QuinStreet Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 6, 2025

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to Queen Street's Fiscal Second Quarter twenty twenty five Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Following prepared remarks, there will be a Q and A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Senior Director of Investor Relations and Finance, Mr. Robert Lamparo.

Operator

Thank you. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. And thank you everyone for joining us as we report QuinStreet's fiscal second quarter twenty twenty five financial results. Joining me on the call today are Chief Executive Officer, Doug Valente and Chief Financial Officer, Greg Wong. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the following discussion will contain forward looking statements. Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected by such statements and are not guarantees of future performance.

Speaker 1

Factors that may cause results to differ from our forward looking statements are discussed in our recent SEC filings, including our most recent eight K filing made today and our most recent 10 Q filing. Forward looking statements are based on assumptions as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements. Today, we will be discussing both GAAP and non GAAP measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings press release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.quinstreet.com. With that, I will turn the call over to Doug Valente.

Speaker 1

Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Rob. Welcome, everyone. We delivered record revenue again in fiscal Q2, defying typical seasonality, driven by the unprecedented surge and broadening of auto insurance client demand. Revenue in other client verticals also continued to perform well, growing 15% year over year in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA remained strong as profitability continued to benefit from operating leverage.

Speaker 2

We expect adjusted EBITDA margin to expand further from here as we continue to optimize media efficiencies and client results in auto insurance and as we progress a range of other revenue growth and margin expansion initiatives. We also expect strong demand in auto insurance to continue and continued strong growth in our non insurance client verticals. Turning to our outlook. We expect fiscal Q3 revenue to be between $265,000,000 and $275,000,000 and Q3 adjusted EBITDA to be between $19,500,000 and $20,000,000 We are once again raising our outlook for full fiscal year 2025. We now expect full fiscal year revenue to be about $1,085,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA to be about $82,500,000 Finally, we previously discussed FCC changes to TCPA regulations expected to go into effect in January.

Speaker 2

Those regulations were stayed by the courts just prior to going into effect and they are not likely to be reinstated. There may be replacement regulations regarding consumer contact rates, but we believe that they would be less disruptive than those that were stayed and more consistent with QuinStreet's current approach. With that, I'll turn the call over to Greg.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Doug. Hello and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Fiscal Q2 was another record revenue quarter for QuinStreet, significantly outpacing typical sequential seasonality. As Doug mentioned, the strength was mainly due to the continued unprecedented ramp of auto insurance client demand. Though our non insurance businesses also maintained strong momentum and grew double digits.

Speaker 3

For the December, total revenue grew 130% year over year and was $282,600,000 Adjusted net income was $11,900,000 or $0.2 per share and adjusted EBITDA was $19,400,000 Looking at revenue by client vertical, our Financial Services client vertical represented 78% of Q2 revenue and grew 208% year over year to $219,900,000 The record performance was largely driven by auto insurance, which grew 615% year over year. Our home services client vertical represented 21% of Q2 revenue and grew 21% year over year to $59,600,000 Other revenue was the remaining $3,100,000 of Q2 revenue. Turning to the balance sheet. We closed the quarter with $58,000,000 of cash and equivalents and no bank debt. Moving to our outlook.

Speaker 3

For fiscal Q3, our March quarter, we expect revenue to be between $265,000,000 and $275,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA to be between $19,500,000 and $20,000,000 As Doug already mentioned, we are again raising our full fiscal year 2025 outlook. We now expect revenue to be between $1,065,000,000 and $1,105,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA to be between $80,000,000 and $85,000,000 I'd like to note that our full fiscal year outlook implies strong sequential margin expansion in the June, our fiscal Q4, as we continue to optimize media efficiencies and client results in auto insurance and as we make progress on a number of growth initiatives. Moving forward, between media and client optimizations, favorable mix shifts as auto insurance growth rates normalize, growing new higher margin opportunities and ongoing productivity improvements, we believe that we are getting within reach of our target 10% adjusted EBITDA margin. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q and

Operator

A. Thank you. Thank you. And your first question comes from the line of John Campbell from Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hey guys, good afternoon. Congrats on a great quarter.

Speaker 2

Thank you, John.

Speaker 4

Sure. I want to start off, I caught one of your large customers, the earnings call today was pretty upbeat. I mean, they talked a lot about ramping up growth just across the board, but mainly in auto. This is also one of the largest national carriers that's also kind of running half throttle from a national exposure standpoint. I know there's a handful of your customers that are kind of in a similar situation.

Speaker 4

So it's great to see you guys put up record results against that backdrop. So I'm kind of curious about your ability to maintain the momentum. I'm hoping, Doug, maybe you could talk to provide some color around maybe the capacity that's out there, kind of what remains as some of these carriers start to open more and more states and kind of what you're seeing in the channel as you go week to week, month to month?

Speaker 2

Yes, sure, John, it's a great question. We see a lot of capacity in front of us. We have broadened the client base pretty dramatically over the past year or so. And we now have a record number of carriers spending 7 figures plus a month

Speaker 5

with us.

Speaker 2

And most of those carriers do not have all the exposure they want in the channel and are not putting nearly as much budget into digital as they should, if you look at ratios of eyeballs and shopping habits in this channel versus other channels. So if you combine the capacity that our clients have budget wise with the potential they have to spend more to be more efficient and more aligned with consumer activity. We see a lot of upside from here. We think we're going to consolidate around this new higher base and be able to grow good strong double digits from here for as long as we can see. We're also opening up whole new dimensions of insurance in terms of addressable markets.

Speaker 2

We're in a relatively small part of the overall market. We're highly leveraged to direct carriers. We will and are adding and growing very rapidly our exposure to agent driven carriers, which is almost the other half of the addressable market and we are very under indexed there. And we are rapidly pursuing other areas of insurance, including business insurance, which is yet again another half of the overall market in our estimates. So a lot of capacity in the current footprint with existing clients where we have great relationships and are working with them to optimize and spend better and a lot of capacity in other areas that we have opened up new initiatives and have begun to serve and are in the process of beginning to scale.

Speaker 2

So a lot of opportunity insurance for a long, long time to come in our estimation.

Speaker 4

Okay. That's great to hear. And then maybe on the gross margin or I'm sorry, on overall just EBITDA margin, I think you guys have pretty accurately depicted the channel just kind of being a mismatch of over demand and under supply. And I think you've talked to maybe that being somewhat of a transitory issue where that will correct itself over time as some of your media partners shift up funnels and just basically change their media sources. So I'm curious as you kind of unpack your guidance on the FY 4Q, looks like you're looking for about 9% margin at the midpoint.

Speaker 4

So above what expectation that would be a lot of your margin expansion. So it would be a great outcome. So I'm curious about how much of that is kind of that dynamic, the channel kind of correcting itself versus more of the self help and some of

Speaker 2

the other initiatives you're working on? Yes. A couple of things. The margins last quarter were a little lower than we might have expected if we had a normalized mix, but we had a very heavy mix of auto insurance. And to your point, we had a heavy mix of auto insurance that wasn't yet optimized because the surge has been so rapid that we're working as hard as we can, but can't quite catch it yet in terms of optimizing.

Speaker 2

We're not optimizing. There's definitely media out there that hasn't been properly segmented, hasn't been properly matched to the right client, hasn't been properly priced to its performance and has been properly priced in terms of what we should be buying it for. So and we're working on that every day and making progress and that's what we do for a living. So a lot of it will be that dynamic, John, the one that the exact dynamic you talked about. But there are a lot of other things going on, a lot of growth in the other verticals and other businesses and products where we have significantly higher margins and a lot of work being done to improve just structurally our margins by opening up new media sources and building ones that we know we can scale that are higher margin than the current media sources we have in building capacity.

Speaker 2

There were really under indexed in, for example, social display native areas that we know we can be bigger and we have seen others have some success and we're growing those very rapidly through our Aquavita Media acquisition, which has gone extraordinarily well. So a lot of moving parts, but much of it to do with what you alluded to, but then other things that we work on day to day initiative wise and or growth wise to expand the margin. And that's what will you'll see that step this quarter, where we're expecting EBITDA margins to be higher than they were last quarter. And you'll see that again, I mean, you'll see that in the fourth quarter, and a little bit as we get even more momentum on those activities and more progress on those activities. And again, a pretty significant jump we expect in the fourth quarter over the third quarter, but I would again point out we're also expecting it this quarter over last quarter.

Speaker 2

So progress across the board.

Speaker 4

Makes sense. Thanks Doug.

Speaker 2

Thank you, John.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer from Craig Hallum. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you. Great job, guys. I just wanted to ask about TCPA. My understanding is that a lot of carriers requested TCPA compliance even before that deadline was put in place.

Speaker 6

So curious if there's anything any notable takeaways kind of in this period of time that it seems like the industry was operating under TCPA compliance? And then the work that you did leading up to TCPA, I'm wondering if there's any learnings there that you think you can apply to the business going forward to make things more efficient?

Speaker 2

That's a great question. It was we were getting ready for TCPA for over a year. We knew it was coming. We're very wired into the FCC and want to be, we want to be know what they're thinking and make sure we're ahead of those things. And so we did an awful lot of work and I think we did learn a lot.

Speaker 2

We tested an enormous number of approaches to matching and communications and contacts with consumers. And despite the fact that the regulations did not go into effect, we will improve a lot of areas based on that feedback and that testing. It was disruptive in many ways because we still had to prepare for it. And to your point, Jason, many clients required us to implement early just to make sure it was working. I'm not being critical.

Speaker 2

It made sense. If you're going to have to comply, you ought to test it early before the actual due date. And so, we had I think we would have done even better in the quarter had we not had to go through that disruption, which certainly wasn't as big as it would have been if we'd have fully implemented across the board, but was not insignificant and it was a distraction quite frankly from a lot of other activities. So I would say that, yes, we did learn a lot. We will roll those into continuing to improve.

Speaker 2

As you know, I said when I talked about their regulations before, I said they would be a short term term disruption, but they would likely accelerate long term trends to make the channel a better, safer, more participatory place for consumers and for clients. And I think those long term trends will continue to go forward and we've learned yet more about how to push those long term trends and we will benefit, we Wind Street will disproportionately benefit from those long term trends and we get to do that now without the short term non insignificant disruption that would have occurred if everybody would have been forced to convert right away and adapt, which in this ecosystem would have been disruption, we're disruptive. So it's we're happy we went through it. We've learned a lot. We still will take the lead on making sure this is a great channel, a compliant channel, a safe channel for our clients and for consumers.

Speaker 2

And we get to do that now without the with having had a little disruption between having to prepare for it, but not the big disruption of having to actually fully implement.

Speaker 6

Appreciate that, Doug. I wanted to piggyback off of John's just on margins and on what you're seeing there. We've talked for a few quarters now about this supply constraint or the media constraint that exists. Can you give any more detail on like are there any indications that that's starting to open up or the factors that you can do to and I think again you're alluding to that in the Q4 guide, but is there any more color on what other industry participants are doing that could give us more supply in the market?

Speaker 2

Sure. We have seen a number of media companies broadly defined because media companies come in all shapes and sizes. They could be folks with databases that are with permission emails as well as folks that publish materials and content. Shift there, we have seen them pretty aggressively shift their activity and their focus back to auto insurance. And that takes a little while to ramp, but we definitely are seeing results from that, increased supply from that, increased activity and opportunities from that.

Speaker 2

And we ourselves have shifted a lot of our own activities on the owned and operated side back to auto insurance to grow our own campaigns in all media, digital and are seeing a lot of great results and very strong growth there. So I don't think that we should expect that in the foreseeable future, there will be a big gap between demand and supply anymore. I think that supply is catching up, but it was tough there for a few quarters because the surge was so rapid and so massive that it was kind of impossible for it to not outstrip everyone's ability to kind of ramp back up their media activities. But I don't think that's going to be a big constraint for over the next few quarters. I think we're almost caught up frankly and I think we'll stay caught up.

Speaker 2

I think that there's I don't think there's a big miss and big structural mismatch we're going to have to be dealing with.

Speaker 6

All right. Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Zack Kamens from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, good afternoon. I just wanted to piggyback off of Jason's question on TCPA. I mean, first, can you comment on any potential impact, especially on the margin side that you had around implementation ahead of the planned date for SEC's one to one consent rule. And I know in your prior guidance that you issued in Q1, you baked in some headwind to home services as a result of this implementation. Just curious if you're now assuming a higher growth rate for for home services, especially as we go on to the second half of your fiscal year?

Speaker 2

Yes, Zach. We are expecting that the home services performance will be better in the back half of the fiscal year than it would have been had we fully implemented the new two CPA changes. And that is it does one of the factors baked into our guidance in the back half. It was in terms of commenting on the work, we worked on it for a year and we worked on it hard. So I would say that what I was pleased with was the exceptional work that all the teams did, our marketplace team, our engineering team, in particular, our home services team, getting ready for the changes.

Speaker 2

And so I think the impact would have been less severe than we feared because of that great work and because we weren't as far off the new rules as a lot of other people are in terms of how we operate. And I mean, we've always limited match rates, always being the last ten to fifteen years. And there are even people who refer to limiting match rates as kind of the QuinStreet approach, because we believe that it matters. And we know there's a sweet spot in terms of consumer engagement, consumer response rates and how many times you match them. Most consumers do want multiple options by the way.

Speaker 2

So matching them more than once is usually a consumer preferred thing, but they probably don't want to be contacted or to be matched to more than about five and the sweet spot seems to be about three. So I think we proved that once again through all the testing and we'll continue to be disciplined as we have been for a very long time on that front, so that we get the best combination of consumer engagement and conversion for our clients and best experience for those consumers.

Speaker 7

Understood. That's helpful. And my one follow-up question is really around auto insurance. Nice to hear the broad based strength that you're seeing amongst carriers. I was just curious if you could go a little bit deeper in terms of the contribution you're seeing from maybe your top one or two carriers versus maybe how you expect that to evolve throughout calendar twenty twenty five as a broader base of carriers should have profitability metrics to spend more money to acquire customers?

Speaker 2

We have a couple of clients that are significantly bigger in terms of their spend than the rest. They're just further along and we're closer to them. But I would say that and Greg may be able to give you some numbers, but I would characterize it kind of qualitatively that I have never seen more carriers, significant carriers. I'm not talking about anybody small because although there are a bunch of those too, but no more of the big carriers, more engaged in digital in a very productive smart way than I am seeing right now. It's I don't think it's an exaggeration to call it dramatically different than it was going into COVID.

Speaker 2

I think that the capabilities, the focus, the willingness and ability to engage on a digital level analytically with us to get the kind of results you can get if you do that, which are by the way spectacularly better than other channels or not doing it analytically or well in this channel, it's a dramatic improvement and a dramatic increase in carriers that are capable and want to be better at it and are working hard at being better at it. Obviously, there are a couple that lead the pack and have led the pack for a long time and it's going to be tough to catch them. But we are seeing a lot more smart activity in the broader carrier group than we've ever seen. And it's not surprising, this channel is incredibly efficient, but it's very different. You have to have a different skill set to win in this channel.

Speaker 2

And it's taken a while for a number of companies to and still taking a while for everybody to build those capabilities because it's hard. But we are seeing, I would say again, I'll keep using the word dramatic progress from where we were just a few years ago.

Speaker 7

Understood. Well, thanks for taking my questions and congrats again on the strong results.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Zach.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholl from Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Good afternoon and congrats again on the strong results. I had a question on the other financial services verticals. I was wondering if you could talk about the just to clarify the 15% growth that you talked about, was that the other financial service verticals or is that just all other revenue categories including home services?

Speaker 2

That was all non insurance client verticals, was the 15%. And Greg, I don't know if you have any other of the numbers that you wanted to share.

Speaker 3

Yes, I would say that's exactly it. It was all financial services ex or I'm sorry, all total business ex insurance grew 15% or non insurance financial services businesses delivered year over year growth itself. I would tell you good year over year growth. The only place that where we did see really good performance, but we had a very tough comp was against credit cards. So very happy with our performance of credit cards in the quarter, but it was closer to flat this quarter just given the comp from last year, but pretty robust growth across the business.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2

No, that's right, Pat. I was just going to reinforce that, but I would say that we were very happy with the performance of the other businesses. We don't give out the numbers for every one of the verticals, but the 15% was again all non insurance, which would include home services.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then you talked about going after more insurance agent driven business. I was just wondering if you could talk about the margin profile of that side of the market versus kind of the direct side?

Speaker 2

Sure. We would expect that it will be as good or better. I don't know that it will be dramatically better as we scale, because the media market gets pretty efficient at scale. But we do believe that what will help us margin wise is it can largely be incremental yield on existing media. And anytime you can because there are consumers that really do want to work with an agent for good reason.

Speaker 2

And we have not we've been very underrepresented we've underrepresented that part of the market. So consumers that come through our flows haven't had as much of an opportunity to engage with an agent in a productive way and so therefore wouldn't convert. So I think it will be additive to margin for a long time and eventually the margins will be similar, maybe a little bit better overall than the current market as we get to more maturity and scale, probably as years out. But initially, as you know, will I think it'll be a higher margin component because of the fact that again, much of it will be yield on existing media, which is theoretically almost pure margin.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 2

You bet.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Chris Sakai from Singularis Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Yes. Hi. You talked about you're potentially entering business insurance. Can you talk about the margins there?

Speaker 2

Sure, Chris. It's early. And so we don't know exactly where those commercial and business insurance margins settle out. We're still early in the process of we have all the we have now a critical mass of the clients that cover the most important segments as clients, and we are now building our media. And so it's too early to save.

Speaker 2

So I would project that the margins will probably be somewhere near our averages in the 30 ish, 25% to 30 ish percent range as we get to any reasonable scale. They're not there yet because we're still early and we're still building that media profile. The good news is, there those much of the not like I said about agent driven demand, there are a lot of customers in our current flows who match that business or commercial insurance. And so therefore, they haven't been converting for us because we didn't have it in our offers. And we'll be able to convert them now because we have the demand and we've hooked up the pipes, if you will, to the folks that can serve them.

Speaker 2

So there'll be a lot of that early on. Like I said, there would be in for agents. And then over time, as we scale it, probably something close to our average is what I would expect until we get to really big scale, at which point we might be more where auto insurance is. Because when you get to really big scale, you can still market at that market, and again that's years out. But then that market gets a little more mature.

Speaker 2

The media margins come down some, but the contribution margins stay healthy because you get so much efficiency out of the other operating lines. It's kind of that the way to think about the evolution of margin in these verticals.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thanks for that. And one other question I had was, we've seen pretty volatile swings with insurance. I mean, just a year ago to now, it's been a pretty volatile swing and we're on the upside now. Can you help me understand, is this something regular or normal with insurance?

Speaker 8

Or are we seeing some change? Or is there going to be potentially a downswing again?

Speaker 2

It's a great question, obviously. I think and industry experts and carriers have said, what happened in the prior downswing was unprecedented. There's never been a period of such a hard market in insurance. And it was driven by what we've talked about, right? Coming out of COVID, you had supply constraints, which drove up costs.

Speaker 2

You had inflation, which drove up costs. You had higher incident rates amongst consumers as they got back to driving, not just because they were driving more, but because they were distracted more because they were using their cell phones even more. And so that cell phone usage had continued to grow, but they hadn't been driving so much during COVID. As you came out of COVID, they started driving and they were using cell phones. Oh, they had more accidents.

Speaker 2

And so you had a very unique combination driven by a very unique pandemic, which we haven't seen the likes of which ever, I guess, unless you go back to the flu epidemic early in the last century. So I have everything that we know about insurance and that what we've been told by our clients and industry experts says that the downswing, which was dramatic, was very unique and highly unlikely. There will be there have been and there will be times when there's less dramatic ups and downs in insurance driven by things like weather and the severity of weather in any particular year. We've seen those over the past twenty years that we've been in, we and the predecessor company required who've been in insurance. But those are very manageable.

Speaker 2

Obviously, we made the last one manageable. We never went cash from there operating profit negative or EBITDA negative. But and we said while we were going through, we said we're going to continue to invest through this cycle because we know it's coming back and when it comes back, we want to be ready to take full advantage of it and we did that. So it was not a great time to go through, but at least we knew it was temporary and we're now benefiting from doing the right thing during the downturn to be ready for the other side. And I think, sorry, long way of saying, it's not going to be as volatile as it has been last couple of years.

Speaker 2

It's going to probably come back to a pretty normal up into the right curve that has some variability in it, but very manageable variability over time. And it's likely going to be that way for at least the rest of my career and probably decades if you look at the long term curve back behind the COVID issue. Okay, great. Thanks for that Doug. You bet.

Speaker 2

Thanks Chris.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Eric Martinuvi from Lake Street. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Yes Doug with

Speaker 5

the arrival of the new administration, tariffs are definitely on

Speaker 9

the table. And I was just curious to the auto carrier rates are obviously tied to the price of the replacement parts and many of those parts are imported to The U. S. We've kicked the can thirty days on Mexico and Canada, but we haven't on China. Have you had any conversations with auto carriers regarding the potential kind of return of inflation due to tariffs?

Speaker 2

Yes, we've heard nothing from clients on that. It's a good question. Obviously, we have not heard that being a concern or an issue from clients when speaking with us. Your guess and anybody's guess is as good as anybody else's in terms of when, whether, how we get we actually get tariffs. But we have not heard that as something that people are planning around or worried about, at least in their conversations with us and as they talk to us about what they're looking to do with us over the next quarters.

Speaker 2

So no, not something we've heard.

Speaker 9

Okay. If we go to a pessimistic scenario where tariffs are do go into effect, would there be is the assumption that there would be requests by carrier carriers would be going back to The states for a rerating process?

Speaker 2

Yes, probably. Although they're in very good shape right now, as you probably know, the loss ratios are coming in, and profit, which is a key profitability measure for these carriers coming in very strong. And so they have good pricing now, but they've also opened up the channels of communication opportunity to get pricing when they need it from the states. Even California is beginning to make it easier for carriers to actually raise their rates based on their costs, because the states have learned that it's just economics. If you want your citizens to be able to get insurance, insurance carriers have to be able to rate economically.

Speaker 2

And so I think if there's one of the good things that maybe came out of the past few years is a lot of lessons learned on the parts of everyone, but hopefully including anybody that makes rate decisions or regulates rate decisions because it's as long as the carriers are doing it based on real economics and obviously inflation of any kind would be real economics, then you kind of have to let them do it or they'll not be able to serve your citizens. So I think that that is to direct answer your question, yes, I think they would again, I'm not an expert in this. You could ask the industry, but my guess is yes, they'd be able to go back and get rate.

Speaker 9

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 2

You bet. Thank you, Eric.

Operator

Thank you.

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