NerdWallet (NRDS) 2026年第三季度业绩电话会：车险业务拖累营收

核心要点

• NerdWallet公布2026年第三季度营收为2.4亿美元，同比增长11%，但低于其2.44亿美元至2.6亿美元的业绩指引区间。
• 汽车保险业务营收同比减少1700万美元。管理层将这一降幅归因于NerdWallet承保商网络存在短板，并表示该问题不太可能在第四季度得到解决。
• 在学生贷款、个人贷款和存款账户业务的带动下，消费者业务营收同比增长12%至2.15亿美元。中小企业（SMB）业务营收增长6%至2500万美元。
• 非GAAP营业利润（NGOI）为3000万美元，利润率为13%。GAAP营业利润为1900万美元，调整后EBITDA达到4000万美元，利润率为17%。
• 过去12个月的调整后自由现金流同比增长51%至1.29亿美元。公司在同期回购了约1.51亿美元的股票。
• 管理层给出的第四季度营收指引为1.91亿美元至2.03亿美元，非GAAP营业利润（NGOI）指引为900万美元至1500万美元。全年非GAAP营业利润（NGOI）预计为8500万美元至9100万美元。

关键财务数据

自第三季度起，NerdWallet调整了其非GAAP营业利润（NGOI）的定义，将某些加速确认的股权激励费用剔除。此项调整加回了与此前一笔收购相关的390万美元。

业务与运营表现

消费者业务营收的增长主要受学生贷款、个人贷款和存款账户推动。个人贷款业务得益于平台市场规模扩大并服务了更多借款人，而存款账户营收增长则源于合作机构预算增加。

这些增长被汽车保险业务的部分下滑所抵消。管理层表示，NerdWallet在拓展保险承保商和第三方代理网络方面仍处于初期阶段，这限制了其相较于同行的流量变现能力。即使在达到足够的规模和市场信誉之后，与承保商建立直接合作关系通常也需要几个季度的时间。

中小企业（SMB）业务营收增长受到贷款发放和续贷强劲表现的支撑。自然搜索流量的下滑则继续令其他中小企业产品承压。

管理层表示，在经历长达3.5年的快速下滑后，自然搜索流量规模现已大幅缩水，不过恶化速度近期已趋于企稳。搜索结果中的AI摘要对教育类内容造成的冲击尤为明显，而金融产品交易平台受到的影响相对较小，因为此类业务依赖库存、动态定价以及核保资质审核。

NerdWallet将其当前的业务模式描述为由以下几部分构成的组合：处于下滑中的以SEO为主导的内容业务、持续增长的付费营销交易平台、垂直整合举措以及长期AI投资。公司仍将重点放在确保其付费交易平台在当月实现盈利。

管理层业绩指引

管理层预计，汽车保险业务受到的限制将在2026年剩余时间内继续对业绩造成负面影响。全年非GAAP营业利润（NGOI）展望中，已计入因投资垂直整合、经纪及咨询业务而产生的1500万美元至2000万美元负面影响。

展望2027年，管理层预计营收将实现同比增长，但指出受高基数影响，第一季度的增长将面临挑战。此外，公司计划增加对回报周期较长的垂直整合及AI相关项目的投入，管理层预计这将在短期内对非GAAP营业利润（NGOI）构成压力。

风险与关注要点

• 随着越来越多大型承保商加入争夺客户的行列，NerdWallet尚未完善的汽车保险承保商网络正在限制其变现能力。
• 管理层无法预测新增承保商合作伙伴的具体时间表，且预计该问题在第四季度无法得到解决。
• 自然搜索流量依然承压，特别是受AI生成搜索摘要影响的教育类内容。
• 垂直整合和AI项目推高了短期支出，但目前尚未贡献实质性营收。
• 来自AI智能体的未来流量规模仍具不确定性，且不同产品类别之间可能存在重大差异。
• 在汽车保险领域，智能体驱动的搜索比价购物可能会引发对客户流失率、客户全生命周期价值以及报价生成成本的担忧。

分析师问答环节要点

管理层表示，NerdWallet拥有充足的保险流量，目前正与承保商展开洽谈，但建立直接合作关系仍需数个季度方能达成。扩大承保商和第三方代理网络仍是重中之重。

针对摆脱对SEO依赖的转型，公司重点提及了付费营销、自有受众运营策略、垂直整合服务以及AI项目。社交媒体等其他获客渠道也正在开发中，广告支出回报率（ROAS）的管理目标是确保交易平台在当季实现盈利。

关于AI智能体与个人理财工具，管理层认为，保险、个人贷款和抵押贷款等复杂品类仍需要具备实时库存、动态定价和核保资质审核数据的合规交易平台。NerdWallet正在为其内部代理人投资开发AI辅助软件，并探索持牌代理人如何为通过AI工具进行消费决策的用户提供支持。

管理层提醒称，智能体流量的经济效益模式尚未明确。在汽车保险领域，这一模式的普及可能取决于承保商的参与度，以及AI驱动的购物比价是否会导致过度的重复报价或客户流失。

财报电话会议完整实录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

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.

分析师问答

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.