• Revenue down 11% (but up 6% YOY)1

• Cash and equivalents up 10%

• EBITDA down 49%

• Liabilities down 20%

• Shareholder equity down 3%

Five Observations

1. NerdWallet Acquired a Student Loan Marketplace

They acquired College Finance Company, LLC back in February for $17.2MM in cash. They mention that the acquisition is a marketplace that connects borrowers with lenders.

Key Takeaway: NerdWallet is investing into expanding their Student Loan offering.

2. SMB is down 11% YOY

NerdWallet’s SMB category appears to be primarily business loans.

“SMB revenue of $22.1 million was down 11% year-over-year, primarily due to continued pressures in organic search traffic, partially offset by an increase in business loan originations.”

Key Takeaway: Demand for Small Business loans is decreasing.

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3. Personal Loans is expanding

From the earnings announcement:

“In personal loans, we expanded our marketplace to serve a broader range of borrowers by adding lenders and delivering more offers to near-prime consumers, which contributed to a $12 million year-over-year increase in personal loans revenue in the second quarter. As we build relationships with more lenders in this market, we are able to provide credit alternatives that can result in meaningfully better financial outcomes for near-prime consumers.”

The growth seems to be primarily driven by expanding into subprime as well as near-prime.

From the shareholder letter:

“We are making it easier for consumers to find the financial products that best meet their needs, and one of the areas where this is having the greatest impact is in the below-prime segment of the personal loans market.”

NerdWallet made their bones on Prime and Super-prime, so it’s not surprising to see them expand to grow their addressable market. To clarify credit ranges, the CFPB defines Subprime as 580-619 and Near-prime as 620-659.

Key Takeaway: NerdWallet is going downmarket to expand beyond Prime credit

4. Credit Card revenue is declining

From the announcement:

“Credit card revenue was down $8.6MM YOY primarily due to continued pressures in organic search traffic that have persisted for multiple quarters.”

I think it’s interesting that they specify that organic traffic has been dropping for many months. This indicates consumers aren’t looking for more credit cards.

If you compare that to these charts on consumer debt and delinquencies, it seems like a lot of Americans are struggling. It would make sense that card volume is down while Personal Loans (often used to consolidate cards) are up.

Key Takeaway: Consumer finance is shifting with higher debt and delinquency

5. In-house insurance policies nearly doubled

NerdWallet launched this initiative in March 2025 so it’s not a shock that it would have rapid growth in the early stages.

“Policies sold through our in-house insurance agency, NerdWallet Insurance Experts, nearly doubled quarter over quarter as our agents ramped their productivity. We continue to add licensed agents while deepening technology integrations with auto insurance carriers in order to build longer-term, recurring relationships with consumers.”

What’s interesting is that they give a hint about the motivations behind why they started selling insurance in-house.

From CFO Jun Lee on the earnings call

“Our largest auto insurance carrier relationship has stabilized, but not yet returned to levels seen earlier in the year. As we continue to explore ways to grow with that carrier, we remain focused on scaling with other leading auto insurance carriers and expanding our in-house insurance agency, an example of our growth and owned audiences.”

Key Takeaway: Their largest auto buyer is spending less, but NerdWallet is growing in-house policies

Final Notes

NerdWallet is aggressively repurchasing its shares. I don’t give stock-buying advice here, but it does seem a strong signal that NerdWallet is buying back shares at this rate. There are a number of reasons companies repurchase shares, but one of the most common is if they feel the stock is undervalued.

“The remaining share repurchase authorization under the Repurchase Program is $67.0 million as of June 30, 2026.”

Finally, NerdWallet raised guidance for Q3

“Revenue is expected in the range of 244-260 million, up 17% year-over-year at the midpoint”

Share

• Revenue up 8%

• Shareholder equity down 39%

• Cash and equivalents down 33%

• Sales/Marketing expense up 28%

• Media Margin1 up 25%

• International Revenue up 12%

• Assets up 4%

• Liabilities up 14%

Five Observations

1. Fluent’s Goodwill Has Zero Value

File this under “not something you see every day”. It’s pretty rare for a company to have zero value for its goodwill on the balance sheet. I mentioned a few weeks ago that Angi recently took a 25% impairment to their Goodwill value, but zero is surprising.

Basically, what Fluent is saying is that all of their value is tied to revenue/profit, and there is no intrinsic value in the brand beyond that.

“As of June 30, 2026 and December 31, 2025, there was no remaining goodwill”

Key Takeaway: The Fluent brand doesn’t hold any value in the market.

2. Fluent Divested Winopoly at a Loss

Fluent acquired a 50% interest in Winopoly in April 2020 for $2.53MM. They fully acquired the company in September 2021 for an additional $7.875MM2. That puts the total price over $10.4MM.

They sold Winopoly to InsureCo for $3MM. Five years after purchase, they sold for less than 30% of the original purchase price.

In the announcement, Fluent says they made the divestiture to focus more on Commerce Media Solutions. That’s a pretty major haircut to sell off a business unit.

In their filings, Fluent reported Winopoly under the line item “Call Solutions”.

“Winopoly is a contact center operation, which serves as a marketplace that matches consumers sourced by Fluent and other third parties with advertiser clients.”

Mention I reached out to Investor Relations to validate the total.

Key Takeaway: Fluent thought it was worth taking a loss on business unit divestiture to focus the business.

3. Fluent is shifting focus from O&O to Commerce Media Solutions

Launched in 2023, Commerce Media Solutions is primarily serving as an adtech middleman, serving ads and powering paths on publisher sites. The growth curve is genuinely impressive in such a short timeframe.

I haven’t used or seen the product, but in the descriptions, it sounds like a competitor to Rokt as a provider of post-sale advertising.

From the 10Q:

“With the difficulties in sourcing traffic for the owned and operated digital media properties (”O&O Sites”), the Company shifted its strategic focus toward scaling its Commerce Media Solutions business. Commerce Media Solutions has demonstrated growth and operates under a different economic model that reduces exposure to certain media sourcing risks. However, it continues to represent an evolving component of the Company’s business and the continued success of Commerce Media Solutions depends on the Company’s ability to continue to onboard and retain media partners, achieve favorable economics under long-term agreements, and maintain advertiser demand, of which there can be no assurance.”

Key Takeaway: Fluent has shifted its primary focus to providing adtech.

4. Fluent is still recovering from their FTC Issues

In 2023, the FTC ordered Fluent to pay a $2.5MM civil penalty. Fluent cites this is a challenge to maintaining traffic.

“In recent years, however, we experienced challenges maintaining traffic volume to our O&O Sites due to changes in our ad serving and media sourcing standards following the Federal Trade Commission (”FTC”) inquiry. We have since taken steps to diversify our traffic sources and expandvour ad network beyond our O&O Sites, including the strategic transition to our Commerce Media Solutions business.”

From the FTC:

“Under a proposed order, Fluent will be required to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty and be banned from engaging in, assisting, or facilitating robocalls. It also limits lead generation on Fluent’s job websites to email marketing and prohibits Fluent from misrepresenting any material facts about rewards, job opportunities, or the collection and sale of consumers’ personal information. The order also requires Fluent to establish systems to monitor its own advertising and that of its affiliates and comply with comprehensive disclosure requirements related to the collection of consumers’ consent to the sale of their information. Finally, the order requires Fluent to delete all previously collected consumer information.”

Just to take a step back, prior to the FTC issues, Fluent’s peak revenue was over $361MM

in 2022. Things have obviously changed since then, and they’re rebuilding under new circumstances. In 2025, their total annual revenue was $209MM.

Key Takeaway: Fluent’s business has been radically transformed since their FTC civil penalty.

5. Fluent Cites a History of Not Meeting Forecasts

I’ve honestly never seen this before in an SEC filing. Fluent specifically mentions that they have a track record of not hitting their own forecasts.

From the 10-Q:

“Based on the Company’s forecast, management expects to have sufficient liquidity over the next twelve months from the date of filing. However, the Company does have a history of not meeting its forecast and any substantial deviations from such forecasts could adversely affect the Company’s liquidity and ability to access funding.”

Key Takeaway: Fluent didn’t provide guidance for Q3, but did say they expect double-digit growth.

A primer on Fluent

I imagine some of our readers may not be familiar, so I wanted to give a quick overview. Founded in 2010, Fluent originally started as a co-registration path (this blog has a decent, though fairly negative overview of what that is). They’ve diversified into other media and technology areas and made several acquisitions, including Q-Interactive, AdParlor, and others.

Going Public Timeline

• 2015: IDI acquired Fluent.

• 2016: IDI changed its name to Cogint

• March 2018: Cogint spun off its analytics & risk management into a company called Red Violet

• April 2018: Cogint rebrands as Fluent and goes public on the Nasdaq.

Fluent Stats

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• Revenue up 9%

• Mortgage revenue up 31%

• Rental income up 14%

• Other revenue up 27%

• Sales/Marketing expenses up 19%

• Mortgage loans held for sale up 37%

• Liabilities up 25%

• Adjusted EBITDA down 23%

  

1. Zillow had a big round of layoffs just before earnings

They let go of 7% of their workforce, around 500 people, to “move faster and operate more efficiently”. Zillow announced this on August 4th, the day before their earnings call.

Total cost is estimated at $59-64MM, with $36MM of that recognized in Q2. If you break down the total amount per impacted employee, that comes to $118K-$128K per person (though that includes cash as well as benefits and share-based comp, etc.)

Geekwire has a pretty thorough analysis here. And here’s how Zillow described the changes.

From the Geekwire Piece:

Zillow cut about 200 jobs in January, but characterized those as performance-related and part of its annual review cycle. It had 7,058 employees as of March 31, down just 10 positions from the end of 2025, meaning it had largely backfilled January’s cuts before Tuesday.

From the 10K:

“On August 4, 2026, Zillow Group announced a plan to reduce its headcount by approximately 7% of its employees. This headcount reduction is designed to allow the Company to move faster and operate more efficiently, including with a more sustainable cost structure. As a result, the Company currently estimates that it will incur pre-tax restructuring costs totaling approximately $59 million to $64 million related to employee termination costs, of which an estimated $36 million to $38 million are expected to be future cash expenditures associated with severance payments, and the remaining amount is expected to be accelerated share-based compensation expense. For the three months ended June 30, 2026, Zillow Group recorded $36 million in restructuring costs related to these employee termination costs and expects that the remainder of the restructuring costs will be recognized during the three months ending September 30, 2026”

Key Takeaway: Companies make layoffs regardless of financial performance.

2. Zillow believes they’re now a top 25 lender

They’re generating serious loan volume.

From their shareholder letter:

“We continue to deliver double-digit adoption of Zillow Home Loans in the integrated experience thanks to a strong value proposition: convenience and competitive lending terms when compared with other industry-leading mortgage originators. Zillow Home Loans is now a top-25 purchase lender in the country.”

They did include a disclaimer that the designation is based on their internal data and estimates, but I don’t see any reason to doubt the accuracy here.

“Mortgages revenue increased 75% year over year to $84 million in Q2, primarily due to a 95% increase in purchase loan origination volume to $2.2 billion.”

Key Takeaway: Zillow Home Loans is becoming a major competitor in the mortgage space.

3. Rental Revenue is growing faster than For Sale

Zillow believes they can get rental revenue over a billion dollars.

“In Q2, we had 2.8 million average monthly active rental listings and an all-time high of 79,000 multifamily properties. Rentals revenue was up 31% year over year in Q2, with multifamily revenue up 42% — growth that reflects the compounding value of what we’ve built on both sides of this marketplace.”

“Rentals is one of our most compelling growth opportunities, with a clear path toward $1 billion and beyond in annual Rentals revenue.”

Key Takeaway: It makes sense that rentals would grow faster given how massive Zillow is in For-Sale, but also indicates that their efforts to diversify are working.

4. Their revenue is relatively diversified

Yes, it’s mostly all related to home purchase/rentals and loans around that, but I had forgotten about a few of their acquisitions over the years.

“Our portfolio of affiliates, subsidiaries and brands includes Zillow, Zillow Premier Agent, Zillow Home Loans, our mortgage origination operations and affiliate lender, Zillow Rentals, Zillow New Construction, Trulia, StreetEasy, Out East, HotPads, Follow Up Boss, ShowingTime, dotloop and Zillow Closing.”

Key Takeaway: While hyper-focused on the housing market, Zillow is more than just a website to find homes.

5. Traffic was down slightly YOY

Q2 traffic was down about 2% year-over-year, though visitors were actually up 11% quarter-over-quarter.

“Traffic to Zillow Group’s mobile apps and sites in Q2 was down 2% year over year to 239 million average monthly unique users. Visits during Q2 were down 2% year over year to 2.5 billion”

Zillow is suggesting they’re down less than others in the sector, citing Comscore in the Shareholder Letter:

“According to Comscore, which tracks growth trends across the residential real estate category, Zillow’s average monthly unique visitors in Q2 outperformed the category, which saw a decline overall amid the rise in mortgage rates. Zillow is the only large company in the category to consistently expand its reach with the real estate audience over the past seven quarters.”

Key Takeaway: Zillow seems to be weathering the complex housing market well.

Zillow Data

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• Revenue up 2%

• EBITDA up 3%

• Cash and equivalents up 8%

• EPS up 6%

• Assets up 5%

• Home and Renters revenue up 25%

Five Observations:

1. EverQuote has been growing steadily

See chart from their earnings presentation - pretty solid uptick in growth. The Insurance sector had a bumpy run during COVID and for a bit after.

EverQuote now believes they’re close to hitting a billion a year in revenue.

From Joseph Sanborn, CFO

“We are executing well and remain confident in our ability to achieve $1 billion in annual revenues on the timeline we initially communicated to investors last November, while also generating strong cashflow.”

Key Takeaway: With $385MM in revenue already this year, EverQuote seems poised to top one billion dollars in annual revenue

2. They’re expanding beyond Auto

Auto Insurance is the undisputed king of volume and revenue in lead generation. It makes sense that they’d try to scale up the other insurance trades

Home and Renters insurance made $23MM of revenue in Q2, up from $18.5MM in Q1.

Key Takeway: While Auto remains the majority of revenue, EverQuote is having success growing Home and Renters insurance.

3. EverQuote gave some color on their AI usage

I doubt any companies on the index don’t mention AI in every announcement. That said, it’s refreshing that EverQuote offers some explanation about how they use AI in their business.

Per CEO Jayme Mendal:

“Our SmartCampaigns AI bidding solution continues to scale, supporting customers’ aggressive customer acquisition goals by helping them deploy marketing budgets more effectively and efficiently. 7 of our top 10 carriers now use SmartCampaigns”

And then continuing on to other applications:

“To name just a few, recent examples include AI Agents designed to emulate human shopper personas and identify friction points in our web experiences; as well as upgrades to our AI traffic bidding platform, which put us on a path to increasingly agentic traffic operations.”

Key Takeaway: 70% of their top carriers are using an AI bidding solution

4. They’re well capitalized

EverQuote ended Q2 with $192.3 million in cash (and equivalents) and no outstanding debt. They also set a new record for adjusted EBITDA at $30.1MM.

Also interesting to note that they listed $138.2MM of advertising expense in Q2. That represents 70.84% of the quarterly revenue, which is fairly flat relative to Q1. That suggests EverQuote has an estimated gross margin of 29% (or what some people call Media Margin).

Key Takeaway: EverQuote has a lot of cash with a steadily growing business.

5. Their Q3 forecast is up 17% YOY

From Joseph Sanborn, CFO

“We expect revenue to be between $198.0 and $208.0 million. Representing 17% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.

And we expect Adjusted EBITDA to be between $28.0 and 31.0 million. Representing 18% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.”

Key Takeaway: EverQuote expects business to increase in the near-term

Everquote Q2 26

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• Revenue up 4% but missed expectations by 2.8%

• EBITDA up 23%, beat expectations by 17.7%

• Lead volume up 9%

• Acquired Pros up 17%

• Monthly Active Pros up 1%

• Revenue Per Lead down 5%

• Cash down 23%

• Share repurchase up 276%

Five Observations

1. Angi’s Large Pro Revenue Grew 20%

Angi calls this “Large Pro and National Partnership” revenue. Think Enterprise and franchise accounts. Large Pro is someone with an annual spend over $50,000 per year.

“National Partnerships are broader commercial relationships between Angi and franchisors, trade associations or other Pro networks through which their franchisees, members or affiliated Pros participate on Angi’s platform.”

Key Takeaway: Their leads are working well for larger companies and franchises with sales/marketing teams and robust follow-up strategies. Presumably more of their churn is coming from the SMB category.

2. Angi acquired 27K pros last quarter

Up from 23K in Q1. In 2025, they averaged 20-25K per quarter. In 2024 that number ranged between 27-40K. While signing 9,000 deals a month is impressive, it’s actually well below previous levels.

Key Takeaway: While they’re still onboarding a lot of new pros, growth has slowed over the last two years.

3. Avg Monthly Pros is down sharply

Average monthly pros was 157K in Q1 24 and has dropped steadily since, resting at 106K this quarter. That’s a 32% drop in clients over the last 9 quarters.

Churn was up to 6% from 5% in the prior quarter. Active users were actually up 1,000 QOQ, but that implies that they also churned 26,000 pros in Q2. That number has toggled between 4.5-6.8% over the last 8 quarters

How Angi defines active pros (from the 10-Q)

Average Monthly Active Pros – the average number of Pros per month that (i) received Leads, (ii) were presented on a Service Request where they agreed to receive a Lead if selected, (iii) requested to be connected to a consumer on a Service Request, or (iv) accepted an offer to complete a pre-priced Service Request.

Key Takeaway: Churn is relatively flat, but Angi has gotten much smaller over the last two years

4. Angi reduced the mix of third-party leads

In their filings, Angi differentiates revenue, requests, and leads between Proprietary and Network. In 2023, 28% of their leads were network and in Q2 that number was only 8%. I’ve heard rumblings in the past of them shrinking their publisher network.

From their Q1 filing:

“U.S. Revenue decreased 5%, due primarily to a 56% decrease in Network Revenue, reflecting the continued shift in consumer traffic following the homeowner choice transition implemented in January 2025, partially offset by a 7% increase in Proprietary Revenue driven by increased advertising investment in paid Proprietary marketing channels.”

Given the timing it’s likely that the push for more direct traffic was related to the FCCs 1:1 consent rule that was vacated shortly before taking effect in January of 2025. It’s also possible that Angi sees higher quality and lower contractor churn with more internal media, but that’s purely speculative.

5. Angi took a Goodwill Impairment this quarter.

The total was $235MM. Goodwill is the intangible asset made up of brand reputation, customer relationships, and IP. I don’t see any previous impairment taken from 2023 to today, so this is a new development.

Goodwill must be tested for impairment annually.

Mathematically, what Angi is saying is that their reputational value just went down 25%.

Key Takeaway: Angi is signaling that its brand value has decreased

Finally, I thought it would be illustrative to include a visual of their stock price over the last 5 years.

Who is/isn’t included on the Index

As I’ve previously outlined, the focus is on companies that make money through lead generation. I ignore companies like Google and Facebook because they supply platforms that can generate traffic, and they also charge on a CPM/CPC model.

Yelp is also not on the list for similar reasons, though they might get included at some point in the future.

Zillow - You may not think of them as a lead generation company, but ultimately they get paid as a result of people filling out forms, so I chose to include them.

Zeta Global - Historically, I’ve considered them a lead gen company, but they’re positioning themselves as a tech and AI business. It’s a bit outside my purview to push back on that, and their filings only break down revenue by US vs. International and Direct Platform vs. Integrated Platform.

Gen Digital - While they own MoneyLion, they also own Norton Antivirus. Unfortunately, it can get wonky reporting on segments vs. whole businesses.

Porch - They seem to have pivoted into Insurance and Home Warranty.

A note on Employee Counts

Companies are only required to disclose the number of employees on the annual filing or 10-K. It is not required on quarterly reports (10-Q), so the data will generally have a bit of a lag. I use employee numbers for general analysis like revenue per employee, etc. Zillow also had a layoff in August of ~500 employees, which is not reflected in the tally from 12/31/25.

• Revenue up 8%

• EPS up 254%

• Cash on hand up 26%

• Home Services Revenue up 24%

• Insurance revenue flat

• Gen/Admin expense down 19%

• Selling/Marketing expense up 20%

• Shareholder equity up 4%

Five Observations

1. The HomeBuddy Acquisition price was ~$190MM**.

The actual/final “price” can fluctuate based on contingencies, but that’s basically what QuinStreet paid. The deal was structured as $115MM in cash and $75MM in stock. Personally, I was a bit surprised to see them go into debt to fund the purchase. Clearly they thought this was a strategic enough acquisition to finance it.

Key Takeaway: QuinStreet is investing heavily in Home Services, and seems to believe the HomeBuddy acquisition was highly strategic.

2. HomeBuddy generated $141MM of annual revenue

(In the 12 months before the acquisition). This implies a revenue multiple of 1.35X. EBITDA multiple was around 6.33x.

From the acquisition Press Release announcing the deal closing on 1/5/26:

“QuinStreet expects the acquisition of HomeBuddy to be accretive to its adjusted EBITDA and EPS, adding an expected $30 million or more to adjusted EBITDA in the first twelve months following closing of the transaction, with significantly more margin dollars expected to be added as the Company implements identified synergies from the combination.”

Key Takeaway: Large acquisitions are still possible for those who achieve scale.

3. Financial Services is their largest revenue category.

The category includes Insurance, Credit Cards, Personal Loans, and Banking. Revenue was flat QOQ,

Key Takeaway: Home Services is driving the revenue growth.

4. QuinStreet broke Quarterly and FY records

From the press release:

• Record quarterly Revenue of $373.9 million, up 43% year-over-year

• Record quarterly Net Income of $19.1 million, up 496% year-over-year

• Record quarterly Adj. EBITDA of $41.4 million, up 87% year-over-year

• Record Full Fiscal Year Revenue of $1.3 billion, up 18% year-over-year

• Record Full Fiscal Year Net Income of $81.2 million, up 1,626% year-over-year

• Record Full Fiscal Year Adj. EBITDA of $112.5 million, up 38% year-over-year

Not surprisingly, they’re predicting a strong FY27.

From the earnings call:

“Turning to our outlook, we expect revenue in fiscal Q1 to be between $370 and $380 million, implying 31% growth year-over-year at the midpoint of the range. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $38 and $40 million, implying 90% growth, a 10.4% margin and a 320 basis-point margin expansion year-over-year at the midpoint of the range.”

Key Takeaway: With a strong finish to their fiscal year, QuinStreet seems to be on the upswing leading into FY27 and calendar Q3.

5. Investment in Home Services has paid off big

I have to give some credit to the QuinStreet leadership team here. Back in 2019, they were in far more categories, such as Education, B2B, Mortgage, and others. Before they acquired Modernize in 2020, QuinStreet sold off several of those lines of business.

Back in 2019, Home Services wasn’t even split out in its own category for SEC filings; it was lumped together with B2B.

Total combined net revenue in FY19 for Home Services/B2B was just under $55MM. Now, Home Services is generating over $400MM of annual revenue. That likely represents more than an 8x increase over the last 7 years. Seen through this lens, the HomeBuddy acquisition is simply a continuation of the strategy from 2019-20.

Key Takeaway: QuinStreet shrewdly pivoted out of lower-growth categories to focus fully on Home Services and Financial Services.

Qnst Q4 26

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Disclosures

*QuinStreet operates on a Fiscal Year from July through June. So while Calendar Q2 just ended, QNST just wrapped up Q4 of their Fiscal Year.

**I worked at QuinStreet from 2020-2025. I previously owned QNST stock granted as RSU’s/PSU’s, but no longer own any shares.

I also introduced one of the HomeBuddy founders to the QuinStreet Corporate Development team, but was not otherwise involved in the deal. As always, I use only data from SEC filings, and any conclusions are my interpretation of that data.

• Revenue down 4%

• Net Income down 45%

• Adjusted EBITDA down 16%

• EPS: $0.68 vs analyst expectations of $0.95 (a 28.4% miss)

• Insurance revenue down 6%

• Home category revenue up 12%

• Insurance remained 67% of revenue

• Product and Dev costs down 13%

• Cash on hand was up 30%

Five Observations

1. Insurance Remains the largest category

While not new, many would be surprised to learn that Insurance is their largest category; over two-thirds of their revenue in Q2 came from the Insurance segment (66.77%). Their acquisition of QuoteWizard in 2018 seems to have been a good one. In their PR around the purchase, Tree consistently mentioned diversification as a reason for the acquisition. Eight years later, insurance is driving the business while Mortgage falters.

Key Takeaway: Diversification is critical for companies subject to big swings due to outside events, like interest rates.

2. Home category was up 12% QOQ

This is primarily due to increased HELOC revenue. HELOC is up 15% YOY. This is likely a result of increased rates keeping refinance volume down and those consumers leveraging lines of credit instead of resetting their entire mortgage.

Home segment revenue peaked in 2021 at $442MM, driven by the low interest rates and real estate frenzy of the COVID era. This quarter, Home revenue was pacing to 40% of that peak.

Key Takeaway: Mortgage refinance is still in the doldrums and not expected to change anytime soon.

3. Tree dropped revenue guidance for the year

The company dropped its revenue guidance for the full year to 1.1%, from $1.33 billion to $1.31 billion at the midpoint. Hard to draw big conclusions from a small decrease, but to me this seems to signal Tree is expecting to see things stay pretty similar through the rest of the calendar year.

Key Takeaway: LendingTree expects current market conditions to continue. That likely means no big improvement in the economy for at least the next two quarters.

4. Analysts are digging into why SMB is shrinking

On the Earnings Call, Jed Kelly of Oppenheimer asked if the SMB product health is related to sensitivity from gas prices or interest rates.

I found the answer from CEO Scott Peyree interesting:

“That’s why we call it temporary because I think it’s just a lot of right now, there’s a smaller number of merchants like requesting loans. And then you look at the average loan size, the loan size they’re requesting is generally smaller than we historically see. And we’ve been doing this for a long time. So we’ve got good history here. And then I would say -- and then there’s a general lower percentage of people then accepting the loan offers they’re getting.”

From the Press Release:

“Last quarter we called out an expected sequential decline in Consumer, driven by suppressed borrower demand in our small business segment. This demand trend continued to deteriorate throughout the quarter.”

Key Takeaway: SMB is seeing fewer loan requests, for smaller loans, with a lower acceptance rate. If you work in SMB lending, you’d be smart to expand to other categories.

5. They initiated an Arbitration request against Google

Filed on July 17th seeking damages What’s interesting is that Tree revealed they spent $2.8 billion on Google over about the last decade. That parses out to an average spend of $23.3MM per year.

Jason Bengel, CFO clarified:

And so we believe Google's overcharge accounted for a significant portion of our overall spend during the relevant period, which would be the basis for our right to damages.

Key Takeaway: If someone as large as Tree feels Google is overcharging them, it’s likely even more important for smaller companies to audit their spend.

Misc.

The stock got pummeled

Tree’s stock tumbled about 20% after the earnings announcement. While it was a fairly small miss on overall revenue, analysts seem to be concerned about the reduction in the SMB category specifically.

Tree is touting its investment in AI

They launched a ChatGPT plugin. From CEO Scott Peyree:

“We launched several new consumer-facing AI capabilities such as our ChatGPT app, expanded our marketplace into six new verticals, and we are continuing to see strong results from our homepage redesign.”Share repurchases have been minimal, with just over $500K in Q2 and none in Q1. Tree has $96.7MM authorized to repurchase, though they do note that 2025 credit facility limits share repurchases.

They have a $75 million debt facility they announced in 2025 with a maturity date of 8/21/30.

Performance against target

Revenue: $313.4 million vs analyst estimates of $315.6 million (25.3% year-on-year growth, 0.7% miss)

Adjusted EBITDA: $35.16 million vs analyst estimates of $39.01 million (11.2% margin, 9.9% miss)

Guidance

Q2 Guidance was for $305-325 million in revenue, and they hit north of $313 million.

Guidance for Q3 is up an additional 4% at $325-335MM.

EBITDA guidance for the full year is $148.5 million at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $157.9 million.

Tree Q2 Stats

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MediaAlpha had a strong Q2, beating earnings expectations.

Key Stats (all QOQ)

• Revenue up 2.2%

• Net Income up 298%

• Adjusted EBITDA down 6.7%

• Product development costs up 11%

• P&C concentration up from 94% to 97% of Revenue

• Earnings per share nearly doubled from $0.23 to $0.44

• *Private Marketplace Revenue was down 21%

• Total debt up 8%

Guidance

Q2 Guidance was for $290-310 million in revenue, and they hit just under $317 million. Guidance for Q3 is up an additional 12% at $330-350MM.

Revenue of $330 million to $355 million, up approximately 12% year over year at the midpoint.

Contribution of $51.5 million to $54.5 million, up approximately 16% year over year at the midpoint.

Adjusted EBITDA of $32.0 million to $35.0 million, up approximately 15% year over year at the midpoint, including an approximately $1 million year-over-year decline in Contribution from under-65 Health.

Misc.

Total assets are down around $7MM, but given high income and stock buybacks, this isn’t surprising.

Shareholder equity went from nearly $30MM negative to $5MM positive.

MediaAlpha repurchased 2.2MM shares for $20MM. That gets them to $41MM YTD, and $88MM over the last 4 quarters, so steadily around $22MM a quarter.

Debt maturity is in March of 2031, after refinancing in Q1 (which they reported in April).

MediaAlpha didn’t make any acquisitions in Q2, staying fairly consistent with their recent history. Their most recent purchase was CustomerHelperTeam in February 2022.

*Private Marketplace

MediaAlpha disaggregates revenue from Open Marketplace and Private Marketplace (sometimes called Private Exchange) transactions. A Private Marketplace is where they’re simply providing the technology and the end user sources volume from their own partners.

The Open Marketplace is where MediaAlpha is the intermediary charging advertisers for the media delivered. Open is the primary business model, with private markets driving only 1.5% of revenue. I think it’s useful to keep tabs on this as private exchange deals are often low margin but have long exclusivity periods. MediaAlpha’s most direct competitor on private exchanges is QuinStreet.

Glossary

MM - Million
B - Billion
QOQ - Quarter over Quarter
YOY - Year over Year

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Disclosures

I previously worked at QuinStreet from 2020-2025 but no longer hold any of their stock.

I may have consulting or referral agreements with companies reported on. I’ll never use confidential information here; this reporting is purely based on analyzing the SEC filings and a bit of conjecture.

We also use rounded numbers for simplicity, so totals won’t always add up to precisely 100.00%.

Mediaalpha Q2 Stats

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