NASDAQ:EVER EverQuote Q2 2025 Earnings Report $23.76 -2.00 (-7.76%) Closing price 08/5/2025 04:00 PM EasternExtended Trading$23.65 -0.11 (-0.46%) As of 05:17 AM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast EverQuote EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.39Consensus EPS $0.35Beat/MissBeat by +$0.04One Year Ago EPS$0.17EverQuote Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$156.63 millionExpected Revenue$157.19 millionBeat/MissMissed by -$556.00 thousandYoY Revenue Growth+33.70%EverQuote Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2025Date8/4/2025TimeAfter Market ClosesConference Call DateMonday, August 4, 2025Conference Call Time4:30PM ETConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by EverQuote Q2 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 4, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Positive Sentiment: Q2 revenue grew 34% year over year to $156.6 million, with record 14% adjusted EBITDA margin and net income of $14.7 million. Positive Sentiment: Carrier demand remained stable, with one large carrier resuming record spend, others poised to reactivate, and the company expects a full carrier panel by year-end. Positive Sentiment: AI investments—such as ML-driven Smart Campaigns that improved spend efficiency by ~20% and AI copilots in engineering—are driving record operating efficiency. Positive Sentiment: EverQuote launched a $50 million share repurchase program, ended Q2 with $148.2 million in cash, zero debt, and secured a new $60 million credit facility. Positive Sentiment: Q3 guidance calls for 15% revenue growth (to $163–169 million), 22% adjusted EBITDA growth, and reiterates long-term targets of 20% revenue growth and 20% EBITDA margins. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallEverQuote Q2 202500:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xThere are 13 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EverQuote Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Operator00:00:25I would now like to turn the conference over to Brinley Johnson with The Blueshirt Group. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:32Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to EverQuote's second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. We'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued today after the market close. With me on the call this afternoon are Jamie Mendel, EverQuote's Chief Executive Officer and Joseph Sanborn, EverQuote's Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will make statements related to our business that may be considered forward looking statements under federal securities laws, including statements concerning our financial guidance for the 2025. Speaker 100:01:03Forward looking statements may be identified with words and phrases such as expect, believe, intend, anticipate, plan, may, upcoming and similar words and phrases. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be considered our views as of any subsequent date. We specifically disclaim any obligation to update or revise these forward looking statements except as required by law. Forward looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For a discussion of those risks and uncertainties, please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10 ks and our quarterly reports on Form 10 Q on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Speaker 100:01:51Finally, during the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures, which we believe are helpful to investors. A reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP measures was included in the press release we issued after the close of market today, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jamie. Speaker 200:02:10Thank you, Brinley, and thank you all for joining us today. We achieved strong results in Q2, growing 34% year over year and delivering record adjusted EBITDA margin and net income. Against the backdrop of healthy carrier profitability, our team remains focused on helping carriers and agents accelerate growth. We continue to make progress toward our vision of becoming the number one growth partner to P and C insurance providers by efficiently delivering better performing referrals, bigger traffic scale and a broader suite of products and services. In Q2, carrier demand remained stable, reflecting a carrier landscape that is broadly healthy, coupled with consumer shopping levels that remain strong. Speaker 200:02:51One large carrier grew spend to record levels, marking their full recovery, while another tightened budgets seeking the optimal balance of growth and efficiency. And a few remained laggards sharing plans to reactivate in the second half of the year. With the exception of certain challenged geographies like California, we anticipate being back to what we would characterize as a full carrier panel by historical standards by the end of this year. As carriers work to grow policies in force, we remain focused on differentiating our marketplace through superior performance that is underpinned by our data advantage. Our data scale enables us to deploy AI throughout our traffic and distribution bidding and routing systems. Speaker 200:03:35For example, as another major carrier adopted our ML driven Smart Campaigns product, it drove immediate improvement in their spend efficiency by about 20%. Over time, greater adoption of Smart Campaigns propels our flywheel as higher ad spend efficiency in our marketplace compels carriers to shift more budget to EverQuote relative to alternative advertising platforms. And as we get more budget and outcome data, we feed this data to our AI driven systems to enable further improvements to customer performance. Agent and captive carrier demand also remained strong in Q2 with continued growth from our local agent base. We are making progress in our transition from a leads vendor to a strategic growth partner for local agents by driving multiproduct adoption. Speaker 200:04:24We continue to build on our foundation in leads by adding additional value add products and services, broadening the ways we help agents grow, which in turn enables us to consolidate agent marketing budgets and positions us as the indispensable growth partner for these same agents. Over the last six months, our paid products per agent have increased by more than 15%, with over a third of our agent base now using multiple products. Our consumer acquisition teams executed well in q two, driving 25% year over year VMD growth despite elevated competitive pressure in the broader advertising landscape as carriers step up their direct advertising efforts as well. As monetization improves and in order to keep pace with carrier appetite for growth, we are making investments in scaling incremental customer acquisition channels, including on several social and video platforms. As we continue to grow, we remain laser focused on increasing operating efficiency and productivity, evidenced by our record adjusted EBITDA margin and net income. Speaker 200:05:27On top of the expense management discipline honed over the last couple of years, we are increasingly layering on AI driven efficiency applications. For example, in our engineering organization, copilots have gained rapid adoption. We also have teams experimenting with rethinking how we can develop software more holistically using an AI first approach to inference production ready code faster and more efficiently than can be done by humans, inclusive of our ability to integrate, release, test, and maintain production quality code consistent with our performance requirements. In our call center operations, we have introduced AI voice agents with the goal of reducing reliance on human call centers over time. Lastly, we are testing AI agents to help automate operational tasks. Speaker 200:06:16We have stood up our first dedicated AI team, which will serve as our nucleus for building and supporting AI use cases across the business. In May, I shared our goal of exceeding $1,000,000,000 of annual revenue in the near future. Having just finished our most recent annual growth planning cycle, the road map to accomplish this is increasingly clear, and we are making the requisite investments to do so. We are confident that as we continue to execute our strategy, we will emerge as P and C insurance provider's leading growth partner. I'll now turn the call over to Joseph to discuss our financial results. Speaker 300:06:52Thank you, Jamie, and thank you all for joining. I will start by discussing our financial results for the 2025 before providing an update on our capital allocation strategy and our guidance for the third quarter of this year. We delivered a strong second quarter as we further enhanced our operating performance and focused on driving expanding levels of profitability. Total revenues in the second quarter grew 34% year over year to $156,600,000 Revenue growth was primarily driven by stronger enterprise carrier spend, which was up over 61% from the comparable period last year. Revenue from our auto insurance vertical increased to $139,600,000 in Q2, up 36% year over year. Speaker 300:07:40Revenue from our home and renters insurance vertical increased to $17,000,000 in Q2, up 23% both year over year and sequentially. Variable marketing dollars or VMD increased to $45,500,000 in the second quarter, up 25% from the prior year period. Variable marketing margin or VMM, which is VMD as a percentage of revenue, was 29.1% for the quarter, up from 28% in Q1. Turning to operating expenses in the bottom line. As we scale and drive top line growth, we continue to expand operating leverage in our business through disciplined expense management and by utilizing AI and other technology investments to deliver incremental efficiency. Speaker 300:08:26In the second quarter, we grew net income to a record $14,700,000 up from $6,400,000 in the prior year period. Q2 adjusted EBITDA increased to $22,000,000 compared to $12,900,000 in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to a record 14%. We reported record operating cash flow of $25,300,000 for the second quarter, ending the period with no debt and cash and cash equivalents of $148,200,000 up from $125,000,000 at the end of Q1. Cash operating expenses, excludes advertising spend and certain non cash and other one time charges were $23,600,000 in Q2. Speaker 300:09:09Operating expenses were sequentially down in the quarter and lower than expected, reflecting some hiring and short term projects being deferred to the second half of the year. Also announced today, I wanted to highlight our inaugural share repurchase program. The Board has authorized the company to purchase up to $50,000,000 in shares of common stock over the next twelve months, evidence of the continued confidence we have in our business. We will be opportunistic in repurchasing stock and believe this program is a prudent use of capital, reflects our conviction in EverQuote's business, market opportunity and cash flow. Going forward, we expect our strong cash flow generation to position us to retain a fortress balance sheet while continuing to invest in growth initiatives including AI. Speaker 300:09:55In addition, on August 1, we entered into a new three year $60,000,000 committed credit facility. While our previous $25,000,000 line of credit was never drawn upon, and we have no immediate plans to utilize the new facility, the arrangement provides us with additional financial flexibility. Looking to the back half of 2025, as mentioned last quarter, we plan to increase investment in our AI capabilities, technology, and data assets to drive continued operational efficiency and strengthen EverQuote's long term competitive mode. We are already seeing evidence of the benefits of our strategic investments, and we'll be disciplined in balancing incremental operating expenses to generate adjusted EBITDA margins at or near current levels. Now turning to guidance for the 2025. Speaker 300:10:44We expect revenue to be between 163,000,000 and $169,000,000 representing 15% year over year growth at the midpoint. We expect VMD to be between 47,000,000 and 50,000,000 representing 10% year over year growth at the midpoint. And we expect adjusted EBITDA to be between 22,000,000 and $24,000,000 representing 22% year over year growth at the midpoint. In summary, our performance to date this year reflects our steadfast commitment to strong execution and a clear strategy. We remain focused on delivering on our long term target of approximately 20% annual revenue growth with 20% EBITDA margins. Speaker 300:11:23We believe that the strength of our operating model and future growth initiatives will position EverQuote to deliver continued growth, profitability, and free cash flow generation. Jamie and I will now take your questions. Operator00:11:50Our first question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:11:57Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. First, just given the uncertainty around tariffs and the potential impact on carrier profitability in the back half of the year, could you maybe give us a sense of how committed your budgets are in the second half of this year based on your conversations with carriers? I guess just trying to get a sense of your level of visibility into the second half of the year. Speaker 200:12:21Thanks, Maria. Well, we don't have a committed spend model. I think all signs point to a very healthy carrier landscape right now. Carrier demand has been stable and and building so far this year. And if you look at some of the latest prints from the carriers, you know, the big carriers are are showing eighties combined ratio, so extremely healthy. Speaker 200:12:44And then, you know, in every interaction that we have with carriers that I personally have with carriers over the last few months, the dialogue has been entirely around growth and us finding more ways to help them grow. So we don't anticipate encountering any budget constraints or pullback over the back part of the year. We do know that the carriers have been watching the tariffs, but they're starting from a position of significant strength. And so we think they'll be able to absorb whatever impact ends up flowing through the system. Speaker 400:13:18Got it. That's very helpful. And then can you maybe help us understand a little bit better how to think about sort of the ongoing shift sort of in the AI powered search impacting or sort of how it could impact your traffic acquisition strategy down the line? Speaker 200:13:35Sure. Yeah. I I think it's it's fairly evident that that search and and shopping for everything will evolve over time. We believe there are reasons to believe it could move a bit more slowly in insurance. There's it's an industry that is more opaque, so rates aren't readily available on the open Internet. Speaker 200:13:57It's a regulated industry. It's a relatively high value, high stakes purchase for the consumer. But over time, clearly, more search volume and shopping will move over to these AI platforms. And we think we're really well positioned to engage with that LLM based traffic. Right now, we've started building LLM based conversational workflows in our call center operations, and you can sort of think about those as effectively taking the top of the shopping funnel using agentik.ai. Speaker 200:14:29And over time, we'll be working our way down the funnel to facilitate more of that buying experience. So I think how and when these platforms open up to advertisers is still a bit of an open question and how much of that is paid versus organic. But I'd say given our monetization and our AI capabilities that are sort of fast developing, we're going to be really well positioned to acquire this traffic. Speaker 400:14:54Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you. Speaker 300:14:57Thanks, Maria. Operator00:14:59Your next question comes from the line of Cory Carpenter with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:15:05Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. Maybe to another one on tariffs, maybe just ask more directly. Do you think that impacted carrier budgets in 2Q? And are you incorporating any potential impact from that in 3Q? Speaker 500:15:19And then maybe just Speaker 600:15:20at at a higher level, the 2Q results and Speaker 500:15:23the 3Q guide imply, you know, pretty typical seasonality that we would expect in the auto business. You know, could you just kinda help us reconcile that with with the fact that it sounds like you're still bullish on the potential for a step at some point as the recovery broadens to more carriers in the last remaining states open? Thank you. Speaker 300:15:41Sure. Thanks, Corey. I'll start on answering and Speaker 700:15:44then Jamie can add on. When you Speaker 300:15:46look at Q2, I'd say your question was what was the impact of tariffs on Q2? Our sense just to remind folks, tariffs were announced on April 1. And so I think for carriers like most of the business community, I think the early part of Q2 was bit of uncertainty saying, let's figure out what's going to what tariffs will mean to us. For the point of view of the carriers, the carriers were worried about whether that would increase claims costs, right? So that was the question they monitored. Speaker 300:16:12Our sense as we look through the quarter was, I think carriers had very healthy combined ratios in underwriting margins throughout the period. And one of the things that we would observe as we thought through how the quarter would unfold, I think we might have thought that carriers leaning in a bit sooner given their underwriting margins than they did. I think that reflects a little bit of hesitancy on how tariffs were impacting in Q2. That being said, as we progressed through the quarter and got to the latter part of the quarter, you actually saw the carriers step up as you got into in June. And I think and that has continued into July. Speaker 300:16:47And I think that part reflects getting greater clarity on what's going on in the tariff environment. And that's obviously been reflected in the guide we gave for Q3. And then as recovery broadens to more states, I think right now we generally have broad based recovery in a lot of states. There is still an outlier in California to some extent as well as a handful of other states. As Jamie mentioned in his prepared comments, we see by the end of the year having sort of a full carrier panel back in line within the marketplace. Speaker 300:17:17And we think you'll start to see some of these laggard states come on in a more meaningful way in 2026. Exact timing, can't give you specifics. But again, you're starting to see some of these states start to come on, just it's happening quite gradually. In California, for example, you've seen the carriers existing carriers get rates so they'll stay in the state. It hasn't translated into dramatic increases in trying to grow and bring in new consumers, but you're starting to see some signs. Speaker 300:17:44And so we'll see how it plays out through the rest of this year into next. Operator00:17:54Your next question comes from the line of Zach Cummins with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead. Speaker 800:18:01Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just digging a little bit deeper into some of your carrier commentary here in Q2. It sounded like you had one major carrier that really ramped up spend while another was more so in a defensive mode here in Q2. Speaker 800:18:17So any additional context you can give around that and kind of where you're at with the rest of the carrier base in terms of ramping up budgets here in the coming quarters? Speaker 900:18:28Yes. So I would say that most of Speaker 200:18:32the carriers are back in growth mode and feel largely sort of stable in their budget levels. There was one carrier that was kind of fluctuating a bit over the first half of the year, and that was reflected in the commentary. But even they are now sort of fluctuating back up from where they were in Q2. But on balance, would say the carriers feel oriented towards growth and the demand feels stable. There were a couple of carriers that have really not yet reactivated in our marketplace, But we've gotten signal from them that they do intend to reactivate in the second part of this year. Speaker 200:19:13And so we expect to exit the year with, as Joseph said, what we would characterize as a full panel of carriers relative to historical participation in the marketplace. Speaker 800:19:27Understood. That's helpful on that side. And just given where the balance sheet is right now, nice to see the share repurchase authorization. Just curious on the flip side of that, if there's any interesting M and A that you're considering at this juncture? And any sort of update that to how you're thinking about potentially deploying that capital? Speaker 300:19:47So thanks for the question. I guess just to give some context on the buyback. So we're pleased to do our first buyback to $50,000,000 up to $50,000,000 over the next twelve months been authorized by the Board. I And think it really reflects the confidence we have in our business and really just the cash flow generation of the business. At the same time, obviously, we'll continue to look selectively at M and A. Speaker 300:20:09We will M and A is certainly something we will think about, particularly as it accelerates what we're trying to do in our core markets of P and accelerates our long term position to be the leader in that space. And so we'll continue to look at that and we'll update you as we have more to share. But something we'll certainly part of the things we're looking at is over the next several months. Speaker 800:20:31Understood. Well, thanks for taking my questions and best of luck with the rest of the quarter. Speaker 1000:20:37Thanks, Your Operator00:20:39next question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer with Craig Hallum. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:20:45Great. Thank you, guys. So you talked about kind of a whole panel of carriers, a full panel of states. I'm just curious from a competition standpoint, if you've seen any greater competition for leads, if you think that's creating any more volatility or any more pressure on VMM either in Q2 or as the year progresses? Speaker 200:21:06Yes. Thanks, Jason. So we have seen over the course of this year some of the competitive pressure to return to the advertising landscape as carriers obviously, we benefit from their increased budgets in our marketplace, but they're also stepping into the more open advertising market as well. And so we have seen some competitive pressure in that regard. And that being said, I think we've continued to execute really well in a more competitive traffic environment. Speaker 200:21:40We're continuing to kind of build out our AI bidding solutions. We drove 25% VMD growth year on year. And we actually were able to achieve a step up in our VMM margin from what it was I think around 28% last quarter or 29% this quarter. So yes, more competitive pressure. But I think we're managing through it well and we're focused on maintaining margin and kind of finding the growth through incremental channels as I mentioned earlier. Speaker 700:22:13Great. Thanks, Jamie. So last year, you saw a nice budget flush as we approach year end. With the combined ratios of the carriers tracking so much below their targets right now, I'm just curious what your sense is for a similar budget flush as 2025 progresses. Speaker 200:22:32I'm as curious about this as you are. I would say intuition would suggest that the carriers will have quite a bit of room going into the back part of the year in terms of their combined ratios particularly for those that manage to kind of a calendar year outcome. So we've received no indication from any carriers that there's some end of year budget flush coming. But in the past when we've entered the end of the year and we've seen both pressure for growth and margin in profitability, we have seen some carriers deploy excess budget into the market at the end of Speaker 300:23:08the year. Maybe I'd add to that. That tends to be a phenomenon you see more with public companies than you do with some of the mutual companies. Just have a different sort of mentality about managing annual budgets. So just something to be cognizant of and as in terms of what we've seen in the past. Speaker 700:23:24All fingers crossed we Thank see something like that Speaker 600:23:27you, guys. Speaker 200:23:28Thank you. Operator00:23:31Next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair. Please go ahead. Speaker 1100:23:37Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just on the some of the pressures you're seeing in the search engine marketing channels from the carriers coming back online, would you sort of categorize this as sort of typical, I guess, pressures you've seen before and would have to build workarounds for? Or is there something different or more pronounced, from what you see today? And maybe just a follow-up question there is, maybe if you could provide some perspective in what you're seeing in some of the incremental channels that you've been testing, that would Speaker 600:24:09also be helpful. Thank you. Speaker 900:24:13Yes. So thanks, Ralph. I Operator00:24:17would Speaker 200:24:17say there's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the competitive pressure we're seeing. It's most acute as you'd expect in some of the industry specific channels like search. We're seeing more stability in more generalized channels like social and video. So these are that's where some of our dollars are being directed in order to to kind of offset some of the competitive pressure in search. So nothing really out of the ordinary. Speaker 200:24:46What was this? Remind me the second part of the question? Speaker 1000:24:50Yeah. Just any sort of update you Speaker 1100:24:52can provide or metrics around, social or the video channels, and just any progress that you're making there. Speaker 200:25:00Yeah. Got it. So these were channels that we were fairly active in before the downturn. And then as the auto monetization kind of fell out, we pulled back a bit in these channels. So there's a part of this that's just kind of reactivating the engine and rescaling the engine. Speaker 200:25:20And we're seeing some traction, right? So these are some of these channels are beginning to scale. And then there's some incremental platforms which we've not been as active in, in the past, which now with monetization where it is, we believe we should be able to compete as well. Operator00:25:40Your next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon with Needham. Speaker 1000:25:47Jamie and Joseph, even though you didn't provide specific guidance for the fourth quarter, could you just remind us of the seasonality just so that we get our models straight, don't get over our skis? Any thoughts around how we should think about the top line VMD and just the leverage in the model on the EBITDA front? Speaker 300:26:06Sure. So thanks for the question. In terms of seasonality, Q3 to Q4 tends to be down sort of single digit low single digit percent like 3%, 4% yes, 3% to 5% I would say is the zone. And then in terms of VMD, I'd say no change in what we've said previously, which is sort of looking at the high 20s is what we're targeting as we run the business. And then lastly on EBITDA, as I said in my prepared remarks sort of at or near current levels. Speaker 300:26:36Q1 was 13.5%, Q2 was 14% adjusted EBITDA margins. Q3 guide implies us basically in that same ballpark as well. The midpoint is just shy of 14%. So I think we're sort of planning to sort of maintain those levels is our goal. And that means that we'll modulate expenses we've been doing. Speaker 300:26:56What you're seeing implied in Q3 is a step up in expenses, and some of that will continue obviously into Q4. And again, very much in line with what we said at the start of the year. We expected the back half of the year to add incremental investments and especially around our technology areas and AI and other areas. Speaker 1000:27:14Great. That's helpful. And then going from a short term question to a long term question. Jamie, you talked about the billion dollar road map to get there. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more on how you think about the growth coming organically? Speaker 1000:27:29Are you including M and A opportunities to get to that type of revenue growth target? And then also just I would add that is this contingent on adding, you know, larger carriers that aren't clients today? Or do you feel like you have enough headroom to grow within the account base to really get to that type of level? Speaker 200:27:49Yeah. So hopefully, it's not a long term question. Hope to get there relatively soon. And we think we can do so organically and with our existing customer base. So the plan that we've got really relies on the distribution side. Speaker 200:28:09It's about continuing to improve performance for carriers and agents through AI products like Smart Campaigns. You know, we've got a reliable pattern established now where when we deploy these products, they improve performance, we get more budget, we get more pricing. And so that's a that's a part of it. With agents, we're expanding products to get more share of their wallet. And then on the traffic side of the marketplace, we think we can sort of size the opportunity in under and unpenetrated channels that we're beginning to sort of expand into and scale up. Speaker 200:28:45And then outside of auto, I think the homeowners vertical and other non auto verticals could sort of round it out. So our plan to get to $1,000,000,000 of revenue does not rely on M and A. But as Joseph mentioned and feel free to layer on, Joseph, that's a potential accelerant. And maybe what I'd add, Mike, Speaker 300:29:05is just remind folks of our long term model. We've said for some time we're going to average 20% top line growth, and we're going to get to adjusted EBITDA margins of 20% in the long term. If you look at what we've done in EBITDA margins, last year was 11.6% for the year. If you look at where we're the messaging we've given today and where we've done through the first half of the year, we'll add at least a couple of 100 basis points to that for this year. And so as you think about the path to getting to 20%, but we had 200 basis points a year. Speaker 300:29:31We're not saying we're going do that every year, but I'd expect this to be adding 100 basis points on average would be probably expected and we'll see in some years it may be more. So I think that is the recipe we see. We see a real growth opportunity but also continuing to drive profitability at the same time as we do that top line growth. Operator00:29:55Your next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Speaker 1200:30:02Hey, great. Thanks for taking the question. Just looking at the guidance and then the VMM margins, you know, would you expect as the market sort of normalizes and we return to a steady state growth that you would expect your VMM margins to go back into the low 30s? Or how should we just think about the level of VMM margin predictability or VM dollars predictability over the next, call it, eighteen to twenty four months? Operator00:30:38I think the way we Speaker 300:30:40think about BMO is what we've been talking about since the start of the year. We see this sort of in the high 20s. Sometimes it may go into low 30s. But given the I think on average, it's going to be in the high 20s. That's sort of our view on how things will shake out. Speaker 300:30:52And I think it's important to note, Jed, as we've talked about in the past is we don't run the business on a day to day basis. The traffic teams do not sort of try to solve for VMM. They really are driving VMD. Now of course, we look at it regularly throughout each month. And of course, there's a correlation between the maximum VMD point and also the VMM margin nicely overlap with where we're at sort of high 20s level right now. Speaker 300:31:17So we feel good about that. It's the right way to manage the business. Speaker 1200:31:21Got it. And then just the cash balance, great job. Looks like ex the buyback could be approaching $200,000,000 end of the year. Do you ever think about acquisitions in terms of helping you get some leverage over some larger carriers and reduce competitive spending on what you have to pay for traffic? Can you just talk about M and A and how you kind of think about using your cash balance to fund additional growth? Speaker 300:31:53Yes. I guess when we think about M and A, it's focused on the current strategy. So we believe we want to be the leading growth partner to P and C carriers and agents. So it's not about getting leverage over carriers and agents, but how we help them be successful. How can we help them be more successful? Speaker 300:32:07How can we get more share of their wallet to help them grow their business? And that's how we think about the opportunity. And I think M and A could there are some M and A opportunities that could fit within that strategy. But again, I think our desire and our belief is that we win by our customers winning. And if we take the results they give us and we manage that business well, we'll give great results for shareholders and that in turn helps our flywheel keep going to building shareholder value. Speaker 1000:32:32Thank you. Thanks, Ed. Operator00:32:37Your next question comes from the line of Mitchell Rubin with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Speaker 600:32:43Hey, thank you guys for taking my call. This is Mitch on behalf of Greg Peters. So on slide 12, you guys have a table where you're breaking out the auto versus, home revenue quarterly. It looks like it's sequentially increased each quarter since, 01/2024, and it came down a bit in the '25 relative to the first quarter. So I was wondering if Speaker 500:33:07you could provide some color on this dynamic. I Speaker 300:33:11think what I'd say in the home business, the way to think about home, I think this page is obviously a visual we give, page 12 of the investor deck to help people see the breakouts of auto versus home revenues. I think looking at them, the relative proportion in a given quarter, I'm not sure quite looking at that way. It's generally been around 10% give or take. I'd say with the home vertical specifically maybe I could give you some context around that. That's a vertical that had nice performance in Q2. Speaker 300:33:38We had 23% growth year on year also sequentially as well. So a really nice quarter. I think that reflected the broader landscape of home having strong underwriting pickup improvements relative to Q1. As you may recall in Q1 we had an environment where the home environment broadly for carriers had some pressure with cat losses. As you look into Q2, think it's become much more stable underwriting environment. Speaker 300:34:02So we feel good about home. We'll then continue to be an opportunity for us to grow for us over time. So I think that's probably the color I'd give you, probably the most important. And in the visuals, I think on the page, look at the relative proportion. I think it just really reflects the how fast auto has grown during this period of growth, given that it was coming out of a relative trough in 2023 with the downturn. Speaker 600:34:25Thank you for the color on that. My next question is on the inaugural share repurchase program. How are you guys thinking about the quarterly cadence with that going forward? Is there going to be any seasonality or relatively consistent from quarter to quarter? Speaker 300:34:42The way we're thinking about it now, it's going to be opportunistic sort of based on market conditions. We don't have a prearranged plan to do certain things within any given quarter. But again, it's one where we view it as very much why do we do this? We feel it's a good way to reflect the confidence we have in our business and the strong cash flow generation. I think it's also a way to give bad value back to our shareholders in a way that we've talked about in the past, one of the things we consider. Speaker 300:35:08And so we're pleased to be able to do it, but it's to be opportunistic in how we execute it for our first program. Speaker 600:35:16Thank you for the answers. Speaker 200:35:19Thank you. Thank you. Operator00:35:22And it seems that we have no further questions for today. That concludes the yesterday's answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks. Speaker 200:35:32Thank you all for joining. Look, we continue to make great progress. This quarter was punctuated by a number of records, particularly as it relates to our operating efficiency as we introduce more ML and AI more broadly across the business. We got record levels of net income, operating cash flow, cash balance, adjusted EBITDA margin, and we're really energized right now. We're energized to continue growing efficiently towards that $1,000,000,000 revenue goal as we build EverQuote into the unambiguous leading growth partner for P and C insurance providers. Speaker 200:36:05Thanks all. Operator00:36:08This concludes today's conference. We would like to thank everyone for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a pleasant day.Read morePowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) EverQuote Earnings HeadlinesEverQuote signals $1B revenue roadmap and launches $50M share repurchase amid record Q2 profitability4 hours ago | msn.comEverQuote’s (NASDAQ:EVER) Q2 Earnings Results: Revenue In Line With Expectations But Stock Drops 10.8%4 hours ago | finance.yahoo.comTrump set to Boost Social Security Checks by 400%?If you're collecting or planning to collect social security... You should see this presentation about President Trump's Executive Order #14196. Legendary investor Louis Navellier believes it could soon not only save Social Security from collapse... But BOOST benefits for millions of retirees by up to 400%. No wonder the financial times called this new initiative... | InvestorPlace (Ad)Why EverQuote (EVER) Stock Is Nosediving4 hours ago | finance.yahoo.comEverQuote to Present at Upcoming Investor ConferencesAugust 5 at 4:10 PM | globenewswire.comEverQuote: New Buybacks Signal A Very Healthy BusinessAugust 5 at 12:12 PM | seekingalpha.comSee More EverQuote Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like EverQuote? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on EverQuote and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About EverQuoteEverQuote (NASDAQ:EVER) operates an online marketplace for insurance shopping in the United States. The company offers auto, home and renters, and life insurance. The company serves carriers and agents, as well as indirect distributors. The company was formerly known as AdHarmonics, Inc., and changed its name to EverQuote, Inc. in November 2014. 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There are 13 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EverQuote Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Operator00:00:25I would now like to turn the conference over to Brinley Johnson with The Blueshirt Group. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:32Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to EverQuote's second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. We'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued today after the market close. With me on the call this afternoon are Jamie Mendel, EverQuote's Chief Executive Officer and Joseph Sanborn, EverQuote's Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will make statements related to our business that may be considered forward looking statements under federal securities laws, including statements concerning our financial guidance for the 2025. Speaker 100:01:03Forward looking statements may be identified with words and phrases such as expect, believe, intend, anticipate, plan, may, upcoming and similar words and phrases. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be considered our views as of any subsequent date. We specifically disclaim any obligation to update or revise these forward looking statements except as required by law. Forward looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For a discussion of those risks and uncertainties, please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10 ks and our quarterly reports on Form 10 Q on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Speaker 100:01:51Finally, during the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures, which we believe are helpful to investors. A reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP measures was included in the press release we issued after the close of market today, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jamie. Speaker 200:02:10Thank you, Brinley, and thank you all for joining us today. We achieved strong results in Q2, growing 34% year over year and delivering record adjusted EBITDA margin and net income. Against the backdrop of healthy carrier profitability, our team remains focused on helping carriers and agents accelerate growth. We continue to make progress toward our vision of becoming the number one growth partner to P and C insurance providers by efficiently delivering better performing referrals, bigger traffic scale and a broader suite of products and services. In Q2, carrier demand remained stable, reflecting a carrier landscape that is broadly healthy, coupled with consumer shopping levels that remain strong. Speaker 200:02:51One large carrier grew spend to record levels, marking their full recovery, while another tightened budgets seeking the optimal balance of growth and efficiency. And a few remained laggards sharing plans to reactivate in the second half of the year. With the exception of certain challenged geographies like California, we anticipate being back to what we would characterize as a full carrier panel by historical standards by the end of this year. As carriers work to grow policies in force, we remain focused on differentiating our marketplace through superior performance that is underpinned by our data advantage. Our data scale enables us to deploy AI throughout our traffic and distribution bidding and routing systems. Speaker 200:03:35For example, as another major carrier adopted our ML driven Smart Campaigns product, it drove immediate improvement in their spend efficiency by about 20%. Over time, greater adoption of Smart Campaigns propels our flywheel as higher ad spend efficiency in our marketplace compels carriers to shift more budget to EverQuote relative to alternative advertising platforms. And as we get more budget and outcome data, we feed this data to our AI driven systems to enable further improvements to customer performance. Agent and captive carrier demand also remained strong in Q2 with continued growth from our local agent base. We are making progress in our transition from a leads vendor to a strategic growth partner for local agents by driving multiproduct adoption. Speaker 200:04:24We continue to build on our foundation in leads by adding additional value add products and services, broadening the ways we help agents grow, which in turn enables us to consolidate agent marketing budgets and positions us as the indispensable growth partner for these same agents. Over the last six months, our paid products per agent have increased by more than 15%, with over a third of our agent base now using multiple products. Our consumer acquisition teams executed well in q two, driving 25% year over year VMD growth despite elevated competitive pressure in the broader advertising landscape as carriers step up their direct advertising efforts as well. As monetization improves and in order to keep pace with carrier appetite for growth, we are making investments in scaling incremental customer acquisition channels, including on several social and video platforms. As we continue to grow, we remain laser focused on increasing operating efficiency and productivity, evidenced by our record adjusted EBITDA margin and net income. Speaker 200:05:27On top of the expense management discipline honed over the last couple of years, we are increasingly layering on AI driven efficiency applications. For example, in our engineering organization, copilots have gained rapid adoption. We also have teams experimenting with rethinking how we can develop software more holistically using an AI first approach to inference production ready code faster and more efficiently than can be done by humans, inclusive of our ability to integrate, release, test, and maintain production quality code consistent with our performance requirements. In our call center operations, we have introduced AI voice agents with the goal of reducing reliance on human call centers over time. Lastly, we are testing AI agents to help automate operational tasks. Speaker 200:06:16We have stood up our first dedicated AI team, which will serve as our nucleus for building and supporting AI use cases across the business. In May, I shared our goal of exceeding $1,000,000,000 of annual revenue in the near future. Having just finished our most recent annual growth planning cycle, the road map to accomplish this is increasingly clear, and we are making the requisite investments to do so. We are confident that as we continue to execute our strategy, we will emerge as P and C insurance provider's leading growth partner. I'll now turn the call over to Joseph to discuss our financial results. Speaker 300:06:52Thank you, Jamie, and thank you all for joining. I will start by discussing our financial results for the 2025 before providing an update on our capital allocation strategy and our guidance for the third quarter of this year. We delivered a strong second quarter as we further enhanced our operating performance and focused on driving expanding levels of profitability. Total revenues in the second quarter grew 34% year over year to $156,600,000 Revenue growth was primarily driven by stronger enterprise carrier spend, which was up over 61% from the comparable period last year. Revenue from our auto insurance vertical increased to $139,600,000 in Q2, up 36% year over year. Speaker 300:07:40Revenue from our home and renters insurance vertical increased to $17,000,000 in Q2, up 23% both year over year and sequentially. Variable marketing dollars or VMD increased to $45,500,000 in the second quarter, up 25% from the prior year period. Variable marketing margin or VMM, which is VMD as a percentage of revenue, was 29.1% for the quarter, up from 28% in Q1. Turning to operating expenses in the bottom line. As we scale and drive top line growth, we continue to expand operating leverage in our business through disciplined expense management and by utilizing AI and other technology investments to deliver incremental efficiency. Speaker 300:08:26In the second quarter, we grew net income to a record $14,700,000 up from $6,400,000 in the prior year period. Q2 adjusted EBITDA increased to $22,000,000 compared to $12,900,000 in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to a record 14%. We reported record operating cash flow of $25,300,000 for the second quarter, ending the period with no debt and cash and cash equivalents of $148,200,000 up from $125,000,000 at the end of Q1. Cash operating expenses, excludes advertising spend and certain non cash and other one time charges were $23,600,000 in Q2. Speaker 300:09:09Operating expenses were sequentially down in the quarter and lower than expected, reflecting some hiring and short term projects being deferred to the second half of the year. Also announced today, I wanted to highlight our inaugural share repurchase program. The Board has authorized the company to purchase up to $50,000,000 in shares of common stock over the next twelve months, evidence of the continued confidence we have in our business. We will be opportunistic in repurchasing stock and believe this program is a prudent use of capital, reflects our conviction in EverQuote's business, market opportunity and cash flow. Going forward, we expect our strong cash flow generation to position us to retain a fortress balance sheet while continuing to invest in growth initiatives including AI. Speaker 300:09:55In addition, on August 1, we entered into a new three year $60,000,000 committed credit facility. While our previous $25,000,000 line of credit was never drawn upon, and we have no immediate plans to utilize the new facility, the arrangement provides us with additional financial flexibility. Looking to the back half of 2025, as mentioned last quarter, we plan to increase investment in our AI capabilities, technology, and data assets to drive continued operational efficiency and strengthen EverQuote's long term competitive mode. We are already seeing evidence of the benefits of our strategic investments, and we'll be disciplined in balancing incremental operating expenses to generate adjusted EBITDA margins at or near current levels. Now turning to guidance for the 2025. Speaker 300:10:44We expect revenue to be between 163,000,000 and $169,000,000 representing 15% year over year growth at the midpoint. We expect VMD to be between 47,000,000 and 50,000,000 representing 10% year over year growth at the midpoint. And we expect adjusted EBITDA to be between 22,000,000 and $24,000,000 representing 22% year over year growth at the midpoint. In summary, our performance to date this year reflects our steadfast commitment to strong execution and a clear strategy. We remain focused on delivering on our long term target of approximately 20% annual revenue growth with 20% EBITDA margins. Speaker 300:11:23We believe that the strength of our operating model and future growth initiatives will position EverQuote to deliver continued growth, profitability, and free cash flow generation. Jamie and I will now take your questions. Operator00:11:50Our first question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:11:57Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. First, just given the uncertainty around tariffs and the potential impact on carrier profitability in the back half of the year, could you maybe give us a sense of how committed your budgets are in the second half of this year based on your conversations with carriers? I guess just trying to get a sense of your level of visibility into the second half of the year. Speaker 200:12:21Thanks, Maria. Well, we don't have a committed spend model. I think all signs point to a very healthy carrier landscape right now. Carrier demand has been stable and and building so far this year. And if you look at some of the latest prints from the carriers, you know, the big carriers are are showing eighties combined ratio, so extremely healthy. Speaker 200:12:44And then, you know, in every interaction that we have with carriers that I personally have with carriers over the last few months, the dialogue has been entirely around growth and us finding more ways to help them grow. So we don't anticipate encountering any budget constraints or pullback over the back part of the year. We do know that the carriers have been watching the tariffs, but they're starting from a position of significant strength. And so we think they'll be able to absorb whatever impact ends up flowing through the system. Speaker 400:13:18Got it. That's very helpful. And then can you maybe help us understand a little bit better how to think about sort of the ongoing shift sort of in the AI powered search impacting or sort of how it could impact your traffic acquisition strategy down the line? Speaker 200:13:35Sure. Yeah. I I think it's it's fairly evident that that search and and shopping for everything will evolve over time. We believe there are reasons to believe it could move a bit more slowly in insurance. There's it's an industry that is more opaque, so rates aren't readily available on the open Internet. Speaker 200:13:57It's a regulated industry. It's a relatively high value, high stakes purchase for the consumer. But over time, clearly, more search volume and shopping will move over to these AI platforms. And we think we're really well positioned to engage with that LLM based traffic. Right now, we've started building LLM based conversational workflows in our call center operations, and you can sort of think about those as effectively taking the top of the shopping funnel using agentik.ai. Speaker 200:14:29And over time, we'll be working our way down the funnel to facilitate more of that buying experience. So I think how and when these platforms open up to advertisers is still a bit of an open question and how much of that is paid versus organic. But I'd say given our monetization and our AI capabilities that are sort of fast developing, we're going to be really well positioned to acquire this traffic. Speaker 400:14:54Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you. Speaker 300:14:57Thanks, Maria. Operator00:14:59Your next question comes from the line of Cory Carpenter with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Speaker 500:15:05Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. Maybe to another one on tariffs, maybe just ask more directly. Do you think that impacted carrier budgets in 2Q? And are you incorporating any potential impact from that in 3Q? Speaker 500:15:19And then maybe just Speaker 600:15:20at at a higher level, the 2Q results and Speaker 500:15:23the 3Q guide imply, you know, pretty typical seasonality that we would expect in the auto business. You know, could you just kinda help us reconcile that with with the fact that it sounds like you're still bullish on the potential for a step at some point as the recovery broadens to more carriers in the last remaining states open? Thank you. Speaker 300:15:41Sure. Thanks, Corey. I'll start on answering and Speaker 700:15:44then Jamie can add on. When you Speaker 300:15:46look at Q2, I'd say your question was what was the impact of tariffs on Q2? Our sense just to remind folks, tariffs were announced on April 1. And so I think for carriers like most of the business community, I think the early part of Q2 was bit of uncertainty saying, let's figure out what's going to what tariffs will mean to us. For the point of view of the carriers, the carriers were worried about whether that would increase claims costs, right? So that was the question they monitored. Speaker 300:16:12Our sense as we look through the quarter was, I think carriers had very healthy combined ratios in underwriting margins throughout the period. And one of the things that we would observe as we thought through how the quarter would unfold, I think we might have thought that carriers leaning in a bit sooner given their underwriting margins than they did. I think that reflects a little bit of hesitancy on how tariffs were impacting in Q2. That being said, as we progressed through the quarter and got to the latter part of the quarter, you actually saw the carriers step up as you got into in June. And I think and that has continued into July. Speaker 300:16:47And I think that part reflects getting greater clarity on what's going on in the tariff environment. And that's obviously been reflected in the guide we gave for Q3. And then as recovery broadens to more states, I think right now we generally have broad based recovery in a lot of states. There is still an outlier in California to some extent as well as a handful of other states. As Jamie mentioned in his prepared comments, we see by the end of the year having sort of a full carrier panel back in line within the marketplace. Speaker 300:17:17And we think you'll start to see some of these laggard states come on in a more meaningful way in 2026. Exact timing, can't give you specifics. But again, you're starting to see some of these states start to come on, just it's happening quite gradually. In California, for example, you've seen the carriers existing carriers get rates so they'll stay in the state. It hasn't translated into dramatic increases in trying to grow and bring in new consumers, but you're starting to see some signs. Speaker 300:17:44And so we'll see how it plays out through the rest of this year into next. Operator00:17:54Your next question comes from the line of Zach Cummins with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead. Speaker 800:18:01Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just digging a little bit deeper into some of your carrier commentary here in Q2. It sounded like you had one major carrier that really ramped up spend while another was more so in a defensive mode here in Q2. Speaker 800:18:17So any additional context you can give around that and kind of where you're at with the rest of the carrier base in terms of ramping up budgets here in the coming quarters? Speaker 900:18:28Yes. So I would say that most of Speaker 200:18:32the carriers are back in growth mode and feel largely sort of stable in their budget levels. There was one carrier that was kind of fluctuating a bit over the first half of the year, and that was reflected in the commentary. But even they are now sort of fluctuating back up from where they were in Q2. But on balance, would say the carriers feel oriented towards growth and the demand feels stable. There were a couple of carriers that have really not yet reactivated in our marketplace, But we've gotten signal from them that they do intend to reactivate in the second part of this year. Speaker 200:19:13And so we expect to exit the year with, as Joseph said, what we would characterize as a full panel of carriers relative to historical participation in the marketplace. Speaker 800:19:27Understood. That's helpful on that side. And just given where the balance sheet is right now, nice to see the share repurchase authorization. Just curious on the flip side of that, if there's any interesting M and A that you're considering at this juncture? And any sort of update that to how you're thinking about potentially deploying that capital? Speaker 300:19:47So thanks for the question. I guess just to give some context on the buyback. So we're pleased to do our first buyback to $50,000,000 up to $50,000,000 over the next twelve months been authorized by the Board. I And think it really reflects the confidence we have in our business and really just the cash flow generation of the business. At the same time, obviously, we'll continue to look selectively at M and A. Speaker 300:20:09We will M and A is certainly something we will think about, particularly as it accelerates what we're trying to do in our core markets of P and accelerates our long term position to be the leader in that space. And so we'll continue to look at that and we'll update you as we have more to share. But something we'll certainly part of the things we're looking at is over the next several months. Speaker 800:20:31Understood. Well, thanks for taking my questions and best of luck with the rest of the quarter. Speaker 1000:20:37Thanks, Your Operator00:20:39next question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer with Craig Hallum. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:20:45Great. Thank you, guys. So you talked about kind of a whole panel of carriers, a full panel of states. I'm just curious from a competition standpoint, if you've seen any greater competition for leads, if you think that's creating any more volatility or any more pressure on VMM either in Q2 or as the year progresses? Speaker 200:21:06Yes. Thanks, Jason. So we have seen over the course of this year some of the competitive pressure to return to the advertising landscape as carriers obviously, we benefit from their increased budgets in our marketplace, but they're also stepping into the more open advertising market as well. And so we have seen some competitive pressure in that regard. And that being said, I think we've continued to execute really well in a more competitive traffic environment. Speaker 200:21:40We're continuing to kind of build out our AI bidding solutions. We drove 25% VMD growth year on year. And we actually were able to achieve a step up in our VMM margin from what it was I think around 28% last quarter or 29% this quarter. So yes, more competitive pressure. But I think we're managing through it well and we're focused on maintaining margin and kind of finding the growth through incremental channels as I mentioned earlier. Speaker 700:22:13Great. Thanks, Jamie. So last year, you saw a nice budget flush as we approach year end. With the combined ratios of the carriers tracking so much below their targets right now, I'm just curious what your sense is for a similar budget flush as 2025 progresses. Speaker 200:22:32I'm as curious about this as you are. I would say intuition would suggest that the carriers will have quite a bit of room going into the back part of the year in terms of their combined ratios particularly for those that manage to kind of a calendar year outcome. So we've received no indication from any carriers that there's some end of year budget flush coming. But in the past when we've entered the end of the year and we've seen both pressure for growth and margin in profitability, we have seen some carriers deploy excess budget into the market at the end of Speaker 300:23:08the year. Maybe I'd add to that. That tends to be a phenomenon you see more with public companies than you do with some of the mutual companies. Just have a different sort of mentality about managing annual budgets. So just something to be cognizant of and as in terms of what we've seen in the past. Speaker 700:23:24All fingers crossed we Thank see something like that Speaker 600:23:27you, guys. Speaker 200:23:28Thank you. Operator00:23:31Next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair. Please go ahead. Speaker 1100:23:37Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just on the some of the pressures you're seeing in the search engine marketing channels from the carriers coming back online, would you sort of categorize this as sort of typical, I guess, pressures you've seen before and would have to build workarounds for? Or is there something different or more pronounced, from what you see today? And maybe just a follow-up question there is, maybe if you could provide some perspective in what you're seeing in some of the incremental channels that you've been testing, that would Speaker 600:24:09also be helpful. Thank you. Speaker 900:24:13Yes. So thanks, Ralph. I Operator00:24:17would Speaker 200:24:17say there's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the competitive pressure we're seeing. It's most acute as you'd expect in some of the industry specific channels like search. We're seeing more stability in more generalized channels like social and video. So these are that's where some of our dollars are being directed in order to to kind of offset some of the competitive pressure in search. So nothing really out of the ordinary. Speaker 200:24:46What was this? Remind me the second part of the question? Speaker 1000:24:50Yeah. Just any sort of update you Speaker 1100:24:52can provide or metrics around, social or the video channels, and just any progress that you're making there. Speaker 200:25:00Yeah. Got it. So these were channels that we were fairly active in before the downturn. And then as the auto monetization kind of fell out, we pulled back a bit in these channels. So there's a part of this that's just kind of reactivating the engine and rescaling the engine. Speaker 200:25:20And we're seeing some traction, right? So these are some of these channels are beginning to scale. And then there's some incremental platforms which we've not been as active in, in the past, which now with monetization where it is, we believe we should be able to compete as well. Operator00:25:40Your next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon with Needham. Speaker 1000:25:47Jamie and Joseph, even though you didn't provide specific guidance for the fourth quarter, could you just remind us of the seasonality just so that we get our models straight, don't get over our skis? Any thoughts around how we should think about the top line VMD and just the leverage in the model on the EBITDA front? Speaker 300:26:06Sure. So thanks for the question. In terms of seasonality, Q3 to Q4 tends to be down sort of single digit low single digit percent like 3%, 4% yes, 3% to 5% I would say is the zone. And then in terms of VMD, I'd say no change in what we've said previously, which is sort of looking at the high 20s is what we're targeting as we run the business. And then lastly on EBITDA, as I said in my prepared remarks sort of at or near current levels. Speaker 300:26:36Q1 was 13.5%, Q2 was 14% adjusted EBITDA margins. Q3 guide implies us basically in that same ballpark as well. The midpoint is just shy of 14%. So I think we're sort of planning to sort of maintain those levels is our goal. And that means that we'll modulate expenses we've been doing. Speaker 300:26:56What you're seeing implied in Q3 is a step up in expenses, and some of that will continue obviously into Q4. And again, very much in line with what we said at the start of the year. We expected the back half of the year to add incremental investments and especially around our technology areas and AI and other areas. Speaker 1000:27:14Great. That's helpful. And then going from a short term question to a long term question. Jamie, you talked about the billion dollar road map to get there. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more on how you think about the growth coming organically? Speaker 1000:27:29Are you including M and A opportunities to get to that type of revenue growth target? And then also just I would add that is this contingent on adding, you know, larger carriers that aren't clients today? Or do you feel like you have enough headroom to grow within the account base to really get to that type of level? Speaker 200:27:49Yeah. So hopefully, it's not a long term question. Hope to get there relatively soon. And we think we can do so organically and with our existing customer base. So the plan that we've got really relies on the distribution side. Speaker 200:28:09It's about continuing to improve performance for carriers and agents through AI products like Smart Campaigns. You know, we've got a reliable pattern established now where when we deploy these products, they improve performance, we get more budget, we get more pricing. And so that's a that's a part of it. With agents, we're expanding products to get more share of their wallet. And then on the traffic side of the marketplace, we think we can sort of size the opportunity in under and unpenetrated channels that we're beginning to sort of expand into and scale up. Speaker 200:28:45And then outside of auto, I think the homeowners vertical and other non auto verticals could sort of round it out. So our plan to get to $1,000,000,000 of revenue does not rely on M and A. But as Joseph mentioned and feel free to layer on, Joseph, that's a potential accelerant. And maybe what I'd add, Mike, Speaker 300:29:05is just remind folks of our long term model. We've said for some time we're going to average 20% top line growth, and we're going to get to adjusted EBITDA margins of 20% in the long term. If you look at what we've done in EBITDA margins, last year was 11.6% for the year. If you look at where we're the messaging we've given today and where we've done through the first half of the year, we'll add at least a couple of 100 basis points to that for this year. And so as you think about the path to getting to 20%, but we had 200 basis points a year. Speaker 300:29:31We're not saying we're going do that every year, but I'd expect this to be adding 100 basis points on average would be probably expected and we'll see in some years it may be more. So I think that is the recipe we see. We see a real growth opportunity but also continuing to drive profitability at the same time as we do that top line growth. Operator00:29:55Your next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Speaker 1200:30:02Hey, great. Thanks for taking the question. Just looking at the guidance and then the VMM margins, you know, would you expect as the market sort of normalizes and we return to a steady state growth that you would expect your VMM margins to go back into the low 30s? Or how should we just think about the level of VMM margin predictability or VM dollars predictability over the next, call it, eighteen to twenty four months? Operator00:30:38I think the way we Speaker 300:30:40think about BMO is what we've been talking about since the start of the year. We see this sort of in the high 20s. Sometimes it may go into low 30s. But given the I think on average, it's going to be in the high 20s. That's sort of our view on how things will shake out. Speaker 300:30:52And I think it's important to note, Jed, as we've talked about in the past is we don't run the business on a day to day basis. The traffic teams do not sort of try to solve for VMM. They really are driving VMD. Now of course, we look at it regularly throughout each month. And of course, there's a correlation between the maximum VMD point and also the VMM margin nicely overlap with where we're at sort of high 20s level right now. Speaker 300:31:17So we feel good about that. It's the right way to manage the business. Speaker 1200:31:21Got it. And then just the cash balance, great job. Looks like ex the buyback could be approaching $200,000,000 end of the year. Do you ever think about acquisitions in terms of helping you get some leverage over some larger carriers and reduce competitive spending on what you have to pay for traffic? Can you just talk about M and A and how you kind of think about using your cash balance to fund additional growth? Speaker 300:31:53Yes. I guess when we think about M and A, it's focused on the current strategy. So we believe we want to be the leading growth partner to P and C carriers and agents. So it's not about getting leverage over carriers and agents, but how we help them be successful. How can we help them be more successful? Speaker 300:32:07How can we get more share of their wallet to help them grow their business? And that's how we think about the opportunity. And I think M and A could there are some M and A opportunities that could fit within that strategy. But again, I think our desire and our belief is that we win by our customers winning. And if we take the results they give us and we manage that business well, we'll give great results for shareholders and that in turn helps our flywheel keep going to building shareholder value. Speaker 1000:32:32Thank you. Thanks, Ed. Operator00:32:37Your next question comes from the line of Mitchell Rubin with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Speaker 600:32:43Hey, thank you guys for taking my call. This is Mitch on behalf of Greg Peters. So on slide 12, you guys have a table where you're breaking out the auto versus, home revenue quarterly. It looks like it's sequentially increased each quarter since, 01/2024, and it came down a bit in the '25 relative to the first quarter. So I was wondering if Speaker 500:33:07you could provide some color on this dynamic. I Speaker 300:33:11think what I'd say in the home business, the way to think about home, I think this page is obviously a visual we give, page 12 of the investor deck to help people see the breakouts of auto versus home revenues. I think looking at them, the relative proportion in a given quarter, I'm not sure quite looking at that way. It's generally been around 10% give or take. I'd say with the home vertical specifically maybe I could give you some context around that. That's a vertical that had nice performance in Q2. Speaker 300:33:38We had 23% growth year on year also sequentially as well. So a really nice quarter. I think that reflected the broader landscape of home having strong underwriting pickup improvements relative to Q1. As you may recall in Q1 we had an environment where the home environment broadly for carriers had some pressure with cat losses. As you look into Q2, think it's become much more stable underwriting environment. Speaker 300:34:02So we feel good about home. We'll then continue to be an opportunity for us to grow for us over time. So I think that's probably the color I'd give you, probably the most important. And in the visuals, I think on the page, look at the relative proportion. I think it just really reflects the how fast auto has grown during this period of growth, given that it was coming out of a relative trough in 2023 with the downturn. Speaker 600:34:25Thank you for the color on that. My next question is on the inaugural share repurchase program. How are you guys thinking about the quarterly cadence with that going forward? Is there going to be any seasonality or relatively consistent from quarter to quarter? Speaker 300:34:42The way we're thinking about it now, it's going to be opportunistic sort of based on market conditions. We don't have a prearranged plan to do certain things within any given quarter. But again, it's one where we view it as very much why do we do this? We feel it's a good way to reflect the confidence we have in our business and the strong cash flow generation. I think it's also a way to give bad value back to our shareholders in a way that we've talked about in the past, one of the things we consider. Speaker 300:35:08And so we're pleased to be able to do it, but it's to be opportunistic in how we execute it for our first program. Speaker 600:35:16Thank you for the answers. Speaker 200:35:19Thank you. Thank you. Operator00:35:22And it seems that we have no further questions for today. That concludes the yesterday's answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks. Speaker 200:35:32Thank you all for joining. Look, we continue to make great progress. This quarter was punctuated by a number of records, particularly as it relates to our operating efficiency as we introduce more ML and AI more broadly across the business. We got record levels of net income, operating cash flow, cash balance, adjusted EBITDA margin, and we're really energized right now. We're energized to continue growing efficiently towards that $1,000,000,000 revenue goal as we build EverQuote into the unambiguous leading growth partner for P and C insurance providers. Speaker 200:36:05Thanks all. Operator00:36:08This concludes today's conference. We would like to thank everyone for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a pleasant day.Read morePowered by