CarGurus, Inc. (CARG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Well, it's my pleasure to be joined on stage by Jason Trevisan, CEO of CarGurus. Jason, thanks for coming to the conference and helping kick off the company session.

Of course. Thanks for having us.

Sure. So maybe just to level set, for those less familiar with the story, maybe just talk about the evolution of CarGurus and what that journey has been on and some of the key messages coming out of the quarter.

We began as a 2-sided marketplace, helping consumers shop for and buy cars and helping dealers get access to the largest audience of car shoppers. And so it's a 2-sided marketplace. And we entered a market in the U.S. that was -- that already had existing competitors, but we came with a different model. We came with a freemium model where we invited all inventory and all dealers onto our platform, which allowed us to give consumers more access to more inventory. We gave them more information on the inventory and on the cars and then we sorted it in a way that made sense to them largely through our deal rating system. And that allowed us to build the largest consumer audience and a 2-sided marketplace as you get the network effects, we also then built the largest dealer base as well. So today, we are by every measure, the largest marketplace. Since then, we have expanded with both dealers and consumers. So among dealers, we've helped them with not just market their cars, but with more aspects of running their dealerships. So we now have data and technology that helps them source better merchandise, price and sell cars. And then we help consumers a little more upstream with determining what types of cars to buy. So what we call the consideration step. We've always helped them with the decision step of which car to buy. And then we're also helping them purchase the car by allowing them to do more steps of the purchase on our site.

And maybe before we get into the more product and platform stuff, I'd love just to get your perspective on what you're seeing from a broader macro perspective in the auto market, any impact from tariffs that you're seeing and your base case around broader macro and impact on the platform?

So we -- as the largest marketplace, we are not terribly affected positively or negatively by a lot of macro effects in auto. As dealers are trying to sell cars and consumers are searching for cars, we play a very valuable role. Right now, we're seeing pretty strong demand for cars. Tariffs have not translated into -- the auto manufacturers of new cars have not passed a lot of those tariffs on to the consumers yet. They've reduced some rebates. But it has had a marginal effect on raising new car prices, and it's had a marginal effect on raising used car prices, but demand has remained strong. Consumer confidence, though, is quite low and cost of borrowing are still quite high. And so consumers are shopping much more price sensitive now than they were a year or 2 ago. Inventory levels are back up to pre-COVID levels. And so you've got pretty strong inventory. You've got pretty strong demand and -- but you've got a consumer that's certainly feeling pinched and so therefore, searching for lower-priced cars.

Okay. You recently wound down or made the decision to wind down the CarOffer transaction business following the strategic reassessment. Maybe just talk about that decision, what went into that as you were assessing that business? Any impact to financials that you're flagging to folks for the back half of this year? And then how you anticipate the underlying technology of that business still being able to be utilized inside of or enhancing the broader platform?

Sure. Our belief has always been that in order for dealers to sell cars well, they need to use data and intelligence across the entire spectrum of their workflow, and that starts with sourcing the right type of car. So we have long believed that in order to sell cars effectively, they need to buy the right types of cars and the right cars at the right prices. And so sourcing has always been part of our effort to expand solving the pain points of dealers. So we -- so CarOffer is a digital wholesale transaction platform. Unlike that segment of the market, which has historically run with an auction model, CarOffer ran with what's called an instant trade model, which is different and unique from an auction. And during COVID, it skyrocketed. It's very easy to buy and sell on the platform when dealers have high confidence in the prices of cars in wholesale. Since then, since post-COVID, it has struggled to grow volume. And so there are a couple of different parts of the business, if you will. One is the actual running of the transactions themselves. The other is the technology that we built around CarOffer. And that technology is stocking recommendations, appraisal and price assessments, acquisition, inventory acquisition intelligence, so telling dealers which cars to buy, how much to pay for them and being able to predict, and a lot of this is using AI, being able to predict how quickly they will sell those cars at what prices and how much gross margin they can make. So we made the decision and announced at our last earnings to wind down the transaction piece of that business. But we are taking the technology and the analytics, and we are bringing that and making that available to all of our CarGurus customers with a software-like and data approach rather than a logistics-intensive transaction approach of CarOffer. So on August 7, we announced at earnings, we announced the wind down. We said -- from your second part of your question, the financial implications, we said there will be between $14 million and $19 million of total expenditure, the bulk of which will happen in the second half of the year. At the time, we gave a marketplace guide on revenue and EBITDA, which is different than historically when we've given a consolidated. And we did that because we view that as much more relevant to the go-forward nature of our business. So we gave a marketplace revenue and EBITDA guide. And just to note for all of you that some of the aggregators are showing that marketplace guide as the consolidated guide. And that does not take into account CarOffer losses. In Q3, because we're winding down transactions, there will be lower fixed cost coverage. And so CarOffer burn in Q3 is likely to be higher than in the last couple of quarters because of that wind down of transactions. And so -- and then in Q4, it will be discontinued operations.

Okay. Well, that's a good segue into the marketplace business. Maybe just help us understand, as you think about the growth algorithm for the core of the business, how do you think about the number of dealers being a driver versus wallet share. I think you guys disclosed a metric called QARSD. And just within that QARSD metric, how you think about the drivers of wallet share and the rank order of the various factors that help drive that growth?

So we have U.S. -- the bulk of our business is the U.S., but we also have marketplaces in the U.K. and Canada that are growing much faster than our U.S. business and have more runway. And so if you look at the total spend in those 3 countries of dealers in marketplaces, it's about $4.5 billion. And today, we're less than 30% market share, but yet we're the largest audience. So we see a lot of upside there. So the 2 metrics we look at, one is quarterly average revenue spend per dealer or QARSD and the other is number of dealers on our platform, paying dealers on our platform. If I focus on the U.S., we have about 26,000 paying dealers today, and there's about 42,000 to 44,000 total dealers in the country. We have -- we still have a freemium model. And so total dealers on our platform is over 30,000. We've been growing our dealer rooftop count. But that, I would say, honestly, is not a key focus of ours. A key focus of ours is just gaining more wallet share in total. And so for us, the more important factor over the last few years has been QARSD and growing QARSD. So the way we grow QARSD is there's a handful of key levers. Number one is upselling to higher tiers of our product. We do that. They get dealers get more benefit to higher tiers, but we've also been innovating a lot of data and intelligence and including those, bundling those into the higher tiers. And so upsell has been our #1 driver over the last couple of years. And yet we still have less than half of our dealers who are beyond the basic package. So we have a lot of runway there. Second is add-on products. So these are not bundled, but they are other marketing-related products that dealers can buy from us. We have a handful of those, and so adding products is the second. The third is, as we grow lead volume and grow lead quality, that grows the value to dealers because they will sell more cars as a result of working with us. And so that is just -- as long as we keep growing leads, and we've said we're growing leads. And as long as we keep growing quality, which we've indicated we have, then that's value that just grows by itself. And then the last is unit pricing. So we started in order to earn our way to the leadership position, we priced below our competitors. We believe we are still priced on a unit basis below our competitors in most cases. And so that's been a very -- a small lever for us, but it's been a consistent one that we think has a long runway as well. So that's all within marketing. And then as I mentioned earlier, as we move out into other steps of the dealer workflow, we have every intention to bolster the technology and the analytics that we're delivering to them such that we can start to tap into their wallets that they're spending on data and their wallets that they're spending on software.

Okay. And that reported metric is obviously a blend of newer dealers coming into the platform and funnel and older kind of more mature dealers that have been on a journey already. Is there a way to illustrate what some of your most mature dealers look like and what that journey or adoption curve look like from either a product attach rate standpoint or what the journey looks like to move up the subscription tiers to just illustrate what -- how that cohort curve can look?

Sure. I mean I think -- so one helpful data point is that the -- if you look at the cohort of dealers who have been on our platform for 5 years and compare it to the cohort of dealers who have been on our platform for 1 year, the 5-year cohort is spending 80% more on average per rooftop than the 1-year cohort. And so that's growing with us through all of the QARSD levers that I described. And also, it's just dealers that stay with us longer and are with us longer learn more about how to use all of the features and analytics that we provide. We're getting better at helping them do that. We're delivering it in different methods in the app, in the dashboard, in e-mail, through account management. So we're getting better at helping them, but those that really buy into the system are far more effective than those who just view us as a more simple marketplace.

Okay. Yes. And it seems like the strategy is to become a more integrated partner with your dealer partners over time. Maybe talk about what some of those key unlocks have been as the platform has evolved. Talk about some of the specific products that you've rolled out that have allowed that deeper, more tight relationship with your dealer partners.

Sure. So part of it is establishing a relationship with more people at the dealership. And so I mentioned an inventory acquisition report. That is typically focused on the person at the dealership who is in charge of sourcing cars, which is different than the person, say, the Internet Marketing Manager who's focused on marketing the cars. So we're building relationships with more roles at the dealership by providing some of this. Pricing is a big area where we've had a lot of progress, and that's changed behaviors at dealers. And so we have a couple of products. One is called Next Best Deal Rating, and one is called Max Margin. And that helps dealers understand how they can make oftentimes small changes to the pricing of their cars and have an outsized positive impact on either the leads they're generating from our site or the margin they're making on the car. But what's -- and so now we have over half of our dealers getting that information in those reports. What's most exciting to me is that they're getting those daily and weekly. And those are now going to multiple people at the dealership. It's going to the GM, it's going to the Internet Marketing Manager. And so their engagement in our platform and their habitual use of our analytics has gone from occasionally going into our dashboard to something that they're using every day.

Okay. Let's maybe move over to the consumer shopper side of the platform and talk about how the company has innovated on the consumer side and the car buying journey to drive deeper engagement with you, better conversion for your dealer partners, reduce friction overall. Maybe just talk about some of the product and feature evolution that you've gone through there?

Sure. I'll take it in a -- on a few different dimensions. One is, I mentioned earlier that we're helping with more steps of the car buying journey. So there is an initial period where someone is trying to figure out what types of cars exist and what they might want to think about getting. There's then sort of a deeper consideration of what type of car to get. There's then the decision of which car to go pursue and then there's the purchase of it. So on the consideration piece, we have an AI-based virtual assistant that helps consumers figure out what type of car they want based on colloquial inputs that they have, how many kids they have, what they need the car to do, what aspects of a car they like and don't like and helps get them to make model trim and then actual cars that are available. Not only is that growing the conversion rate of our audience and really deepening the engagement that they have with us, but it's giving us really valuable data that we're then passing on to the dealer so that when the dealer gets this lead and knows all of this about Jason, they're able to convert that lead better. So that's in the consideration piece. On the decision piece, we, again, mostly AI-driven. We're getting much better at personalization. We are getting much better at sort order and recommendations. And so again, that's making for more engagement. We have -- our audience is much more engaged in our platform than any others. We have 75%, I believe, percent more session time than our next closest competitor. So that's in the decision piece. And then in the purchase piece, we're helping consumers do a lot more on our site so that they can make their time in the dealership more efficient. So we now help consumers get a trade-in value. They can get prequalified or fully qualified for financing. They can set up an appointment. They can put down a deposit, all on our platform. And so when they get to the dealership, instead of spending 5 hours, they come in, dealership knows them much better, they're spending 1 to 2 hours.

And is there a flywheel or feedback loop where the better the experience, the reduction in friction on the consumer or shopper side leads or gives -- empowers you to go to dealers that drives more of that higher product attach rate or moving up subscription tiers. Does it kind of helps the dealer side as well in terms of that wallet share story that you're talking about?

It definitely does, but it is also hard to measure. So we focus a lot on attribution and helping dealers understand not only did we send you 150 leads this month and not only did we give you all these other capabilities and technology and analytics. But importantly, that translated into x number of sales for you a month. And we focus a lot on quality. So we know, for instance, the type of lead that has a higher propensity to close, and we incorporate that into our performance marketing way upstream. And so we track a metric of estimated sold cars, and that's how we measure our success, and that's growing. And the more we're able to help dealers understand that, then yes, the more they're buying into the system.

Okay. Another part of the key strategic initiative story that you've talked about a lot on prior calls is moving more transactions towards the bottom of funnel. Maybe just talk about that initiative, talk about digital deal, what that is, how that's progressed? And then additionally, how like financing plays into driving more of the transactions-oriented stuff at the bottom of the funnel?

Yes, dealers -- When COVID happened, dealers materially reduced their sales team's size and have not really built them back up. And so you'll hear a lot of dealers now say that they have trouble getting the sales staff that they do have to actually effectively respond to all the leads. And so dealers are always looking for signals as to which is a higher quality lead so they can prioritize and be most efficient with their sales team's time. And so we have a number of ways to further qualify consumers on our site, which also creates huge consumer satisfaction. And the examples I just mentioned are consumers can do elements of the transaction on our site. So appointment, down payment, trade-in value. They can buy other products from the dealer. Dealers have -- as any of you have bought a car know, they are going to try to sell you 5 to 10 other things that they have. They can market those and sell those on our site to the consumer as well. And so it makes the consumer happier. The vast majority of consumers say they want to do more online. While full online transactions are growing quickly, it's still a very small percent. It's low single-digit percentages of consumers that want to do it all online. So most consumers want to do most of it online, but then still go into the dealership for the test drive and to complete the transaction. And so we are trying to find a win-win always between consumers and dealers to make that more efficient. And it then makes the conversion of those leads much more efficient for the dealer, which is much more profitable for them.

Okay. We talked about it a little bit earlier. You touched on it is international. Maybe talk about just the international efforts in Canada and the U.K., how that has progressed relative to the progression in the U.S. over time? And any plans to extend that to other countries beyond the U.K. and Canada anytime soon?

Canada and the U.K. are a similar playbook to what we've executed in the U.S., but a few years behind. So in -- I'll talk -- there are a lot of parallels or similarities between the 2 countries, but I'll talk about them independently. So in Canada, which was the first country we entered, AutoTrader Canada is the current leader and we are the #2 and growing very quickly. So our international business in Canada has been growing 20% to 30% for the last few years. The market leader has been growing much less. It's private, but from our data points. And so we're gaining market share. And importantly there, our lead volume is starting to get close to AutoTrader Canada's lead volume, which is allowing dealers to finally -- and we charge materially less. So it's a similar playbook to the U.S. of we're going to grow our consumer audience. We're going to focus on lead quality and quantity and we're going to charge less. So the ROI story is bulletproof. And so with getting to the lead volumes we're at, we're now having dealers who are finally saying, finally, I'm able to work exclusively with CarGurus. So AutoCanada, one of the largest groups in the country, just released a press announcement that they're making us their exclusive marketplace provider. So that market is doing very well for us. App is growing exceedingly fast as well. And as we introduce -- build and introduce new products in the U.S., we're then bringing the majority of those to Canada where -- which is helping fuel the growth. U.K., similar in so much as there's a market leader, Auto Trader U.K. and we are the #2, similar story that we're growing much faster than the market leader. So we're gaining share. There, we are a little bit further behind in lead quantity. So we're still growing our consumer audience there. But the ROI in a recent survey, we were just deemed by dealers the strongest ROI that they work with. And we're the #1 download app. So -- in the auto category. So in both markets, you're seeing this slower growing very high margin incumbent that, frankly, dealers are eager to find competition for because they're displeased in a lot of cases. And we are the highly innovative, highest ROI, fastest-growing consumer audience and rapidly catching up to them.

I did want to shift here and talk about AI. Obviously, it's fast evolving and moving. What are you seeing in terms of any impact at all from AI search, zero-click search on your business in terms of customer acquisition and the broader funnel for search?

We are very focused on it. We're spending a lot of time making sure that we understand ways in which AI is a threat to our business and the ways in which AI is an opportunity in our business, and it is certainly both. From an audience acquisition perspective, I would say there's probably 3 dimensions. Number one is we are aggressive users of the AI tools that the performance marketing platforms are building. And so it's helping us become more efficient in places like Google and Meta and so forth. So it's -- we're more efficient as a result of AI in the performance marketing channels, presumably because we're leaning harder into it than our competitors are. Second way is making sure that we make our data and our content available for the generative AI search engines themselves, so the SEO for AI and that is more of a technology and content strategy, and it's still a very small percent of total searches, but we're excited by how we're showing up there. Again, it's all relative to the competition. And I would say in that, the zero-click search that you mentioned, car shopping is rarely a zero-click or one-click activity. If you're searching for a data point or an answer to a question, it's fantastic. If you're searching for the right -- the perfect Subaru Outback that you want for your family, you're going to need to do some searching over 3 to 6 months, and that's going to be informed by generative AI responses, but it really is going to be ultimately decided by a platform like ours where the consumer goes deep over a period of time has multiple conversations, et cetera. So we have not seen a lot of our audience gets siphoned off to zero-click because they still need to do the searching process. That's the second. And then the third I would say is we are diversifying our spend pretty aggressively. We've started this maybe 2 years ago to be less and less concentrated in performance marketing. And so we have spent a larger percentage of our marketing on brand and on awareness. We're tapping much more aggressively into online video, TV, social influencers so that we develop a more direct relationship with the consumer and a -- and it's working for us. So our app usage and the percent of our volume that comes from app is up significantly. Direct is one of our fastest-growing channels, and that's the type of relationship that circumvents any third parties because that's us directly with the consumer. And so app is a huge focus area for us.

Okay. And maybe it's too early and not entirely representative, but are you noticing any difference in the type of audience that's coming into the funnel or engaging from an AI search generative search versus traditional SEO, SEM in terms of conversion or demographics? Any noticeable difference yet?

We have not seen that yet. As I mentioned earlier, we are -- we optimize for the actual conversion to a sold car. And so that would get captured in our algorithm. What we are seeing, though, is that users -- our users who are using our virtual assistant and are using the AI to help them find the car are much more likely to convert to a lead and then much more likely to go from a lead to a sold car. And so as our use of AI helps create a smarter customer or consumer on our site, that's leading to a much more qualified consumer at the dealer.

Okay. And maybe last one on this topic. Just as you've obviously built out a muscle over time on SEO and SEM, how does that help you? Or how have you seen that help you show up more prominently in AI search? Or is that not something that necessarily translates in terms of optimizing for making sure that you're prominently showing up?

No, I think it does. I think it does translate. Number one, we have the most data. We have the most searches. We have, by far, the most intelligence and visibility on car shopping behaviors in the U.S. And so simply having that breadth and depth of content helps. We have the most inventory of cars. We have the most consumers, et cetera. So that puts us in a good starting position. We have tried to be really smart about making that information accessible while still without giving it away too much so that it recommends us I think we've done a good job with that. And then the second -- the third factor I would say is that we have started to develop more content over the last couple of years, largely using AI. We've never had a large content team or large content investment. And we have said we're comfortable if we're not very high up in the funnel to a searcher who says, "I think I want to sit in, but I'm not sure which one." We've not focused as much there. But with AI, we're producing multiples, multiples more content than we have before. And it's still not for that trying to compete with car and driver necessarily. It's more in the, "Well, how should I think about Audi A4 versus BMW 323 or whatever. Yes. And so having that content helps significantly with the GEO.

Okay. I wanted to shift to the growth versus margin dynamic. And we talked a lot about priorities for growth around investing in product innovation, customer acquisition and international. What's the messaging around the priorities for investing for growth versus showing kind of improving margins, scaling free cash flow, et cetera?

When you focus on -- or when you isolate for our marketplace business, so excluding CarOffer, we have shown really nice margin expansion over the past few years, and it's now in the mid-30s. And we -- and that was our long-term margin target that we've indicated for years. And so we feel comfortable in that range. And when you look at Rule of 40 and how we stack up, it's very, very strong. And so our focus going forward is much more on the growth levers that I talked about before and specifically, so continuing to grow our leadership position in the marketplace model, which -- we think it's a winner take most. We think there's a long runway there. So we're going to continue to do that, but also innovating to cement that, but also innovating to solve for more of the dealer workflow and by doing that, we think we're going to be able to build -- continue to build great features, but move those from features to actual data products and actual software products. And so as we do that, that will tap us into the $8 billion that dealers spend on software and get us out of simply the wallets that they think about from marketplace. So long story -- or long answer to your question, we're much more focused on sustaining our growth for many, many years to come and less focused on continuing to expand the margin.

And are you seeing any efficiencies on the cost side from incorporating AI into your own kind of workflows and how meaningful or not has that been?

We certainly are. I would say it has been modest thus far, but we're seeing it in -- certainly in our engineering and code creation. We're seeing it in our product development cycles, we're seeing it in account management and sales. So our sales team is maintaining higher productivity and efficiency than they otherwise wouldn't be more effective with the customer. We're seeing it in smaller ways in finance and legal and HR. We have never had a big customer support piece of our business, and so that's not as relevant for us. So we have the company focused on how we can use AI to move faster and to build more for our customers and less around cost cutting, but we're seeing a little bit of both.

Okay. In the last couple of minutes here, I did want to end on capital allocation. You're starting to scale free cash flow at a pretty healthy rate. You just increased the share repurchase program. So maybe just talk about how investors should think about your priorities for capital allocation between investing in some of those product and feature initiatives returning capital, any kind of M&A that may or may not fit the platform? What's the messaging around that?

The messaging is similar to what it's been the last couple of years, and I think we've shown. We've executed on what we indicated. So 3 main options or opportunities. One is to invest in the business. And so I just spoke to that in the form of margin. The second is returning capital to shareholders. And so over the last few years, we've bought back over $0.5 billion of our shares. We do that assessment based on looking at our expected free cash flow returns to the business based on the share price. And as a result, we've been pretty aggressive. And as you said, we just expanded it another $150 million to last earnings. And then the third is M&A. And we continue to look at a lot of M&A that is always a muscle that we're using. We've acquired 3 businesses in the past and we expect to acquire more. The area that we're most focused on is in that dealer software and data analytics so that we can continue to expand with dealers and get their get them using our platform more and more than they have in the past. And I think that's evidenced by dealers are at a much faster clip signing up with us for year-long contracts. And historically, it was a month-to-month. So that shows the commitment as well as the behavior.

Great. With that, I think we're out of time. We'll end it there. Please join me in thanking Jason and the team from CarGurus for being at the conference.

Thank you, Ben. Thanks.