ThredUp Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 5, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's thredUP Q2 2024 Earnings Call. Mode. Please note, today's call will be recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Lauren Frasch, Head of Investor Relations.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss thredUP's Q2 2024 Financial Results. With me are James Reinhart, thredUP's CEO and Co Founder and Sean Sowers, CFO. We posted our press release and supplemental financial information on our Investor Relations website at ir. Thredup.com. This call is being webcast on our IR website and a replay of this call will be available on the site shortly.

Speaker 1

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that we will make forward looking statements during the course of this call, including but not limited to statements regarding our earnings guidance for the 3rd 4th fiscal quarters and full year of 2024 future financial performance market demand growth prospects business strategies and plans investments in AI technologies the company's intention to exit the European market and to seek strategic alternatives for its European business and our ability to cost effectively track new buyers. Words such as anticipate, believe, estimate and expect as well as similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements. These forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including our ability to effectively deploy new and evolving technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning in our offerings. Our ability to identify and execute a strategic alternative for the company's European business and the effects of inflation, increased interest rates, changing consumer habits, climate change and general global economic uncertainty. Our actual results could differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

You can find more information about these risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our operating results in our SEC filings, earnings press release and supplemental information posted on our IR website. Any forward looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. In addition, during the call, we will present certain non GAAP financial measures. These non GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, or in isolation from GAAP measures. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release and supplemental information posted on our IR website.

Speaker 1

Now I'd like to turn the call over to James Reinhart.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Lauren. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm James Reinhart, CEO and Co Founder of FredUp. Thank you for joining our Q2 2024 earnings call. We're pleased to share thredUP's financial results for Q2 and have significant news to share about how we expect our business to evolve in the back half of the year and into 2025.

Speaker 2

We will provide an update on growth, adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, expectations for free cash flow over the next year and further developments in our new AI products as we launch them widely this month. I will then hand it over to Sean Sowers, our Chief Financial Officer, to talk through our Q2 2024 financials in more detail and provide our outlook for the 3rd Q4 of 2024. We'll close out today's call with a question and answer session. To get right to it, I want to start by acknowledging that the quarter on a consolidated basis was challenging for us. This was the case for 3 specific reasons, which I'll explain in order of impact.

Speaker 2

1st and by far most significantly, our European business really struggled. 2nd, we experimented in the U. S. With initiatives around new forms of customer acquisition and promotions, and they simply didn't perform the way we expected. 3rd, we are operating in an incrementally more challenging consumer environment where the compounding effects of inflation continue to hurt our core customers.

Speaker 2

While Sean will walk you through all the detailed financials in a moment, I want to highlight that for the Q4 in a row, our U. S. Business is growing gross profit, expanding margins and is adjusted EBITDA positive. In Europe, however, the business has continued to struggle even as we invested over $20,000,000 in cash in that business over the past 6 quarters. In Q2, our EU business contracted 18% while posting a negative 23% adjusted EBITDA despite significant attention from our U.

Speaker 2

S. Team. The accelerated transition to consignment in the EU business has been challenging, particularly in the midst of a difficult consumer demand environment and persistent inflation. Despite bringing in new leadership, upon strategic review, we determined that the Remix business needs a longer term turnaround. As such, we've made the difficult decision to divest our European business and that commenced seeking strategic alternatives.

Speaker 2

I'd now like to turn your attention to U. S. Performance.

Speaker 3

There are 2 areas I would like

Speaker 2

to make sure are very clearly understood. 1st, midway through Q1, we embarked on a plan for driving increased lifetime value from new customers by spending a bit less on marketing and changing our new customer offer structure and subsequent retention incentives. With the U. S. Business cash flow positive and growing revenue per buyer, we attempted to test into a new customer growth strategy and to further increase the LTV to CAC ratio by exploring some bold changes.

Speaker 2

Unfortunately, after reducing spend to iterate and nearly 90 days of testing and observing retention metrics, we found ourselves to be worse off. The estimated impact of this was that we acquired 90,000 fewer customers, who then also will not materialize into repeat customers this year. We reverted back to our prior spend and offer strategy on June 1st and have seen immediate recovery in June July. 2nd, let me turn to pricing and promotion. Since the middle of 2022, back when the consumer environment began to soften, we've been flexing prices and promotions to optimize for unit and contribution margin.

Speaker 2

Over that time period, we have made significant margin gains with gross margins up nearly 800 basis points to roughly 80% and contribution margins improving more than 1,000 basis points. Our unit economics have been as strong as ever and we have made substantial progress towards our long term margin profile. What we've been experimenting with in Q2 and into the early part of Q3 was to trade some of those unit economics for increased active buyer engagement, orders per customer and sell through. And the results have been mixed. Orders and revenue per buyer reached all time highs in Q2, running at more than $208 per active buyer in the U.

Speaker 2

S. Total item sales for the quarter reached an all time high of more than 5,000,000 pieces of clothing. The downside is that we did not see sufficient buyer incrementality given what we believe is just a muted overall demand environment. In addition, revenue flowed through at reduced unit economics and we believe we pulled forward summer demand from Q3 into Q2. To give you a sense of this, item sales in June were up 16% year over year and June tends to be a weaker demand month in apparel.

Speaker 2

We learned important lessons in Q2 and early in Q3 around item targeting, promotions and pricing elasticity that will guide our decision making into the back half of the year and Unfortunately, these two initiatives, which we take full accountability for, will have a lingering impact in the remainder of the year. But it's worth emphasizing that these were not things that happened to us, rather we made choices with well considered strategic considerations and they just did not perform the way we expected. Many of our initiatives over the past couple of years have led to the steady growth and adjusted EBITDA expansion you've seen in the U. S. But we're not perfect.

Speaker 2

We won't get it right every time. But we believe our body of work over the past couple of years demonstrates that we're getting it right a lot more than we're getting it wrong as we navigate a challenging macro environment. And that's a nice segue as I turn to our product launches this week. After months of testing, we are going live with our endless expression marketing campaign that launches our new AI shopping products to all customers. Our visual search functionality is now deployed across each of our platforms, bringing a much more robust shopping experience to every journey.

Speaker 2

Our style chat launch helps customers shop by inspiration and occasion in ways that are much more intuitive. For example, you could now shop for a Cape Cod fall wedding or a Disney Bahama cruise or outfits for New York City back to school like Ariana Grande. Customers are now only limited by their imagination and creativity. Our Image Search tool now lets you import any item into thredUP's mobile experience and find quality, high fidelity looks that match your style. Whether it's finding a look you love on Instagram or TikTok or Pinterest or reading people at Rogue Magazine or seeing a cute mannequin dressed up in a store window, we now bring you all of this into a customizable on demand thrift experience.

Speaker 2

I want to emphasize, this is the most significant product launch we've had at FrodeUp in a long time, arguably since we launched the company more than a decade ago. Much of the customer innovation from here will build on top of this foundational technology for merchandising, discovery, and inspiration. This technology can enable us to leap forward because we already have built a massive data advantage, world class infrastructure and a beloved brand. As I've said before, this isn't thredUP plus the new AI experiences. This is a fundamental upgrade in how we're innovating on behalf of the customer.

Speaker 2

We believe that AI disproportionately benefits our business relative to other marketplaces and retailers. And as consumers become more accustomed to these types of products in their lives, we believe we will see significant upside in our business. Before I turn it over to Sean, I want to close with a few thoughts on how we see the back half of the year shaping up broadly and for thredUP specifically. 1st, consistent with commentary from many of our peers, we expect the consumer environment to remain challenging until consumers begin to feel the benefits of ebbing inflation, lower interest rates and ongoing job stability and wage gains. We agree with soft landing commentary for the broader economy.

Speaker 2

But remember, landings are not the same as takeoffs. We think it will take several quarters for consumers, especially our core customers, to feel the benefits of interest rates coming down and for overall sentiment to improve. We also remain cautious given the upcoming U. S. Election cycle and recent financial indicators of a slowing economy and degradation in the jobs market.

Speaker 2

2nd, after the volatility of the first half of the year with our March restructure, intention to divest our European business and to seek strategic alternatives from EMEK, and the full scale launch of a whole new set of product experiences built around generative AI, our approach is to remain cautious on investments in marketing, processing and general operating expenditures. We will focus our efforts on improving our product experience, normalizing our unit economics and driving process improvements in our DCs to lower our overall variable costs. We remain poised to accelerate all of our growth engines as conditions for discretionary apparel spending in the U. S. Improve.

Speaker 2

Despite the ambition and optimism of every teammate in the halls of product, we just do not see a playing field in the second half that suggests we should or could be more aggressive. 3rd, as we refocus all of our efforts on the U. S, we expect our business to grow faster with structurally higher margins, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow despite having a lower top line. This might not come all at once as I mentioned earlier and we may remain temporarily at the mercy of economic forces outside of our control. But we believe the fundamentals of Thrive's business will be more resilient, more predictable, more defensible as we move back to exclusively focusing on the U.

Speaker 2

S. Opportunity. This laser like focus should be a significant catalyst for us in the year ahead. I'll now turn it over to Sean to walk through the financials in more detail.

Speaker 3

Thanks, James. I'll begin with an overview of our results and follow-up with guidance for the 3rd and 4th quarters and full year of 2024. I will discuss non GAAP results throughout my remarks. Our GAAP financials and a reconciliation between our GAAP and non GAAP measures are found in our earnings release, supplemental financials and our 10 Q filing. Before we get into the numbers, I want to start with an overview of how I view our business in the remainder of the year.

Speaker 3

Q2 was a challenge in part due to the factors outside of our control in Europe and in part due to factors within our control in the U. S. We have our arms around both of these challenges. In the U. S, we expect the impact from the Q1 and Q2 missteps in our buyer acquisition strategy and promotional cadence that James described earlier to linger throughout the balance of the year.

Speaker 3

But we are pleased to report that we have diagnosed the problem and are course correcting. While our revenue growth in the second half will be weaker than we'd like as we absorb the negative impact of the strategy shift, as well as being up against 15% growth in second half of twenty twenty three, we expect to be EBITDA positive. Europe has been a drag on our profitability and focus for several quarters, but we intend to exit the European market and expect to present U. S. Only operating results when we report our Q3 earnings.

Speaker 3

We will be able to direct our focus and resources to prioritize our U. S. Operations without the burden of optimizing for consolidated results. We anticipate that this action will immediately increase our gross margins, improve our gross profit growth, get us to positive adjusted EBITDA and accelerate our path to free cash flow. Though exiting the EU will incur some cash cost, our balance sheet remains healthy and we do not anticipate our cash and marketable securities falling below $50,000,000 before we reach free cash flow positive.

Speaker 3

Now on to our results. This quarter, I'll be reviewing the results of both our U. S. And European businesses. We are also providing historical U.

Speaker 3

S. Active buyers, net revenue and gross margins in our supplemental financials. As discussed, we were faced with a challenging Q2 in both the U. S. And Europe.

Speaker 3

For the Q2 of 2024, revenue totaled $79,800,000 a decrease of 3.5 percent year over year. Additionally, active buyers were $1,700,000 while orders were 1,700,000 dollars representing a 2.6% and a 6% decline respectively. In Q2, Europe posted net revenue of $13,000,000 an 18 percent decline year over year. This was well below our expectation for the quarter. The macro environment in Europe has yet to inflect, while the transition to consignment proved to be more difficult to execute in a challenging consumer environment.

Speaker 3

In Q2, the U. S. Achieved net revenue of $66,700,000 flat to last year on 1,300,000 active buyers, representing a 5.6% decline year over year. As James shared earlier, U. S.

Speaker 3

Net revenue was challenged due to changes to our new buyer strategy that we implemented in mid Q1, causing us to miss out on acquiring approximately 90,000 buyers until we course corrected in June. We estimate this was an approximate $3,000,000 negative net impact to Q2. In addition, starting in mid April and persisting into Q3, we've seen the promotional landscape intensify in the U. S. And consumers pressured by compounding inflation became incrementally more selective in their purchasing.

Speaker 3

The Q2 of 2024 consolidated gross margin was 70.4%, a 300 basis point increase over the same quarter last year. The U. S. Achieved gross margin of 78.8 percent, 2 40 basis points higher than last year, however, lower than our expectations. In addition to a highly competitive market, we lean harder into promotions in an effort to achieve our consolidated outlook.

Speaker 3

As a result of both of these dynamics, we sold more units at lower prices pressuring gross margin. The EU posted gross margins of 27.3%, a 250 basis point decline year over year, driven by higher unit costs and aggressive discounting. For the Q2 of 2024, GAAP net loss was $14,000,000 compared to GAAP net loss of $18,800,000 in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $1,500,000 or a negative 1.9 percent of revenue for the Q2 of 2024. In the U.

Speaker 3

S, we generated $1,500,000 of adjusted EBITDA in Q2, our 4th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA after having generated $1,900,000 in Q1. Europe was a $3,000,000 drag on adjusted EBITDA in Q2 as their business meaningfully underperformed. Turning to the balance sheet. We began the 2nd quarter with $67,900,000 in cash and securities and ended the quarter with $60,700,000 using $7,200,000 in cash in Q2. Of that $2,300,000 was due to the EU's cash needs, dollars 2,000,000 was severance from our Q1 restructuring, dollars 1,200,000 was using CapEx and $1,000,000 was the debt pay down.

Speaker 3

As we focus on the U. S. Business, we do not expect this degree of cash consumption to continue. Regarding CapEx, we are maintaining our expectations of approximately $8,000,000 for all of 2024. Reflecting on the first half of the year, it has certainly been a challenge.

Speaker 3

But we feel that we are starting off the second half on a stronger footing. We made some mistakes in the U. S, but we've diagnosed the problem and have pivoted our strategy. We are operating in a highly competitive environment, but are well positioned to flex our marketplace model. And finally, we are exploring strategic options for our EU business.

Speaker 3

We believe our stakeholders would be best served by focusing our attention and resources solely on our adjusted EBITDA positive U. S. Business. To reiterate, exiting the European market will immediately increase our gross margins, improve our gross profit growth, get us to a positive adjusted EBITDA and accelerate our path to free cash flow. Moving to our outlook, I would like to add some color to the comments James made earlier to provide additional context for guidance.

Speaker 3

At the moment we are facing 3 distinct headwinds in the balance of the year. 1st, after changing our new buyer strategy in mid Q1, we believe we missed out on acquiring but we feel the impact of this misstep in the remainder of the year when we also miss out on their repeat purchases. We estimate this dynamic to be several $1,000,000 revenue headwind in the second half. 2nd, in Q2, we made the strategic decision to be more promotional in order to achieve our consolidated goals. Not only did this negatively impact our unit economics in Q2, but it also pulled forward lower quality revenue into June and higher quality revenue out of July.

Speaker 3

We estimate this to be a $5,000,000 negative impact to Q3. Finally, our core customer is feeling the multiyear impact of compounding inflation. They are incrementally more discriminating in their purchasing, resulting in a highly competitive consumer discretion environment. We expect this dynamic to persist in the balance of the year and could potentially worsen. In Q3 and Q4, we will continue to flex pricing in our marketplace model, but we will moderate promotions from our Q2 levels and largely return to preserving our healthy unit economics.

Speaker 3

With all of this in mind, I'd like to turn to our outlook, which will refer to our U. S. Operations only. In the Q3, we expect revenue in the range of $59,000,000 to $61,000,000 representing a decline of 12% at the midpoint as we lapped 17 growth in Q3 of last year. Gross margins in the range of 77.5% to 79.5%, flat to last year at the midpoint.

Speaker 3

Adjusted EBITDA of negative 1% to a positive 1% of revenue, flat to last year at the midpoint. And Basic Wave average shares outstanding of approximately 113,000,000 shares. In the Q4, we expect revenue in the range of $57,000,000 to $59,000,000 representing a decline 6% at the midpoint as we lap 12% growth in Q4 of last year. As a reminder, Q4 is seasonally the smallest quarter in our U. S.

Speaker 3

Business. Gross margins in the range of 77.5% to 79.5%, representing margin expansion of 100 basis points at the midpoint. Positive adjusted EBITDA of 0% to 2% of revenue, a $2,000,000 decline year over year at the midpoint. And basic weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 115,000,000 shares. For the full year of 2024, in the U.

Speaker 3

S, we now expect revenue in the range of $247,000,000 to $251,000,000 representing a decline of 4% at the midpoint. Keep in mind that the EU business accounted for approximately $70,000,000 of our previous full year outlook. Gross margins in the range of approximately 78.5% to 79.5%, representing gross margin expansion of 220 basis points at the midpoint. Positive adjusted EBITDA of 1% to 2% of revenue, a $9,000,000 improvement year over year at the midpoint and basic weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 114,000,000 shares. In closing, we're excited to renew our focus on our U.

Speaker 3

S. Business. When completed, divesting European operations will provide investors with greater transparency to the U. S. Structurally higher gross margin, positive adjusted EBITDA and favorable free cash flow dynamics.

Speaker 3

We believe that focusing our talent, capital resources and attention on our profitable U. S. Business is the best strategy to expand our profits and accelerate our path to free cash flow. James and I are now ready for your questions. Operator, please open the line.

Operator

And we'll take our first question from Ike Boruchow with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hey, guys. I guess I wanted to focus on the split of EU and U. S. I guess first question is on Europe. Obviously, we know it's been a drag for a while.

Speaker 4

You guys have talked about it. Maybe what specifically changed in the Q2? And then maybe, James, could you just talk about the evolution of your thinking as you kind of came to the decision you guys did?

Speaker 2

Sure. Hey, Ike. Yes, I mean, I think if you go back a year, we had been focused on investing in the product, technology, operations piece of the business. And then over the past several quarters have talked about the change in consignment, really focusing on that as a driver of gross profit expansion and growth. And like it's just it's taken longer to see that materialize the way that we'd like.

Speaker 2

And then we brought in Florin, who started in May, who I think we feel really great about. And he made it clear as he dug into the business that it was going to take even longer than I think we originally thought. And not just time, but capital. And I think we aligned with the idea that it was going to require more degrees of flexibility for them to turn around that business. And so I think we then decided that in order for them to really successfully get the business to a place that they wanted, that the U.

Speaker 2

S. Is going

Speaker 3

to be tough for

Speaker 2

the U. S. To support them. And so that became really the catalyzing event. And we think that business and the TAM opportunity in Europe is real.

Speaker 2

We just think it's going to take longer. And so at this point, given the challenges globally, we think our capital and resources deployed fully on the U. S. Is the best case scenario. And part of that also reflected back, we put $20,000,000 over the last 6 quarters into the EU, what would that have looked like if we had put that $20,000,000 into the U.

Speaker 2

S? And I think we'd be in a better place. And so we didn't want to repeat that same mistake.

Speaker 4

Got it. And could you sorry if I didn't follow-up, but on U. S. EBITDA, these self inflicted issues you kind of talked about it at that past call, like roughly how much was that in dollars to the U. S.

Speaker 4

EBITDA for this year?

Speaker 3

Hold on. I can't answer it.

Speaker 4

I guess as you look forward, Sean, I guess what I'm trying to look at is so your U. S. Business is basically $250,000,000 with a 1% to 2% margin, but there's some headwind in that margin from this issue. I'm just trying to think about as we try to shake this off and look into next year, like what is the run rate of the business from a profitability perspective as you're hopefully back to growth as well next year?

Speaker 3

And I think your question is what's like the normal EBITDA run rate for the U. S. Business or the impact of what happened this year in the U. S. Business?

Speaker 3

I'm trying to get a good understanding.

Speaker 4

I'm trying to add back that self inflicted issue to the positive 1% to 2% margin and think about how you guys think the U. S. U. S. Now it's a U.

Speaker 4

S. Only business from here into next year. So how should we think about U. S. Profitability scaling as we think about the business moving into next year and beyond?

Speaker 4

Okay.

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, I'll jump in, John. And then, I mean, the way I think about it is, if you go back to exiting 2023, the U. S. Business was Q3, Q4, we were expanding Q4 exited at 4%.

Speaker 2

In the full year in the U. S, I think we'll be in that 1% to 2% range. And so our expectation is whatever where we guided on a consolidated basis previously, U. S. Standalone will be above that as we get into 2025.

Speaker 2

And so I think you can triangulate around above where the consolidated guide was previously, knowing that there might be some tumult in Q3 and Q4. Yes.

Speaker 3

What I would say and I'm Haik, I'm just doing a little back of the envelope math, right, because I didn't have it here in front of me. But you could say it's around of the $6,000,000 that we kind of lost as it relates to the buyer strategy, related to those 90,000 buyers, it's probably around $2,000,000 ish in EBITDA for the full year.

Speaker 4

Got it. So you exited last year on a 4 margin. You've got a couple points from the headwind here that would kind of get you back. It kind of seems like a mid single digit U. S.

Speaker 4

Margin is kind of what you strive for as you're kind of going into the next year. Is that fair?

Speaker 3

That sounds right. Yes, I

Speaker 2

think that's fair. I think that's fair. Yes.

Speaker 4

Okay. All right. Thanks guys.

Operator

We'll move next to Rick Patel with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hey, thanks guys and good afternoon. I'm just trying to better understand the change that you made in mid-1Q that had a negative impact in the Q2. So can you maybe just walk us through an example of what change that resulted in the negative impact? And I guess what changed again in the beginning of June that created the positive change in the direction? And then secondly, I was hoping you can tie in that commentary with what you're seeing with gross margins because it sounded like you're maybe pulling it sounded like you pulled back on promotions and that's why you lost those 90,000 customers.

Speaker 5

But at the same time, your gross margins came in

Speaker 3

a little bit lighter than

Speaker 5

you wanted to because of the discounting. So I feel like I'm not fully understanding what happened.

Speaker 2

Sure. Why don't I talk about the acquisition piece and then I can talk I can take it over to Sean. So, yes, I mean, Rick, the way to think about it is we were flexing the percent off your first order and then we have a traditional onboarding path where you may get incremental credits or loyalty points for second order, third order, fourth order. And so we had moved to more of a flat dollar based credit system. And so for example, instead of 30% or 40% off your first order to IMVEUS trial, we were flexing is it $10 is it $20 is it $30 off an order of $100 or more.

Speaker 2

And so we were really iterating around that type of strategy. And what we found is that there was nothing that we could do from a dollars off your first order or incentives across multiple orders that was better than just the straight percent off order with free shipping. And so but we didn't we needed it 90 days to really see how those LTVs played out. And once we felt confident that we were worse off, we reverted back to where we had been previously and where we had been for the prior year on June 1. So that was it was the offer structure and then the incentive structure.

Speaker 3

And Rick on the gross margin piece, I think in the beginning, I think you have it right during that new customer acquisition period, gross margins were probably a little more favorable on our side. But as we started to end the quarter, we got much more promotional and started to really give opportunities to discounts back to the new customers as well as our existing purchasers. And that more than offset the benefit of having the gross margin favorability that we had in the first part of Q2. And that's why you see the kind of the mix in the 78.8 percent gross margin in the U. S.

Speaker 3

Versus the 80% is what we've seen in Q1.

Speaker 5

Okay. That's really helpful. And secondly, can you just zoom out and maybe just talk about consumer behavior on the platform? Any incremental data that trade down maybe getting worse than expected or maybe the kinds of consumers that you might be acquiring like higher end versus lower end? Any kind of changes in the trend line from the prior quarters?

Speaker 2

Sure. I mean, I think the biggest thing, Rick is that you're just seeing that the consumer, especially as we move through the quarter, they were just more discerning, right? And so you were you had discounts needed to be incrementally higher to that budget shopper. I think the standard premium shopper are highly engaged buyer. I think they perform as well as ever, but that real budget shopper call it making $50,000 $60,000 a year, you really needed to have compelling offers to convert them.

Speaker 2

And so just to give you an example, discounts had to be about 20% higher, Rick, for that budget shopper relative to where they were a year ago to sort of move them off the couch and to make a purchase. And so we've been navigating that now for a few months and we feel good about sort of the plan into the back half of the year, but it's really that segment of buyers that struggled.

Speaker 5

I appreciate it. Thanks very much.

Operator

We'll move next to Dylan Carden with William Blair. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thanks. I'm curious sort of why the change was made in customer acquisition. Yes, let's just start there.

Speaker 2

Yes, I mean Dylan, as I said, I think the business we were feeling pretty good at the beginning of the year. The U. S. Business, free cash flow positive, growing. I think we felt some sense of optimism that the year would materialize better.

Speaker 2

And I think we had been in a very we had not really messed with the new customer offer in some time. And so what we were looking for was, was there something that we could do that would yield more new customers, wider 10, better LTVs over time. And so we were really looking for a new mountaintop. And I think it's very easy as an organization to keep doing what you're doing across your marketing mix and across your offer mix. And we were looking for something that potentially could have put us in a much better place.

Speaker 2

And so that was the intent and I think in retrospect we probably could have done it in certain areas differently, but that was the path we chose and we got it wrong and we own that and we fixed it and moving forward.

Speaker 6

And so it wasn't in response to some sort of competitive change, dynamic change in the market?

Speaker 2

No, I think we were just looking for at this point, we were looking for new sources of growth and lifetime value. And could we shift the type of buyer that we're looking for? Could we shift the channel from where those buyers came from and didn't materialize the way we would like? And we think a lot of it had to do we think one was the offer, but also just into a demand environment that we thought that we think was weakening, you just you were worse off.

Speaker 6

And so now with sort of what we're left with on the guide, there's a lot of moving pieces here. If you kind of strip away the lost 90,000 buyers, what's the incrementality on kind of the macro overhang? I mean, I was of the impression, I think you can go back to last call that sort of you were derisked on the macro front in the prior guide. Is there sort of incremental behavior that you're seeing that kind of takes you another leg down here? Is it really just the kind of own goal or own, yes, that you're sort of speaking to here?

Speaker 2

Well, I think Sean can give you kind of the bridge, but Dylan, yes, I mean, I think consistent with I think the commentary from a lot of our peers and consumer, I think the buyer, the consumer is more challenged now than they were 90 days ago, right? I think that you're there's whether it's Starbucks or McDonald's, right, across the board there's some consumer companies that are struggling. And so I think maybe you think the world has gotten a little bit worse, right, from where we were 90 days ago and certainly at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 6

Got it.

Speaker 2

Sean, do you want to bridge the revenue piece for Dylan?

Speaker 3

Yes, yes, Dylan. So if you think about like our last guide to this guide, it's about it's down at the midpoint, it's about $33,000,000 on an annual basis. It's pretty simple. It's $19,000,000 of it straight up Europe. And so I think we talked about that and you guys know what we're doing there.

Speaker 3

And then the remaining $14,000,000 is the U. S. About $6,000,000 is really that active buyer strategy, change that we made and then made back. And then the remaining is about $8,000,000 which is really macro impact.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Great. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Operator

We'll go next to Dana Telsey with the Telsey Group. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hi, good afternoon. James, as you talked about the increase of 20% of discount or promo in order to get people to spend, What was it for besides the value customers? What did it look like for just your other regular core customers? What are you seeing in terms of cleanup bags in terms of what you're getting? And how do the distribution centers with this lower volume, how do you think of the capacity and the expense structure going forward?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, Dan, it's interesting. I mean, I would not say that there's lower volume by any means. In Q2, we sold more clothing than we've ever had than ever in our history, right? So there is a lot of volume.

Speaker 2

I think what we've just found is that for those products that if you think about the average selling price on thredUP being between $20 $25 we were just having to mark down our lower priced product even further, Dana, for customers to convert. And so the sort of pernicious part of it all is that you're having to discount more, right? And even that then that budget shopper is not converting at the same rate. And so, we just think that there's a segment of customers who it's not that they potentially are trading down, it's that they're trading out. And we think that they are really struggling.

Speaker 2

And so I don't think our cost structure, the variable cost in our DCs or the fixed cost, is any kind of overhang. I think the biggest challenge was sort of the weakness in Europe in Q2 and then some of these strategic changes that we made the acquisition in Q1 and then the promotions in Q2.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

And it does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to the company for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you everyone for joining. Thank you to the teammates throughout the ThredUP organization and our folks overseas in Europe. We appreciate all the things that you have done and are working on and are very excited for the product work ahead of us. And we do make mistakes, but we also have a firm understanding of where we're headed. And so look forward to seeing you at our next call.

Operator

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation.

Speaker 1

You have been removed from the call. Goodbye.

Operator

Have a wonderful afternoon.

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Earnings Conference Call
ThredUp Q2 2024
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