Conferencia de resultados del 3T de 2026 de Cardlytics (CDLX): los ingresos caen un 30%, prevé crecimiento para el 4T

Puntos clave

• La facturación del tercer trimestre de 2026 cayó un 32% interanual hasta los 57,2 millones de dólares, mientras que los ingresos se redujeron un 30% hasta los 32,9 millones de dólares. Las comparaciones excluyen a Bridg, compañía que Cardlytics desinvirtió en el primer trimestre de 2026.
• La contribución ajustada disminuyó un 24% hasta los 19,4 millones de dólares, aunque el margen de contribución ajustado mejoró al 59% frente al 54,4% registrado un año antes.
• El EBITDA ajustado se mantuvo en terreno positivo en 0,4 millones de dólares, frente a los 3,3 millones de dólares del tercer trimestre de 2025. El flujo de caja libre mejoró hasta un saldo negativo de 1,6 millones de dólares, frente al saldo negativo de 2,7 millones de dólares previo.
• La dirección atribuyó la ralentización trimestral al ajuste en los presupuestos de los anunciantes, en particular en el sector de la alimentación, y a una interrupción técnica en un banco asociado del Reino Unido. La empresa calificó ambos problemas de temporales y no como indicios de cara al cuarto trimestre o a 2027.
• Cardlytics firmó alianzas de CRP con Yahoo!, VodafoneThree y Rove durante el trimestre, a las que se sumó Coupert tras el cierre del período. La dirección espera que estos lanzamientos comiencen a aportar resultados en 2027.
• Para el cuarto trimestre de 2026, Cardlytics proyectó una facturación de 63 a 69 millones de dólares y unos ingresos de 35 a 39 millones de dólares, lo que supone un regreso al crecimiento intertrimestral.

Datos financieros principales

Cardlytics indicó que los menores gastos operativos reflejaron las reducciones de plantilla implementadas en el segundo semestre de 2025 y la optimización de la infraestructura en la nube. La dirección espera que el flujo de caja libre tienda a acercarse al EBITDA ajustado con el tiempo y señaló que está evaluando opciones para mejorar el balance y el flujo de caja.

Desempeño comercial y operativo

La facturación procedente de nuevos negocios aumentó un 25% respecto al segundo trimestre. Los anunciantes incorporados durante el segundo trimestre incrementaron su facturación un 58% en el tercero, mientras que el 70% renovó con nuevos presupuestos. Las empresas de restauración, gasolineras y alimentación representaron el 29% de los anunciantes activos.

Cardlytics informó de que el gasto de los consumidores estadounidenses según sus datos aumentó un 10% respecto al tercer trimestre de 2025. La frecuencia de compra aumentó un 7% y el importe medio por transacción creció aproximadamente un 3%. El gasto en viajes avanzó un 17%, mientras que el número de anunciantes activos del sector de viajes aumentó más del 50% interanual.

La facturación en el Reino Unido se redujo un 4% interanual, debido principalmente a una incidencia técnica en un banco asociado. La dirección afirmó que el crecimiento entre los diez principales anunciantes del Reino Unido se mantuvo sólido, con un aumento de la facturación en el comercio minorista de aproximadamente el 5%.

La empresa se está expandiendo más allá de la distribución bancaria tradicional a través de acuerdos de CRP. Yahoo! ofrecerá ofertas personalizadas a los usuarios de Yahoo Mail, VodafoneThree integrará inicialmente las ofertas en la aplicación de recompensas Three+ y Rove ofrecerá recompensas personalizadas a sus miembros. Se espera que Coupert distribuya ofertas en Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido mediante su sitio web, su extensión de navegador y su aplicación móvil.

Según la dirección, más de la mitad de las tarjetas vinculadas a través de CRP provienen de fuera de la red bancaria actual de Cardlytics. La empresa señaló que esto amplía su alcance entre los consumidores al tiempo que conserva un modelo publicitario dirigido y basado en el rendimiento.

Cardlytics también lanzó niveles de recompensas bancarias personalizadas y probó recompensas mejoradas para clientes que no habían canjeado una oferta en más de seis meses. En las pruebas iniciales entre bancos asociados, la facturación aumentó un 13% en los grupos de prueba.

Previsiones de la dirección

Las perspectivas de facturación implican un crecimiento intertrimestral del 10% al 20%. La dirección prevé que Cardlytics vuelva al crecimiento intertrimestral en el cuarto trimestre, respaldada por la actividad de los anunciantes y las inversiones de varios grandes bancos asociados en promociones, recompensas mejoradas y otros programas de fidelización.

La empresa prevé que las difíciles comparaciones interanuales continúen hasta el primer trimestre de 2027, momento en que se cumplirá un año de los cambios previamente analizados en las relaciones con sus bancos asociados.

Riesgos y factores a vigilar

• Los presupuestos de los anunciantes siguieron bajo presión en el tercer trimestre, especialmente en el sector de la alimentación, al tiempo que parte del gasto se contrajo o se trasladó a otros formatos.
• La incidencia técnica en el banco asociado del Reino Unido redujo la entrega de ofertas y la facturación durante un período prolongado del trimestre.
• Los usuarios cualificados mensuales se mantuvieron sustancialmente por debajo del nivel del año anterior debido a los cambios en las relaciones con los bancos asociados.
• Cardlytics cerró el tercer trimestre con 29,9 millones de dólares en efectivo y equivalentes de efectivo y un flujo de caja libre negativo de 1,6 millones de dólares. La dirección afirmó que sigue centrada en mejorar el balance y el flujo de caja.
• La contribución financiera de los socios de CRP recién incorporados depende del éxito de sus lanzamientos; la dirección prevé que su impacto se materialice en 2027.

Puntos destacados de la sesión de preguntas y respuestas con analistas

La dirección describió el problema del banco británico como una interrupción puntual de la infraestructura y señaló que ambas entidades colaboraron para reforzar los sistemas afectados. Asimismo, calificó la debilidad en alimentación como una combinación de factores cíclicos y propios de los anunciantes, y no como un patrón recurrente que se prolongará en 2027.

En cuanto al modelo económico y la segmentación de CRP, la dirección afirmó que la experiencia principal de las ofertas es similar tanto en los canales bancarios como en los no bancarios. El historial de compras sigue respaldando la publicidad dirigida basada en el rendimiento y los canjes verificados, mientras que los socios no bancarios amplían el alcance de Cardlytics a consumidores fuera de su ámbito bancario actual.

Al ser consultada sobre dónde observa Cardlytics las mayores oportunidades de expansión, la dirección destacó la llegada a los consumidores en entornos de compra de alta frecuencia en lugar de priorizar un sector específico. Los bancos siguen siendo el foco principal de socios de la empresa, mientras que CRP amplía la distribución a medios en línea, telecomunicaciones, viajes y plataformas de reembolso.

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Comentarios de la dirección

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Q3 2026 Cardlytics, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Chris Cheng, Chief Legal Officer. Chris, please go ahead.

Chris Cheng

Good evening, and welcome to the Cardlytics Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements based on our current assumptions, expectations and beliefs, including expectations around our future financial performance and results, including for the fourth quarter of 2026, our capital structure and operational and product initiatives.

For a discussion on the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from today's discussion, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our 10-Q for the quarter ending September 30, 2026, which has been filed with the SEC. Also during our call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures of our performance. GAAP financial reconciliations and supplemental financial information are provided in the press release issued today, which you can find on the Investor Relations section of the Cardlytics website. Today's call is available via webcast, and a replay will also be available on our website.

On the call today, we have CEO, Amit Gupta; and CFO, David Evans. Following their prepared remarks, we'll open it up for your questions. With that, I'll hand the call over to Amit.

Amit Gupta

Good evening, and thank you for joining us. Q3 was another quarter of execution against our priorities, deepening our bank partnerships, expanding our publisher network, driving incremental revenue for our advertisers and investing in our technology platform that differentiates us. Billings and revenue were down from Q2, and we came in below our guidance. We experienced some sluggishness in the third quarter. One of our bank partners in the U.K. had issues unrelated to us that reduced our billing and caused offers not to get served to their consumers for a long stretch of time.

Macro pressures weighed on advertiser budgets, particularly in grocery. And in some industries, budgets contracted or moved to other formats. We don't view this as a signal for Q4. David will take you through the details in a few moments. What encourages us is that we are building for the next stage of growth. New brands are coming on to the platform at a faster pace each quarter, and we are expanding our publisher network with new CRP partners. Starting with our network and supply. We have signed 3 new CRP partners this quarter. We welcomed Yahoo! to our publisher network and we'll start by bringing offers to Yahoo Mail users.

Through Yahoo Mail's primary ad unit, users can link a card, browse personalized offers and earn Yahoo! cashback automatically on the purchases they're already making. This puts CRP in front of millions of consumers on one of the largest platforms globally, and we expect the experience to roll out over the next few months. In the U.K., we recently signed a partnership with VodafoneThree for Three mobile customers to use Cardlytics on the Three+ rewards app. VodafoneThree is the U.K.'s largest mobile network operator serving the fixed and mobile market formed following the merger of Vodafone U.K. and Three U.K. We will start with launching offers with Three+ with plans to bring it to VeryMe in the future.

This partnership also marks 3 firsts for Cardlytics in the U.K. Our first open banking partner at scale, our first U.K. CRP partner outside of financial institutions and our first to offer rewards as a credit off the phone bill. We also announced a partnership with Rove, a universal airline mile program built for Gen Z and millennials. Rove members can link a card and earn Rove miles through personalized offers on top of the miles they already earned through flights, hotels and shopping. The offers experience will roll out later in Q4 to all Rove users. Since the end of the quarter, we have also signed a fourth CRP partner, Coupert, a loyalty platform that will bring our offers to its users in the U.S. and U.K. through its website, browser extension and mobile app.

Each of these partners sits outside the traditional banking across telecom, online media, travel and cashback verticals. Together, we see CRP gaining traction and our supply diversifying to new services beyond banks. It also expands who we reach. More than half of the cards consumers link through CRP come from outside our existing bank network. So each partner brings us consumers we could not see before. We continue to have positive conversations with other potential bank and nonbank partners, and we look forward to sharing more as these launches roll out and we see an impact in 2027. On the bank side, several of our largest partners are investing heavily in Q4 to promote their programs and boost engagement.

That includes bank-funded offers, bonus redemption days, boosted rewards and sweepstakes. Turning to our advertiser base. Despite the challenges we noted in some of our existing accounts, we continue to be encouraged by growth we see in new business. New business billings grew 25% from Q2. The advertisers that launched with us in Q2 ramp quickly with this cohort's billing up 58% in Q3 and 70% of them renewed with new budgets, so those advertisers are valuing the Cardlytics channel. Over half of the advertisers that launched with us in Q2 but more in Q3, including a national electronics retailer that nearly tripled.

Everyday spend is a growing part of our advertiser base. Restaurant, gas and grocery advertisers now make up 29% of our active advertisers. Advertisers are still watching their budgets closely, but they know Q4 is an important quarter, and we expect that to show up in our results. We are bringing them new ad formats and new programs. And as I said earlier, our bank partners are investing alongside us. Our purchase intelligence also shows that the consumer is still spending. We saw U.S. consumer spending grew 10% compared with the third quarter of last year. Shoppers made 7% more purchases and the average transaction size was about 3% larger compared to Q3 2025.

Spend on gas and convenience also grew 27% because of higher fuel prices. Travel spend grew 17% in the same time period. And we see that in our advertiser base, too, with the number of active travel advertisers up more than 50% from a year ago, including new airline, hotel, cruise and online travel agency logos. Travel brands come to us for verified redemptions and because we can deliver revenue within a set window, which helps them hit specific goals like Q4 targets. We plan to bring verified redemptions to other industries such as retail. In the U.K., billings were down 4% year-over-year.

As mentioned earlier, the decline primarily came from a technical disruption at one of our bank partners, which reduced billing during the quarter. Underneath that, our advertiser base was healthy. We saw growth across our top 10 advertisers and retail grew about 5%. Our U.K. data shows a change in shopper behavior versus last year. Instead of concentrating purchases around the deepest discount days like Black Friday, shoppers are making more considered purchases spread across the whole holiday season. In response, new and existing retail partners are investing earlier and more steadily instead of timing their spend around seasonal spikes.

Now to our technology platform. We launched the ability for banks to set custom reward tiers. A bank can now offer a higher reward multiplier to encourage customers to move up to a higher account tier. We worked with one of our bank partners to extend our program to a broader part of its customer base. We also tested boosted rewards for customers who had not redeemed an offer in more than 6 months. In early tests across bank partners, billing rose 13% in the test groups. We are finalizing the plan to expand it. We scaled our AI insights agent and expanded our industry outlook reports to 7 sectors, including quick service restaurants, grocery and travel.

The agent now produces this content across hundreds of brands with very little engineering effort, which lets our sales team build custom campaigns for advertisers quickly and with minimal effort. Advertisers tell us our share of wallet insights change how they plan. That's the concept behind our newly released Cardlytics Demand Index. It is designed to turn our networks verified purchase data into aggregated privacy safe insights on consumer spending. Our goal is to give advertisers more confidence in how they plan and add a better view of consumer health to the broader economic conversation.

Finally, as consumers begin shopping through AI agents, we plan to bring our offer network into those experiences. We are designing our technology so AI shopping agents can become a new type of publisher in our network, showing consumers relevant offers at the point of purchase and tying those offers to verified redemptions. Looking ahead, with VodafoneThree, Yahoo!, Rove and Coupert signed, we are excited about growth in CRP, and we are focused on launching these partners successfully and carrying that momentum into 2027. We expect to return to sequential growth in Q4. David will take you through our financials. With that, I'll turn it over to him.

David Evans

Thank you, Amit. As Amit mentioned, we experienced some sluggishness in the third quarter, but we don't view it as a signal for what we're seeing coming in Q4, and it's not indicative of how we will move forward given momentum from advertisers and supply partners. Turning to Q3 results. For awareness, all comparisons to prior year will be presented excluding Bridg, which we divested in Q1 of this year. Bridg's specific results can be found in the 10-Q. Also, the comments will be year-over-year comparisons to the third quarter of 2025, unless stated otherwise.

In Q3, our billings were $57.2 million, a 32% decrease year-over-year. We will continue to see tough comps year-over-year until Q1 2027 when we anniversary the previously discussed changes in our bank partner relationships. Over the course of the year, we have seen supply stabilize. Q3 revenue was $32.9 million, a 30% decrease year-over-year. Q3 adjusted contribution was $19.4 million, a 24% decrease year-over-year. We materially increased our adjusted contribution as a percentage of revenue to 59% from 54.4% in the prior year. Our Q3 adjusted EBITDA was positive $0.4 million compared to $3.3 million in the third quarter of 2025.

Q3 adjusted operating expenses were $19 million, a decrease of 14% from prior year. This was largely due to reduction in force actions taken in the second half of 2025 and optimization of our cloud infrastructure. Q3 free cash flow was negative $1.6 million compared to negative $2.7 million year-over-year. From a liquidity perspective and on the balance sheet, we ended Q3 with $29.9 million in cash and cash equivalents and approximately $10.4 million available on our credit facility. We remain focused on free cash flow with investments targeted at driving near- and medium-term growth that is self-sustaining.

We see free cash flow trending in the right direction and converging closer to adjusted EBITDA going forward. We are laser-focused on the balance sheet and are actively evaluating any and all options as it pertains to improving our balance sheet and cash flow going forward. Our MQUs for the quarter were 187 million, down from 230 million a year ago due to the previously discussed changes in our bank partner relationships. That is, however, up 1.2 million from the end of the second quarter.

Now turning to our outlook for Q4 2026. For Q4, we expect billings between $63 million and $69 million, revenue between $35 million and $39 million, adjusted contribution between $20 million and $23 million and adjusted EBITDA between negative $1 million and positive $2 million.

Our guidance represents 10% to 20% growth in billings quarter-over-quarter and a return to sequential growth. We remain focused on executing against our priorities as we close out the year and build towards 2027. I will now turn it back to Amit for closing remarks.

Amit Gupta

To wrap up, Q3 slowed our recovery due to tighter advertiser budgets and issues on the bank side that were unrelated to us. The fundamentals haven't changed. The new advertisers coming on to the platform and the partners signing on tell us Cardlytics platform is delivering value to consumers, our partners and advertisers. I'll now turn it over to the operator to begin Q&A.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum.

Preguntas y respuestas

Jason Kreyer

Wondering if we can parse out some of the commentary that created a little bit of headwind in the quarter. The issues in U.K. seem largely onetime and poised to reverse themselves. So maybe you can just give a concept on timing when that gets better. But then some of the issues you'd highlighted like in groceries and other verticals, again, maybe we can dive into that a little bit more, like that was created headwinds in Q3. Does that persist into Q4? Can some of this stuff persist into next year? Just looking for more color there.

Amit Gupta

Craig, thanks so much -- sorry, Jason, thanks so much for the question. We appreciate it. I think just the 2 part. On the bank issue that we experienced in U.K., very much a onetime one-off issue. They were going through a change in their infrastructure that led to this. So we very much see this as a one-off. And happy to share that our teams work and collaborated quite actively to make sure that not only does it not happen again, but just hardening the systems overall.

On your second part of the question around grocery, again, I think these are a combination of cyclical and a few advertiser-related issues that we saw. We don't see this as a recurring pattern, definitely not in 2027. And as you saw, our Q4 growth from -- there's a sequential growth that we see. Again, furthermore, to address this, we're also bringing new ad formats to some of these grocer verticals that allows them to share and spend the budget in different ways, which they want to. So we see this more as a onetime effect in this quarter, and that's why we said we don't see this as a signal for Q4 at this time.

Jason Kreyer

As we kind of compare and contrast CLO versus CRP solutions, I'm curious if you can talk about how different is the purchase history that you're obtaining that allows you to show targeted offers? And maybe if there's any difference in your ability to tie an offer to actually utilization at a POS.

Amit Gupta

Yes. I think the way I would suggest we think about CRP is simply an extension of the surface area where we're publishing the offer. The core experience is quite analogous, whether it's on a bank experience or a bank surface or a nonbank surface, Jason. So there's less kind of pull and push about differences in the actual purchase history, the purchase history that we get from a nonbank CRP partner is quite similar and that we use that data to target because the core -- the secret sauce is very much about relevance and targeting and it's not a kind of one of those spray and pray.

So we're very much continue to be in the lower end of the performance funnel. And whether it's served on a CRP surface or a bank surface, it continues to be a targeted performance advertising funnel. So there's less kind of differences there. The other thing that CRP brings to us, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, it gets us access to consumers that we may not see from a current banking partner network footprint. So it allows us to grow the footprint with a similar experience.

Jason Kreyer

Very helpful. I'm going to sneak in one more. You talked a lot, you're clearly looking beyond FIs to find additional supply. Just wondering if you can talk about what areas would represent maybe the most promise as you look to expand?

Amit Gupta

I think simply put, we want to meet consumers where they are. So none of this expansion in beyond banks changes our strength of relationship or our focus with banks. Bank partners continue to be paramount to us, our first priority. And as you mentioned, we continue to have more conversations with other bank partners who we hope to welcome to the network soon. But in addition, this is allowing CRP funnel allows us to meet consumers beyond banks. So in terms of which verticals, you've heard us talk about Yahoo! and Vodafone and Rove. So frankly, it's less specific on verticals.

We want to be where consumers are, where consumers are in the fast frequency purchase patterns because that's where they can actually get more and more value from our offers. And we're excited about bringing newer budgets that might meet the requirements of the new publisher partners. So hopefully, the way we think about it, it's about getting access to more consumers, more advertisers can now publish their ads on the Cardlytics network, and they get the benefit of having one stop to get a larger access of consumers across banks and nonbanks.

Operator

We have reached the end of our Q&A portion. I will now turn the call back to Amit Gupta for closing remarks.

Amit Gupta

Thank you again for joining. As we shared, we continue to see progress with our bank and CRP partners. Our gratitude to all the stakeholders that help grow our ecosystem so we can deliver more value to the end consumer. We're excited about what lies ahead, and we'll be back soon. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect.