NerdWallet (NRDS) 2026年第三季財報電話會議：車險拖累營收

重點摘要

• NerdWallet 公布 2026 年第三季營收為 2.4 億美元，年增 11%，但低於其 2.44 億至 2.6 億美元的財測區間。
• 汽車保險營收年減 1,700 萬美元。管理層將此下滑歸因於 NerdWallet 合作保險公司網絡的缺口，並表示該問題不太可能在第四季解決。
• 在學生貸款、個人貸款和存款帳戶帶動下，消費金融營收成長 12% 至 2.15 億美元。中小企業營收則成長 6% 至 2,500 萬美元。
• 非 GAAP 營業利益（NGOI）為 3,000 萬美元，利潤率為 13%。GAAP 營業利益為 1,900 萬美元，調整後 EBITDA 則達 4,000 萬美元，利潤率為 17%。
• 過去 12 個月調整後自由現金流年增 51% 至 1.29 億美元。該公司在同期回購了約 1.51 億美元的股票。
• 管理層預測第四季營收為 1.91 億至 2.03 億美元，NGOI 為 900 萬至 1,500 萬美元。全年 NGOI 預計為 8,500 萬至 9,100 萬美元。

關鍵財務數據

自第三季起，NerdWallet 變更其 NGOI 定義以排除特定加速認列的股份基礎給付費用。該變更加回了與先前收購案相關的 390 萬美元。

業務與營運表現

消費金融營收成長由學生貸款、個人貸款及存款帳戶帶動。個人貸款營收受惠於市集擴大並服務更多借款人，而存款帳戶營收則因合作夥伴預算增加而增長。

這些增長被汽車保險業務部分抵銷。管理層表示，NerdWallet 在拓展合作保險公司與第三方代理商網絡方面仍處於初期階段，相較於同業限制了其流量變現的能力。即便在達到足夠規模與市場信譽之後，與保險公司建立直接合作關係通常仍需要數個季度的時間。

中小企業營收成長獲得強勁的貸款發起與續約動能支撐。自然搜尋流量則持續對其他中小企業產品帶來壓力。

管理層表示，歷經 3.5 年的快速下滑後，自然搜尋規模現已大幅縮小，不過近期的惡化步調已趨於穩定。教育性內容受到搜尋結果中 AI 摘要的衝擊尤為嚴重，而產品市集則因仰賴庫存、動態定價與核保資格審查，受到的影響相對較小。

NerdWallet 將其目前模式描述為：持續下滑的 SEO 主導內容業務、不斷成長的付費行銷市集、垂直整合計畫以及長期 AI 投資的結合。該公司仍專注於確保其付費市集能產生單月正獲利。

管理層財務預測

管理層預期汽車保險的限制將在 2026 年剩餘時間內持續影響業績。全年 NGOI 展望包含了投資垂直整合、經紀與諮詢業務帶來的 1,500 萬至 2,000 萬美元負面影響。

展望 2027 年，管理層預期營收將實現年增長，但表示第一季因比較基期較高，成長將面臨挑戰。該公司亦計劃增加對回本週期較長的垂直整合及 AI 相關專案的支出，管理層預計這將在短期內對 NGOI 造成壓力。

風險與關注事項

• 隨著更多大型保險公司競逐客戶，NerdWallet 不完整的合作保險公司網絡正限制其變現能力。
• 管理層無法預測新增保險公司合作夥伴的時間點，且預計該問題不會在第四季獲得解決。
• 自然搜尋持續承壓，特別是受 AI 生成搜尋摘要影響的教育性內容。
• 垂直整合與 AI 專案正在推升短期支出，且目前尚未貢獻顯著營收。
• 來自 AI 代理的未來流量規模仍具不確定性，且在不同產品類別之間可能存在顯著差異。
• 在汽車保險領域，代理驅動的購物模式可能會引發市場對客戶流失、終身價值以及報價生成成本的擔憂。

分析師問答重點

管理層表示，NerdWallet 擁有足夠的保險流量，並正在與保險公司洽談，但直接合作關係可能仍需數季時間才能建立完成。擴大合作保險公司與第三方代理商網絡仍是當務之急。

關於擺脫對 SEO 依賴的轉型，該公司強調了付費行銷、自有受眾策略、垂直整合服務及 AI 專案。社群與其他獲客管道亦在拓展中，其廣告投資報酬率管理目標為確保當季市集實現獲利。

針對 AI 代理與個人理財工具，管理層認為保險、個人貸款及房貸等複雜類別，仍需要具備即時庫存、定價與核保資格數據的合規市集。NerdWallet 正為其內部代理人投資 AI 輔助軟體，並探索持照代理人如何協助透過 AI 工具購物的消費者。

管理層提醒，AI 代理流量的經濟效益仍未明朗。在汽車保險方面，普及程度可能取決於保險公司的參與意願，以及 AI 導向的購物是否會導致過多的重複報價或客戶流失。

完整財報電話會議記錄

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

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.

分析師問答

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.

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