EverQuote（EVER）2026年第3四半期決算説明会：売上高25%増、AI投資を拡大

主要なポイント

• EverQuoteの2026年第3四半期の売上高は前年同期比25%増の2億1810万ドルとなり、同社の業績予想レンジの上限を上回りました。
• 調整後EBITDAは41%増の3550万ドルとなり、調整後EBITDAマージンは16.3%となりました。営業キャッシュフローは4050万ドルに達しました。
• 自動車保険の売上高は21%増の1億9040万ドル、住宅保険の売上高は70%増の2770万ドルとなりました。経営陣は、住宅保険が中期的により高成長なバーティカルであり続けると予想しているものの、70%という成長率をそのまま当てはめることには注意を促しました。
• 変動マーケティング支出（VMD）は25%増の6260万ドルと過去最高を記録しました。変動マーケティングマージン（VMM）は28.7%でした。
• 2026年第4四半期について、経営陣は売上高を2億1300万ドル〜2億2300万ドル、調整後EBITDAを2900万ドル〜3200万ドルと予想しています。EverQuoteがエージェンティックAIトラフィックチャネルや新製品に投資するため、VMMは前四半期比で低下する見込みです。
• EverQuoteは、AIネイティブな損害保険比較プラットフォーム「Luva」を立ち上げました。同社はまた、Meta、OpenAI、Anthropicなどのプラットフォームに跨る連携機能の開発を進めており、これらは各プラットフォームの審査と承認を前提としています。

主要財務実績

GAAP純利益が減少した主な要因は、法人所得税が前年同期比で730万ドル増加したことと、EverQuoteが広告サービス業者との契約解除に伴う一時的な解約手数料400万ドルを計上したことです。

事業および営業業績

需要は広範に維持されており、EverQuoteの上位10社の保険会社顧客のうち8社で前四半期比で成長しました。経営陣は、この良好な環境の要因として保険会社の引受収益性の強さと、契約拡大に対する継続的な意欲を挙げました。

住宅保険は最も急成長しているバーティカルでした。同社は、専用リソースの投入、住宅特有のワークフローに合わせた製品調整、および予想を上回る保険会社からの需要が70%増を支えたと述べました。経営陣は中期的にも住宅保険の売上高が自動車保険を上回るペースで成長し続けると見込んでいるものの、このバーティカルは比較的規模が小さいベースから拡大している点に言及しました。

EverQuoteは、AIベースの入札製品である「SmartCampaigns」を保険会社や地域の代理店向けに拡大し続けています。経営陣によると、以前開示された管理ケーススタディでは、保険会社の初期状態に応じて、従来の入札手法と比較して2桁台または約20%のパフォーマンス改善が示されたとのことです。

内部的には、エージェンティック・コーディング・パイプラインの導入に伴い、エンジニアリングのサイクルタイムが前四半期比で36%短縮しました。また同社は、エンジニアリング以外の部門におけるAIツールの活用拡大も挙げました。

Luvaは、リサーチ重視のAIネイティブな保険購入者を対象に設計されており、手数料、成果報酬型の契約獲得、紹介料を含むハイブリッドな収益化モデルを採用する予定です。経営陣は、保険会社の参加状況、製品機能、導入状況、対話型AIやエージェンティック・チャネルからのトラフィックを追跡する計画です。

EverQuoteは無負債で、2億2910万ドルの現金及び現金同等物を保有して第3四半期を終えました。同社の取締役会は、第2四半期に5000万ドルで250万株を買い戻して従来の自社株買いプログラムが終了したことを受け、新たに5000万ドルの自社株買いプログラムを承認しました。経営陣の資本配分の優先順位は、強固なバランスシートの維持、標的を絞ったM&Aと投資、および自社株買いとなっています。

業績予想

経営陣は2027年に向けて健全な保険会社需要が続くと見込んでおり、EverQuoteの投資家向けプレゼンテーションで引用された業界調査によると、損害保険のソフトマーケット・サイクルは2029年以降まで伸びる可能性があると考えています。

同社は年間の売上高10億ドルに達するという目標を改めて表明しました。経営陣は現在、強力なキャッシュフローを生成し、AI関連の成長施策に投資を続けながら、今後1〜2年以内にその目標を達成できると見込んでいます。

リスクと注目点

• エージェンティックおよびLLM主導のトラフィックは依然として僅小です。現在、EverQuoteのトラフィックのうちLLM経由は1%未満であり、エージェンティックな購入者からの寄与はさらに小規模です。
• 新たなエージェンティック・トラフィック源は、初期段階では効率が低下します。経営陣は第4四半期のVMMを2027年の妥当な初期指標（プロキシ）と説明する一方で、業績はこれらのチャネルがどのように発展するかに依存すると強調しました。
• Meta、OpenAI、Anthropicとの連携は、引き続き各プラットフォームの審査と承認プロセスの対象となります。
• 保険会社はエージェンティックな保険販売手法をまだ評価している段階です。経営陣は、継続的な保険の見直し（リショッピング）、保険期間の短縮、料率の透明性、逆選択、法律上の問題、規制順守などの懸念事項を浮き彫りにしました。
• 現在のAI比較ツールは保険商品の限られた一部にしかアクセスできず、比較サイクルを完了するまでに大幅なコンピューティングコストが必要となる可能性があります。
• 住宅保険の70%という成長率は、比較対象となる前年ベースが小さかったことや予想以上に活発だった保険会社の動きの恩恵を受けており、四半期ごとの成長率は変動しやすくなる可能性があります。

アナリスト質疑応答の要点

AI主導の保険比較・購入： 経営陣は保険の探索が時間とともに、よりエージェンティックになると予想していますが、保険会社は慎重に行動し、料率へのアクセス制御を課す可能性が高いと述べました。EverQuoteは、価格設定、製品、ブランドプレゼンテーションに対する保険会社の管理権を維持しながら、消費者およびAIプラットフォームを保険会社と繋ぐことを目指しています。

2027年の成長要因： 良好な保険会社環境に加え、経営陣はSmartCampaignsの採用拡大、地域代理店向けの新製品、未開拓およびハイファンネルのトラフィックチャネルへの拡大、AI検索、住宅保険の成長、Luvaを潜在的な寄与要因として挙げました。

顧客獲得の経済性： 経営陣は、比較検討の頻度が高まることで収益化可能なイベントが増える可能性があると述べました。また、AI支援によるリサーチの向上は紹介のコンバージョンと収益化を改善する可能性がありますが、最終的な経済モデルは依然として不確実です。

グーグルへの露出： EverQuoteは、同社のトラフィックポートフォリオは分散されており、オーガニック検索（経営陣がグーグルの変更によって最も打撃を受けたと考えている領域）ではなく、主に有料のプログラマティック広告に注力していると述べました。

資本配分： 同社は、キャッシュ創出によってバランスシートを維持し、獲得可能な最大市場（TAM）を拡大するパートナーシップ、投資、買収を検討し、自社株買いを行う柔軟性が得られると述べました。

決算説明会文字起こし全文

決算説明会の完全なトランスクリプト

経営陣による説明

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the EverQuote Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Sara Buda, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sara Buda

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to EverQuote's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued today after market close. With me on the call this afternoon are Jayme Mendal, EverQuote's Chief Executive Officer; and Joseph Sanborn, EverQuote's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer.

During this call, we may make statements related to our business that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws, including statements considering our financial guidance for the fourth quarter of 2026.

Forward-looking statements may be identified with words and phrases such as aim, expect, believe, intend, anticipate, plan, will, may, continue, 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-K 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.

Finally, during the course of today's call, we refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which include adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, variable marketing dollars and variable marketing margin, 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 market closed today, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website.

And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Jayme.

Jayme Mendal

Thank you, Sara, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered exceptional performance in Q3. We generated record results across our key financial metrics, exceeding the high end of our guidance range. Our marketplace continues to fire on all cylinders as carriers maintain strong underwriting profitability and appetite for growth, and our team is executing well to meet this demand.

In Q3, we continued to diversify our revenue across carriers, product offerings, and verticals, punctuated by outstanding performance in our home vertical, which grew by 70% year-over-year. Our market position remains strong, and we are growing and deepening customer relationships with both carriers and agents.

Furthermore, we believe we are making great progress as we begin to lead the P&C insurance industry into the AI era. First, we continue to use AI to drive productivity. In Q3, our engineering teams reduced cycle time by 36% quarter-over-quarter through adoption of our agentic coding pipeline. We have also achieved broad adoption of AI tools across non-engineering functions, allowing us to innovate and launch new products faster while growing adjusted EBITDA by over 40% year-over-year.

Second, AI remains a reliable driver of our consistent marketplace growth. We have deployed SmartCampaigns to new carriers and to more local agents. This AI bidding solution drives benefits, including higher conversion rates, which in turn allows us to access more budget so we can maximize highly targeted policy volume at customers' performance targets. We also rolled out new AI-native features to local agents in the quarter, including a new AI-based reporting tool that surfaces insights to help them understand and optimize account activity.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, AI underpins our strategy to broaden our value to customers and expand our long-term addressable market. We are at the forefront, leading P&C insurance distribution into the AI era.

In Q3, AI agents took center stage when Meta and OpenAI launched their personal agents. We have long anticipated personal agents as the next step in the evolution of insurance digital marketing and distribution, from web-native to LLM-native to agentic.

For months in advance of the launches of Muse and Dots, we were in discussions with carriers about agentic commerce to help educate and prepare them for this next wave of change. In fact, during the quarter, we published a thought leadership white paper on agentic shopping and P&C insurance distribution, which has led to an active dialogue with major carriers as they themselves contemplate how to adapt. This topic has become a major focus area for our customers, and we are partnering with carriers to innovate solutions that help them navigate this fast-developing landscape.

Last week, we launched Luva, a separately branded AI-native P&C insurance shopping platform for consumers that will be integrated with LLMs and AI commerce agents. We believe EverQuote can emerge as a key player in the AI ecosystem by bridging the needs of consumers using LLMs and AI agents to research and shop insurance with insurers' need to access these consumers while maintaining control over how their pricing, product, and brand are represented.

We are rolling out apps across LLM and agentic platforms like Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. These integrations are subject to the platforms' review and approval process, but we'll build on each solution over time in close partnership with carriers.

It is clear that our carrier and agent customers will need help adapting as agentic AI plays a larger role in P&C insurance distribution over time. We see tremendous opportunity in this dynamism. With our unique data, technology, and industry relationships developed over the last 15 years, we are ideally suited to help steward P&C insurance distribution into the AI era. Recent and forthcoming product launches position us to capitalize on this market evolution.

In summary, it has been an exciting quarter at EverQuote, and we are proud of maintaining our track record of sustained profitable growth while making investments in our future. As evidenced by our Q3 performance, the business is healthy and the team is executing well. We continue to make progress across our strategic priorities, and we are accelerating new product innovation to lead our industry into the agentic AI era.

I will now turn the call over to Joseph, who will discuss our financial results and outlook.

Joseph Sanborn

Thank you, Jayme, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered record results in Q3 and exceeded the top end of our guidance across all key financial metrics. We grew revenue 25% and Adjusted EBITDA 41% year-over-year. We also drove record Variable Marketing Dollars, or VMD, and Adjusted EBITDA, while at the same time generating strong cash flow. Our AI investments are already yielding results, and we will continue to invest to extend our market leadership position even further.

Now, let's turn to the details of the third quarter. Total revenue increased to $218.1 million. Revenue from our auto insurance vertical grew to $190.4 million in the third quarter, an increase of 21% year-over-year.

Our home insurance vertical grew 70% in Q3 to $27.7 million, as carriers continue to lean into home as a growth opportunity, and as we align our solutions and resources to scale this vertical and diversify our business.

We are executing well in a healthy environment. Looking at customers, 8 of our top 10 carriers grew sequentially, underscoring that demand continues to be broad-based. VMD increased to $62.6 million in the third quarter, up 25% from the prior year period. Variable Marketing Margin, or VMM, was 28.7% for the quarter.

Turning to operating expenses and the bottom line. In the third quarter, GAAP net income was $18.2 million, down from $18.9 million in the prior year period, due primarily to income taxes increasing $7.3 million year-over-year and a one-time $4 million termination fee related to a vendor contract for advertising services.

Q3 adjusted EBITDA increased 41% from the prior year period to $35.5 million, representing a 16.3% adjusted EBITDA margin. Cash operating expenses, which excludes advertising spend and certain non-cash and other charges, were $27.2 million in Q3, up slightly from Q2.

We reported operating cash flow of $40.5 million for the third quarter. We ended the period with no debt and cash and cash equivalents of $229.1 million.

We recently announced that our Board authorized a new $50 million share repurchase program. As a reminder, under our previous program, which concluded in Q2, we purchased 2.5 million shares totaling $50 million. The recent authorization is a component of our 3-pronged approach to capital allocation, which includes: one, maintaining a fortress balance sheet; two, pursuing targeted M&A and investment opportunities that align with our growth strategy to expand our TAM; and three, returning capital to shareholders through stock repurchases.

The continued strength of our operations and expectations for ongoing growth and profitability give us confidence that we have the flexibility and capacity to execute these priorities.

Finally, as Jayme mentioned, we are focused on broadening our offerings and leading our sector into the agentic AI era. This includes new solutions that capitalize on emerging models for agentic LLM traffic and extend the value we provide carriers and agents as they adapt to new models. These initiatives build on the success of our marketplace and reinforce our position as an AI beneficiary long term. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming quarters.

Turning to guidance for the fourth quarter of 2026. We expect revenue to be between $213 million and $223 million, representing 12% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect VMD to be between $57 million and $60 million, representing 19% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. As we mentioned, we are investing in new agentic LLM channels and developing new solutions to drive long-term growth. As a result, VMM is expected to decrease sequentially from Q3.

Our Q4 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $29 million and $32 million, representing 22% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.

Looking ahead, we expect healthy carrier demand into the coming year. Insurer combined ratios remain low, and we are benefiting from operating in the relatively early stages of a prolonged soft market cycle. As illustrated in our investor presentation available on our IR website, industry analysts have forecast this soft market cycle could continue well into 2029 or beyond, as carriers focus on growing policies in force.

Amidst this positive environment, EverQuote is a trusted growth partner of choice for both carriers and agents. Our home vertical is showing impressive growth, and we continue to broaden our customer relationships. Our investments in expanding AI solutions are delivering measurable customer results, establishing a strong foundation for sustained growth.

As a reminder, on our November 2025 earnings call, we shared our goal to become a $1 billion revenue company within 2 to 3 years while also generating strong cash flow. Here we are 12 months later. As evidenced by our results and guidance, we are executing well toward our goal. We are on track to reach the $1 billion revenue mark within the stated timeline, which means that we expect to achieve our goal within the next 1 to 2 years.

At the same time, we are making the right investments today to lead our sector into the agentic AI era tomorrow and scale well beyond our near-term $1 billion revenue goal while generating strong cash flow.

In conclusion, we continue to execute our strategy to be a trusted growth partner for our customers. We reported a record quarter across all key metrics with strong growth and cash flows. We have a focused growth strategy to innovate and expand our offerings, capitalize on new growth opportunities with agentic AI, and broaden our value for our customers. We believe this is an exciting time to be a shareholder of EverQuote as we continue building upon our strong foundation while also innovating for what's next.

Jayme and I will now take your questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair.

質疑応答

Ralph Schackart

Jayme, maybe just to kind of kick it off, maybe at a high level, can you walk us through how you see the workflow? Let's say I go to an agent such as Muse or something similar, and I don't know, maybe a simple query like, I want to lower my auto insurance, and maybe get a little bit more details. How does that sort of trigger, I guess, maybe your agent or sort of that flow, or how does EverQuote in this evolving world integrate into that? And then I have a follow-up.

Jayme Mendal

Sure. So I think there's how it works today and then how it's likely to evolve over time. Today, Meta or Muse will sort of make a determination as to how best to complete that task. And through our testing, we've seen it try a lot of different things, from going directly to carrier sites to looking at comparison sites like ours.

But if you zoom out, we've been anticipating and planning for agentic commerce for some time now. And I think from the consumer's perspective, these personal agents are going to be helpful across a lot of tasks, including researching and shopping insurance. But as we know, there are certain aspects of the insurance sector that differentiate it from others. You've got the regulatory and compliance considerations, the preference towards rate opacity from a handful of particularly the largest carriers, got material costs associated with accessing rates.

And so while from the consumer's perspective, using an AI agent to compare and shop is likely an attractive option, I think that ultimately the shape that this takes over time will really start to depend on how carriers respond. And Ralph, we published a thought piece on this, and we've since spoken with just about every major carrier on this topic over the last 6 weeks. And so I'll share a few things that we've heard, which I think represents probably the latest in terms of how the industry is thinking about it.

First, I think most carriers are in kind of learning mode right now. So they're just observing what's going on and trying to understand it. Number two is, I think across the board, they do perceive potential risk to their business if agentic commerce is left kind of unmanaged. And the risk that they are concerned about, I think, is continuous reshopping, which could compress their policy life expectancy. I think they do not support rate transparency, particularly if it's out of context or not controlled by the carrier themselves. That can lead to adverse selection. And then you still have a lot of legal and compliance questions that are unanswered. And so I think initially, most carriers are likely to move pretty slowly and impose some guardrails around how their rates are accessed, much like they did in the web era, candidly. But ultimately, I think the carriers will start to want to access this traffic as long as they can access it in ways that align with their requirements.

So you've got the consumer that will probably want to apply this use case. You've got the carriers who are still working through it. And then you've got the third category, which is what you asked about, which is the actual AI agents themselves, or the platforms that operate them. And what do they want? Well, they want a streamlined path to access products, right? They want inexpensive, they want fast, they want ultimately effective. And so we've done a lot of testing. Based on this testing, I think today, they're pretty far off from getting the job done well. They can only access a relatively small subset of available products. And it costs quite a bit to actually run one of these shopping cycles today in terms of compute.

So this is going to develop over time. We see it as a really significant opportunity for EverQuote, given our position in the value chain, our scale, our technical acumen, carrier relationships we have. But we do see an evolution towards more agentic discovery over time, same way traditional advertising shifted to digital. And we think EverQuote can play a significant role in this next phase of distribution to help solve for the best outcome, not just for consumers, but also for carriers and for the AI platforms themselves alike.

Ralph Schackart

That is super helpful. Just maybe one quick one. Just looking at homeowners growth of 70%, obviously very strong this quarter. Joseph, I think you talked about just carriers leaning in, but any more color on this in terms of the drivers? And then how should we think about this growth rate going forward? Thank you.

Joseph Sanborn

Yes, we were pleased with how the vertical did this quarter. I mean, just to give some context, Ralph, we made some decisions in the first part of last year to really start to put some new execution expertise around the home vertical. We have talked about how we saw this opportunity emerging. First, the carriers focused on getting the right pricing in auto, now they are switching to home. And we saw that coming, we got ready for it. And so our teams have been doing a really nice job. The first part of this year, we had 30%, 35% growth in Q1 and Q2. Q3 was even stronger.

What I would say what drove it in Q3, I think, would be a couple things. One is, I think our teams are doing a nice job scaling the offering, but we are also putting some dedicated resources on there as well. We also see the carriers at the same time leaning into the home opportunity broadly. And so we have been working with them, and we have been helping, as we have been putting more resources on, we have been helping them say, how do we set up this vertical with the specific attributes and characteristics in the workflow that are required for home? We have been doing that. So we have been very pleased with it. I would say it was the over-performance on home was in part driven by carriers coming on even stronger in the quarter than they anticipated when they told us at the start of the quarter how they were looking. So we are pleased by that.

As we look ahead, we see home continue to be our stronger grower than auto in the medium term. I would say 70% was very impressive, and I would not put that into your model, Ralph. But I would say having outsized growth from the home vertical, we were in the 30s for first part of -- 30% year-on-year growth for Q1 and Q2. We sort of see the home verticals continue to grow nice strongly going ahead.

Just be mindful on the numbers. It is off a relatively small base. So in any given quarter when you have a few things go really well, that can sort of amplify the year-on-year growth, which is what a little bit has happened in Q3. But again, really strong execution by the team. We are really pleased, and we are bullish on home's opportunity as we look ahead.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord.

Maria Ripps

Great. Congrats on the strong quarter. Clearly, you see strong momentum here exiting the year. So as we look ahead to 2027, can you maybe talk about the key growth drivers, sort of in addition to a favorable industry backdrop? And how should we think about sort of their relative contributions to growth?

Jayme Mendal

Can you repeat that last part of the question, Maria? You broke up a little. The contributions?

Maria Ripps

Yes. As we think about 2027, how should we think about sort of key growth drivers in addition to a favorable industry backdrop and sort of relative contribution to overall growth?

Joseph Sanborn

Right.

Jayme Mendal

Yes.

Joseph Sanborn

Yes, sure.

Jayme Mendal

So you mentioned the favorable backdrop, but we do expect that to persist with carrier underwriting as healthy as it has been, and I think most analysts seeing this soft market cycle extending at least into 2029. And so we feel good about the backdrop for next year.

Beyond that, I think we always think about it, there is distribution. And so how do we drive more carrier budget and improve pricing? And that typically is through, over the last couple of years, it has been driven through our AI bidding product, SmartCampaigns, which we continue to improve and drive greater adoption of. Most notably, this last quarter, we expanded it to a critical mass of local agents, and we will continue to roll that out into next year.

Then within the agent population, there are a number of incremental products that we are rolling out as we work to consolidate to be the one-stop growth partner for the local agent. And so we see those starting to get some scale moving into next year.

Then over onto the traffic side, as we get more budget, we are able to push that back and compete more aggressively in the traffic landscape. And we continue to expand into more channels, into un- and under-penetrated channels, some higher funnel channels, AI search, we expect to grow into next year. So we get more traffic to feed that distribution budget.

Joseph mentioned non-autos and our expectations for home next year. And then the other product, which we recently launched, is Luva. It is a new experience we think will allow us to begin to tap into a new segment of shoppers who are a bit more sort of research-oriented, AI-native shoppers that should help with growth next year as well.

Maria Ripps

Got it. Got it. That is very helpful. And then just in terms of sort of AI agents and your white paper. So as insurance sort of, excuse me, as insurance shopping sort of shifts towards AI agents, how should we think about sort of the economics of customer acquisition for your platform? I guess, could greater automation improve conversion and acquisition efficiency, or could we see sort of some pressure on the economics as AI platforms essentially take a larger role in driving demand?

Jayme Mendal

Yes. So I think when we think about the unit economics, I mean, to put it in context, right now it's negligible. It's immaterial in terms of its scale. We get less than 1% of our traffic from LLMs and even less from agentic shoppers. But it is likely to expect it will -- reasonable to expect it will grow over time.

So question number one is, for us in terms of unit economics is, what does it do to volume? Because you have the -- to the extent that agents can shop, reshop with greater frequency and less friction, we actually may see an increase in monetizable events as that happens. And then I think we have some -- I think the jury's out in terms of how exactly the economic model will evolve. But to the extent that these agents are able to do good research and improve the likelihood that the ultimate referral converts into a policy, we could see greater performance from the referrals going out and in turn, greater monetization.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Naved Khan with B. Riley.

Naved Khan

A couple of questions from me. Maybe the first one, just on the sort of -- we're hearing some changes to Google Search, in terms of Google increasing the coverage for AI Mode. And it seems like, looking at your numbers, it does not seem to have affected your numbers, or even for the -- looking at the guide for the Q4. So could you just talk about your ability to adapt to Google changes and how you look at the quality of the leads you get from there directly, and also the diversification in your own traffic? And then I have a follow-up.

Jayme Mendal

Sure. I think to begin, we have a very diversified traffic portfolio. Google is a large partner, but we have a very diversified base of traffic to begin with. And I think over the last few years, the segment of Google traffic that has been most impacted has been organic traffic, which, for better or worse, and right now it is for better, we have never had much exposure to organic traffic. So we have always been heavily concentrated with paid programmatic advertising. And we have managed to work through all the changes that have occurred with Google to date, and we expect that to persist moving forward.

Overall, we see shopping activity relatively stable this year at elevated levels, because I think the overall policy value and premiums just remain high. And so people are shopping and reshopping frequently as in response, I think, the cumulative effect of rate increases over time. And we have seen relative stability over the course of the year.

Naved Khan

That is good. Okay. And then I just wanted to touch on this partnership with Waniwani, I guess, is how you pronounce it. But I think there is some kind of exclusivity there. What does it cover exactly? Is it for the U.S.? Does it cover P&C or something broader? And what's the duration there? Also, with respect to any kind of revenue generated through such a partnership, how do the economics compare versus something that you get through other channels?

Jayme Mendal

Sure. So the basic premise of their offering is that they provide technology infrastructure and services to help companies of regulated industries distribute through AI channels. And so they will help build applications and then host infrastructure that provides related services, compliance services, insights, analytical services. And we have partnered with them on our market, effectively. So they serve multiple markets geographically and from a vertical standpoint. And the scope of our partnership is to help them distribute their offering to our customers in P&C insurance within the U.S. market. And then maybe Joseph can add.

Joseph Sanborn

It's a multi-year arrangement. Obviously, there's milestones as the relationship evolves. The economics, I think we were pleased with how the economics work from our partnership basis. As you might imagine, like any partnership, it's not a perfect answer exactly how it compares to current economics, it depends on how much we sell, but I think we feel very good in the opportunity and the partnership.

I think sort of stepping back from the specific arrangement, I think it puts in broader context of our strategy. As we think about bringing more products to carriers, more AI-first products to carriers and agents, how do we go about doing that? Some of those we will certainly be building ourselves when we're doing that. Some of those we'll find companies like Waniwani where it makes sense to partner, and we can do that as well. Sometimes acquisition we involve as well, and investment. So there's a whole range of possibilities, but Waniwani sort of fits into that strategy, just sort of to give you sort of the broader context.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Smilek with JPMorgan.

Unknown Analyst

This is Vignesh on for Bryan. I guess just as you look into 2027, you kind of touched on it, but just a little more color into how the conversations with carriers are kind of shaping up, and if you're seeing any changes in kind of appetite and what that broad-based strength kind of looks like. I know you mentioned 8 of your kind of top 10 customers also grew sequentially. So any color on that would be good.

Joseph Sanborn

Sure. So I guess as we -- maybe we'll start with how are we feeling right now? As I said in our prepared remarks, it's a healthy environment, and we expect that to continue not just into next year. We see it's a relatively early stages of a prolonged soft market cycle. And as you know, in insurance, a soft market cycle is good. The research we reference on our IR deck shows us going into 2029, several analysts. So we feel very good about that backdrop.

As you look at carriers right now, we see carriers broadly healthy, right? They want to grow policies in force. We saw in Q3, we had sequential growth in 8 of our 10 carriers, top 10 carriers. So we feel really good about that. So as we look into next year, we see that dynamic continuing. And so we see this favorable backdrop as being a very good time for EverQuote.

Unknown Analyst

Got it. And then I guess one follow-up on the launch of Luva. Can you kind of talk about maybe how you see monetizing the platform and any sort of maybe milestones to track into next year?

Jayme Mendal

Yes. So there's a number of ways we will monetize. Depending on the carrier relationship, some will be treated as commission, some will be paid effectively for performance on the placement of the policy. And there may be some referral-based models as well. So it will be a hybrid from a monetization standpoint, but that's really based on what suits the carrier for this channel.

So we launched -- we're all, what, 5 or 6 days old at this point. But some of the things that we'll be looking at as we progress into next year is obviously further development of the product in terms of the carrier panel, the capabilities, and then adoption, right? So this is really meant to access a segment of shopper that wants a different kind of comparison experience that is built around conversation, education, like really deeper understanding of their coverage and their policy options.

And it was designed from day 1 around the needs of consumers using LLMs and conversational AI, and built on top of infrastructure that can be leveraged to serve agentic commerce. And so we are going to be looking for arrival specifically through those channels to ensure that the sort of the intended segment that we are trying to serve is actually accessing the product and getting the value.

Operator

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

Jason Kreyer

So can you just talk about the progression of the AI partnerships, just where you are at in terms of rolling out the partnerships that you talked about on the call? And then maybe what kind of a pipeline you are developing to extend to additional AI partners?

Jayme Mendal

Yes. Just to clarify, are you talking on the carrier side or on the platform side?

Jason Kreyer

More on the platform side, like you talked about Meta and Anthropic and OpenAI and stuff.

Jayme Mendal

Yes. So we have relationships across the board. I think that each of these platforms is still trying to learn their way into our category, particularly into like the distribution landscape within insurance. And so we've been having good, productive conversations with them to try and educate them about some of the unique characteristics of our market. And our expectation is that we'll be able to kind of build relationships that will sort of give us certain access and ability to really partner with them over time.

Jason Kreyer

Appreciate that. Maybe one for Joseph. So you called out the expectation for a downtick in VMM Q3 to Q4. You said that would be at least in part driven by the move into agentic. Curious what your perspective is over the next couple of years. Do you think that VMM -- like do you think those will remain stable, or is there potential for upside or downside to VMM as agentic becomes more and more a part of workflows?

Joseph Sanborn

Sure. So great question. So let me give you some context. So when you think about the investments we're making on our AI offerings, one of the areas those investments show up is in the traffic line. So again, different than some of the investments we've talked about, the AI investments previously, where they're showing up in driving efficiencies in the OpEx line, and we're able to drive a lot of increase in leverage through those investments in AI. Different with our AI and the investments we're making in agentic traffic sources. Just like any new traffic source, those new channels do not perform as well in the early days. And again, these particular traffic sources are new. They're still evolving for us and for the industry as a whole.

So as we look at that area, we're very bullish on the opportunity. You are seeing in Q4, we are making investments in these traffic channels, and Luva is part of that. Those will continue into the first part of next year. As we look at the VMM margin, what I would sort of say is I would look at Q4 as a reasonable proxy for next year as sort of a starting point. We will see how it evolves from there. But I guess that gives you a high-level view on it from the VMM margin level.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer.

Jed Kelly

Another nice quarter with a strong free cash flow. I think, ever since I've known you, so it's been almost 10 years, or maybe over 10 years, the company at its core has always been machine learning, AI. So it seems like you've got a pretty big advantage harnessing this technology relative to your competitors. How should we think about -- is there an opportunity here to sort of maybe consolidate the market, gain more distribution, accelerate share gains? How should we see that in terms of using this to maybe drive better unit economics from the carriers or gain more market share? Just can you talk about how we kind of think about your ability to use this solution and just accelerate share and drive better unit economics for the business?

Jayme Mendal

Yes. Thanks, Jed. So to your point, since the company's inception, I think one of the value adds we've been able to bring to carriers is being -- we tend to be kind of at the leading edge within our industry in terms of performance marketing and customer acquisition in digital channels, and through the use of whatever the latest technology and data available is. And that sort of represents -- that has driven the growth that has gotten us to this point.

And now, we are now in the early stages of the evolution to kind of the next phase of things. And I think the same pattern is likely to play out again, and we're really leaning into it, right? We are trying to stay very much in close contact with the AI platforms and with the carriers to help start to bridge the gap between what is a very fragmented, very opaque, and nuanced end market, and these platforms that really are just trying to deliver maximum value to their consumers. And I think if we can maintain a strong position in helping bridge that gap, there's going to be just a tremendous amount of opportunity along the way for us to build products and deliver traffic in a way that really benefits both sides of that marketplace.

Jed Kelly

Got it. And then just around capital allocation, I see you're implementing a share buyback. Get that just given the current valuation. But does it make sense maybe given where valuations are now for some of your other competitors, does it ever make sense to explore more M&A versus buying back stock where it's hard to see if the market's going to give you credit for that? Any thoughts on that?

Joseph Sanborn

Sure. Thanks, Jed. So when we think about capital allocation, it continues to be the same as we've said before, which is there's 3 ways we think about it, right? First is we want to make sure we have a fortress balance sheet. As we think about deepening our partnerships with our carrier partners, they will want to see a partner who's got depth on their balance sheet and will be here. And so I think that certainly is important to us, and it always has been, but even more important now as we think about these longer-term relationships.

The second is M&A and investments, right? We see this as ways -- we did the Waniwani as an example of an investment. We think about M&A as an opportunity as well, and M&A is something certainly we're looking at. But what form it will take, we will look. We will see over time. But again, whether it's investments or M&A, it's all about how we will build our TAM over time as the world evolves into this AI-first world. That'd be the second.

And buybacks, for us, we can do all 3. We have the cash flow generation that gives us the flexibility and capacity to all of the above. On buybacks, we see it as, it's opportunistic utilization. It also helps us offset employee dilution, which happens on an annual basis, and we think that's wholesome.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gregory Peters with Raymond James.

Charles Peters

Well, good afternoon. I guess most of the questions that I had in mind have been asked. But maybe you can just remind me, during your commentary, you talked about the vendor services contract that was non-renewed. Maybe you could just remind me of the details behind that, what's going on there?

Joseph Sanborn

Sure, sure. So this was a relationship we entered about a year ago. It was sort of a new traffic opportunity, a branded traffic opportunity, and it was sort of a multi-year arrangement, a 5-year arrangement. As we've progressed into that arrangement, we realized it was not performing the way we liked. It was also distracting from other traffic operations. So we decided to end that particular contract. We still have a relationship with that brand, and we continue to work with them, but the exact arrangement didn't make sense.

And so it was a 5-year arrangement that we cut it short. We took the charge in the period. It was reflected in our adjustment to net income. This was sort of a very unique kind of situation for us. We had not done something like this before. And it was something we tried, and obviously, we reassessed when it wasn't working the way we expected.

Charles Peters

Can I go back to the SmartCampaigns? I guess, I'm trying to come up with this. I believe you're helping improve the conversion rates, and yet you say you're doing it, and your revenue results reflect it. But I don't know if there's some statistics you can add to your disclosure that will help us understand, hey, when the carriers use our SmartCampaigns, their conversion rates improve by 2x or 3x or something like that. But any color you can provide on that would be helpful.

Jayme Mendal

Yes. We've shared case studies in the past, Greg. I mean, it always depends on where the carrier starting point is. But in some of the case studies we've shared in the past, I think some of the numbers we've used have been double-digit or 20% performance improvements as a result of, in a controlled test, as a result of testing SmartCampaigns against their whatever legacy bidding they were doing prior to that.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Jayme Mendal

Thank you. And thanks, everyone, for joining us. To close out, I want to first thank the EverQuote team for delivering yet another excellent quarter with record financial performance. We continue executing our strategy, deepening customer relationships, and driving further innovation as we lead P&C insurance distribution into the AI era. We look forward to sharing further updates in the coming months as we build on this momentum. Thanks all.

Operator

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