Q4 2025 Cars.com Inc Earnings Call

February 26, 2026

Speaker #1: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cars. 4th quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode, following the presentation we will conduct a question-and-answer session, if at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star 0 for the operator.

Speaker #1: This call is being recorded on Thursday, February 26, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katherine Chen, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Speaker #1: Please go ahead.

Speaker #2: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Cars.com Inc. 4th quarter and full year 2025 conference call.

Speaker #2: With me this morning are Toby Hartman, CEO, and Sonia Jain, CFO, who will share business highlights and our financial results and outlook. We'll finish the call with Q&A.

Speaker #2: Before I turn the call over to Toby, I'd like to draw your attention to our forward-looking statements and the description and definition of non-GAAP financial measures, which can be found in our presentation.

Speaker #2: We'll be discussing certain non-gap financial measures today, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted net income, and free cash flow. Reconciliations of these non-gap financial measures to the most directly comparable gap measures can be found in the financial tables included with our earnings press release and in the appendix of our presentation.

Speaker #2: Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our SEC filings including those in our most recently filed 10-K, which is available on the IR section of our website.

Speaker #2: We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. And now I'll turn the call over to Toby.

Speaker #3: Thank you, Katherine. It's a pleasure to welcome everyone to my first earnings call with Cars.com. I would like to start by acknowledging Alex's leadership and dedication to Cars.com for over two decades.

Speaker #3: He guided the company from its print-classified origins to a multifaceted technology platform with capabilities including websites and trade and appraisal features, now we are starting the next chapter with a portfolio of B2B products that supports and enhances our marketplace flywheel.

Speaker #3: As some of you may know, I have dedicated more than 20 years to building, enhancing, and growing online classifieds, marketplaces, and digital businesses in the EU and the US.

Speaker #3: Most recently, I was CEO of Scout24, a leading player in European real estate classifieds. The company increased its market capitalization significantly to approximately 8.5 billion US dollars and delivered 195% TSR during my six-year tenure.

Speaker #3: Through Scout24's large automotive vertical, I also gained a valuable lens into consumer car shopping behavior, dealership operations, and the OEM landscape. This will complement our strategic planning for Cars.

Speaker #3: No matter the vertical, I strongly believe the fundamental drivers of sustainable success as a marketplace company are the same. These principles are as follows.

Speaker #3: One, attracting and harnessing relevant inventory. Two, leveraging our strong brand to build a trusted environment that drives scale and engagement for all stakeholders. Three, interconnecting products and solutions to deliver the best user experience and ROI.

Speaker #3: And lastly, infusing all aspects of the business with unique and proprietary data insights. Without these core fundamentals, the flywheel cannot accelerate. Over many years, Cars has maintained strong marketplace fundamentals and built advantages in the brand and the data aspect of this flywheel.

Speaker #3: The Cars.com brand remains synonymous with online automotive marketing and retail. We also own data and have developed powerful capabilities that help customers improve efficiency, and sales outcomes.

Speaker #3: These assets contribute to our differentiation and competitive mode. And this is why I was attracted to this company. But there is an imperative to strengthen important and critical marketplace elements.

Speaker #3: We will achieve this by focusing on product, processes, and cost, and organizational improvements. For product, delivering sustainable future growth requires us to prioritize integration of the marketplace instead of trying to scale distinct product verticals.

Speaker #3: A well-oiled marketplace flywheel is therefore the growth engine for the platform and all products. With focused execution, we can create meaningful value while becoming the most trusted marketplace connecting consumers, dealers, and OEMs.

Speaker #3: I want to be clear that we will achieve our future growth in a responsible manner through process and cost optimization even as we deliver product advancements.

Speaker #3: As a tech-driven product company, we believe that favorable economics will naturally follow as we consistently increase the value we provide to all stakeholders. I'm now six weeks into this journey and working at full speed with a team to formulate the future initiatives and plans.

Speaker #3: Organic growth has been challenging in the past. We have good assets, but scaling them will require better integration, simplified processes, and efficient cost and organizational structure.

Speaker #3: However, our direction is clear and the team is already executing on a number of opportunities to position Cars as an even more relevant marketplace player.

Speaker #3: Before I discuss those details, let me turn to Sonia to cover fourth-quarter performance in 2026 Outlook. Sonia?

Speaker #4: Thank you, Toby. It's been great collaborating with you over the past several weeks, and I'm excited about the fresh perspective you're bringing to the business.

Speaker #4: I will now recap 2025 and provide guidance before turning it back to Toby to expand on our 2026 priorities. Let's start with full-year performance.

Speaker #4: In 2025, we managed through early challenges to deliver low single-digit revenue growth in the second half while also maintaining profitability and returning capital to shareholders.

Speaker #4: Improving dealer revenue trends in the second half produced total annual revenue of $723 million. Up 1% year over year and in line with our expectations.

Speaker #4: As you may recall, our path to returning to top-line growth relied on volume and pricing levers, which both improved throughout the year. We expanded our customer base to close Q4 with 19,544 dealer customers, adding 338 dealers year over year.

Speaker #4: And while ARPD was flat year over year, favorable pricing and repackaging for both websites and marketplace helped drive sequential improvement in ARPD in Q3 and Q4.

Speaker #4: Profitability and cash generation remained steady, full-year adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.2% was within our range of expectations, adjusted EBITDA dollars grew 1% year over year, keeping pace with revenue growth.

Speaker #4: We delivered an other year of strong adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of roughly 60%, which translated to free cash flow of $126 million for the year.

Speaker #4: Our capital allocation plan tilted towards share buybacks in 2025, and we repurchased 86 million of shares, up 75% year over year and at the high end of our targeted 70 to 90 million range.

Speaker #4: In total, we retired roughly 9% of the outstanding share count in 2025. Overall, dealer revenue health has improved throughout the year, so less unpacked Q4 and the green shoots that we're seeing in key parts of the business.

Speaker #4: Fourth-quarter revenue of $183.9 million was up 2% year over year and achieved our guidance. Dealer revenue was up 3% year over year, a further improvement over the Q3 growth rate.

Speaker #4: As I previously mentioned, both dealer count and repackaging were positive revenue contributors in Q4. On a year-over-year basis, dealer count was up 338 customers with marketplace accounting for over 80% of unit growth.

Speaker #4: On a quarter-over-quarter basis, strong underlying marketplace performance was partially offset by elevated website cancels, which muted total customer growth to 18 units. Given our focus on accelerating the marketplace flywheel, it is important to note that we reversed historical seasonality in Q4 and added over 100 marketplace dealers on a sequential basis for the third straight quarter.

Speaker #4: As you've heard from Toby earlier, marketplace traction is critical given its outsized impact to revenue, margin, and free cash flow. And our priority is to build on these positive trends in 2026.

Speaker #4: Turning to our other dealer KPIs, fourth-quarter ARPD of $2,472 was up slightly quarter-over-quarter and flat year over year. For marketplace, new premium and premium plus tiers were rolled out mid-year to align pricing and product value.

Speaker #4: We more than doubled the number of premium plus subscribers from Q3 to Q4, a promising sign of customer appetite for our media offerings. Website repackaging has also been a success, with some benefits continuing to quarterize through 2026.

Speaker #4: However, as we saw during the year, small customer and product mix shifts can result in short-term ARPD variance. In particular, softer uptake of dealer media products has somewhat offset solid monetization improvements for the rest of our product suite.

Speaker #4: Overall, these are small variations in dollar terms, and we expect to return ARPD to more robust growth through continued cross-selling, upgrades, and other pricing and packaging levers.

Speaker #4: Let's wrap up the dealer revenue discussion with quick updates across our interconnected product suite. Starting with our core marketplace, we attracted total traffic of $627 million visits from nearly 26 million average monthly unique visitors in 2025.

Speaker #4: Organic traffic remained stable at nearly 60% of total visits. We also continue to be the number one most cited public automotive marketplace across some of the largest AI services, such as Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT.

Speaker #4: Our newest marketplace features, designed to surface the most relevant vehicle listings for each shopper and speed the marketplace flywheel, have performed well since launch.

Speaker #4: Carson, our AI-powered search assistant, has further improved consumer engagement, now prompting four times more saved vehicles and three times more vehicle listing views from its users.

Speaker #4: For dealers, our market area expansion product helps them extend the searchability of their inventory to non-local markets and ship cars to interested buyers. Consumers are also benefiting from increased access to inventory and our survey data shows that 80% of recent car buyers are willing to purchase the right vehicle, even if it's outside of their market.

Speaker #4: As we continue to scale our marketplace, including listings inventory, we will also keep developing additional products and features that reduce complexity and enhance the user experience in each part of the flywheel.

Speaker #4: While taking a slight step back in terms of customer growth in Q4, website solutions still added approximately 130 total subscribers in 2025. And lastly, our AccuTrade subscriber base grew to roughly 1,180 customers in Q4.

Speaker #4: The average number of vehicles appraised per customer was up another 15% quarter-over-quarter, a record sequential increase that speaks to the product's growing efficacy and value.

Speaker #4: We also recently launched AccuTrade IMS, the only full lifecycle inventory management system that will be fully integrated with the Cars.com marketplace and DI website.

Speaker #4: Our IMS sets itself apart by powering profitability on every vehicle, combining optimized VIN-specific pricing with retail or wholesale exit strategy recommendations. Early feedback has been positive, and we are well positioned to tap into the growing demand for AI and data-driven dealership tools.

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cars Q4 and fiscal year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, 26 February 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katherine Chen, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker #4: We're pleased that dealer revenue and products, which represent roughly 90% of our total revenue mix, continued to move on a positive trajectory in Q4.

Speaker #4: This strength helps us manage through softer-than-expected OEM and national revenue, which was down roughly 1.5 million year over year. Our original OEM outlook was for year-over-year growth in Q4.

Speaker #4: But the weak October performance we pointed to on our last earnings call opened up a wide gap that weighed on the total quarter. In contrast, November and December rebounded to be basically flat compared to those same months in 2024.

Katherine Chen: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Cars.com, Inc. Q4 and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. With me this morning are Tobias Hartmann, CEO, and Sonia Jain, CFO, who will share business highlights and our financial results and outlook. We'll finish the call with Q&A. Before I turn the call over to Toby, I'd like to draw your attention to our forward-looking statements and the description and definition of non-GAAP financial measures, which can be found in our presentation. We'll be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted net income, and free cash flow. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the financial tables included with our earnings press release and in the appendix of our presentation.

Speaker #4: Q4 is a prime example of the episodic nature of OEM media investments, and why we're more focused on driving growth in stickier, reoccurring dealer products.

Speaker #4: Looking ahead, early signals to start the year, such as the notable absence of most automakers from Super Bowl ads, continue to point to evolving marketing and advertising strategies by OEMs.

Speaker #4: We'll closely monitor those signals to manage potential volatility, while remaining anchored to our plans for dealer-driven 2026. Now to discuss cost. Fourth-quarter operating expenses were $162.2 million.

Speaker #4: Up 1% year over year. The increase was largely driven by marketing investments and severance in stock-based compensation expense that were partially offset by lower depreciation and amortization expense.

Katherine Chen: Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our SEC filings, including those in our most recently filed 10-K, which is available on the IR section of our website. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Now I'll turn the call over to Toby.

Speaker #4: Q4 adjusted operating expenses were $145.5 million. Down 3% year over year from lower depreciation and amortization expense that more than offset the aforementioned marketing investment.

Speaker #4: On a full-year basis, operating expenses were $663 million. Nearly $3 million lower year over year. The bulk of the decline was due to certain assets being fully depreciated and amortized ed in the current year, as compared to the previous period.

Tobias Hartmann: Thank you, Kathryn. It's a pleasure to welcome everyone to my first earnings call with Cars.com. I would like to start by acknowledging Alex's leadership and dedication to Cars for over 2 decades. He guided the company from its print classified origins to a multifaceted technology platform with capabilities including websites and trade and appraisal features. Now, we are starting the next chapter with a portfolio of B2B products that supports and enhances our marketplace flywheel. As some of you may know, I have dedicated more than 20 years to building, enhancing, and growing online classifieds, marketplaces, and digital businesses in the EU and the US. Most recently, I was CEO of Scout24, a leading player in European real estate classifieds. The company increased its market capitalization significantly to approximately $8.5 billion and delivered 195% TSR during my 6-year tenure.

Speaker #4: In terms of offsets, new dealer club expenses were worth roughly a point of margin in line with our initial assumptions when we acquired the company in January 2025.

Speaker #4: Full-year adjusted operating expenses were $604 million. Down 2% year over year, with largely the same puts and takes as mentioned above, supplemented by efficiencies from targeted headcount reduction in Q1 of last year.

Speaker #4: We ended the year with approximately $1,700 employees compared to $1,800 employees a year ago. For the following line item detail, all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted.

Speaker #4: Product and technology expense decreased 1.3 million on a reported basis and was roughly flat on an adjusted basis in the fourth quarter. For the full year, product and technology spend was roughly flat on a reported basis and increased 1.6 million on an adjusted basis.

Speaker #4: Lower overall compensation was driven by less stock-based compensation, which had a slightly unfavorable mix effect on adjusted expenses. Marketing and sales increased roughly $5 million on both the reported and adjusted basis for the fourth quarter.

Tobias Hartmann: Through Scout24's large automotive vertical, I also gained a valuable lens into consumer car shopping behavior, dealership operations, and the OEM landscape. This will complement our strategic planning for Cars. No matter the vertical, I strongly believe the fundamental drivers of sustainable success as a marketplace company are the same. These principles are as follows: One, attracting and harnessing relevant inventory. Two, leveraging our strong brands to build a trusted environment that drives scale and engagement for all stakeholders. Three, interconnecting products and solutions to deliver the best user experience and ROI. Lastly, infusing all aspects of the business with unique and proprietary data insights. Without these core fundamentals, the flywheel cannot accelerate. Over many years, Cars has maintained strong marketplace fundamentals and built advantages in the brand and the data aspect of this flywheel. The Cars.com brand remains synonymous with online automotive marketing and retail.

Speaker #4: Largely reflecting a modest increase in marketing investment. For the full year, marketing and sales expenditures were up 7.1 million on a reported basis and up 3.7 million on an adjusted basis.

Speaker #4: Higher compensation and severance-related expense followed by marketing, where the drivers of increased reported costs. Similar drivers account for the full-year increase on an adjusted basis.

Speaker #4: General and administrative expense was up 6.2 million year over year on a reported basis, but decreased $600,000 on an adjusted basis in the fourth quarter.

Speaker #4: The reported increase was primarily due to stock-based compensation and severance costs that were partially offset by savings from the lease amendment completed in Q4 2024.

Speaker #4: For the full year, general and administrative expenses were up 7.1 million on a reported basis and down 1.1 million on an adjusted basis. We made strong efficiency gains that will have long-term benefits for our cost structure.

Speaker #4: Though these improvements were masked on the P&L by certain one-time expenses. Fourth quarter net income was $7.4 million, for $0.12 per diluted share, compared to net income of $17.3 million or $26 per diluted share a year ago.

Tobias Hartmann: We also own data and have developed powerful capabilities that help customers improve efficiency and sales outcomes. These assets contribute to our differentiation and competitive mode. This is why I was attracted to this company. There's an imperative to strengthen important and critical marketplace elements. We will achieve this by focusing on product, processes, and cost and organizational improvements. For product, delivering sustainable future growth requires us to prioritize integration of the marketplace instead of trying to scale distinct product verticals. A well-oiled marketplace flywheel is therefore the growth engine for the platform and all products. With focused execution, we can create meaningful value while becoming the most trusted marketplace, connecting consumers, dealers, and OEMs. I want to be clear that we will achieve our future growth in a responsible manner through process and cost optimization, even as we deliver product advancements.

Speaker #4: Full-year net income of $20.1 million, or $0.32 per diluted share, compared to net income of $48.2 million, or $0.72 per diluted share a year ago.

Speaker #4: The difference in fourth quarter net income was due to the prior year gain on the sale of an equity investment, while the difference in full-year net income also included changes in the fair value of contingent consideration for prior acquisitions recorded in 2024.

Speaker #4: Adjusted net income for the fourth quarter was $27.4 million. For $44 per diluted share, compared to $32.5 million or $49 per diluted share a year ago.

Speaker #4: For the year, adjusted net income was $108.1 million, or $1.71 per diluted share, compared to $114.9 million, or $1.71 per diluted share a year ago.

Speaker #4: Adjusted EBITDA of $55 million in the fourth quarter was flat year over year, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.9% was 90 basis points lower year over year due to the marketing investments mentioned above.

Tobias Hartmann: As a tech-driven product company, we believe that favorable economics will naturally follow as we consistently increase the value we provide to all stakeholders. I'm now six weeks into this journey and working at full speed with the team to formulate the future initiatives and plans. Organic growth has been challenging in the past. We have good assets, but scaling them will require better integration, simplified processes, and efficient cost and organizational structure. Our direction is clear, and the team is already executing on a number of opportunities to position Cars as an even more relevant marketplace player. Before I discuss those details, let me turn to Sonia to cover Q4 performance in 2026 outlook. Sonia?

Speaker #4: For the full year, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $211.1 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.2%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was essentially unchanged year over year and in line with revenue growth.

Speaker #4: Moving to the cash flow statement and the balance sheet. Net cash provided by

Speaker #1: By operating activities totaled $151.6 million for the year , compared to $152.5 million last year . Free cash flow was $125.7 million for the year , down modestly year over year from slightly elevated CapEx in 2025 .

Speaker #1: We bought back 7.1 million shares for $86 million , returning more than two thirds of free cash flow to shareholders . As we delivered at the high end of our targeted repurchase range of 70 to $90 million .

Sonia Jain: Thank you, Toby. It's been great collaborating with you over the past several weeks, and I'm excited about the fresh perspective you're bringing to the business. I will now recap 2025 and provide guidance before turning it back to Toby to expand on our 2026 priorities. Let's start with full year performance. In 2025, we managed through early challenges to deliver low single-digit revenue growth in the second half, while also maintaining profitability and returning capital to shareholders. Improving dealer revenue trends in the second half produced total annual revenue of $723 million, up 1% year-over-year and in line with our expectations. As you may recall, our path to returning to top-line growth relied on volume and pricing levers, which both improved throughout the year.

Speaker #1: We also utilized free cash flow to pay down net $5 million of our revolver debt Outstanding was $455 million as of December 31st , 2025 , for a total net leverage ratio of 1.9 times .

Speaker #1: Total liquidity was $351.2 million as of December 31st , 2025 , offering a flexibility and ample capacity to fulfill capital allocation priorities . As we consider our capital allocation framework , our goal continues to be driving shareholder returns and long term TSR while operating from a position of financial strength .

Sonia Jain: We expanded our customer base to close Q4 with 19,544 dealer customers, adding 338 dealers year-over-year. While ARPD was flat year-over-year, favorable pricing and repackaging for both websites and marketplace helped drive sequential improvement in ARPD in Q3 and Q4. Profitability and cash generation remained steady. Full year Adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.2% was within our range of expectations. Adjusted EBITDA dollars grew 1% year-over-year, keeping pace with revenue growth. We delivered another year of strong Adjusted EBITDA to Free Cash Flow conversion of roughly 60%, which translated to Free Cash Flow of $126 million for the year.

Speaker #1: Our strong free cash flow conversion gives us the opportunity to not only continue to return capital to shareholders , but also pay down debt with value creation as our foremost consideration .

Speaker #1: We are focused on beginning to pay down our revolver , while also remaining committed to return capital to shareholders through robust share buybacks .

Speaker #1: In aggregate , we expect to buyback at a minimum $60 million of shares for the year with an opportunistic approach to increasing repurchases with excess free cash flow , much as we did last year Finally , we'll conclude with full year and Q1 2026 outlook for the full year , we expect revenue to be flat to up 2% year over year Importantly , we expect our revenue to continue growing year over year as it has for the last two quarters .

Sonia Jain: Our capital allocation plan tilted towards share buybacks in 2025, and we repurchased $86 million of shares, up 75% year-over-year, and at the high end of our targeted $70 to 90 million range. In total, we retired roughly 9% of the outstanding share count in 2025. Overall, dealer revenue health has improved throughout the year. Let's unpack Q4 and the green shoots that we're seeing in key parts of the business. Q4 revenue of $183.9 million was up 2% year-over-year and achieved our guidance. Dealer revenue was up 3% year-over-year, a further improvement over the Q3 growth rate. As I previously mentioned, both dealer counts and repackaging were positive revenue contributors in Q4.

Speaker #1: Based on marketplace and website repackaging , customer base growth and further product adoption OEM and national revenue , which is 9% of our business experienced some year end pressure as automakers made fewer investments into our advertising and media solutions .

Speaker #1: We have seen similar trends persist in Q1 and therefore believe it's prudent to moderate expectations for this portion of our business until we see improving signals from our partners .

Speaker #1: Based on those near-term trends , we're a favorable Q4 exit rate for subscription based marketplace and website products is being balanced by pressure in OEM advertising .

Speaker #1: First quarter revenue is expected to be flat to up 1% year over year Full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be between 29 to 30% , and we expect to grow absolute adjusted EBITDA dollars year over year .

Sonia Jain: On a year-over-year basis, dealer count was up 338 customers, with Marketplace accounting for over 80% of unit growth. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, strong underlying marketplace performance was partially offset by elevated website cancels, which muted total customer growth to 18 units. Given our focus on accelerating the marketplace flywheel, it is important to note that we reversed historical seasonality in Q4 and added over 100 marketplace dealers on a sequential basis for the third straight quarter. As you heard from Toby earlier, marketplace traction is critical, given its outsized impact to revenue, margin, and Free Cash Flow. Our priority is to build on these positive trends in 2026. Turning to our other dealer KPIs, Q4 ARPD of $2,472 was up slightly quarter-over-quarter and flat year-over-year.

Speaker #1: Note that Dealer Club is expected to generate EBITDA losses in 2026 , with the impact more pronounced in Q1 . Given the timing of the acquisition and as a result , first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be between 26 and 27% due to a lower mix of margin and creative OEM and national revenue , as well as slightly elevated technology and compensation expenses .

Speaker #1: Now , let me turn the call back to Toby to share his preliminary thoughts on 2026 .

Speaker #2: Thank you Sonia . Let me put my earlier thoughts in perspective and in context of the details . Sonia just provided . I shared with you that the team and the company needs to work on three dimensions product , processes and costs , and organizational structure These will take time to implement and are necessary preconditions to scale over the medium to long term .

Sonia Jain: For Marketplace, new premium and Premium Plus tiers were rolled out mid-year to align pricing and product value. We more than doubled the number of Premium Plus subscribers from Q3 to Q4, a promising sign of customer appetite for our media offerings. Website repackaging has also been a success, with some benefits continuing to quarterize through 2026. However, as we saw during the year, small customer and product mix shifts can result in short-term ARPD variance. In particular, softer uptake of dealer media products has somewhat offset solid monetization improvements for the rest of our product suite. Overall, these are small variations in dollar terms, and we expect to return ARPD to more robust growth through continued cross-selling, upgrades, and other pricing and packaging levers. Let's wrap up the dealer revenue discussion with quick updates across our interconnected product suite.

Speaker #2: Our goal is to increase the Cars.com Inc. growth rate beyond a low single digit rate , but this requires some difficult decisions and focused work We know investors have higher expectations than our recent performance , and we are committed to delivering against these expectations to accelerate growth and reverse this trend .

Speaker #2: We will begin by strategically addressing the marketplace flywheel and dialing up the team's execution , making marketplace the priority will drive numerous benefits such as simplifying the go to market motion , delivering more inventory to our consumer audience , and providing unique data to inform dealer success .

Speaker #2: So here's the plan . We will accelerate the company in our marketplace by focusing on operating at scale with healthy cost structures , whilst pushing for interconnected product and customer experiences .

Sonia Jain: Starting with our core marketplace, we attracted total traffic of 627 million visits from nearly 26 million average monthly unique visitors in 2025. Organic traffic remains stable at nearly 60% of total visits. We also continue to be the number one most cited public automotive marketplace across some of the largest AI services, such as Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT. Our newest marketplace feature is designed to surface the most relevant vehicle listings for each shopper and speed the marketplace flywheel have performed well since launch.... Carson, our AI-powered search assistant, has further improved consumer engagement, now prompting four times more safe vehicles and three times more vehicle listing views from its users. For dealers, our Market Area Expansion product helps them extend the searchability of their inventory to non-local markets and ship cars to interested buyers.

Speaker #2: For consumers and dealers First , we will put the existing assets to work from a rather isolated and disconnected offering to an interconnected marketplace , offering .

Speaker #2: We do have solid assets , but they're currently lack sufficient integration to deliver a full end to end value proposition . Our new products are being designed with integration expressly in mind Those of you who saw our Nada demos got a first look at how our new active IMS integrates with the marketplace to create efficiency gains and a unique user experience .

Speaker #2: What this means is subscribers making a price or inventory change in Accutane IMS will see those changes instantly populate across the product suite .

Sonia Jain: Consumers are also benefiting from increased access to inventory, our survey data shows that 80% of recent car buyers are willing to purchase the right vehicle, even if it's outside of their market. As we continue to scale our marketplace, including listings inventory, we will also keep developing additional products and features that reduce complexity and enhance the user experience in each part of the flywheel. While taking a slight step back in terms of customer growth in Q4, website solutions still added approximately 130 total subscribers in 2025. Lastly, our AccuTrade subscriber base grew to roughly 1,180 customers in Q4. The average number of vehicles appraised per customer was up another 15% quarter-over-quarter, a record sequential increase that speaks to the product's growing efficacy and value.

Speaker #2: Why is this important ? We will have the only solution in the market that enables these types of changes in real time , giving dealers meaningful operational velocity Our product development approach will create even more data and feature linkage as a marketplace ecosystem .

Speaker #2: We believe this will unlock cross-selling and therefore AR expansion . For example , our new AI powered win videos can turn marketplace vehicle listings into eye catching video assets in minutes and early results show a two times lift in website .

Speaker #2: Lead conversion for those AI videos versus other media tactics . We are removing barriers for marketplace dealers to run video campaigns at scale , meaning , time and resources savings as they adopt multiple cars , products We already bundled other interconnected media products into the marketplace , packaging .

Sonia Jain: We also recently launched AccuTrade IMS, the only full lifecycle inventory management system that will be fully integrated with the Cars.com marketplace and DI website. Our IMS sets itself apart by powering profitability on every vehicle, combining optimized VIN-specific pricing with retail or wholesale exit strategy recommendations. Early feedback has been positive. We are well-positioned to tap into the growing demand for AI and data-driven dealership tools. We're pleased that dealer revenue and products, which represent roughly 90% of our total revenue mix, continued to move on a positive trajectory in Q4. This strength helped us manage through softer than expected OEM and national revenue, which was down roughly $1.5 million year-over-year.

Speaker #2: Last year, we saw encouraging customer uptake. We expect further evolution over time in tandem with growing value delivery. Second, we will accelerate developing the right features as a trusted platform for all stakeholders of the marketplace.

Speaker #2: We have a clear objective to provide the best possible guidance for all stakeholders to empower Car transactions in a trusted environment As one example , we plan to roll out advanced shopper alerts for Premium Plus subscribers in Q2 directly integrating shopper engagement marketplace data into the dealer .

Speaker #2: CRM helps dealers easily find clear signals to close sales This helps dealers build confidence in our marketplace as a critical and trusted partner Nearly two thirds of marketplace dealers are using the current version of shopper alerts .

Sonia Jain: Our original OEM outlook was for year-over-year growth in Q4. The weak October performance we pointed to on our last earnings call opened up a wide gap that weighed on the total quarter. In contrast, November and December rebounded to be basically flat compared to those same months in 2024. Q4 is a prime example of the episodic nature of OEM media investments and why we are more focused on driving growth in stickier, reoccurring dealer products. Looking ahead, early signals to start the year, such as the notable absence of most automakers from Super Bowl ads, continues to point to evolving marketing and advertising strategies by OEM. We'll closely monitor those signals to manage potential volatility while remaining anchored to our plans for dealer-driven growth for 2026. Now to discuss cost.

Speaker #2: Another step up from roughly 50% penetration in Q3 We believe that the upcoming CRM integration will drive further customer interest in Upleveling to Premium Plus and lead to AR growth over time Third , we are very clear about our role positioning and priorities as we execute our plans .

Speaker #2: As a reminder, our guidance calls for adjusted EBITDA margin in the high 20% range, which is consistent with prior year performance baked into our guidance. This is an intentional re-allocation of existing resources towards marketplace. We are already utilizing internal AI tools that can also help teams bridge some of this transition. We are also closely scrutinizing our cost structure with a goal to improve efficiencies in 2026.

Sonia Jain: Q4 operating expenses were $162.2 million, up 1% year-over-year. The increase was largely driven by marketing investments and severance and stock-based compensation expense that were partially offset by lower depreciation and amortization expense. Q4 Adjusted operating expenses were $145.5 million, down 3% year-over-year from lower depreciation and amortization expense that more than offset the aforementioned marketing investment. On a full year basis, operating expenses were $663 million, nearly $3 million lower year-over-year. The bulk of the decline was due to certain assets being fully depreciated and amortized in the current year as compared to the previous period.

Speaker #2: Our cost containment operating leverage and highly cash generative model should yield another year of strong free cash flow . As Sonia mentioned , we will continue to buy back shares whilst also paying down debt As we pursue a balanced capital structure .

Speaker #2: We have started the work already and I'm excited to share more details as we accelerate our pace Finally , let me make this clear .

Speaker #2: Our job is to drive long term shareholder value and the team is ready to be focused on that . Let me now open the call to Q&A

Sonia Jain: In terms of offsets, new DealerClub expenses were worth roughly a point of margin, in line with our initial assumptions when we acquired the company in January 2025. Full year adjusted operating expenses were $604 million, down 2% year-over-year, with largely the same puts and takes as mentioned above, supplemented by efficiencies from targeted headcount reduction in Q1 of last year. We ended the year with approximately 1,700 employees, compared to 1,800 employees a year ago. For the following line item detail, all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Product and technology expense decreased $1.3 million on a reported basis and was roughly flat on an adjusted basis in Q4.

Speaker #1: Thank you .

Speaker #3: In a moment , we will open the call to questions . If you would like to ask a question , please press star one on your telephone keypad .

Speaker #3: A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue . You may press star two . If you would like to remove your question from the queue .

Speaker #3: For participants using speakers , speaker equipment , it may make . It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys .

Speaker #3: Please be advised that the questions are limited to two questions , and then you can rejoin the queue . Thank you . One moment while we poll for the questions .

Speaker #3: The first question comes from Tom white with a day Davidson . Please go ahead

Sonia Jain: For the full year, product and technology spend was roughly flat on a reported basis and increased $1.6 million on an adjusted basis. Lower overall compensation was driven by less stock-based compensation, which had a slightly unfavorable mix effect on adjusted expenses. Marketing and sales increased roughly $5 million on both a reported and adjusted basis for Q4, largely reflecting a modest increase in marketing investment. For the full year, marketing and sales expenditures were up $7.1 million on a reported basis and up $3.7 million on an adjusted basis. Higher compensation and severance-related expense, followed by marketing, were the drivers of increased reported costs. Similar drivers account for the full year increase on an adjusted basis.

Speaker #4: Great, thanks for taking my question. Good morning, everyone, and welcome aboard. Toby, I guess the first one is just on the plan to kind of refocus your priority on marketplace.

Speaker #4: I think you talked about kind of getting the flywheel going and I heard , you know , some , some discussions about about product Curious how marketing investments and audience growth might play into that this year and how you're thinking about that And then I've got a follow up on AI .

Speaker #4: Thanks

Speaker #2: Hi . Thank you for your question . Nice to meet you over the phone . Yes , we're refocusing on marketplace fundamentals , which is literally what we just talked about , which is focused on getting the right inventory and driving engagement and that means that it's not a lack of marketing that we're currently doing .

Sonia Jain: General and administrative expense was up $6.2 million year-over-year on a reported basis, but decreased $600,000 on an adjusted basis in Q4. The reported increase was primarily due to stock-based compensation and severance costs that were partially offset by savings from the lease amendment completed in Q4 2024. For the full year, general and administrative expenses were up $7.1 million on a reported basis and down $1.1 million on an adjusted basis. We made strong efficiency gains that will have long-term benefits for our cost structure, though these improvements were masked on the P&L by certain one-time expenses. Q4 net income was $7.4 million or $0.12 per diluted share, compared to net income of $17.3 million, or $0.26 per diluted share a year ago.

Speaker #2: It's just a lack of focus . We will just refocus and really being centered around the marketplace fundamentals as opposed to driving other isolated solutions .

Speaker #2: So the current plan foresees that we're not going to dial back on marketing investments , but it's going to be more focused and centered around the marketplace .

Speaker #2: Flywheel . Thank you

Speaker #4: Okay , great . And then just on AI , you know , a lot of marketplace companies are getting this question from investors .

Speaker #4: It poses opportunities and risks . And the investors seem more focused on kind of the the risks as it relates to disintermediation and the companies , you know , sort of touting the opportunities if they can kind of incorporate AI into their businesses .

Sonia Jain: Full year net income of $20.1 million or $0.32 per diluted share, compared to net income of $48.2 million or $0.72 per diluted share a year ago. The difference in Q4 net income was due to the prior year gain on the sale of an equity investment, while the difference in full year net income also included changes in the fair value of contingent consideration for prior acquisitions recorded in 2024. Adjusted net income for Q4 was $27.4 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, compared to $32.5 million or $0.49 per diluted share a year ago.

Speaker #4: Just curious how you envision AI and Agentic AI kind of evolving in in this space and kind of automotive things

Speaker #2: Sure . Thank you So just starting with a big picture , we probably agree that automotive is a pretty complex industry that requires deep vertical expertise .

Speaker #2: Also , from a shopper's perspective or consumers perspective , the car is really the second largest purchase for consumers , and that means that the vast majority of consumers spend a lot of time researching in depth .

Sonia Jain: For the year, Adjusted net income was $108.1 million or $1.71 per diluted share, compared to $114.9 million or $1.71 per diluted share a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA of $55 million in Q4 was flat year-over-year, and Adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.9% was 90 basis points lower year-over-year, due to the marketing investments mentioned above. For the full year, we delivered Adjusted EBITDA of $211.1 million and Adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.2%. Our Adjusted EBITDA margin was essentially unchanged year-over-year and in line with revenue growth. Moving to the cash flow statement and the balance sheet.

Speaker #2: Now , the researching in-depth is exactly where we play a competitive role because we have data and we've accumulated the data over the past 25 years .

Speaker #2: We have it at a local level . We have it at a customer level . We have it at a level , and there's an opportunity to .

Speaker #2: Really accompany that research for consumers . And then drive through attribution models . A very unique value prop that we believe is very hard to replicate in being Disintermediate now , with AI , play a significant role in our vertical .

Speaker #2: Absolutely Now , are there a couple of things to think through ? How it all evolves ? As I guess nobody on the call really knows what will happen next Absolutely .

Speaker #2: But we feel confident about our opportunity because we also have something that's key for any LM and any future AI , which is the brand and LMS will always have to revert back to the brand , especially for those consumer verticals that are so deeply engraved in the capital .

Sonia Jain: Net cash provided by operating activities totaled $151.6 million for the year, compared to $152.5 million last year. Free cash flow was $125.7 million for the year, down modestly year-over-year from slightly elevated CapEx. In 2025, we bought back 7.1 million shares for $86 million, returning more than two-thirds of free cash flow to shareholders as we delivered at the high end of our targeted repurchase range of $70 to $90 million. We also utilized free cash flow to pay down net $5 million of our revolver. Debt outstanding was $455 million as of 31 December 2025, for a total net leverage ratio of 1.9x.

Speaker #2: Household spend . So more to come on that . Thank you

Speaker #4: Great , thanks . I'll get back in the queue . Appreciate it

Speaker #3: Thank you . The next question comes from Naved Khan with B Riley Securities . Please go ahead .

Speaker #5: Thank you very much . Two questions from me . Maybe just on the on the new product launch recently at Nada . You know , you showcased the trade IMS and the market expansion and video ads .

Sonia Jain: Total liquidity was $351.2 million as of 31 December 2025, offering us flexibility and ample capacity to fulfill capital allocation priorities. As we consider our capital allocation framework, our goal continues to be driving shareholder returns and long-term TSR, while operating from a position of financial strength. Our strong Free Cash Flow conversion gives us the opportunity to not only continue to return capital to shareholders, but also pay down debt. With value creation as our foremost consideration, we are focused on beginning to pay down our revolver, while also remaining committed to return capital to shareholders through robust share buybacks. In aggregate, we expect to buy back at a minimum, $60 million of shares for the year, with an opportunistic approach to increasing repurchases with excess Free Cash Flow, much as we did last year.

Speaker #5: I'm wondering what is contemplated in your annual guide in terms of contribution from these new products . And Toby , when you talked about accelerating the growth for the company up from the low single digits into to some higher pace .

Speaker #5: What kind of time frame do you have in mind ? Do you expect that to show up in 2027 , or are you thinking about 2 to 3 years from now ?

Speaker #5: Just us. Your thoughts there? The second question I had is just around the website customer count. I think it's a decline quarter on quarter in Q4.

Speaker #5: Is there any seasonality there, or were there any changes that kind of led to this decline? Is there any clarification that would be helpful?

Speaker #5: Thank you

Speaker #1: Maybe . Thanks for the thanks for the questions , Navid . Maybe to start out with the with the nada product launches , both both .

Speaker #1: You know , IMS market area expansion . Our AI based Vin videos . Those are incorporated into our guidance . They're obviously new products .

Sonia Jain: Finally, we'll conclude with full year and Q1 2026 outlook. For the full year, we expect revenue to be flat to up 2% year-over-year. Importantly, we expect dealer revenue to continue growing year-over-year, as it has for the last two quarters, based on marketplace and website repackaging, customer base growth, and further product adoption. OEM and national revenue, which is 9% of our business, experienced some year-end pressure as automakers made fewer investments into our advertising and media solutions. We have seen similar trends persist in Q1, and therefore believe it's prudent to moderate expectations for this portion of our business until we see improving signals from our partners.

Speaker #1: Right . So they're going to take some time to scale . I would also tell you that the sales cycle for each one of these is going to be slightly different .

Speaker #1: Market area expansion , AI generated videos , you know , those are relatively familiar into our product . Existing product suite , right of media solutions and marketplace attached products .

Speaker #1: I would say the IMS sales cycle is going to be a little bit different because it is so core to, kind of, dealer operations.

Speaker #1: So you can expect a different sales cycle , but they're already captured in terms of our in terms of our full year guide for 2026 .

Sonia Jain: Based on those near-term trends, where a favorable Q4 exit rate for subscription-based marketplace and website products is being balanced by pressure in OEM advertising, Q1 revenue is expected to be flat to up 1% year-over-year. Full year 2026 Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be between 29% to 30%, and we expect to grow absolute Adjusted EBITDA dollars year-over-year. Note that DealerClub is expected to generate EBITDA losses in 2026, with the impact more pronounced in Q1, given the timing of the acquisition. As a result, Q1 Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be between 26% and 27%, due to a lower mix of margin accretive OEM and national revenue, as well as slightly elevated technology and compensation expenses. Now let me turn the call back to Tobias Hartmann to share his preliminary thoughts on 2026.

Speaker #1: I think you had a second question related to website customer count . You know , I think I would say one of the things we're observing is that , you know , some of the some of the dealer groups and I think you've seen this periodically .

Speaker #1: They , they , they want to strike it out on their , on their own with some of their technology solutions . We find that in many cases that even though they have this ambition building kind of the full service suite , that includes things like information security , integration with third parties , it's hard to do on your own .

Speaker #1: And so I don't think there's, like, any specific seasonality or any broader sort of long-term concern or trajectory. We would expect many of these dealers to come back to us over a period of time, as they kind of test and find the value in the products that we have and can bring to bear.

Tobias Hartmann: Thank you, Sonia. Let me put my earlier thoughts in perspective and in context of the details Sonia just provided. I shared with you that the team and the company needs to work on three dimensions: product, processes and costs, and organizational structure. These will take time to implement and are necessary preconditions to scale. Over the medium to long term, our goal is to increase the Cars.com growth rate beyond a low single-digit rate. This requires some difficult decisions and focused work. We know investors have higher expectations than our recent performance. We are committed to delivering against these expectations. To accelerate growth and reverse this trend, we will begin by strategically addressing the marketplace flywheel and dialing up the team's execution....

Speaker #5: Thank you . Sonia

Speaker #3: Thank you . The next question comes from Rajat Gupta with J.P. Morgan . Please go ahead .

Speaker #6: Great . Thanks for taking the questions . Just wanted to clarify , you know , as a follow up to question around the websites .

Speaker #6: I mean , it is there like a different phenomena potentially this time where , you know , the dealers might be opting to maybe test out some of these agentic AI tools to build out these website and curious if that is something that you're seeing or if this is just like how you described it , where they're just trying to attempt it , through other areas to build out these websites and services , and curious if that is a risk that you see to the business , and how would you navigate that ?

Tobias Hartmann: Making marketplace the priority will drive numerous benefits, such as simplifying the go-to-market motion, delivering more inventory to our consumer audience, and providing unique data to inform dealer success. Here's the plan: We will accelerate the company in our marketplace by focusing on operating at scale with healthy cost structures, while pushing for interconnected product and customer experiences for consumers and dealers. First, we will put the existing assets to work from a rather isolated and disconnected offering to an interconnected marketplace offering. We do have solid assets, but they currently lack sufficient integration to deliver a full end-to-end value proposition. Our new products are being designed with integration expressly in mind. Those of you who saw our NADA demos got a first look at how our new AccuTrade IMS integrates with the marketplace to create efficiency gains and a unique user experience.

Speaker #6: Have a quick follow up . Thanks

Speaker #2: Hi . Thanks for your question . I'll take this . So if you think about the website business and dealer taking on their own website , this has gotten a lot more complicated than a year ago or even two years ago .

Speaker #2: The number of changes that the OEMs are posing the requests that you're getting from a fraud and security standpoint , the fraudulent AI bots that are out there opposing a new threat .

Speaker #2: So we actually view this as an opportunity because obviously , by consolidating and operating this from a sheer size and volume perspective , there's advantages .

Speaker #2: So yes , absolutely , we are embedding AI tools . We make those available to those dealers . And again , the punchline here is this business is getting a lot more complex .

Speaker #2: If we want to solve for that on your own , as opposed to having someone like ourselves providing an end to end solution .

Speaker #2: So yes , we are already integrating more and more AI features , and we're also getting some great feedback on some of the roadmap that we've planned for the website business .

Tobias Hartmann: What this means is, subscribers making a price or inventory change in AccuTrade IMS will see those changes instantly populate across the Cars.com product suite. Why is this important? We will have the only solution in the market that enables these types of changes in real time, giving dealers meaningful operational velocity. Our product development approach will create even more data and feature linkage as a marketplace ecosystem. We believe this will unlock cross-selling and therefore ARPD expansion. For example, our new AI-Powered Inventory Video can turn marketplace vehicle listings into eye-catching video assets in minutes. Early results show a two times lift in website lead conversion for those AI videos versus other media tactics. We are removing barriers for marketplace dealers to run video campaigns at scale, meaning time and resources savings as they adopt multiple Cars products.

Speaker #2: Thanks .

Speaker #6: Understood . Thanks for that color . And then maybe if you could help us a little bit , you know , and thanks for all the candid assessment about the business .

Speaker #6: And , you know , the areas you want to focus . But we're curious , you know , with the pickup in product and technology expenses and also the sales and marketing side , is there a timing or a timeline you can provide us on when you expect growth to start ?

Speaker #6: We , you know , not not like not not from 1 to 2% , but maybe more in like the mid-single digit type range or higher .

Speaker #6: Curious what kind of visibility do you have early on here ? Thanks

Speaker #2: Yes , sure . So as I mentioned , I'm now six weeks into the journey and as you know , from the history of the company , the company has acquired a few other assets and companies , and I do expect that over the course of this year , which is , by the way , baked into our guidance that we just provided , we will make significant progress .

Tobias Hartmann: We already bundled other interconnected media products into the marketplace packaging last year and saw encouraging customer uptake. Expect further evolution over time in tandem with growing value delivery. Second, we will accelerate developing the right features as a trusted platform for all stakeholders of the marketplace. We have a clear objective: to provide the best possible guidance for all stakeholders to empower car transactions in a trusted environment. As one example, we plan to roll out advanced shopper alerts for Premium Plus subscribers in Q2. Directly integrating shopper engagement marketplace data into the dealer CRM helps dealers easily find clear signals to close sales. This helps dealers build confidence in our marketplace as a critical and trusted partner. Nearly two-thirds of marketplace dealers are using the current version of shopper alerts, another step up from roughly 50% penetration in Q3.

Speaker #2: But as you know , organizational improvement system improvements , platform integration , data integration , process integration , takes some So when we said we would like to deliver a higher growth rate going forward , we're not talking about five years out .

Speaker #2: We're talking about a short to medium term outlook . But obviously this year to date just focuses on 2026 . And that's fully baked in .

Speaker #2: What we just talked about . And what Sonia shared in terms of guidance . But to be very concrete , it's obviously our ambition and it's the expectation to drive further growth following 2026 .

Speaker #2: And it's not five years out . It's rather , you know , two years out than five years . So that's probably the summary .

Speaker #2: I can I can share . Thank you .

Speaker #6: Understood . Thanks for all the color and good luck .

Speaker #7: Thank you .

Speaker #3: Thank you . The next question comes from Marvin Fong with Btig . Please go ahead

Tobias Hartmann: We believe that the upcoming CRM integration will drive further customer interest in upleveling to Premium Plus and lead to ARPD growth over time. Third, we are very clear about our role, positioning, and priorities as we execute our plans. As a reminder, our guidance calls for Adjusted EBITDA margin in the high 20% range, which is consistent with prior year performance. Baked into our guidance is an intentional reallocation of existing resources towards marketplace. We are already utilizing internal AI tools that can also help teams bridge some of this transition. We are also closely scrutinizing our cost structure with a goal to improve efficiencies in 2026. Our cost containment, operating leverage, and highly cash generative model should yield another year of strong Free Cash Flow.

Speaker #8: Great . Good morning . Thanks for taking my questions . Welcome , Toby . It the first question probably for you , Toby , just wanted to get a little deeper on what you were saying about prioritizing marketplace more integration and things like that .

Speaker #8: So should we take that to mean ? Or how do the kind of ancillary products like trade Dealer Club and Website solutions ? I mean , will those continue to sort of be standalone products in this new vision or do you envision sort of integrating those into like a unified subscription ?

Speaker #8: And then second question , just on the full year guidance , I mean , should we sort of think about the algorithm as being dealer revenue up to 2 to 3 points and , and advertising on a consolidated level , you know , detracting about about a point that growth is that the right way to think about it ?

Tobias Hartmann: As Sonia mentioned, we will continue to buy back shares whilst also paying down debt as we pursue a balanced capital structure. We have started the work already, and I'm excited to share more details as we accelerate our pace. Finally, let me make this clear. Our job is to drive long-term shareholder value, and the team is ready to be focused on that. Let me now open the call to Q&A.

Speaker #8: And just sort of like a little more explanation on what you're envisioning for the trajectory of , of OEM will be kind of flattish in absolute dollars throughout the year .

Speaker #8: Anything on that would be great . Thank you

Speaker #2: Hi , Marvin . Thank you . I'll start with the first question . Then I'll hand it , then over to Sonia . So when we talk about a deeper marketplace integration , we really mean the fact how we able on the other , the other hand , like as a dealer to experience solution , there is a difference .

Operator: Thank you. In a moment, we will open the call to questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speakers, speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Please be advised that the questions are limited to two questions, and then you can rejoin the queue. Thank you. One moment while we call for the questions. The first question comes from Tom White with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Speaker #2: I hope you would agree whether you're selling for different solutions and you're basically showing up at a dealers location and you say , look , I want you to use arcade .

Speaker #2: I want you to use dealer club . I want you to lose . I want you to use marketplace . And by the way , there's also a great media play that we have that we would like you to use as opposed to imagine a world where , yes , you are unified as part of our subscription service , and you have the opportunity to seamlessly use .

Tom White: Great, thanks for taking my question. Good morning, everyone, and welcome aboard, Toby. I guess first one, just on the plan to refocus your priority on marketplace. I think you talked about getting the flywheel going, and I heard, you know, some discussions about product. Curious how marketing investments and audience growth might play into that this year and how you're thinking about that. I've got a follow-up on AI. Thanks.

Speaker #2: Lets say , accurate shape because it becomes part of your listing service . So imagine a world where maybe there is a listings product , which is part of your membership or subscription service .

Speaker #2: Be the Premier Plus or Premier Plus plus where all of a sudden with just one click , you can actually activate acute trade and it allows you to run whatever 30 to 100 or 100 to 200 appraisals as an integrated part of your subscription service per month .

Tobias Hartmann: Hi, thank you for your question. Nice to meet you over phone. Yes, we're refocusing on marketplace fundamentals, which is literally what we just talked about, which is focused on getting the right inventory and driving engagement. That means that it's not a lack of marketing that we're currently doing, it's just a lack of focus. We will just refocus on really being centered around the marketplace fundamentals as opposed to driving other isolated solutions. The current plan foresees that we're not going to dial back on marketing investments, but it's gonna be more focused and centered around the marketplace flywheel. Thank you.

Speaker #2: That is a different value prop , and it's easier and more convenient to consume as opposed to having 3 to 4 different applications where you need to train everyone and where you need to make sure that you have a separate subscription plan .

Speaker #2: So yes , what we mean by that is a deeper integration when it comes to delivering the value prop from a dealer's perspective , what we also mean a deeper integration from a point of view , which is it's tied back to the marketplace experience , which means there's a lot of attribution modeling that we can do .

Speaker #2: There's a lot of data enhancement that we can do , which we will target towards individual dealerships and membership products . Where I think based on the assessment , what I've seen , we can improve and we can do better .

Tom White: Okay, great. Just on AI, you know, a lot of marketplace companies are getting this question from investors. It poses opportunities and risks, and the investors seem more focused on kind of the risks as it relates to disintermediation and the company's, you know, sort of touting the opportunities if they can kind of incorporate AI into their businesses. Just curious how you envision AI and agentic AI kind of evolving in this space, in kind of automotive? Thanks.

Speaker #2: So it doesn't mean that we are not selling standalone , but it means that we are prioritizing the bundling and the integration over a standalone solution , if that makes sense .

Speaker #2: And the second question , I will hand it over to Sonia .

Speaker #1: Thank you Marvin . Regarding the full year guide , I think , you know , generally I would say I would say directionally kind of correct , maybe a little bit of nuance in that I would probably say OEM is expected to be flat to down on a full year basis .

Tobias Hartmann: Sure. Thank you. Just starting with the big picture, we probably agree that automotive is a pretty complex industry that requires deep vertical expertise. From a shopper's perspective or consumer's perspective, the car is really the second largest purchase for consumers, and that means that the vast majority of consumers spend a lot of time researching in-depth. Now, the researching in-depth is exactly where we play a competitive role because we have data, and we've accumulated the data over the past 25 years. We have it at a local level, we have it at a customer level, we have it at a VIN level. There's an opportunity to really accompany that research for consumers and then drive through attribution models, a very unique value prop that we believe is very hard to replicate in being disintermediated.

Speaker #1: And like very specifically for Q1 , we do expect coming out of Q4 . And you can kind of see what those Q4 numbers look like .

Speaker #1: We're expecting a similar sort of trajectory heading into Q1 , and we will hope , like over the course of time during the year , we can close some of that gap .

Speaker #1: But ultimately , we're expecting it to be flat to down

Speaker #8: Okay , that is very helpful . Thank you both

Speaker #3: Thank you . The next question comes from Joe Stack with UBS . Please go ahead

Speaker #9: Thank you . Good morning . Just wanted to dive in a little bit more to opex and cost . I mean , you talked about slightly elevated technology .

Speaker #9: I think that makes sense in the context of the plan you laid out . It sounded like within marketing , maybe it was a little bit more of a reallocation of dollars .

Tobias Hartmann: Will AI play a significant role in our vertical? Absolutely. Are there a couple of things to think through how it all evolves, as I guess nobody on the call really knows what will happen next? Absolutely. We feel confident about our opportunity because we also have something that's key for any LLM and any future AI, which is the brand. LLMs will always have to revert back to the brand, especially for those consumer verticals that are so deeply engraved in the capital household spend. More to come on that. Thank you.

Speaker #9: But I guess I'm wondering how we should think about the opex trend over your your turnaround plan period . Because marketing used to be , you know , significantly higher as a percent of sales .

Speaker #9: I think . 3335 now it's been sub 32 for a couple of years . So , you know , as the the reintegration occurs as some of the product developed , do we eventually need to see a real acceleration there to help drive that growth ?

Speaker #9: And then maybe just a little bit more on where you're looking to find actual cost savings , not just a reallocation of cost dollars .

Tom White: Great, thanks. I'll get back in the queue. Appreciate it.

Speaker #9: Thanks

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker #2: Yeah , sure . A couple things . As we had shared during the call and as you probably know , there's still some work to do to integrate these assets .

Naved Khan: Thank you very much. 2 questions from me. Maybe just on the new product launched recently at NADA. You know, you showcased the AccuTrade IMS and the Market Area Expansion and video ads. I'm wondering what is contemplated in your annual guide in terms of contribution from these new products? Toby, when you talked about accelerating the growth for the company up from the low single digits into some higher pace, what kind of timeframe do you have in mind? Do you expect that to show up in 2027, or are you thinking about 2 to 3 years from now? Just your thoughts there. The second question I had is just around the website customer count.

Speaker #2: What this means that fact that we're running these assets , not being fully integrated , produces costs that shows up as part of a duplication of certain functions , duplication of efforts .

Speaker #2: Whether you look at processes , whether you look at personal costs , whether you look at organizational structure . So there's an opportunity to really streamline the costs from an operational standpoint and an organizational standpoint .

Speaker #2: So that's where we think as we as we talked about during the earnings call , where we'll find some headroom to create capacity to then reallocate that .

Speaker #2: Yes. Towards technology product investments and also marketing. So our plan is not to dial down the marketing. And our plan is not to dial down the product and tech investments.

Naved Khan: I think it saw a decline, quarter-over-quarter in Q4. Is there any seasonality there, or were there any changes that kind of led to this decline? Just any clarification that would be helpful. Thank you.

Speaker #2: But if you look at our personal expenses , you will figure out that we're running at a pretty high percentage . So that's that's where we're focused .

Sonia Jain: Maybe, thanks for the questions, Naved. Maybe to start out with the NADA product launches. both, you know, IMS Market Area Expansion, our AI based VIN videos, those are incorporated into our guidance. They're obviously new products, right? They're gonna take some time to scale. I would also tell you that the sales cycle for each one of these is going to be slightly different. Market Area Expansion, AI-generated videos, you know, those are relatively familiar into our product, existing product suite, right, of media solutions and marketplace attached products. I would say the IMS sales cycle is going to be a little bit different because it is so core to kind of dealer operations.

Speaker #2: And that comes along with process changes and an optimization that we're driving internally . Hope that makes sense .

Speaker #9: Thank you . Yeah yeah sure I guess the second question is , you know , certainly you sort of talked about the buyback right ?

Speaker #9: 70% of this year's free cash flow . You know , you talked about how that sort of still part of the continued cap allocation plan , but , you know , to be perfectly blunt , the , you know , the money you spent thus far has been value destructive .

Speaker #9: So like , I guess I'm wondering how you're sort of thinking about that capital allocation process and plan and , and why continue ?

Speaker #9: You know , right now , I guess until you , you feel the business is sort of stabilized a little bit , as you know , I think you're clearly indicating it's going through a transition period

Sonia Jain: You can expect a different sales cycle, but they're already captured in terms of our full year guide for 2026. I think you had a second question related to website customer count. You know, I think I would say one of the things we're observing is that, you know, some of the dealer groups, and I think you've seen this periodically, they want to strike it out on their own with some of their technology solutions. We find that in many cases, that even though they have this ambition, building kind of the full service suite that includes things like information security, integration with third parties, it's hard to do on your own.

Speaker #1: Yeah . I mean , I think Toby's articulated kind of our plan to reignite the marketplace flywheel and drive greater levels of growth in this business .

Speaker #1: You know , we have a collection of , I think , really good assets that need to be connected together better in order to really unlock the revenue growth potential .

Speaker #1: I think we firmly believe this . The markets . You know , from time to time may not always operate in a smooth line .

Speaker #1: But as we think about creating long term shareholder value , we see a clear path . And as Toby was kind of articulating , this isn't , you know , a five year mission .

Sonia Jain: I don't think there's, like, any specific seasonality or any broader sort of long-term concern or trajectory. We would expect many of these dealers to come back to us over a period of time as they kind of test.

Speaker #1: We're on . We are targeting doing this quickly , aggressively and trying to turn the corner here within the next , you know , two years .

Speaker #1: And so it does make sense for us to be out in market . We believe the stock is undervalued . We believe there is a lot of growth potential here .

[Company Representative] (Cars.com): ... and find the value in the products that we have and can bring to bear.

Sonia Jain: ... and find the value in the products that we have and can bring to bear.

Speaker #1: And we think setting a floor at 60 million is prudent . You'll get quarterly updates from us on how we're progressing on our plan to turn around the business .

Tobias Hartmann: Thank you, Sonya.

Naved Khan: Thank you, Sonya.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker #1: And you'll also get quarterly updates from us on how we think about capital allocation on a broader basis

Rajat Gupta: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to clarify, you know, as a follow-up to Naved's question, around the website. I mean, is there, like, a different phenomena potentially this time where, you know, the dealers might be opting to maybe test out some of these agentic AI tools to build out these websites? I'm curious if that is something that you're seeing or if this is just like how you described it, where they're just trying to attempt it, you know, through other areas to build out these websites and services. I'm curious if that is a risk that you see to the business, and how would you navigate that? I have a quick follow-up. Thanks.

Speaker #9: Thank you

Speaker #3: Thank you . The next question comes from Gary Preston , Prestopino , with Barrington Research . Please go ahead

Speaker #7: Well , hey , Toby , let me I'm trying to understand here when you're talking about the integrated marketplace and did you have separate sales forces selling point solutions as well as marketplace ?

Speaker #7: And if not , what do you have to do to the sales force to start driving more of these integrated sales wrapped around the marketplace

Tobias Hartmann: Hi, thanks for your question. I'll take this. If you think about the website business and a dealer taking on their own website, this has gotten a lot more complicated than a year ago or even two years ago. The number of changes that the OEMs are posing, the requests that you're getting from a fraud and security standpoint, the fraudulent AI bots that are out there posing a new threat. We actually view this as an opportunity because obviously, by consolidating and operating this from a sheer size and volume perspective, there's advantages. Yes, absolutely, we are embedding AI tools. We make those available to those dealers. Again, the punchline here is this business is getting a lot more complex. You will wanna solve for that on your own, as opposed to having someone like ourselves providing an end-to-end solution.

Speaker #2: Yes , we did have separate sales forces at different levels , and I would also say at different levels of sophistication and what we are doing and what is in flight already is that our colleague , our chief commercial officer , has redefined the sales strategy and sales organization .

Speaker #2: So view it as there's more consultative selling that will be necessary . Going forward . As opposed to a standalone solution for one service only .

Speaker #2: And that's been in the making . And we're doing that as we speak . And I'm very confident that this is the right approach .

Speaker #2: And that we are well on track .

Speaker #7: Okay . And just just let me understand again , you did say that you will still be giving the dealers the ability where you can to sell a single point solution .

Tobias Hartmann: Yes, well, we are already integrating more and more AI features, and we're also getting some great feedback on some of the roadmaps that we've planned for the website business. Thanks.

Speaker #7: You're not going to go into your dealerships and say , okay , we've got five products wrapped around marketplace . It's going to cost you X .

Rajat Gupta: Understood. No, thanks for that color. Then maybe, if you could help us a little bit, you know, and thanks for all the candid assessments about the business and, you know, the areas you want to focus. We're curious, you know, with the pickup in product and technology expenses and also on the sales and marketing side, is there a timing or a timeline you can provide us on when you expect growth to start re-accelerating? You know, not like not from 1% to 2%, but, you know, maybe more in, like, the mid-single digit type range or higher. I'm curious, what kind of visibility do you have early on here? Thanks.

Speaker #7: And in order to be a part of the car's commerce universe, you have to buy all of these.

Speaker #2: That's correct . There's absolutely the opportunity . View it as a , you know , like a restaurant . You can you can have an appetizer , you can have a , a main dish , but there's just also a menu .

Speaker #2: And the menu is going to be a lot more attractive . And that's what we're aiming for .

Speaker #7: But yes . Okay . Thank you .

Speaker #2: Very much. Also selling it as a standalone. Absolutely.

Speaker #7: Okay. Thank you. That clears it up. Thanks a lot.

Speaker #3: Thank you At this time we have reached the end of the question and answer session . This concludes today's conference and you may now disconnect your lines at this time .

Tobias Hartmann: Yes, sure. As I've mentioned, I'm now six weeks into the journey. As you know from the history of the company, the company has acquired a few other assets and companies. I do expect that over the course of this year, which is, by the way, baked into our guidance that we just provided, we will make significant progress. As you know, organizational improvements, system improvements, platform integration, data integration, process integration, take some time. When we said we would like to deliver a higher growth rate going forward, we're not talking about five years out. We're talking about a short to medium-term outlook. Obviously, this year to date just focuses on 2026. That's fully baked in what we just talked about and what Sonya shared in terms of guidance.

Speaker #3: Thank you for your participation

Speaker #2: Thank you all .

Speaker #3: Thank you .

Tobias Hartmann: To be very concrete, it's obviously our ambition, and it's the expectation to drive further growth following 2026. It's not 5 years out. It's rather, you know, 2 years out than 5 years. That's probably the summary I can, I can share. Thank you.

Rajat Gupta: understood. Thanks for all the color. Good luck.

Tobias Hartmann: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Marvin Fong with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Marvin Fong: Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Welcome, Toby. Yeah, the first question, probably for you, Toby, is just wanted to get a little deeper on what you were saying about prioritizing marketplace, more integration, and things like that. Should we take that to mean? Or how do the kind of ancillary products like AccuTrade, DealerClub, and Website Solutions, I mean, will those continue to sort of be standalone products in this new vision? Or do you envision sort of integrating those into, like, a unified subscription? Second question, just on the full year guidance, I mean, should we sort of think about the algorithm as being dealer revenue up 2 to 3 points and advertising on a consolidated level, you know, detracting about 1 point of growth?

Marvin Fong: Is that the right way to think about it? Just sort of like a little more explanation on what you're envisioning for the trajectory of OEM will be kind of flattish in absolute $ throughout the year. Anything on that would be great. Thank you.

Tobias Hartmann: Hi, Marvin. Thank you. I'll start with the first question, and I'll hand it then over to Sonya. When we talk about a deeper marketplace integration, we really mean the fact how we're able, on the other hand, like as a leader, to experience the solution. There is a difference, I hope you would agree, whether you're selling four different solutions and you're basically showing up at a dealer's location, and you say: Look, I want you to use AccuTrade, I want you to use DealerClub, I want you to use Marketplace. Oh, and by the way, there's also a great media play that we have that we would like you to use.

Tobias Hartmann: As opposed to, imagine a world where, yes, you are unified as part of our subscription service, and you have the opportunity to seamlessly use AccuTrade, because it becomes part of your listing service. Imagine a world where maybe there is a listings product, which is part of your membership or subscription service, be it a Premier Plus or Premier Plus+, where all of a sudden, with just one click, you can actually activate AccuTrade, and it allows you to run whatever, 30 to 100 or 100 to 200 appraisals as an integrated part of your subscription service per month.

Tobias Hartmann: That is a different value prop, and it's easier and more convenient to consume, as opposed to having 3 to 4 different applications where you need to train everyone and where you need to make sure that you have a separate subscription plan. Yes, what we mean by that is a deeper integration when it comes to delivering the value prop from a dealer's perspective. What we also mean, a deeper integration from a point of view, which is it's tied back to the marketplace experience, which means there's a lot of attribution modeling that we can do. There's a lot of data enhancement that we can do, which we will target towards individual dealerships and membership products, where I think, based on the assessment, what I've seen, we can improve and we can do better.

Tobias Hartmann: It doesn't mean that we are not selling standalone, but it means that we are prioritizing the bundling and the integration over a standalone solution, if that makes sense. On the second question, I will hand it over to Sonya.

Sonia Jain: Thank you. Marvin, regarding the full year guide, I think, you know, I would say directionally, kind of, correct, maybe a little bit of nuance in that I would probably say OEM is expected to be flat to down on a full year basis. Like very specifically for Q1, we do expect, you know, coming out of Q4, and you can kind of see what those Q4 numbers look like. We're expecting a similar sort of trajectory heading into Q1, and we will hope, like over the course of time during the year, we can close some of that gap, but ultimately, we're expecting it to be flat to down.

Tobias Hartmann: Okay, that is very helpful. Thank you both.

Marvin Fong: Okay, that is very helpful. Thank you both.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Joe Spak with UBS. Please go ahead.

Joe Spak: Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to dive in a little bit more to the OpEx and costs. I mean, you talked about slightly elevated technology. I think that makes sense in the context of the plan you laid out. It sounded like within marketing, maybe it was a little bit more of a reallocation of dollars. I guess I'm wondering how we should think about the OpEx trend over your turnaround plan period, because, you know, marketing used to be, you know, significantly higher as a percent of sales, I think 33%, 35%, now it's been sub 32% for a couple of years. You know, as the reintegration occurs, as some of the products develop, do we eventually need to see a real acceleration there to help drive that growth?

Joseph Spak: Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to dive in a little bit more to the OpEx and costs. I mean, you talked about slightly elevated technology. I think that makes sense in the context of the plan you laid out. It sounded like within marketing, maybe it was a little bit more of a reallocation of dollars. I guess I'm wondering how we should think about the OpEx trend over your turnaround plan period, because, you know, marketing used to be, you know, significantly higher as a percent of sales, I think 33%, 35%, now it's been sub 32% for a couple of years. You know, as the reintegration occurs, as some of the products develop, do we eventually need to see a real acceleration there to help drive that growth?

Joe Spak: Maybe just a little bit more on where you're looking to find actual cost savings, not just a reallocation of cost dollars. Thanks.

Joseph Spak: Maybe just a little bit more on where you're looking to find actual cost savings, not just a reallocation of cost dollars. Thanks.

Tobias Hartmann: Yeah, sure. A couple of things. As we had shared during the call, as you probably know, there's still some work to do to integrate these assets. What this means, that the fact that we're running these assets not being fully integrated, produces costs. That shows up as part of a duplication of certain functions, duplication of efforts, whether you look at processes, whether you look at personal costs, whether you look at organizational structure. There's an opportunity to really streamline the costs from an operational standpoint and an organizational standpoint. That's where we think as we talked about during the earnings call, where we'll find some headroom to create capacity to then reallocate that, yes, towards technology, product investments, and also marketing.

Tobias Hartmann: Our plan is not to dial down the marketing, and our plan is not to dial down the product and tech investments. If you look at our personal expenses, you will figure out that we're running at a pretty high percentage. That's where we're focused, and that comes along with process changes and an optimization that we're driving internally. Hope that makes sense.

Joe Spak: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, sure. I guess the second question is, you know, Sonia, you sort of talked about the buyback, right? 70% of this year's Free Cash Flow. You know, you talked about how that's sort of still part of the continued cap allocation plan, but, you know, to be perfectly blunt, the, you know, the money you've spent thus far has been value destructive. Like, I guess I'm wondering how you're sort of thinking about that cap allocation process and plan, and why continue, you know, right now, I guess, until you feel the business is sort of stabilized a little bit, as, you know, I think you're clearly indicating it's going through a transition period?

Joseph Spak: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, sure. I guess the second question is, you know, Sonia, you sort of talked about the buyback, right? 70% of this year's Free Cash Flow. You know, you talked about how that's sort of still part of the continued cap allocation plan, but, you know, to be perfectly blunt, the, you know, the money you've spent thus far has been value destructive. Like, I guess I'm wondering how you're sort of thinking about that cap allocation process and plan, and why continue, you know, right now, I guess, until you feel the business is sort of stabilized a little bit, as, you know, I think you're clearly indicating it's going through a transition period?

Sonia Jain: Yeah, I mean, I think Toby's articulated kind of our plan to reignite the marketplace flywheel and drive greater levels of growth in this business. You know, we have a collection of, I think, really good assets that need to be connected together better in order to really unlock the revenue growth potential. I think we firmly believe this. As we think about creating long-term shareholder value, we see a clear path. As Toby was kind of articulating, this isn't, you know, a five-year mission we're on. We are targeting doing this quickly, aggressively, and trying to turn the corner here within the next, you know, two years. It does make sense for us to be out in market. We believe the stock is undervalued.

Sonia Jain: We believe there is a lot of growth potential here, and we think setting a floor at $60 million is prudent. You'll get quarterly updates from us on how we're progressing on our plan to turn around the business, and you'll also get quarterly updates from us on how we think about capital allocation on a broader basis.

Operator: Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Gary Prestopino with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Joseph Spak: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Gary Prestopino with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Gary Prestopino: Well, hey, Toby. Let me I'm trying to understand here when you're talking about the integrated marketplace, and did you have separate sales forces selling point solutions as well as marketplace? If not, what do you have to do to the sales force to start driving more of these integrated sales wrapped around the marketplace?

Tobias Hartmann: Yes, we did have separate sales forces, at different levels.

Gary Prestopino: Okay.

Tobias Hartmann: I would also say at different levels of sophistication. What we are doing and what is in flight already is that our colleague, our chief commercial officer, has redefined the sales strategy and sales organization. View it as there's more consultative selling that will be necessary going forward, as opposed to a standalone solution for one service only. That's been in the making, and we're doing that as we speak. I'm very confident that this is the right approach and that we're well on track.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. Just let me understand again, you did say that you will still be giving the dealers the ability, where you can, to sell a single point solution. You're not going to go into your dealerships and say, Okay, we've got 5 products wrapped around marketplace. It's going to cost you X, and in order to be a part of the Cars Commerce universe, you have to buy all of these.

Tobias Hartmann: That's correct. There's absolutely the opportunity. View it as, you know, like a restaurant. You can have an appetizer, you can have a main dish, there's just also a menu, the menu is going to be a lot more attractive, that's what we're aiming for. Yes.

Gary Prestopino: Okay, thank you very much.

Tobias Hartmann: We're also selling it as a standalone. Absolutely.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. Thank you. That clears it up. Thanks a lot.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. This concludes today's conference, and you may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Tobias Hartmann: Thank you all.

Sonia Jain: Thank you.

Tobias Hartmann: Thanks for dialing in.

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