our service layer, products like registered agent and virtual mail, benefit from structural advantages tied to regulation, physical presence, and human execution, making it inherently durable. Over the past two years, we've enhanced service levels and have grown through premium pricing and retention improvements. These products anchor long-term relationships and function as a platform from which we can expand into higher-value services across our entire existing base. Our near-term goal is to accelerate growth in our human-in-the-loop strategy by prioritizing high-value subscription products. Longer-term, as we expand our go-to-market efforts to reach established businesses, we expect to capture accelerated share of our serviceable addressable market. As Noel will detail, we will leverage our partnerships both with key AI platforms and our broader partner channel as we unlock to activate and scale. To sum up, we are leveraging AI to grow efficiently, scaling human-in-the-loop services, and expanding our ecosystem to help small businesses stay compliant, protected, and confident over time. AI may change how businesses begin, but LegalZoom is how they thrive. We are uniquely positioned to deliver what others cannot: the last mile, real accountability, real expertise, and real outcomes. Our 25-year foundation of data, trust, and legal infrastructure gives us a moat that compounds as technology evolves. This positions us for durable growth not just in 2026 but for decades to come. With that, I'll say thank you for your continued support and turn it over to Noel.

Thanks, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I walk through the results and our outlook, I want to briefly re-anchor on our financial priorities. Over the past year, our focus has been clear: driving durable, high-quality subscription growth while scaling efficiencies across the business to expand margins. We made meaningful progress on both in 2025, and we expect that momentum to continue in 2026. As you heard earlier, our strategy is focused on building a more resilient revenue base through higher-value subscription offerings and AI-enabled human-in-the-loop services. These efforts are improving unit economics, driving predictable revenue, and reinforcing our competitive position where execution and expertise matter most. With that context, I'll start with our financial results and then discuss our outlook for the year. For the full year 2025, we grew revenue 11% to $756 million, more than double the growth rate from our initial outlook, inclusive of the Formation Nation acquisition. This performance reflects successful integration and incremental growth of Formation Nation, organic revenue growth of 3%, and strength across our subscription portfolio. Full year subscription revenue increased 13%, the result of continued focus on higher-value customers and differentiated premium human-in-the-loop service offerings. We also delivered strong profitability. Full year adjusted EBITDA was $172 million, representing a 23% margin, up approximately 100 basis points year-over-year. We expanded margins while continuing to invest in AI and product innovation, demonstrating our ability to grow efficiently and with discipline. Turning to our fourth quarter results, total revenue was $190 million in the quarter, reflecting growth of 18%. Subscription revenue increased 20% to $131 million, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth. Subscription revenue was driven by strength in our registered agent and compliance offerings, along with contributions from Virtual Mail, our 1-800Accountant partnership, and Formation Nation. This performance reflects the combined impact of several initiatives executed throughout the year, including pricing actions and improved retention in our registered agent and compliance offerings. We ended the quarter with approximately 1.94 million subscription units, up 10% year-over-year. Unit growth was driven by increased Virtual Mail adoption, the inclusion of Formation Nation subscriptions, and bundled offerings that combine bookkeeping and legal advisory services with certain Formation products. We expect modest unit growth in 2026 as we fully lap the bundling of these offerings. ARPU was $266 for the quarter, up 1% year-over-year. This reflects the early benefit of our focus on ARPU expansion, particularly in higher-touch human-led services, partially offset by bundled subscriptions that included lower-priced offerings. Looking ahead to 2026, we expect ARPU to be an important driver of subscription revenue growth as we see a customer mix shift toward higher-value subscriptions, including legal plans, compliance, and concierge where human expertise, regulatory rigor, and ongoing engagement matter most. This mix shift toward higher-value offerings reflects the early success of our human-in-the-loop strategy. We continue to see encouraging adoption of our concierge product suite. These white-glove, do-it-for-me offerings provide one-on-one guidance and related full-service filing and fulfillment services, allowing customers to offload complexity and focus on running their business. Today, we are selling our concierge subscription offerings online and directly through our sales force. At an average price of over $1,100 per year, they are driving stronger lifetime value and higher quality customer relationships. Turning to transactions, revenue increased 12% to $59 million, driven largely by Formation Nation and growth in annual report filings. This was partially offset by the expected decline in BOIR revenue. Transaction units declined 1% to 239,000, reflecting the elimination of BOIR activity, partially offset by Formation Nation transactions and higher annual report volumes. Excluding BOIR and Formation Nation, transaction units increased 5%. We processed 112,000 business formations in the quarter, representing 17% year-over-year growth. This increase was driven by Formation Nation and continued growth in formations acquired through our partner channel. This year, we aim to further leverage our partner channel to acquire high-quality small businesses. In 2025, we laid the foundation to scale by modernizing our partner platform, building new embedded partner experiences, and adding more than 100 partners and collaborators, including Perplexity, OpenAI's ChatGPT, VistaPrint, SoFi, and American Express. In 2026, we plan to build on this momentum as we deepen these relationships, expand embedded integrations, and onboard a strong pipeline of SMB-focused brands. Average order value was $248 for the quarter, up 13% year-over-year, driven by increased adoption of higher-priced concierge services and the elimination of lower-value BOIR transactions. Looking ahead, we expect transaction revenue growth in 2026 to benefit from higher-value customer acquisition and growth in our concierge suite. Finally, deferred revenue declined by $10 million sequentially, reflecting normal seasonality in the business. Turning to profitability, where all of the following metrics are on a non-GAAP basis, fourth quarter gross margin was 71%, flat with the prior year period. Sales and marketing costs were $56 million or 30% of revenue, an increase of 29% from the prior year. Customer acquisition marketing costs increased $5 million or 13%. You may recall last year, we tested lower performance marketing spend levels to evaluate efficiencies. In 2026, we expect to continue investing in brand and partner channel initiatives concentrated in Q1, resulting in CAM spend increasing slightly faster than revenue. Non-CAM sales and marketing expenses increased $8 million or 103% from the addition of Formation Nation and investments in our concierge sales team. Technology and development costs were $14 million, up 5%. General and administrative expenses were $15 million, an increase of $1 million or 10%. Our strong execution drove adjusted EBITDA of $50 million, representing a margin of 26%. Free cash flow was $28 million in the quarter, down 22% compared to $36 million for the same period in 2024. Our free cash flow decrease was largely due to the timing of changes in working capital. For the full year, free cash flow was a record $148 million, up 48% year-over-year. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $203 million. Our cash position decreased by $34 million versus Q3 2025, driven by share repurchases, partially offset by strong free cash flow generation. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 4.3 million shares of our common stock for approximately $42 million. For the full year, we returned approximately $80 million to shareholders through share repurchases, repurchasing 8.3 million shares of our common stock at an average price of $9.71 per share. Through consistent share repurchases since our IPO, we've reduced our share count by approximately 10%. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately $70 million authorized and available under our share repurchase authorization. So far in Q1, we have remained active in the market. As a reflection of our confidence in the business, our Board of Directors approved a $100 million increase to our existing share repurchase authorization. Our $100 million revolving credit facility remains undrawn. Supported by a strong cash position and robust free cash flow generation, we intend to continue to balance returning capital to our shareholders, investing in high-growth areas of our business, and selectively assessing strategic M&A opportunities. Now turning to our outlook, we feel confident in the trajectory of the business as we exit 2025 and the stronger, more scalable foundation we are operating on. This positions us well to continue to drive high-quality growth even as we lap several initiatives from last year. For the full year, we expect revenue in the range of $805 million to $825 million, representing approximately 8% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. This compares to 3% organic growth last year, representing meaningful acceleration. Critically, the acceleration is being driven by contributions from higher value offerings as we prioritize quality customer acquisition and our human-in-the-loop strategy. For the full year, we expect to achieve adjusted EBITDA in the range of $190 million to $200 million or growth of 13% at the midpoint. Our outlook reflects improved gross margins and disciplined cost management, partially offset by higher product and marketing investments focused on higher value and established business customer acquisition. Of note, we continue to be disciplined with headcount as our organization onboards more AI and technology into our processes. Relatedly, we recently completed a gross reduction in headcount of 5% earlier this month, allowing for improved operating leverage while preserving investment in high-growth initiatives. For the first quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $200 million to $203 million or 10% growth at the midpoint. This includes continued execution of our initiatives and balanced growth across transaction and subscription revenue. We expect to achieve adjusted EBITDA in the range of $34 million to $36 million, representing a 5% year-over-year decline at the midpoint. This reflects a shift in the timing of our CAM investments with brand spend and partner channel investments weighted more heavily toward the beginning of the year to align with peak business formation seasonality. As reflected in our full year guidance, we expect a stronger year-over-year adjusted EBITDA performance over the remainder of 2026. In closing, we've never been more optimistic about the future of LegalZoom and the opportunities that lie ahead. The transformational progress we have made uniquely positions us to lead in the online legal services space as the only company that combines AI-assisted legal services with human expertise at scale to deliver trustworthy, high-value products to small businesses. Through a series of high-impact initiatives, we are confident in our ability to drive strong financial performance as we further differentiate LegalZoom's competitive positioning. I'd like to thank the entire team for their efforts and dedication to our success. And with that, I will now turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.

Our first question will come from Ella Smith from JPMorgan.

So first, Jeff, maybe for you. Are there any early metrics on how the concierge product is doing? And to what extent is that factored into your 2026 expectations?

Thank you, Ella. There are some early proof points and green shoots, and we have factored those in. That said, we factored them in conservatively. We're still in the early innings. We're still launching products regularly. We continue to launch products, but the success that we've seen is quite encouraging. And it's one of the reasons why we said this will become one of our biggest growth drivers.

Great. And given the strength of the business formation environment, do you see any likelihood of sizing up customer acquisition marketing throughout the year?

We do. And you see this to some extent with our Q1 marketing, and we accelerated a bit of that spend earlier in the year as a result. What we're looking for are the right types of customers, not just all customers who are forming but the ones who will go through their life cycle alongside us. And we have gotten really, really good at identifying those, targeting those, and marketing to them, both through traditional marketing means through our brand advertising and ultimately through the partner channel.

And just to add, the Q1 incremental marketing spend is primarily driven by brand. That's an important message we want to communicate early. This is their peak season for customer demand. For the full year, we still expect CAM spend to be relatively consistent as a percentage of revenue, maybe with a slight increase, growing a bit faster than revenue, but the timing throughout the year will be more optimized for our peak season. Additionally, our marketing is performance-based. If we see strong demand, we will increase our spending. Conversely, if demand softens, we will adjust our spending accordingly.

Our next question will come from the line of Trevor Young from Barclays.

Great. Two for me. First, just on the revenue growth guide and the cadence throughout the year. It does imply a bit of a step down for the full year, kind of starting the year in 1Q at 11% at the high end full year 9%. Is that just a function of the tougher compares as the year goes on, lapping Formation Nation here in 1Q? Or is there something else going on? And then my second question for Jeff kind of relatedly, what needs to go right from here to be a durable double-digit grower?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Trevor. I think importantly and excitingly, the outperformance we saw in Q4 was driven by several different initiatives where we're seeing strength in the business. We mentioned in our prepared remarks our compliance-related retention rates are improving, which we're really excited about. I think that speaks generally to the health of our customer base in the broader environment, but we're also seeing strength in the younger cohorts, which we think is a reflection or a signal of some of the value improvements we've made in terms of the delivery of our service. We also saw strength in Virtual Mail, Formation Nation, our partner channel. So lots of initiatives that we expect to carry forward and drive growth in 2026. But to your point, there are some meaningful initiatives that were really successful in 2025 and drove growth that are creating some comping challenges and growth overs including Formation Nation, our 1-800 Accountant tax partnerships, some pricing that we did last year. And those do accelerate throughout the year. So you hit the nail on the head. That is what is creating some of the deceleration that you see from Q1 relative to the full year guide.

And to address your second question, which is very much related to the first and similar to what we were talking about earlier with Ella's question and as well, what we talked about at your conference when we dug into the things that need to happen, we've laid most of the groundwork there. And I think we're being appropriately smart and thoughtful about what our guide is in '26. But the reality is our guide does show organic acceleration, and it's already pretty significant. To shift over into the double-digit side where we want to be, where we are looking to be as we come out of '26 and into '27, what needs to go right is this human-in-the-loop strategy. First and foremost, it needs to expand our serviceable addressable market. We talked about this a number of times. This allows us to penetrate a broader set of small businesses, those who are established, those who will give us greater share of wallet, and those who are going to grow with us and such that we can grow alongside them.

Next question will come from the line of Michael McGovern from Bank of America.

Could you provide an update on the ongoing discussions with some of your partners, like Perplexity and OpenAI? How do you see the process of becoming a last-mile delivery provider for legal services for LLMs, and what does the transition from the middle mile to the last mile look like in that context?

Great question, something we're deeply focused on, something I am personally incredibly excited about, and have taken the initiative and lead alongside our business development team and the operations and technology folks. The bottom line is the right answer is we don't know and they don't know yet. However, both parties have identified a problem, whether AI is able to complete the first 80%, 85%, or 90% can be in dispute. Whether they will be able to finish the job for most small businesses is not in dispute. There is no question that more and more people are self-identifying as having a legal issue. And what we want to do is make sure that we are front and center and perhaps the only solution in many cases to solve that last mile. And when you think about the infrastructure that we have, thousands of network lawyers and owned and operated law firm, the ability to tackle national matters, local matters, state matters, IP matters, personal matters, there really isn't anyone on the technology side positioned at all, forget well-positioned to tackle the problem of I've reviewed something, I've identified some issues. I either feel reasonably comfortable with like a second opinion, or I don't even understand what I'm supposed to be signing outside of LegalZoom. And that's where we come in, and we've been rapidly working both on the partnership side and on the technology and product integration side to make sure that we are there when these technologies actually get a customer to an awareness stage and 80% stage and then now what. And we want to be that solution to the now what.

Got it. And a quick follow-up. I think in the past, you've talked about how you're relatively platform-agnostic, if you will, when it comes to LLMs. Is it safe to say you're attempting to have more and more conversations throughout the industry longer term, expanding partners longer term?

Absolutely. That statement is spot on.

Next question will come from the line of Elizabeth Porter from Morgan Stanley.

This is Lucas Cerisola on for Elizabeth Porter tonight. Could you talk to the contribution from Formation Nation to both subscription and transaction revenue in Q4? And how might that progress throughout the year if new business formations remain strong?

Yes. This is Noel. I'll take that question. So in Q4, Formation Nation contributed about $9.8 million on the transaction side and $5.7 million in subscription revenue. Formation Nation, since we acquired them, the business has performed really nicely. A lot of that stems from the integration and the sharing of resources and knowledge between the two groups. We have an expectation that, that business will continue to grow in 2026. So we're seeing growth throughout 2025, and the expectation is that momentum carries forward.

Got it. Super helpful. And then how do you think about the additional investments needed to ramp up the human-in-the-loop and last-mile services within the business? And then as you expand into new products next year, how that progresses?

Yes. I'll take it at a high level and I'll maybe speak to any specifics. There will and have been and will continue to be significant investment going into that. That's at the high level. Underneath, we're seeing material savings in other areas. Both of these are driven by AI. One is strategic, shifting to that human-in-the-loop. The other is tactical, driving AI throughout our organization to create savings that we can use to deliver what we need to do on the product side for human-in-the-loop and continue to drive margin expansion. And you can see this in the dichotomy between a really strong print in Q4, accelerated growth into 2026 and beyond. Yet we did an approximately 5% reduction in force that we just announced because we were able to do it with some of the technology efficiency that we've driven throughout the organization.

Yes. I would say that you can see our approach reflected in our guidance. We have been very careful to balance our focus on revenue growth with profitability. As a result, we have achieved margin improvements for several consecutive years, and our guidance indicates further margin improvement in 2026, both in terms of gross margin and EBITDA margin. We believe we are still in the middle stages of this process, becoming more efficient each day. We are utilizing various tools available in the market to enhance efficiencies. As Jeff mentioned, we are balancing the reinvestment of some of these efficiencies in growth while also contributing to our bottom line.

Our next question will come from the line of Matt Condon from Citizens.

My first one is just as you've continued to focus more on acquiring existing businesses and less on business formation. Have you seen any material change in the top of funnel metrics to date? Or is that more of an opportunity as we move into 2026? And then my second question is just on competitive dynamics. Just have you seen or observed any meaningful changes in the competitive landscape over the past few quarters? Any new entrants, anything different from existing players? And just how do we think about competitive intensity in 2026?

You bet. Those questions are actually interrelated. So I'll again try to take those at a high level. When you look at the opportunity for existing businesses, as we mentioned in the last couple of quarters, we've started with our own base of businesses, and we have seen proof points and growth therein. We have gone from there to leverage partners. It is probably one of the biggest unlocks in the strategy because we can now go to an SMB ecosystem of partners to start to drive customers that way and leverage other people's channels. And we've had some success, some early success with the partner channel and driving partnerships. Ultimately, we think that the real opportunity is going to come in '26 and beyond as we start to grow those partnerships and then do direct marketing. But again, that's really a '27 and beyond point more than anything. And then on the competitive intensity side, sorry, I didn't mean to ignore that. Although we haven't seen much. Frankly, we look at much of what people have considered as competitors, potential partners for us because what we are doing with this human-in-the-loop strategy isn't something that those competitors can do. They are largely pure-play software providers. So from my standpoint, our standpoint, the real focus is how can we work with them and dominate this larger expanded SAM in such a way that what you might historically think of as a competitor should actually want to partner with us or might need to actually send customers our way just so that they can solve those customers' problems.

Next question comes from the line of Patrick McIlwee from William Blair.

Great results here. So my first question, I believe in September of 2025, you lapped some of the changes you made to your compliance pricing and your bundling strategy. Noel, with that said, is there any way you can frame or quantify the impact that had over the last year, just as we think about how impressive your fourth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth was?

Yes. The growth acceleration came from several sources. It was partly due to bundling, pricing actions, successful attachment of other products, and some improvement in retention. This was truly a multifaceted approach. The bundling initiatives included various trials throughout the year, which we will continue to test and expand with different products. These efforts significantly advanced our focus on attracting quality customers and improving our SKU mix. We observed that customers were moving up to more premium SKUs, supported by the progress on the concierge side. There are multiple factors influencing this growth, and I wouldn't single out any one as the primary driver.

Okay. And I know formations grew substantially year-over-year, understanding that's not a big focus anymore, but obviously, that grew largely year-over-year. You've got a larger denominator there, but it does look like your share slipped a bit more than normal even with the contribution of Formation Nation. I mean is that largely a result of your focus on higher intent customers? Or how should we think about your pursuit of share versus customer LTV going forward?

Yes. This is something we've been talking about for a while, where we are keenly focused on quality share. We want customers that are serious about starting a business or willing to make an investment in that business. And we think those customers we can help and they'll sustain longer, which creates more of an LTV opportunity for us. And so from a macro standpoint, I'd say the macro has been supportive. We feel like it's a very healthy environment, but we think some of the census reporting is anomalous. And we've seen it where it's been weak, and we don't feel that in our business. It's been stronger. We don't feel that same impact that we had previously. And I think that's partly because of this focus on quality share. It's partly because we've increased the percentage of our business that's subscription-oriented. So we generally take a neutral position when we think about our plan and expectations moving forward from a macro standpoint. Our expectation is that we will meet the guidance that we set out for the year regardless of the macro backdrop.

Our next question will come from the line of Brent Thill from Jefferies.

This is John Byun on behalf of Brent Thill. I have two questions. First, you mentioned 3% organic growth in '25. How should we interpret the 8% guidance you provided? Is that comparable to the 3%? This might depend on your treatment of Formation Nation. Second, regarding the concierge products, you've launched several. Which one is performing better in terms of traction and success?

Yes. Regarding the guidance, you can consider it as a direct comparison. There are some minor rounding errors involved since we are not accounting for the growth we achieved after acquiring Formation Nation in that 3%. Additionally, this year includes some inorganic growth due to the timing of last year’s acquisition. That's why we highlighted this point, to clarify that we expect the business to accelerate organically this year on a full-year basis.

Yes. We're actually pretty excited about the organic trajectory. I'd say we're pleased but not satisfied. We can do better, but it's in the right direction. And on concierge, I would say our compliance-oriented products around concierge feel like the strongest uptake and adoption right now and the biggest opportunity for us long term. So that's the predominant one that we're focused on because it is so opaque between regional, state, and national levels, how to remain compliant, particularly how that changes over time, and that's where our concierge experts and specialists really add a lot of value.

One of the ways we activate customers is by communicating their compliance status. Many businesses are compliant when they start, but as they evolve, their compliance requirements can change due to new regulations or increasing complexity, leading them to fall out of compliance. We begin by notifying them that they are out of compliance, which prompts them to seek assistance for reinstatement and ongoing compliance management. This approach has proven successful for us and we believe it presents a significant opportunity for existing businesses.

Our next question will come from the line of Kishan Patel from Raymond James.

This is Kish Patel on for Josh Beck. How are you thinking about the potential impact to key workflows or billing terms across the core business and human expert network as agentic legal tools and software start to proliferate?

For us, it's actually an accelerant in two respects. First, internally because we use so many of those workflows to actually power our human-in-the-loop strategy, it actually allows us to scale more cost-effectively. And externally, it drives increased SAM, serviceable addressable market. So as we said earlier, this is a big unlock for us to increase our market and market share of those established and existing businesses.

Got it. And can you share any trends through the year and into 1Q '26 on how AI search is impacting traffic and conversions?

Sure. I mean, look, it's still pretty early in terms of what is happening, but the trend should look no different than what you're seeing overall in the general market. You're seeing less and less traffic and quality traffic come through traditional search engines and more and more coming from AI queries. And we're seeing that as well, and we're actually taking advantage of that as what we see as a key opportunity into '26 and '27.

Yes. I think one other trend to highlight is that the traffic we are receiving is more qualified. More people are getting their questions answered while still engaged with the AI experience. As a result, those who do come through tend to be more qualified and have a higher conversion rate.

Our next question will come from the line of Ron Josey from Citi.

Jeff, you talked about reorienting to higher-value clients and broadening the customer base. Just talk to us about the tools the team is using to do just that and the progress you're making. And then, Noel, on the shift in timing on marketing, it makes a lot of sense given the seasonality here in the year, but talk to us about the brand focus and where you plan to be ramping the spend on marketing? And when do you think you'll see the returns, is this a 1Q thing? Or is this a quarter lag?

Great. Thank you. On that first question with respect to the tools that we're using, I'll break it up into two categories, and then probably break it down even further. On the tools question directly, what you're asking, we're leveraging a variety of different AI systems. What we're not doing is leveraging specialized systems. So most of them are on the generalized side. We discussed what we're doing with Perplexity and with OpenAI and ChatGPT. We're seeing huge efficiency gains and advantages that help us drive new product deployment at a faster rate, which is absolutely critical as we focus on the other side of the toolkit which are these experts that we're bringing in. We, right out of the gate, when I joined, started to bring in that service layer back that we didn't have prior, and we've now been filling that out with layers on top of that. So we went from service and sales to concierge, think of those as business consultants and business advisers to our legal network, which we're getting more and more entwined into our products and becoming more customer-facing. What is effectively allowing us to do is take a model that wouldn't have scaled prior because if you had a lawyer, they might be able to manage 10 clients a day and get the lawyer to leverage technology or the concierge rep to leverage technology or the service rep to leverage technology to go from 10 customers to 100 to 1,000, and then on so that it scales proportionately or super linearly even in some cases such that we can expand margins and drive more throughput while satisfying our customers' problems. So we are rapidly deploying technology. Some of it is owned and operated, and we're doing it in-house. This is particularly around our data on the proprietary side. But most of it, we're leveraging generalized systems and specializing it to our various use cases.

Yes. And on the brand side, we've been very happy with some of the changes we made throughout 2025, the new assets that we created, the messaging has worked really well. And what we saw is as we increase brand as a percentage of our total CAM spend, we really still saw a strong ROAS without some of that deferred realization of value that you would otherwise expect. And so we're leaning further into that, in particular, in Q1, which we think is well timed, and that's through connected TV, YouTube, social channels; we're trying to stay very diversified with the places that we post our brand messaging. We expect that to pay dividends in a relatively short period of time. As a reminder, with the heavy subscription orientation of the business from a revenue standpoint, if you generate bookings in Q1, you'll realize some of that revenue throughout the year. But that's why we're making a...

And the final piece, and this speaks to the spend that we're doing in brand right now, is this also drives forward into our partner strategy. As we show the brand strength and the quality of our human-in-the-loop strategy intertwined with that trust that comes with an answer and a service that comes from LegalZoom, that helps drive that partner strategy forward as well.

Next question will come from the line of Stephen Ju from UBS.

If I heard you guys correctly on the prepared remarks section, it seems like Formation Nation is driving growth in subscription units as well. So can you talk about the success that you might be having in moving that customer base from what was probably historically the one-and-done transaction to upselling them other products from the broader sort of LegalZoom portfolio?

Sure. And look, the success is similar to what we have done in LegalZoom proper. I would argue that if anything, it is slower than what we would like. And I think that there is even more to be done. But remember, this is our value-price service offering. So we have been driving more and more of the lower-cost or lower-propensity to purchase customers towards those brands, particularly Inc Authority. But they continue to have strong success both converting in general and then shifting to subscription where appropriate. So I actually suspect there will be more to come.

All right. Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. With that, this concludes the question-and-answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.