Earnings call transcript: Chegg beats Q3 2025 revenue forecast, stock rises

Chegg Inc. (CHGG) reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, surpassing revenue expectations amidst a strategic shift towards skilling and B2B services. The company posted a revenue of $78 million, exceeding forecasts of $76.3 million, which led to a 4.49% increase in its stock price in aftermarket trading. Despite a year-over-year revenue decline of 42%, Chegg’s restructuring efforts and focus on growth in skilling appear to be gaining traction.

Key Takeaways

• Chegg’s Q3 revenue of $78 million exceeded expectations by 1.83%.
• The company’s stock rose 4.49% in aftermarket trading.
• Chegg is focusing on its skilling business, expecting a 14% growth in Q4.
• The company reduced its workforce by 400 employees to improve efficiency.
• Chegg is transitioning from a B2C to a B2B model.

Company Performance

Chegg’s overall performance in Q3 2025 reflects a strategic pivot towards skilling and a B2B model. The company’s revenue of $78 million, although a 42% decrease from the previous year, indicates a positive trajectory as it exceeds market expectations. Chegg’s focus on language learning and job-related skills, especially in AI, positions it well in the $40 billion skilling market. The company is leveraging its unique offerings to capture a significant share of this growing sector.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $78 million (42% decrease year-over-year)
• Non-GAAP operating expenses: $49 million (46% reduction year-over-year)
• Adjusted EBITDA: $13 million (17% margin)
• Cash and investments: $112 million
• Net cash balance: $49 million

Earnings vs. Forecast

Chegg reported a revenue of $78 million, surpassing the forecast of $76.3 million by 1.83%. This outperformance is a positive indicator, especially given the company’s recent challenges and strategic shifts. The EPS forecast for future quarters indicates a gradual improvement, with positive EPS expected in the first quarter of 2026.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Chegg’s stock experienced a 4.49% increase in aftermarket trading, reflecting investor optimism towards the company’s strategic direction and revenue beat. The stock’s movement is notable given its 52-week range, which has seen lows of $0.44 and highs of $2.73, indicating potential for recovery as the company implements its new strategy.

Outlook & Guidance

Chegg projects Q4 2025 revenue between $70 and $72 million, with the skilling business expected to grow by 14%. The company is targeting a gross margin of 57-58% and anticipates an adjusted EBITDA of $10-$11 million for the fourth quarter. Chegg plans to expand its B2B channels in the US and Europe, with potential university partnerships to bolster growth.

Executive Commentary

CEO Dan Rosensweig stated, "We reinvented Chegg and created a bigger, more valuable company, and we can do it again." This sentiment underscores the company’s commitment to its strategic shift. CFO David Longo highlighted, "We are now a more lean and efficient company with a skilling business that is expected to grow 14% in Q4."

Risks and Challenges

• Continued impact from AI and reduced Google traffic.
• Legal challenges, including a lawsuit against Google for traffic reduction.
• Execution risk in transitioning to a B2B model.
• Economic uncertainties affecting corporate spending on skilling.
• Competition in the skilling and language learning markets.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on Chegg’s strategic shift to skilling and the retention of legacy academic services for cash generation. Questions also explored Busuu’s transformation into a B2B model and potential distribution channels and sales strategies.

Full transcript - Chegg Inc (CHGG) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to the Chegg Q3 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief Q&A will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press and 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tracey Ford, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Tracey Ford, Vice President of Investor Relations, Chegg: Good afternoon. Thank you for joining Chegg’s Q3 2025 conference call. On today’s call are Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, and David Longo, Chief Financial Officer. A copy of our earnings press release, along with our investor presentation, is available on our investor relations website, investor.chegg.com. A replay of this call will also be available on our website. We routinely post information on our website and intend to make important announcements on our media center website at chegg.com/mediacenter. We encourage you to make use of these resources. Before we begin, I would like to point out that during the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events, including the future financial and operating performance of the company. These forward-looking statements are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.

We caution you to consider the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. In particular, we refer you to the cautionary language included in today’s earnings release and the risk factors described in Chegg’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 24, 2025, as well as our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.

Our GAAP results and GAAP-to-non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in our earnings press release and on the investor slide deck found on our IR website, investor.chegg.com. We also recommend you review the investor data sheet, which is also posted on our IR website. Now, I will turn the call over to Dan.

Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, Executive Chairman, Chegg: Thank you, Tracey. Hello, and thank you, everyone, for joining Chegg’s Q3 2025 earnings call. Despite our current challenges, I’m honored to return as the CEO and Executive Chairman of Chegg. The board and I believe the company is undervalued and see a significant opportunity to rebuild and reinvent Chegg and return it to a growing company with strong adjusted EBITDA margins and cash flow. We split the company into two units: our growth business, Chegg Skilling, which we expect to have sustainable double-digit growth, and our legacy academic services, which will focus on generating cash. This new structure gives us the cash and the assets we need to rebuild, and I firmly believe we will create significant long-term value for our shareholders. It’s clear that the rise of AI and the subsequent negative impact on traditional sources of traffic have disrupted almost every direct-to-consumer industry.

We are dealing with these realities head-on. Two weeks ago, we took decisive action, restructuring the company to enable our academic services to operate more efficiently and generate significantly more cash flow, while repositioning Chegg Skilling to become a larger, more profitable B2B SaaS business. This was hard because of the impact on a large number of employees, but it was necessary and a positive decision for the future of Chegg. Our clarity of purpose and lower-cost structure is energizing and gives us the ability to invest in our skilling business, which is experiencing tailwinds and already generating double-digit growth. We’re now in the right categories with the right business model and are beginning to see momentum from our efforts. The impact of AI has resulted in a large number of companies needing to reskill their employees, especially around AI.

The skilling market is already large, more than $40 billion today, and has turned its attention to workforce, AI, and language learning. We start from a position of strength. We have two valuable skilling assets. The first is language learning with Busuu, and the second in skills with Chegg Skills. Busuu is helping the true language learner, differentiated by its focus on speaking, not just translation. Chegg Skills already has a strong catalog of courses on in-demand topics, which will only get stronger. We are combining them, investing in them, and over time, we’ll expand with additional assets. We plan to report them as a single unit called Chegg Skilling for external revenue reporting, so you can track our progress and our growth. In that spirit, Chegg Skilling is ending 2025 with strong momentum, expecting a 14% year-over-year growth and a full-year revenue of $70 million.

Looking ahead, we expect the business to continue to grow at double-digit pace. I’ve spent 42 years in the technology industry, and the one constant has been that platform changes bring both incredible disruption and opportunity. We reinvented Chegg and created a bigger, more valuable company, and we can do it again. We started as a textbook rental company, transformed it into an education technology company that helped tens of millions of students succeed. Our next chapter, Chegg Skilling, is in a very large and growing market. We have the ability to use our skilling assets and our balance sheet to build a great company, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead. I’m confident that Chegg will evolve and thrive, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to lead our team through the next chapter. With that, I’ll turn it over to David.

David Longo, Chief Financial Officer, Chegg: Thank you, Dan, and good afternoon. Today, I will be presenting our financial performance for Q3 of 2025, along with the company’s outlook for Q4. We delivered a good Q3, surpassing our revenue expectations and outperforming our adjusted EBITDA guidance by $5 million as a direct result of our cost-cutting and restructurings. With our strategic shift toward the large and growing skilling market, we are now well-positioned to enter the next phase of our growth. In Q3, total revenue was $78 million, a decrease of 42% year-over-year. Reduced traffic impacted our business in two key ways. First, it led to fewer subscribers and less subscription revenue. Second, within our skills and other, it led to fewer sessions, which significantly reduced advertising revenue. As Dan mentioned earlier, going forward, we will break out our skilling business, which only includes Busuu and Chegg Skills, so you can track our progress.

Moving on to expenses, non-GAAP operating expenses were $49 million in the quarter, a reduction of approximately $41 million, or 46% year-over-year, driven by the execution of our restructurings. Our Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $13 million, representing a margin of 17%. To position ourselves for future growth, we overhauled our cost structure to be more efficient and allow us to invest in future growth. To put this in context, in 2024, our total non-GAAP expenses were $536 million, and we are on track to reduce them to under $250 million by 2026. Our investments in AI have enabled us to continue to reduce our CapEx, which was $6 million in Q3, down 63% year-over-year. We anticipate full-year 2025 CapEx of approximately $27 million, with a targeted further reduction of approximately 60% in 2026, while still delivering a high-quality experience that our students expect from us.

Free cash flow for Q3 was negative $900,000, which was primarily impacted by a one-time $7.5 million settlement payment to the FTC and $5.5 million in severance payments related to our restructurings. Our company will continue to generate strong cash flow, although it will be temporarily affected by $15-$19 million in cash expenditures for employee transition severance costs associated with our recently announced restructuring. These payments will occur over the fourth and first quarters. Considering this, we are still on a path to generate meaningful free cash flow in 2026. Looking at the balance sheet, we concluded the quarter with cash and investments of $112 million and a net cash balance of $49 million. Looking ahead and using our new revenue breakout, for Q4, we expect $18 million of revenue from our skilling business, which represents an increase of 14% year-over-year. Total revenue between $70-$72 million.

Gross margin to be in the range of 57-58%, and adjusted EBITDA between $10 and $11 million. In closing, the path has been difficult, but the outcome will be positive. We are now a more lean and efficient company with a skilling business that is expected to grow 14% in Q4. We believe we are turning the corner and are on a path to future growth and profitability. We look forward to sharing more detail on our February earnings call, including greater visibility into our multi-year growth plan for skilling and how we intend to drive additional value in the years ahead. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for your questions.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe two quick ones, if I could. In terms of skilling, can you talk through a little bit of what you see as the strategic product priorities to execute on the skilling side to capture the market opportunity and across the legacy business and skilling? How should we think about the mix of resource allocation across those efforts looking forward? Thanks so much.

May I ask a question?

Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, Executive Chairman, Chegg: Sorry about that. I was on mute, so I apologize for that because I have not been on a call for a while. I appreciate the question. Very simply, all of our growth resources are going to go into the skilling business. When we made the decision to restructure the company, this is not a layoff; this is a complete restructure. We essentially put the company into two businesses or two units. One is the legacy business, which historically had been the majority of the company, and that was Chegg Study. Given the realities of AI and given the realities of the Google traffic situation, we have turned our attention to the bigger and growing market and more sustainable market for us, which is the skilling market, which is made up of B2B now versus B2C. When we originally had the businesses, they were B2C.

We have made that transformation, and they are growing, as you saw, or at least, as we said, about 14% year-over-year in Q4. That is our expectation. We are excited about the fact that they are already growing. Those businesses are going to focus on frontline workers, which is the deal that we already have with Gill. They are going to focus on language learning, which is what Busuu traditionally has done. Believe it or not, even though AI is going to affect translation and instant translation and those things, corporations still want their people to learn how to actually speak the languages. We are seeing really great progress in our B2B side of the Busuu business. Then job-related skills, mostly around AI today, which are extraordinarily popular. Our resources, we have the necessary resources because we have the necessary cash now by removing almost 400 people from the company.

Our expectation is that our capital investments will be used to grow the growth businesses and come at the expense of what traditionally was Chegg.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you.

Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, Executive Chairman, Chegg: Yep.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Devin with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, great. Thanks for taking my question. Just first one, just to follow up from the last set of questions. On the legacy academic business, what kind of support or services are you going to continue providing for that unit? I have a follow-up.

Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, Executive Chairman, Chegg: Yeah. So that business, it’s very interesting because as we invested early in AI, because of what we saw the situation was becoming, and also because the technology allows us to do things more efficiently, we built an incredible service, which we believe is the number one service. The issue for us is that our Google traffic dropped by 50%. We weren’t seeing the necessary traffic to come in. As you know, we’ve launched a lawsuit against them for that. The quality of the product is unquestioned. Believe it or not, 90% of all the questions that we get are already in Chegg’s database. We’re able to make this transition on the resources and still have the quality product that we had before. We’re actually fine in that context. We expect that business to generate cash for hopefully several years.

Most companies, most businesses have tails longer than we expect. I mean, I marveled at the fact that AOL just sold for $1.4 billion to Bending Spoons based on its historical model, and no one’s heard of it in 10 years. Our desire is to run that business as long as we can. We have the necessary resources on it. The resources are mostly the database, the technology, and the network that we built over the years. We still have over 130 million questions that are already in the database. It is really in a good position to generate cash, but our expectation in a future growth, we cannot compete with the situation that Google has caused and the fact that OpenAI is what it is.

We put the business into a bigger $40 billion growing market and transitioned that business over the last two years from what was historically a B2C business, or a D2C business, I should say, to now almost exclusively B2B, which is a better business, a more stable business, more secure business, less likely to be impacted negatively by the trends in the market, and already seeing some success on that by being able to acknowledge that we’re going to grow more than double digits in the quarter and then expectedly for next year. This has been a long process. It’s been a painful process. It’s affected a lot of people negatively. It’s obviously affected our shareholders. We finally feel like we’ve hit the bottom because we have business that’s growing that is $70 million.

Our expectation is for 2025, and we expect it to grow double digits next year. We are rebuilding the company with those resources.

Understood. I appreciate the context there, Dan. Maybe just a quick follow-up. I know you touched on this a little bit. It seems like the Busuu business, the B2B side, is doing well. Maybe if you could just kind of give us a little bit more color on the initiatives you’re looking to make, some of the near-term product roadmap or milestones you’re looking to reach in that business, and kind of what’s giving you the confidence that you can grow that business sustainably double digit. Thank you.

Yeah. It’s a great question. Part of the reason I was willing to come back is because I feel confident in that. Busuu, for those who just haven’t had a chance to know much about the business, is predominantly in Europe. We’ll also be moving into Latin America. One of the initiatives will be Latin America as an example. The big initiative over the last two years was repackaging our learning mechanisms, not for the B2C, but for the B2B, what do businesses want. Of course, leveraging AI. In our case, the number one thing that people want is conversation. They want a conversational way to be able to learn the language and discuss it and be graded on it. AI, actually, with voice, it’s scary, but it gives us a heck of a chance to be able to do that.

What we’ll be looking at is the number of businesses that sign up, number of seats that we have, but engagement with those that choose to use it inside the companies because the more they engage, the more seats we’ll have at those companies. The things we’ll be looking at over the next year, two years, three years will not be surprising. It’ll be the number of businesses that we sign up, the number of seats in those businesses, the retention that we have within those businesses, and that gives us the confidence to keep moving forward. Busuu has been around for 15 years. This is a very significant change for it. It started originally trying to compete in the world of Duolingo.

We made the decision that that was not a market that we should compete in, and we went B2B, and it’s actually now working in our favor. It’s exciting. The milestones on the product will be how does AI help you develop the language skills better, your pronunciation better, feel like that you’re actually working with a human being on the other side. Those are the things that people seem to use when they learn best, when they need to learn the language, as opposed to just want to get a couple of phrases.

Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan McDonald with Needham & Company. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions, Dan. Welcome back. Maybe on the skilling business, can you talk about, you mentioned Gill already as obviously that’s been a good channel for that business as you’ve looked to grow it. Can you talk about other sort of investments or other potential channels you’re kind of looking at or evaluating as you sort of build the go-to-market motion here, and how much you think is going to be sort of direct sales versus sort of additional channels? Where does sort of internal sales capacity stand at right now for those initiatives? Thanks.

Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, Executive Chairman, Chegg: Yes. A great question. It is early on in that question. Here is where we are in our current thinking, which is we launched through Gill, and that has been incredibly successful, and we are grateful for that partnership. Obviously, nobody wants to be dependent on a singular channel. We are working very hard to be able to offer non-competitive products to Gill and other channels. I think as you track that part of the business, you will probably hear over the course of the year new partnerships. Think of it as all new distribution channels where they have the customer, we have the content, and there are marketplaces for that, and there are channels for that. Those channels are in the U.S., and they are in Europe.

That’s where we’re starting, which is what we know, which is how to put great content in places where people want that content. The second thing is we are building slowly a B2B Salesforce, and that B2B Salesforce is focusing on opening more of those channels. Also, one of the unfortunate realities of Chegg’s existence was universities did not historically want to work with Chegg because of Chegg. Now that that part of the business is going away, there are a lot of people who understand the quality of our content, the quality of the way we execute, the value that it has for the students. We will be building new channels eventually direct to institutions. It’s just going to start slow. I don’t want you to think in 2026 we’re going to announce a lot of universities because we’re not.

We are going to start with the other distribution channels similar to Gill that already have built-in audiences inside of corporations. We have been contacted by a number of universities who know the quality of our work. If you actually look at the success that we’ve had inside of Gill, I think we have amongst the highest retention rate and completion rate. Those things are examples of just how good our quality is. Those are the things that we are working on, but we’re going to take it slow because we want to grow the business at double-digit growth. We want the businesses to become profitable. We want them to have sustainable growth. We have a roadmap of the course of 2026 that we’re really excited about by adding more content, adding more channels, and starting with new partnerships.

Helpful there. Maybe just as a follow-up, I think you mentioned, and I think it was in David’s sort of prepared remarks, that you saw a little bit slower than expected or lower than expected advertising revenue within the sort of skills and other segment as a result of the reduced traffic. I guess, how should we think about how much of a headwind traffic can be in this skilling business moving forward? Maybe some of the initiatives you’re undertaking to, whether it’s investing in new marketing channels to sort of drive that top of the funnel in the business to offset some of the declines from just core Google, if you will.

Yeah. Actually, it’s a really great question, and I’m glad you asked it because we should clarify this absolutely, which is skilling and other. It’s not that we’re removing the other from skilling. The other were things like advertising. Those ads didn’t appear in the skills. Those ads appeared in Chegg Study. They appeared in Chegg Math, in Chegg Writing. That’s where the traffic has declined, and that’s where the ad sessions have gone away. You will see no headwinds in skilling other than things that we don’t expect or might pop up. Those businesses are about growth now. Those businesses, the headwind that they have faced over the last couple of years is a lack of investment because of what we were dealing with on the core side of the business. It’s not easy to reposition a business at all, ever.

In the public markets, it’s even more difficult. We’ve had to balance our debt, our cash, our initiatives, and reposition those businesses to B2B. We now feel like they’re in position to do that. We’re actually pretty excited about it.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, there are no further questions. The conference of Chegg has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO, Executive Chairman, Chegg: Thanks everyone.

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