NerdWallet, Inc.

Q2 total revenue was $197 million, up 6% year over year. Consumer revenue was $175 million, up 8% year over year, while SMB revenue was $22 million, down 11% year over year. GAAP operating income was $7 million; non-GAAP operating income (NGOI) was $12 million, or a 6% margin, and adjusted EBITDA was $23 million. Trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow rose 100% year over year to $141 million, a new record, and the company ended Q2 with $62 million of cash and cash equivalents. For Q3, management guided revenue to $244 million-$260 million and NGOI to $29 million-$37 million. For full-year 2026, NGOI guidance was narrowed to $90 million-$105 million, and that includes a $15 million-$20 million NGOI impact from customer acquisition spend with payback periods beyond the current year; at the midpoint, this implies about a 5x year-over-year increase in that spend.

Tim Chen framed the quarter as part of a larger AI transition that is changing how consumers find answers to money questions. He emphasized building owned audiences through vertical integration, better registration, and re-engagement, and said the company is confident because of its trusted brand, large audience, healthy financials, and team. He also said success in brokering and advisory vertical integration is giving management confidence to invest based on IRR targets, with more emphasis on long-term value creation.

John Lee highlighted the quarter’s financial performance and the shift in the profitability mix. He said Consumer revenue benefited from personal loans and deposit accounts, while SMB revenue fell due mainly to organic search declines in SMB products; he also noted the auto insurance carrier relationship has stabilized but not fully recovered. On capital allocation, he pointed to $141 million of trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow, $23 million of share repurchases in the quarter, $160 million repurchased over the last 12 months, $62 million of cash and cash equivalents, and $67 million remaining on the buyback authorization. He added that the company does not expect to be a federal corporate taxpayer in 2026 and expects normalized corporate taxes to resume in Q2 or Q3 2027.

Analysts pressed management on why now is the right time to scale incremental investment fivefold and how long paybacks will take. Lee जवाबed that recent vertical-integration cohorts are showing high retention and recurring revenue, and that the company is treating these investments as LTV-to-CAC decisions with IRR and payback as guardrails against other uses of capital such as free cash flow generation and M&A. Questions also focused on LLM-driven traffic and SEO headwinds; Tim Chen said traffic from LLMs is converting well, intent is high, but the channel is still small. On SMB, management said the real pressure is in non-loan products, while SMB loans are growing year over year and continue to be an area of investment.