Nerdwallet, Inc. Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call

Thank you, operator. Welcome to the NerdWallet Q2 2025 Earnings Call. Joining us today are Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tim Chen; and Chief Financial Officer, Jun Lee. Our press release and shareholder letter are available on our Investor Relations website, and a replay of this update will also be available following the conclusion of today's call. We intend to use our Investor Relations website as a means of disclosing certain material information and complying with disclosure obligations under SEC Regulation FD from time to time. As a reminder, today's call is being webcast live and recorded. Before we begin today's remarks and question-and-answer session, I would like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may relate to future events and expectations and as such, constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results and performance may differ from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements as a result of various risks and uncertainties, including the risk factors discussed in reports filed or to be filed with the SEC. We urge you to consider these risk factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information provided on this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should be aware that these statements should not be considered a guarantee of future performance. Furthermore, during this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, except where we are unable without reasonable efforts to calculate certain reconciling items with confidence. With that, I will now turn it over to Tim Chen, our Co-Founder and CEO. Tim?

Thanks, Sara. This quarter, we continued to improve our efficiency in service of our long-term vision. We earned $187 million in revenue, which was up 24% year-over-year, but below our guidance range of $192 million to $200 million, largely due to a temporary disruption to our insurance shopping funnel as we transition to a new platform partner. However, our improved operational efficiency contributed to our bottom line outperformance. We delivered $21 million in non-GAAP operating income, above our guidance of $14 million to $18 million and representing a significant year-over-year improvement. I am particularly proud of our bottom line results when you consider the challenges all companies, including NerdWallet, have faced from organic search headwinds over the past year. These headwinds continued in Q2, and yet our NGOI is up $23 million year-over-year. I attribute this to a number of factors. We've expanded our top of funnel with other sources of organic referrals through our vertical integration and registered user experiences. We have improved our proficiency in performance marketing, and we have overhauled several of our vertical shopping experiences to capture more consumer and partner demand. And crucially, we've done this all while running leaner and faster. Our efficiency and healthy balance sheet give us options. We can make meaningful investments in our long-term vision, investments that will ensure we stay on offense with new capabilities and advantages. In particular, we're focused on vertical integration or the process by which we pair NerdWallet's brand and reach with best-in-class shopping experiences. Examples include our SMB loan sales concierge and acquisition of Next Door Lending, a mortgage brokerage. These bolt-ons allow us to not only capture more down funnel economics, but also to establish relationships with consumers that bring them back to us directly for future transactions. This quarter, our SMB team expanded our concierge service to a broader range of businesses. Meanwhile, Next Door Lending has been scaling our operating capacity with additional licensing and hiring efforts. Our efficiency gains have created more flexibility to invest opportunistically, whether organically or inorganically or return value to customers or shareholders in the quarter to come. You can read more about the progress we made in our other strategic pillars this quarter in our shareholder letter. In the meantime, I'll pass it over to Jun to cover our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Tim. Like Tim, I'm pleased with our profitability results this quarter and how they reflect our improved efficiency in service of our vision. As I mentioned last quarter, I believe the key drivers of long-term value creation for our shareholders are sustainable growth, strong free cash flow generation, and disciplined capital allocation, all of which depend on our commitment to prioritizing profitability and our long-term vision over short-term goals. With that in mind, let's discuss our Q2 results in more detail. You heard the headlines from Tim. Q2 revenue came in at $187 million. While this represents solid year-over-year growth of 24%, it is below where we guided last quarter due to lower-than-expected growth in insurance. Insurance delivered $55 million in revenue, growing at 86% year-over-year in Q2, but declining 26% quarter-over-quarter. As Tim shared, the deceleration versus Q1 largely arose from our transition to a new platform partner. Notably, this transition wrapped up in mid-July, and we have since seen insurance revenue rebound to levels similar to last year. For more information on our other verticals performance in Q2, please refer to our shareholder letter. Moving on to profitability. During Q2, we delivered $21 million of non-GAAP operating income, which was above our Q2 guidance range. Tim has already shared some of the drivers behind the $24 million year-over-year improvement in NGOI. Other operational efficiencies came from lower employee costs following our Q3 2024 restructuring and decreased brand spend mainly due to timing as we pulled forward our full year brand investments in Q1 to support the rollout of our national brand campaign at the Super Bowl. GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $11 million. Over the last four quarters, we generated $71 million of adjusted free cash flow and ended Q2 with a cash balance of $105 million. As a reminder, we introduced a trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow disclosure last quarter. We believe adjusted free cash flow is an important measure of the health of our business, and we introduced this disclosure to better align our internal KPIs with our reported financial metrics. Please refer to today's earnings press release for a full reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP measures. Continuing on the theme of profitability and Tim's commentary on efficiency allowing us to invest in our future, I would like to touch on capital allocation and our philosophy in this area. This has been a key focus for me since I joined NerdWallet, and the good news is that we have a host of attractive capital allocation opportunities due to our strong balance sheet and cash flow profile. In the current environment, we see two attractive options for deploying free cash flow, M&A and share buybacks. In terms of M&A, the current climate and our financial profile mean that we have a lot of leverage to pursue bolt-on acquisitions that will accelerate our vertical integration strategy. We'll continue to evaluate both opportunistically and with a focus on what will best serve our long-term value creation. In the meantime, on to our financial outlook. Like last quarter, our guidance contemplates a wider range of potential outcomes given low visibility in the macro. In Q3, we expect to deliver revenue in the range of $189 million to $197 million, which at the midpoint would be up 1% versus prior year. In insurance, we expect a small decline year-over-year since our platform transition was not completed until mid-July. And we expect continued headwinds in our credit card business, offset by strength in areas like banking and personal loans. In terms of profitability, we expect Q3 non-GAAP operating income results in the range of $23 million to $27 million. This assumes continued benefit from the improvements we made to our shopping funnels and operational efficiency and that we continue to deploy performance marketing spend to take advantage of verticals with opportunities for profitable growth. Looking ahead, we expect to generate full year 2025 non-GAAP operating income of $71 million to $79 million, an increase of $14.5 million at the midpoint from our previous guidance. Our strategic investments and commitments to operational efficiency have created more opportunities for us to add NGOI dollars through improved execution, so we enter the second half of the year with confidence that our full year NGOI goals for 2025 and 2026 are within reach.

Just with respect to the traffic headwinds that you called out or organic search headwinds you called out that a lot of companies are facing, including yourself. Any sense of just how this is trending? Is it getting incrementally better, incrementally worse? And then what type of success are you having right now in terms of just driving more nudges and getting more repeat users back onto the platform?

Yes, I’d say the situation hasn’t changed much since last quarter. Organic search remains quite challenging. What has changed is that we’ve seen AI overviews being rolled out to a much larger range of queries recently, leading to more individuals receiving answers without visiting websites. This mainly impacts our learned content, which explains why monthly active users have been affected more than revenue. At the same time, we’re noticing early indications that large language models will become a new organic channel for us. This channel is growing quickly, and third-party data suggests we are gaining market share in financial queries. What might not be immediately obvious is that users who click through from large language models have a significantly higher intent to transact compared to those clicking through from search engines. While this is encouraging as a new growth channel, it remains relatively small. In response to your question, we are certainly continuing to invest in our app and through vertical integration to enhance our financial services offerings. With these experiences, we gather substantial user information, making nudges and personalization much more effective in reengaging them. This is a crucial aspect of our strategy moving forward.

Got it. And if I could squeeze in one more. Just when you step back and consider all the innovation that's taken place in GenAI, how does that change your internal approach toward product development? Or said differently, what type of new things can you do today that weren't previously possible for NerdWallet?

Well, I'd say, broadly speaking, AI allows really exceptional teams of Nerds and smaller teams of Nerds to just accomplish a lot more than they could before. So we're definitely seeing improvements in things like R&D efficiency. I mean, you can see the year-over-year impacts there on just dollars spent, but we're actually doing a lot more and a lot more quickly. And then in terms of the user-facing product features, yes, we can do a lot more personalization and a lot more bespoke experiences than before. So you can see that show up in things like people getting deeper financial advice. So there's definitely a few experiences there that are quite promising in terms of getting people to that next financial decision.

It's Michael. Tim, is there any data or qualitative commentary that you could share as to how registered user engagement has trended over the last, say, 6 months? I'm curious if you've seen any change in sort of usage pattern from that cohort, which obviously has been historically quite sticky from a usage perspective?

Yes, nothing to share. I mean we continue to see that 5x better LTV for our registered users. And yes, that LTV just goes up the more features of NerdWallet that people are using. So for sure, users of our app or if you look at our newer features like our cash management account or treasury or Robo, I mean, the usage is even higher. So I think the formula stays the same. It would just be helpful and then I encourage users to use more and more products over time.

Makes sense. And apologies if I missed it, but can you just explain the mechanics as to why the transition on the insurance platform partner side was sort of warranted or needed? I just want to make sure I fully understand that.

Yes. For context, insurance referrals typically go through third-party marketplace platforms due to the fragmented nature of the market on both the demand generation and carrier sides. Each network and marketplace platform has its unique strengths, weaknesses, and pricing. We chose to switch to a platform with better economics and additional features that met our needs. The transition occurred starting in early Q2 and wrapped up in the first half of July.

Tim, regarding your comment about people clicking through, those who engage with LLMs seem to have a higher intent. While I understand that the numbers are still relatively small, could you share your thoughts on how this landscape might change if that trend continues? Additionally, are you observing any early monetization efforts in this area? I know it's still early and the scale is small, but any insights on how you see this developing and its potential for monetization would be appreciated.

I'll note that it's very early, but the evidence we're seeing indicates that the intent is higher because the monetization for those who come through is significantly greater than the average from other channels. It seems that people are getting their initial questions answered, and when they need the product, it often involves things like soft credit pulls or deeper matching processes. As they progress, their intent appears to be much higher. My broader question is whether we can tap into more of the offline demand that typically goes to direct mail, friends and family, or results in individuals sticking with their current options instead of making new decisions. Can we convert more of that demand online and capture a share of it? Many of these questions still need to be addressed.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Tim Chen, CEO, for closing remarks.

All right. Thanks all for your questions today. As always, I'd like to thank the Nerds for their continued hard work over Q2, and I'm looking forward to sharing our Q3 results with you in a couple of months.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.