너드월렛(NRDS) 2026년 3분기 실적 발표 콘퍼런스콜: 자동차 보험이 매출에 부담

핵심 요약

• 너드월렛은 2026년 3분기 매출이 전년 동기 대비 11% 증가한 2억 4,000만 달러를 기록했으나, 가이던스 범위인 2억 4,400만~2억 6,000만 달러에는 미치지 못했다고 발표했다.
• 자동차 보험 부문 매출은 전년 동기 대비 1,700만 달러 감소했다. 경영진은 이러한 매출 감소가 너드월렛의 보험사 네트워크 공백 때문이라며, 4분기에도 해당 문제가 해결되기는 어려울 것으로 보인다고 밝혔다.
• 소비자 부문 매출은 학자금 대출, 개인 신용대출 및 예금 계좌 호조에 힘입어 12% 증가한 2억 1,500만 달러를 기록했다. 중소기업(SMB) 부문 매출은 6% 늘어난 2,500만 달러였다.
• 비GAAP 영업이익(NGOI)은 3,000만 달러, 영업이익률은 13%를 기록했다. GAAP 영업이익은 1,900만 달러였으며, 조정 EBITDA는 4,000만 달러(이익률 17%)에 달했다.
• 직전 12개월(TTM) 기준 조정 잉여현금흐름은 전년 동기 대비 51% 증가한 1억 2,900만 달러를 기록했다. 같은 기간 회사는 약 1억 5,100만 달러 규모의 자사주를 매입했다.
• 경영진은 4분기 가이던스로 매출 1억 9,100만~2억 300만 달러, NGOI 900만~1,500만 달러를 제시했다. 연간 NGOI는 8,500만~9,100만 달러에 달할 것으로 예상된다.

주요 재무 데이터

너드월렛은 3분기부터 일부 조기 귀속 주식기준보상을 제외하도록 NGOI 정의를 변경했다. 이번 변경으로 이전 인수 건과 관련된 390만 달러가 다시 가산됐다.

사업 및 운영 실적

소비자 부문 매출 성장은 학자금 대출, 개인 신용대출 및 예금 계좌가 견인했다. 개인 신용대출 매출은 더 많은 대출자를 유치한 마켓플레이스 확장의 혜택을 입었고, 예금 계좌 매출은 파트너사의 예산 증액에 힘입어 증가했다.

다만 이러한 증가세는 자동차 보험 부문 부진으로 일부 상쇄됐다. 경영진은 너드월렛의 보험사 및 제3자 대리점 네트워크 구축이 아직 초기 단계에 머물러 있어 경쟁사 대비 트래픽 수익화 역량이 제한적이라고 설명했다. 충분한 규모와 시장 신뢰도를 확보한 이후에도 보험사와의 직접적인 제휴 관계를 맺는 데는 수 분기가 걸릴 수 있다.

SMB 부문 매출 성장은 견조한 대출 실행 및 갱신이 뒷받침했다. 반면 오가닉 검색 트래픽 감소는 다른 SMB 상품에 지속적인 하방 압력으로 작용했다.

경영진은 3년 반 동안 급격한 감소세가 이어진 끝에 오가닉 검색 규모가 크게 축소됐으나, 최근 악화 속도는 안정화됐다고 밝혔다. 특히 검색 결과 내 AI 요약의 영향으로 교육용 콘텐츠가 큰 타격을 입은 반면, 상품 마켓플레이스는 재고, 동적 가격 책정, 인수 심사 적격성에 의존하기 때문에 상대적으로 영향을 덜 받았다.

너드월렛은 자사의 현재 사업 모델을 쇠퇴하는 검색엔진 최적화(SEO) 중심 콘텐츠 사업, 성장 중인 유료 마케팅 마켓플레이스, 수직 계열화 추진 및 장기적 AI 투자의 결합으로 규정했다. 회사는 유료 마켓플레이스에서 당월 기준 흑자를 창출하는 데 계속 집중하고 있다.

경영진 가이던스

경영진은 자동차 보험 부문의 제약 요인이 2026년 잔여 기간 실적에도 계속 영향을 미칠 것으로 내다봤다. 연간 NGOI 전망치에는 수직 계열화, 중개 및 자문 사업 투자에 따른 1,500만~2,000만 달러의 부정적 영향이 반영됐다.

2027년의 경우 전년 대비 매출 성장을 예상하면서도, 전년 동기의 높은 기저효과로 인해 1분기 성장은 쉽지 않을 것이라고 밝혔다. 또한 회사는 투자금 회수 기간이 긴 수직 계열화 및 AI 관련 프로젝트에 대한 지출을 늘릴 계획이며, 경영진은 이것이 단기적으로 NGOI를 압박할 것으로 예상하고 있다.

리스크 및 주시 사항

• 고객 유치를 위한 대형 보험사 간 경쟁이 심화되는 가운데, 너드월렛의 불완전한 자동차 보험사 네트워크가 수익화를 제약하고 있다.
• 경영진은 추가적인 보험사 제휴 시점을 예측할 수 없으며, 4분기에도 이 문제가 해결되지는 않을 것으로 보고 있다.
• 오가닉 검색은 여전히 압박을 받고 있으며, 특히 AI 생성 검색 요약의 영향을 받는 교육용 콘텐츠의 부진이 이어지고 있다.
• 수직 계열화 및 AI 프로젝트는 현재 유의미한 매출 기여 없이 단기 비용만 늘리고 있다.
• AI 에이전트로부터 유입되는 향후 트래픽 규모는 여전히 불확실하며, 상품 카테고리별로 크게 달라질 수 있다.
• 자동차 보험의 경우, 에이전트 기반 쇼핑으로 인해 고객 이탈, 고객생애가치(LTV), 견적 산출 비용에 대한 우려가 제기될 수 있다.

애널리스트 Q&A 주요 내용

경영진은 너드월렛이 충분한 보험 트래픽을 확보하고 있으며 보험사들과 논의 중이지만, 직접적인 제휴 관계를 맺기까지는 여전히 수 분기가 걸릴 수 있다고 밝혔다. 보험사 및 제3자 대리점 네트워크 확장은 여전히 최우선 과제다.

SEO 의존도 탈피와 관련해 회사는 유료 마케팅, 자체 오디언스 확보 전략, 수직 계열화 서비스 및 AI 프로젝트를 강조했다. 소셜 미디어를 비롯한 기타 고객 유치 채널도 개발 중이며, 분기 내 마켓플레이스 흑자 달성을 기준으로 광고비 대비 수익률(ROAS)을 관리하고 있다.

AI 에이전트 및 개인 금융 도구와 관련해 경영진은 보험, 개인 신용대출, 주택담보대출과 같은 복잡한 카테고리의 경우 실시간 재고, 가격 책정, 적격성 데이터를 갖춘 규정 준수 마켓플레이스가 여전히 필요하다고 강조했다. 너드월렛은 사내 상담사를 위한 AI 보조 소프트웨어에 투자하고 있으며, 공인 상담사가 AI 도구를 통해 상품을 비교·탐색하는 소비자를 지원할 수 있는 방안을 모색 중이다.

경영진은 에이전트 기반 트래픽의 경제성이 아직 확립되지 않았다고 경고했다. 자동차 보험의 경우, 실제 도입 여부는 보험사의 참여도와 AI 기반 쇼핑이 과도한 반복 견적이나 고객 이탈을 유발하는지 여부에 달려 있을 수 있다.

실적 발표 콘퍼런스콜 전문

전체 실적 발표 컨퍼런스 콜 녹취록

경영진 발표

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Robb Ferris, VP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Robb Ferris

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to the NerdWallet Q3 2026 Earnings Call. Joining us today are our Co-Founder and CEO, Tim Chen, and Chief Financial Officer, John Lee. Our press release and shareholder letter are available on our Investor Relations website, and a replay of this update will also be available following the conclusion of today's call. We intend to use our Investor Relations website as a means of disclosing certain material information and complying with disclosure obligations under SEC Regulation FD from time to time. As a reminder, today's call is being webcast live and recorded. Before we begin today's remarks and question-and-answer session, I would like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may relate to future events and expectations and, as such, constitute forward-looking statements. The actual results and performance may differ from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements as a result of various risks and uncertainties, including the risk factors discussed in reports filed or to be filed with the SEC. We urge you to consider these risk factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information provided on this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should be aware that these statements should not be considered a guarantee of future performance.

Furthermore, during this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, except where we are unable, without unreasonable efforts, to calculate certain reconciling items with confidence. With that, I'll now turn it over to Tim Chen, our Co-Founder and CEO. Tim?

Tim Chen

Thanks, Robb. We delivered revenue of $240 million in the third quarter with non-GAAP operating income, or NGOI, of $30 million. Revenue grew 11% year-over-year, but was below our guidance range due to a $17 million year-over-year decrease in auto insurance revenue. As a result, NGOI came in at the low end of our guidance range. We're our own harshest critics, and we are disappointed by our underperformance in auto insurance, especially with the tailwinds the overall industry is experiencing. We're relatively early in the development of our auto insurance carrier network, which has limited our ability to monetize traffic relative to our peers. We are committed to expanding our network of insurance carrier and third-party agent relationships. Unfortunately, this takes time to build, and in hindsight, we were overly optimistic on partnership timelines.

Although we expect these auto insurance dynamics to continue to impact our results for the remainder of the year, we are confident that we will secure these partnerships over time. From an owned audience standpoint, we are excited by and continue to invest in vertical integration plays across our brokering and advisory businesses with payback periods beyond the current year. Our full-year NGOI guidance range includes $15 to $20 million of negative impact associated with these investments, consistent with our outlook from last quarter. AI also gives us new ways to build and deliver services to consumers and SMBs. In our vertically integrated businesses, we are using AI-assisted development to improve the software our in-house agents use to manage customer relationships. Looking ahead, we are exploring ways for our licensed agents to support consumers shopping through AI assistance. And now I will pass it over to John to cover our financial results in more detail.

Jun Lee

Thanks, Tim. As Tim mentioned, total revenue in Q3 was $240 million, up 11% year-over-year, and below our guidance range of $244 to $260 million. Consumer revenue was $215 million, up 12% year-over-year, driven by growth in student loans, personal loans, and deposit accounts. Personal loan revenue increased as we expanded our marketplace to serve more borrowers, and deposit account revenue growth was driven by expanded partner budgets. These increases were partially offset by a $17 million year-over-year decline in auto insurance. SMB revenue was $25 million, up 6% year-over-year. Strong loan originations and renewals supported growth, while organic search traffic continued to pressure other SMB products. Moving to profitability, Q3 GAAP operating income was $19 million and NGOI was $30 million at a 13% margin.

Beginning this quarter, our NGOI definition excludes certain accelerated stock-based compensation. This quarter, this definition change resulted in a $3.9 million add-back to NGOI related to a previous acquisition. Adjusted EBITDA was $40 million at a 17% margin. Turning to cash flow and capital allocation, we generated $129 million of adjusted free cash flow over the trailing 12 months, a 51% year-over-year increase. During this quarter, we repurchased approximately $11 million of Class A common stock, bringing our repurchases over the trailing 12 months to approximately $151 million. Our weighted average diluted share count was 64.7 million, down 16% year-over-year. As of September 30, we had $74 million of cash and cash equivalents, with approximately $57 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization.

Turning to guidance, we expect fourth quarter revenue in the range of $191 to $203 million and NGOI in the range of $9 to $15 million. For the full year, this implies that we expect NGOI in the range of $85 to $91 million. Looking forward, although we're still in the 2027 planning process, we expect to increase revenue year-over-year in 2027, but growing in Q1 will be a challenge as it will be our toughest year-over-year comp. On expenses, we plan to increase our investments in longer payback, vertical integration, and AI-related projects next year. Although these investments will have a negative impact on NGOI in the near term, we believe they will help us build a stronger business and set us up for sustainable long-term revenue growth. Our cash generation gives us flexibility to invest in the business, pursue acquisitions, and return capital to shareholders. We'll continue to weigh these opportunities against one another with a focus on long-term shareholder value. With that, we'll open up for Q&A.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair. Please go ahead.

질의응답

Ralph Schackart

First, just on the SEO headwinds that you called out, can you maybe speak to the relative headwinds you're seeing in Q3 versus what you've experienced through the year? I'm just kind of curious if those headwinds are getting tougher, you're finding workarounds, et cetera. And then second, just on the insurance situation and insurance vertical, what kind of time horizon do you think it would take to build these integrations and get that business sort of back where you expect it to be? Thank you.

Tim Chen

Thanks for the question. So in terms of SEO, organic search has become a fraction of what it was for us after 3.5 years of rapid declines. That being said, the pace of declines has stabilized a bit in recent months. So just as a reminder, educational content has been severely impacted as Google puts AI summaries in search engine results. However, product marketplaces like insurance have been more insulated. I mean, there is an impact, but you can't, for example, summarize a marketplace. There's inventory, dynamic pricing, underwriting eligibility, and a host of other factors that do require that marketplace. So I'd say SEO is much smaller than it was before and it's stabilizing a bit.

In terms of insurance, to give a little more color there, we mentioned in our prepared remarks that our partner network is broad. So we have direct relationships with a few of the top 10 carriers, including one that was running laps around everyone during the last few years coming out of the hard market. So that allowed us to be very competitive in acquiring customers in 2024 and 2025. So what happened this year is the rest of the top 10 carriers are starting to get way more competitive in acquiring customers, which is awesome for the industry. But yes, you have to be able to monetize.

So ultimately we need to get more competitive and yes, carrier relationships take time to build. They don't really want to work with you until you're at a certain volume or have established your reputation in the market. And even after that happens, it can take quarters to establish that direct relationship. So it's a little hard to predict, frustrating for us, but the good news is we have the volume, we're talking, but it's hard to say exactly when we secure those relationships. At some point we'll get it done and it'll be pretty obvious when that happens, but we don't expect to resolve the problem in Q4.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Yusuf Squali with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Robert Zeller

This is Robert on for Yusuf. On organic search, I'm just curious what the strategy is here now to overcome the organic search headwinds because, historically, it's been an organic SEO business. So just curious now in this new era and with search seeing a lot of volatility, what the new strategy is. And then on that front, I'm curious how much traffic comes from AI agents today and where you think this is going to be in the next 5 years, the next 10 years. Thanks.

Jun Lee

Yes, Robert, thank you for that question. We really have a multi-channel marketplace generating a ton of NGOI focused on in-month earnings, but we also have multiple long-term bets that we've been discussing over the last few quarters. So I would break out our business in the following categories, which is, as you mentioned, we have our SEO-led content business. That has been declining, but it's a lot smaller today than it was a couple of years ago. We have our paid marketing marketplace that has been growing meaningfully year-over-year, and you could track the increase in our marketing spend that we disclose. And we've been pretty clear that we are focused on in-month positive profit in that business. And we also have our vertical integration bets, which is negative in NGOI, which is this $15 to $20 million that we've highlighted for 2026 that we're excited about. And it is really a big part of our owned audience strategy.

And then we have our long-term bets. They're more AI-related as you could imagine now, and they're not contributing to the top line today, but do hit our OpEx so far. So I would really think about it in those 4 terms. And going back to your original question, yes, SEO content business, although big, has been declining and it's much smaller today than 2 years ago.

Tim Chen

And on the agentic traffic question, I mean, I think it's a little bit hard to predict where that goes. I think it's going to vary a lot by vertical. As an example, I would speculate that in auto insurance it's going to really come down to whether carriers play ball. And then you have to think about some of the things they're worried about, right? So first is churn. If you have customers who are shopping via an agent, are they going to reshop in 6 months? And that's going to really impact LTV pretty linearly and make it a less attractive channel.

And then the second piece you've got to think about is just like the cost of quoting. I mean, it costs us a few bucks to run a quote, and then it costs the carriers a multiple of that to give a quote from an underwriting perspective. So that ratio of empty calorie quoting versus people who actually become customers is going to matter a lot. And I think without the major carriers playing ball, it's just not really going to function as a market. So that being said, we're investing in it. I think everyone's going to experiment with it and see where it goes. But it's kind of hard to say exactly how big it'll be.

Robert Zeller

Okay, great. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Infante with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Michael Infante

Tim, I'd be curious to just get your perspective, perhaps your conversations with investors, just in terms of how you describe the value prop of the NerdWallet platform today, particularly as some of the LLMs now are obviously coming out with personal finance functionality, probably beginning to recommend products or at least provide sponsored ads at some point in the future. So how do you just think about continuing to make NerdWallet top of mind for consumers over time?

Tim Chen

Yes, I think for us a big piece of this is the marketplace dynamic. Consumers have to often make complex decisions, especially in areas like insurance, personal loans, mortgages, where there's really a lot of risk-based pricing. And in order to do that in a compliant manner, you need a trusted marketplace that has the inventory, the pricing that's going to send you to the partner. And so that's where we're in conversations with both the model companies as well as constantly with consumers. And I think there's an opportunity to do that in an agentic world. Now, exactly what shape that takes, I think it's still being sorted out in terms of how the economics work. I think it's going to be much more liquid in some verticals and not going to change that much in others. We want to be ready for all eventualities there, so we're definitely making the investment today.

Michael Infante

Appreciate that. And John, just for a quick follow-up, I mean, performance marketing in the quarter, I think it rose $35 million year-on-year against, call it, $25 million of incremental revenue. Obviously, I understood that you had the insurance challenges, but still a lot of performance marketing intensity. As we've spoken about how you guys were still trying to optimize the performance marketing playbook, can you just sort of speak to some of the initiatives that you have in place to optimize that channel and how you think about the ability to sort of incrementally spend on performance marketing over time relative to the revenue generation? Thanks again, guys.

Jun Lee

Yes, I mean, it's related to — I mean, the one big area that we just talked about is all the initiatives we're doing on insurance, right? Building a broader carrier network and having a healthy distribution network is an area that we're very focused on. On ROAS, we're highly focused on making sure that we are in-quarter positive in our marketplace. Performance marketing isn't just SEO. There are multiple different channels that we are developing, including social and other channels that we're highly focused on.

And then the other part of this is that in the math that you're doing, Michael, a lot of our NGOI investments are actually flowing through there as well. So some of the lift you're not seeing there is because of the NGOI investments — sorry, the IR investments that we're making. A lot of that $15 to $20 million is also flowing there, which does show like it's not being efficient, just to factor that in as you're thinking about our efficiency going forward.

Michael Infante

Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions. I will now pass back to management for closing remarks.

Tim Chen

Thanks, everyone, for your questions. Our mission of providing clarity for all of life's financial decisions continues to guide us. I want to thank our Nerds for their dedication to that mission and our shareholders for your continued support. We're encouraged by the progress we're making and excited about the opportunity ahead, earning the trust of the consumers and small businesses we serve and keeping them coming back to NerdWallet.

Operator

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

This live transcript is auto-generated without human intervention or review.