ZipRecruiter, Inc. (ZIP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the ZipRecruiter, Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Emilio Sartori, Head of Investor Relations. Emilio, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on our earnings conference call, during which we will discuss ZipRecruiter's performance for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, and our guidance for the third quarter of 2026. Joining me on the call today are Ian Siegel, Co-Founder and CEO; and David Travers, President and Interim CFO. Before we begin, please be reminded that forward-looking statements made today are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to future events and/or the future financial performance of ZipRecruiter. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. A discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements can be found in ZipRecruiter's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, which is available on our investor website and the SEC's website. The forward-looking statements in this conference call are based on the current expectations as of today, and ZipRecruiter assumes no obligations to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metrics are included in ZipRecruiter's shareholder letter and in our Form 10-Q. And now I will turn the call over to Ian.

Thank you. Good afternoon to everyone joining us today. ZipRecruiter's momentum accelerated in the second quarter. We grew revenue by 5% year-over-year to $118.1 million, coming in $6 million above the midpoint of our guidance range. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $14.6 million, representing a 12% margin, which was above the midpoint of our guidance range and above the adjusted EBITDA margin of 8% in Q2 of '25. Additionally, we repurchased $294.6 million of our 5% senior unsecured notes at a $65 million discount to par. That transaction meaningfully reduced our debt burden while leaving our balance sheet strong. We closed the quarter with $174 million in cash and investments, giving us ample capital to fully fund our future growth initiatives. Turning to our product momentum. Our marketplace continued to improve in Q2 with each innovation focused on the same goal, driving more conversations between employers and job seekers. We believe this real-world outcomes-based focus is what has been driving our growth. First, the ongoing rollout of our next-generation search and matching engine to all parts of the ZipRecruiter platform increased qualified application volume in Q2 by 34% quarter-over-quarter. This lift in qualified applications, paired with our other product improvements, doubled the employer response rate per application year-over-year. Second, we rolled out an option for candidates applying through our Be Seen First feature to record an audio message to accompany their resume, giving job seekers a powerful new way to highlight their personality and stand out. Early data shows that job seekers who record a message saw an 8% lift in response rates from the employer. Third, we launched a new AI feature called Smart Outreach, which enables employers to instantly turn job descriptions into customized multistep message campaigns sent directly to candidates across our resume database. Smart Outreach automates that initial touch point to make hiring faster, easier and more personal. The volume of conversations happening on ZipRecruiter is accelerating as we use cutting-edge technology to help the right people find one another, connect faster and achieve better outcomes. Each new interaction enriches our proprietary data set, making our technology more effective and creating a compounding advantage that improves the experience across both sides of our marketplace. Finally, before I turn the call over to Dave, I want to touch on a major addition to our leadership team. We recently announced that Carmen Chan will be joining us as our new Chief Financial Officer, effective August 17. Carmen brings a wealth of experience from Barclays, Noom and Goldman Sachs, and she will be instrumental in driving our long-term financial strategy and operational excellence. Once Carmen assumes the role, Dave will be continuing in his role as President. We are absolutely thrilled to welcome her to the team. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Dave to share some additional business highlights, financial results and guidance.

Thanks, Ian, and good afternoon. Our marketplace gained momentum in the second quarter as the product improvements we've made over the past several quarters continue to compound. At our core, we are making it easier for employers and job seekers to find one another and start meaningful conversations. I'm excited to share several highlights with you today. We launched our next-generation search and matching engine in Q1, which drove a 37% increase in qualified application volume. The ongoing rollout of our next-generation search and matching engine to all parts of the ZipRecruiter platform increased qualified application volume in Q2 by 34% quarter-over-quarter. This lift in qualified applications paired with our other product improvements, doubled the employer response rate per application year-over-year. We believe increasing the quantity of qualified applications will lead to more meaningful connections between employers and job seekers. In Q2, we expanded our Be Seen First feature. We gave applicants the option to record a message to employers, letting them showcase their personality and soft skills alongside their qualifications. Early data shows that job seekers who recorded a message saw an 8% lift in connection rates with the employer. We also launched Smart Outreach, a new AI-driven feature for our resume database that helps hiring teams quickly find and connect with job seekers. We know from our data that over 80% of candidates are more interested in a role when an employer reaches out proactively. To capitalize on this, Smart Outreach uses AI to turn job descriptions into personalized, editable message campaigns. With a single click, hiring teams can tap into our pool of over 50 million job seekers, minimizing the hours traditionally spent chasing replies and replacing administrative bottlenecks with active conversations. Our enterprise strategy continues to show strong momentum as our investments in programmatic bidding tools deliver tangible growth. Just like last quarter, adoption of our automated campaign performance solutions grew over 50% year-over-year as large employers look for more efficient hiring solutions. Furthermore, these optimizations to our bidding algorithms also drove a 2x year-over-year improvement in our rate of meeting customers' campaign targets. We believe this increased efficacy as well as other improvements, drove a 15% year-over-year increase in performance marketing revenue in Q2, proving that our technology investments are delivering for employers of every size. We continue to lean into conversational AI platforms to meet job seekers where they are. Following our Q1 launch of the ZipRecruiter app for ChatGPT, we've now deepened that integration so job seekers can search for roles from ZipRecruiter directly within the ChatGPT chat field. Additionally, in Q2, we launched a new connector for Claude, Anthropic's AI Assistant. As job seekers increasingly turn to these AI tools earlier in their search, we view these expansions as a critical step in broadening our distribution footprint and we'll look to expand our integrations over time. We believe that this is also a testament to our brand strength and quality of jobs in our marketplace. With that, I'll now discuss our financial results and guidance. Our second quarter revenue of $118.1 million represents a 5% increase year-over-year and a 10% increase quarter-over-quarter. These increases were driven primarily by a higher number of paid employers and increased job posting activity alongside the successful rollout of key product improvements. We ended the second quarter with over 70,000 quarterly paid employers, representing a 7% increase year-over-year and a 12% increase sequentially. We saw strong growth in both new and returning customers as our product improvements continue to resonate with employers of all sizes. Revenue per paid employer was $1,669, down 1% year-over-year and down 2% sequentially. These decreases are primarily a function of the strong growth in quarterly paid employers. Because many of these new employers joined partway through the quarter, they only contributed revenue for a portion of Q2, which drove down the average. Looking at operating expenses, we continue to gain operating leverage across the business as we scale revenue. Total operating expenses decreased to $101.3 million versus $106.9 million in the prior year period, primarily due to lower stock-based compensation and personnel-related expenses. Turning to profitability. Net income in the second quarter was $43.4 million, representing a 37% net income margin. On a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis, net income increased due to the gain on debt extinguishment from the June 2026 partial repurchase of our 5% unsecured notes due in 2030. Adjusted EBITDA was $14.6 million, equating to a 12% margin. This compares favorably to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8% in Q2 of last year and 9% in Q1 of this year. Increases in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, both on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis are a result of both higher revenue and our continued cost discipline. In June, we repurchased $294.6 million of our 5% senior unsecured notes at a discounted par value of $229.4 million. This allowed us to retire over half our outstanding notes and meaningfully reduce our debt burden. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $173.8 million as of June 30, giving us ample flexibility to fully fund our future growth initiatives. Moving on to quarterly guidance. We expect Q3 revenue of $121 million at the midpoint, representing 5% year-over-year growth and 2% sequential growth. We also project Q3 adjusted EBITDA of $16 million at the midpoint, yielding a 13% margin, a significant expansion versus the 8% margin we delivered in the prior year period. We believe delivering growth and margin expansion in a stable hiring environment demonstrates that our differentiated hiring solutions are truly resonating with both employers and job seekers. Looking to the second half of 2026, the labor market remains stable even as overall hires and quits rate remain near their lowest level since 2015. Given our strong execution, we believe low single-digit year-over-year revenue growth is a likely scenario, up from our prior expectation of flat revenue, which will result in a full year adjusted EBITDA margins of 12% to 14%, a meaningful margin expansion versus 9% in 2025. This range gives us room to maintain our push into ROI-positive marketing opportunities on the employer side while upholding the cost discipline that drives our operating leverage across the rest of the business. We believe this balance, capturing incremental growth while preserving our commitment to profitability, positions ZipRecruiter to outperform the broader hiring category over the long term. With that, we can now open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Josh Chan with UBS.

I guess, based on your commentary, it seems like the cadence of the quarter accelerated as you went through the 3 months. I mean, is that the right read? And could you just talk about, kind of, how things are kind of shaping on a monthly basis into July perhaps?

Sure, Josh, great question. This is Dave. So yes, we feel great about how things went in Q2. Obviously, a lot of product and other operational wins resulted in a great quarter for us. As we looked at what happened over the course of the quarter, we did see a nice acceleration over the course of the quarter. And obviously, that plays into showing 5% year-over-year growth, which is a nice acceleration while at the same time being able to expand margins year-over-year from 8% in the prior year period to 12% this quarter. And then as we look going forward based on what we saw in Q2 and thus far in Q3, that makes -- everything we see makes the guidance we're talking about very reasonable to continue at the midpoint at 5% year-over-year growth. So we saw a very nice quarter across multiple product and other executional wins that drove job seekers and employers to come together with greater engagement, and we saw that translate through to the numbers.

That's great to hear. And then on the improvement in the hiring, I guess, are you attributing this to your success in improving the matching? Or is there any macro-related lift? And relatedly, are you seeing any trends across verticals, size of employers that's really, kind of growing in your platform?

Great question. This is Ian. I -- what we saw in Q2 was momentum created predominantly through product improvements as well as some additional marketing. But when you look at the product improvements we rolled out and whether you're looking at the improvements we made Be Seen First, which creates an 8% lift for candidates who record a message to try and better stand out to the employer, or you look at the next-gen search engine, which lifted quality candidates by 34%, really, all of those improvements are designed to do one thing, and that's to stoke conversation between the employer and the job seeker and sort of the metric that all of those improvements ladder up to is that response rate from the employer per application. And when you look at that year-over-year in Q2, that response rate doubled. So a significant portion of our momentum comes from just the fact that there is a lot more activity, which creates satisfaction on both sides of our marketplace when the 2 sides engage. When you look at the macro, if you just look at the data that's out there, we're definitely still in what I'd call a subdued labor market. It was stable with Q1, but you're looking at hires and quits that are near 15-year lows when you look back over the trajectory of those 2 metrics. So the macro was a nonfactor in Q2 as it relates to the momentum we created. It was all driven by our operational success.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Thanks for all the prepared detail in the shareholder letter. Building on the themes you guys talked about around product and AI innovations and helpful to get those early data points around next-gen search and Smart Outreach. How should we be thinking about the momentum around those types of initiatives building over the next 6, 12, 18 months? And what are you watching for to get a sense of how those could impact the business over the medium to long term as they build in that momentum?

Thanks, Eric. Good question. Our product strategy is relatively simple. We are trying to drive up the rate at which employers and job seekers have real meaningful conversations. It defines all of the initiatives that we are focused on and the features that we are implementing into our site. And what we have seen and continue to see is that when we drive up the rate at which these 2 sides are engaging, satisfaction materially improves on both sides as does long-term engagement. I think you should expect to hear us talking about increasing conversations for the next 12 months, the next 24 months and probably for a long time beyond that because that is the simple formula that we have discovered for both making our product better and driving our financial results. And when we look at the features that we have launched, so many of them have been enhanced by AI in one form or fashion. But AI is just a tool, and it is one important tool, but it is certainly not the only tool that we have available. There is a component of all this, which is the extraordinary amount of data we have on the historical interactions between job seekers and employers, which is what we are using to train a lot of the features that we have been building and what made the next-gen search platform possible. It's not just a straight technology advantage. It is a data advantage that we are leveraging and that is unique to our business after 15 years of operation.