EverQuote at Canaccord Conference: Strong Q2 and Strategic Growth

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, EverQuote Inc (NASDAQ:EVER) presented at Canaccord Genuity’s 45th Annual Growth Conference, showcasing a robust Q2 performance with significant revenue and EBITDA growth. The company, however, acknowledged challenges in the California market and competitive pressures in digital advertising. EverQuote emphasized its strategic focus on expanding its insurance offerings and leveraging AI to enhance efficiency.

Key Takeaways

• EverQuote reported a 34% increase in Q2 revenue and a 70% rise in adjusted EBITDA.
• The company ended Q2 with a cash balance of $150 million and no debt.
• EverQuote plans to expand its insurance offerings and integrate AI technologies.
• A $50 million share buyback plan was announced, with $21 million already repurchased.
• The California market remains challenging due to regulatory hurdles.

Financial Results

• Q2 revenue grew by 34% year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA saw a 70% increase, reaching the high end of guidance.
• EBITDA margin hit a record high of 14%.
• Operating cash flow reached a record $25 million.
• Net income was just under $15 million.
• The company maintains a cash balance of approximately $150 million with no debt.
• Q3 guidance suggests potential record levels in revenue and adjusted EBITDA.

Operational Updates

• EverQuote aims to have a full carrier panel by year-end, excluding California.
• The Smart Campaigns product enhances ad spend efficiency for carriers by about 20%.
• The company is expanding its agency network to support local agent growth.
• Video and social channels are being reactivated as monetization strengthens.
• AI voice agents are being introduced to improve consumer qualification in call centers.

Future Outlook

• EverQuote reiterated its medium-term growth model of averaging 20% growth.
• The company sees a clear path to achieving $1 billion in revenue.
• Focus on P&C insurance with potential expansion into other non-auto verticals.
• AI integration is expected to enhance consumer experience and efficiency.
• Capital allocation will prioritize maintaining a strong balance sheet and potential M&A.

Q&A Highlights

• Carriers are becoming more comfortable with tariffs and inflation impacts.
• Digital adoption among insurance carriers is accelerating.
• AI agents will assist consumers but are unlikely to complete the full buying journey.
• Growth in the home insurance vertical is expected to outpace auto insurance over time.

For a more detailed analysis, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Canaccord Genuity’s 45th Annual Growth Conference:

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Analyst here at Canaccord Genuity, and it’s my pleasure to introduce Jamie Mendal, CEO of EverQuote, and Joe Sandborn, CFO. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us again this year. It’s great to see both of you.

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: Great to see you. Thank you for Perfect. Inviting

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: So you reported pretty strong results last week, so congrats on another solid quarter. Maybe we can start with an overview of the key dynamics you are seeing currently and maybe remind investors of your outlook for the second half of the year and sort of any long term targets that you want to highlight.

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: Sure. Thanks, So Vianfei. We’re glad to be here. So Q2, we had a really strong quarter. We had 34% year on year revenue growth, good performance on revenue in VMD.

On adjusted EBITDA, we actually were at the high end of guidance. We had really nice results in the quarter, 70% year on year growth in EBITDA. Some records we set in Q2 was EBITDA margin was a record for us, 14%. Operating cash flow was $25,000,000 in the quarter, a little over 25,000,000 It’s also a record for us and also record net income just under $15,000,000 So we’re really pleased with that. We ended the quarter with about $150,000,000 in cash as well and no debt.

So we feel really good about our financial strength. So that’s how you hear Q2 recap, feel really good about that. As we looked into the second half of the year, we don’t give guidance for the year, we gave guidance for Q3. You see our guidance for Q3 implies a step up from Q2. You look at the range we show on revenues in VMD and adjusted EBITDA, all of them would see at or near record levels.

The midpoint of the range and above of our guidance shows that record levels on revenue, VMD and adjusted EBITDA as well. And as we look to, again, having talked about Q4 specifically, but the general view as we’ve said is for this year, we see us as continued to have this EBITDA growth, EBITDA margins being sort of at or near current levels, 13.5, 14%. You know, going reverse order, the VMM margin sort of spend in the high twenties. For those who are new to the EverQuote story, VMM margin is variable marketing dollars divided by revenue, and the difference there being advertising dollars. And then revenue for Q4, what you and everyone else has looked at is what we’ve shared, is we haven’t given guidance but we’ve said, hey, here’s a seasonal pattern.

Typically Q4 steps down from Q3 in our industry. You know, seasonality is by no means a perfect instrument in our business given macro events have superseded seasonal events at various times over the past five, six years. But that’s sort of how we thought about it. The one thing people have asked, you know, what is sort of the is there an upside potential given the carriers out there right now? And so what you see in the industry we serve in helping insurance carriers and agents grow their business, the thing that carriers look at is their underwriting profitability.

And so the metric that’s used is combined ratio and underwriting margins more broadly. Those have been quite favorable for carriers. And so as you progress through this year, to quantify those, a lot of carriers try to have their combined ratio sort of in the mid-90s as their goal. Many carriers now are in the mid to high 80s. So you would argue, and that’s for the year, so you would argue as we progress through the year here they have quite a bit of room to still go.

One

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: of the

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: things that’s made carriers sort of think through, maybe move a little less aggressively than might be implied by the potential with those margins is. We’re trying to figure out the macro dynamics with tariffs and those issues. I think as you progress through Q2, think people have gotten greater comfort on that. The carriers now go through a period of Q3, which is the normal cat season, losses with storms and things. If that’s a normal season, I think there’s a potential where carriers may have some extra budget as you get into Q4.

And we’ll see how that plays out. But that could be an opportunity. The last time we had that it was Q4 of last year and last time for that was in late twenty twenty, same thing.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: That’s a great overview. And then, depending a little bit on that point, how should we think about sort of key growth drivers from enterprise carriers sort of over the next one or two years and maybe touch on what you see in California as well. Are you okay? Do you need I’m some good. Thank you.

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: So, yeah, as Joseph mentioned, carrier underwriting is quite healthy right now and therefore they all want to grow. And we’ve seen the carriers coming back into the market over the last couple of years. We expect that by the end of this year we’ll have relatively full carrier panel meaning all the carriers who spend digitally in our channel are on across a wide geographical footprint. The one exception we’ve talked about several times before is the state of California. Sort of notoriously difficult from a rate increase standpoint.

And even there we’re starting to see some carriers return to the market, get the rates that they need to resume spending. So we think that by early next year, all carriers are gonna be fully focused on growth which is a good backdrop for us.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: And sort of here in the near term and I feel like you may be touching this a little bit. Are you seeing auto part inflation and tariffs sort of impacting carrier sort of maybe willingness to spend a little bit more be a little bit more aggressive? Is that impacting the business? So I

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: think the way to think about tariffs is we’ll give some time line. So when we came out in the April, I think a lot of carriers as well as a lot of businesses were, what does this all mean? And for carriers, was something they, just similar to COVID, never referenced point. Because we haven’t seen tariffs been used before in many, many years. So it was created a little bit of anxiety.

As we progressed through the period, though, I think you got to the end of Q2 when carriers were much more comfortable with how tariffs will shake out. Just to remind folks, why do tariffs matter to carriers? It really could impact claims costs for them, whether it’s new cars coming in and there’s higher prices on those cars to replace them or it’s getting parts. Those are the dynamics that could affect it. The other dynamic is broader inflation as well, could be a question.

As you’ve gone through Q2, I think they’ve got increasing comfort on tariffs. She had some big announcements out of the administration. I think in terms of inflation, you’re also seeing sort of greater clarity in inflation as we progress. So I think that is giving the carriers some comfort. We now will see how they progress into this period, but I think we look as a very favorable backdrop for them.

And the question is, how aggressive are they or how measured are they in that incremental growth based on that environment? I think different carriers can make different decisions on that. We think that’s generally a very good backdrop One question you mentioned in the beginning I didn’t answer as I was having my coughing fit is sort of our long term model, which is and I think it’s probably worth touching on. For investors, people saw us go through the downturn, which was a very difficult time for the overall industry.

We helped carriers and agents grow when they didn’t want to grow. It was tough to be at EverQuote, because that’s what we do for them. We obviously had this great period of growth. As we now think about more normalized levels, we’ll say, well, what does this all mean as we think about your business? And it’s something we have not talked about a lot two, three quarters ago because investors really want to figure out the current period.

So now as we look ahead, what we’ve said is we haven’t given guidance for ’twenty six. But we said we really would have reiterated our view that we will have a medium term model of averaging 20% growth. Some years will be a little more. Some years will be less on the top line. VMM, we think, will sort of generally be in the levels we’re talking about, the high 20s.

But on EBITDA margins, we’ll end this year probably 13.5%, 14% based on what we’ve said. We’ll add probably 100 basis points a year, give or take, to get to a goal of 20 in the longer term. And that’s within the context of comments that we made in our prepared remarks on the analyst call about our path to 1,000,000,000. We increasingly, as a business, are this focus on P and C that that we started in ’twenty three with our strategic changes. We’re saying, how do we help those carriers and agents grow more successfully?

We’re seeing the fruits of that effort. And now we’re seeing, like, we’ve just come through a long strategic planning process. We think about the long term the medium term time horizon. We’re starting to talk about that path to $1,000,000,000 in revenues. And we see the light.

We see the light, and we’re very bullish about it. So we’re excited about the opportunity.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Perfect. Maybe just sort of one broader question. The insurance industry and carriers have historically been viewed as sort of laggards in terms of moving advertising spend online. Where are we in that process and what does that mean for the industry more broadly?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: Yeah, so I think insurance has been probably one of the most laggard industries in terms of its evolution into the digital marketing and digital channels. Over the last five years though, I mean we’ve largely supported by companies like EverQuote, we’ve seen the carriers begin to take steps to evolve more quickly. And that began five years ago. We really pushed carriers to integrate with our sites so that the data that we pass them could be used to allow consumers to skip right to a rate and dramatically improve their conversion rate over that period of time. Now we’re starting to see over the last, I don’t know, three, four years some of these more digital first carriers really getting some traction.

Companies like Root or Lemonade Insurance. And I think they’re beginning to kind of push the envelope as well with the carriers. So I would say we’re starting to see the technology adoption accelerate among the carriers. And as they improve their digital funnels and they improve their ability to bid more effectively into channels like ours,

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: we

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: would expect that these huge marketing budgets will continue to shift from offline channels, TV, brand spend, more into performance digital channels like ours. So there’s this secular tailwind that we’ve been talking about since the IPO days which persists

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: today.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: And I guess to what extent do you feel like you are gaining share from other channels or platforms versus like innovation and tools that you’re adding to the platform that sort of helping drive further growth?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: Yeah. So I think as category, we’re gaining share. I mean if you just look at the growth over the last couple of years, I think that as the the market recovered, a lot of spend flowed back into our channel and into EverQuote specifically. With respect to taking share within our channel, you know, EverQuote has been very very focused on helping carriers improve the performance of their spend in our marketplace. And we’ve been rolling out products to help drive that and we’re starting to get real critical mass adoption on some of these products.

For example, we have a product called Smart Campaigns which is an AI powered bidding product that when a carrier adopts it and they allow us to basically take over their bidding for them, we’ll see on average a 20% or so improvement in their ad spend efficiency. And so the pattern is typically they’ll adopt Smart Campaigns, we’ll take over their bidding, we’ll drive more spend efficiency and then we’ll start to see their budget with us increase. And that’s a pattern that has, that is now sort of well worn. And through that, I think we’re, we’ve been taking some share and we’ll continue to take share

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: I mean to that point, it sounds like those products have been doing pretty well and sort of driving more spend on the platform. Are there any other sort of products or capabilities that you are maybe looking to add that you can talk about?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: Well, would look at our, you know, I would probably start with our agency network. So we have the largest network of local agents who rely on EverQuote to source insurance shoppers locally who go online to buy insurance. So the kind of analog out there in the internet marketplace world would be like a Zillow or a CarGurus where you have these local dealers or real estate agents who rely on a partner like them to help them get leads or referrals. So we do that for local insurance agents. For many years we have sold insurance agents leads and over the last two or three years we have really begun to invest in developing a more holistic platform to support local agents growth.

And so on top of our strong foundation with leads, we’ve begun expanding to other products, telephony services, marketing services, all technology driven and we’re starting to get some real adoption. So we’re seeing the product penetration per agent increase. We have a very large agent base, 6,000 or so agents and so we are really focused on becoming their one stop growth shop consolidating their marketing budgets with EverQuote.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: So let’s talk about sort of your customer acquisition strategy and channel mix. Historically, I think you deployed spend predominantly across search. Sort of, what are your thoughts on scaling other channels like video or social?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: Yeah. So historically we’ve always had a fairly balanced traffic portfolio. Know, search is a part of that portfolio but we operate across many channels with many partners. However, as you note, video, social, some of these upper funnel channels which are not industry specific were drawn down during the hard market. So as monetization kind of left the category, it became harder to compete in these platforms.

Now as monetization has come back stronger than ever, I think insurance as a category will be very competitive in these platforms. And we’ve got some history operating in them at scale. So we’ve begun reactivating channels like video, like social platforms. We’re already starting to see some good traction there and we expect those to contribute to our growth over the next couple of years.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: And just in terms of search, we’re starting to see AI generated search sort of taking more queries from traditional search. What does that mean for your company and for the industry broadly?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: Yes, EverQuote, I mean for better or worse, we’re in this kind of fortunate position that we don’t rely on organic search results. Like we don’t have, our traffic is almost a 100% paid traffic and where the disruption has occurred in the search landscape is predominantly in the organic search results. So again, for better or worse, we don’t have organic traffic and so we’ve been almost entirely unaffected by any changes that have gone on with Google. And I’d go further to suggest that insurance as their number one monetizing category in a very bottom sort of funnel kind of search is likely to be, I think, less disruptive for a longer period of time than probably most other categories. Now that being said, we see a big opportunity as consumer behavior shifts and people start shopping more through the ChatGPT’s of the world.

There’s gonna be a lot of traffic flow with insurance intent that emerges in these platforms. And you know what we’re paying very close attention to is how these platforms allow that traffic to sort of engage with third parties and there’s a couple, you know there’s probably a few ways it can play out and it’s probably not, there’s no, not gonna be one single answer. You know, a, they could allow companies like ours to build integrations with them, plug ins, and you’ve seen ChatGPT showcase things like this in travel with like booking and some of their product demos. Number two, they could rely on content more like traditional search where you have to put content out there that get picked up in the training runs. And then through that, you get referrals out.

And then number three, develop paid advertising platforms. And our sense is they’ll probably be all of the above depending on the platform. So in terms of paid advertising for us that would we would be very well equipped to just begin competing for that traffic and I think we will. And then with the other two, again, we’re starting with a clean slate and so we’re watching what happens with the platforms carefully and my sense is we will make certain investments that position us quite well as these platforms start to open up and it becomes more clear exactly how you engage with the traffic flow through them.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Yeah, I guess to that point, given that insurance industry deals with sensitive information and a lot of rates are not available out there online, right? Do you think it’s realistic to sort of expect AI agents to like kind of be used in the insurance space?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: I think you will see, you know, it depends what the AI agent is being used for. Right? So if you’re saying, if you look at making a dinner reservation, right? I think the AI agent will be able to make a dinner reservation for all of us very soon. In fact, already can.

When you get down to a category like insurance where there’s regulation involved, there’s not rate transparency out on the internet, it becomes a much, much I think, longer path to get to a point where an AI agent could actually complete that full buying journey for you. But can it assist as starting from the top of the funnel to get you further down and create a more seamless experience? Absolutely. And that’s our vision for where to begin. And we’ve already begun to introduce AI voice agents into our call center workflows which do the very top of funnel qualification of a consumer before we refer them out to a local agent or a carrier.

And the idea, the path I think that the journey that we’re on is to start there and begin to kind of work your way down funnel as both the technology allows and the kind of industry dynamics allow.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: That makes sense. I wanna switch gears here and ask you about your other vertical, just home and rentals. What are some of the dynamics within that vertical? What are some of the products that you are excited about? And how should we think about growth there going forward?

Jamie Mendal, CEO, EverQuote: Sure. So home and renters about 10% of the business. Just to give a sort of benchmark, from a premium standpoint, it’s about 50% of auto. So there is some room to grow just to get to kind of parity Though home is a slightly more complex product, so it’s not clear that you’d get all the way to 50%. But we do expect growth from the home vertical to outpace auto over time.

The more recent dynamic is that the home market has gone through a similar kind of hard market cycle as the auto insurance market. And just in the last quarter or two, you’re starting to see carrier profitability get back to where it needs to be. So there’s been a little bit of market dynamic, I think, constraining the growth of home. We’ve managed to grow through it, but I do think that conditions will be more favorable over the next year or two than they were over the last year or two. And then extending beyond home and renters, within the P and C umbrella, and we’re really focused on P and C and remaining within this market, there are other verticals that carriers are really trying to pull us into.

Some of the more ancillary lines like the toys, boats, motorcycles, RVs, things like that, as well as small business lines. And so I wouldn’t be surprised if we make certain investments to begin to expand into other non auto verticals within that PNC umbrella as well.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: You just answered my question so I don’t need So to ask let’s talk about financials for a minute. As we think about sort of next couple of years, how should we think about the balance between sort of volume and pricing going forward?

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: Sure. So just to give some context, we’ve had shopping levels at elevated levels for some time. Why is that? Consumers got rate increases that were sticker shock, and so they started shopping. What happened in the early part of the recovery is the consumers were shopping.

They were not coverage options for them, right, because carriers did not want to acquire consumers. So consumers it was demand, but not availability. What you’ve seen in this period, in the recent quarter, was much more heavily driven by pricing than the consumer volume increase. Consumer volume has remained at elevated levels. I think we might have thought that consumer levels would start to moderate a bit.

They’ve sort of remained at elevated levels. We think that will continue in the near term. We think you’ll start to see that moderate as you get into next year. But I do think there’s a dynamic where in any given quarter price or volume, it can change from quarter to quarter. But this is at the highest levels.

You have consumers who have been shopping for some time and that is sort of continuing.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Got it. And then, I know you’re not providing guidance for next year or any sort of outlook for next year. But, more broadly, how should we think about sort of your continued momentum in the business versus tough comps in the first half?

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: Yeah, so I think the second so I’ll start with the second half of this year and maybe talk about guidance there or comparison. So it’s fair to say we do have some difficult comps in the second half. Just to give context, first half of this year, we grew like 50%, 55% year on year. ’25 to ’24. Then you look at ’24 to last ’23.

If I remember correctly, it’s like 165% year on year growth. So certainly, second half is definitely a more challenged type comps for growth this year. The midpoint of our guide for Q3 shows 15 ish percent at the midpoint. We haven’t talked specifically about Q4, but you would say it might be down. But seasonality because remember, Q4 of last year was actually was went against the seasonal trend was actually up, so you have even a more challenging in q four.

All that being said, put aside the bounciness within the year within the quarters, you’re looking at a year that’s, you know, 30 ish percent growth, good and with EBITDA margin at 14%, that’s I a pretty good combination of that’s a rule of 40 and then some. And also very high cash converting. So we feel good about that. And then as you go forward, I think you still can as you look to the first part of next year, we haven’t been too specific in it right now. But I would say that we see a dynamic where by the end of this year, we’ll have a full carrier panel back in line within the marketplace.

At what levels we will see, but we’ll think most carriers will be back in the marketplace by the end of the year. I think the dynamic then, one of the wildcards will be what happens with states like California, which are still a ways in getting there. We’re seeing some signs, whether that kicks in in Q1 or Q2 in a meaningful way or the second half, I think that may look at what the comps are. But again, I go back to the high level. We’re going to average 20% growth next year.

And how it plays out specifically, we’ll give you a little more as we get to Q4.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Got it, that makes sense. I want to ask you about your capital allocation priorities then more specifically, yesterday you announced the agreement to buy over 20,000,000 worth of stock from your largest shareholder. Just maybe talk about sort of the rationale behind that decision, that transaction and sort of how should we think about the remaining balance within your share buyback authorization?

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: Sure. So high level, we have about 150,000,000 cash at the end of Q2. At this trajectory, we’ll probably be close to $200,000,000 ish by the end of the year, give or take. So the decision we look at, and we think about capital allocation, there’s sort of three pieces. First is the strength of the balance sheet.

Having a fortress balance sheet is really important in our mind for two reasons. One is it gives us strength to endure as we think about working with companies. They want to work with a strong financial partner. We have that. I think it also, from a mindset of how we think about investments, I can tell you during more thin balance sheet periods, as I refer to them in ’23, some of the investments that had very strong ROIs, we wouldn’t have considered because the payback period was so long.

So think about some of the technology investments we’re making in AI and things. Those are longer term investments. They will not drive meaningful benefit this year or even next year, but they’re critical to building that long term differentiation and competitive moat. So fortress balance sheet, number one. Number two is, we’ve talked about this idea of how will M and A play into the industry over time.

We don’t believe M and A is required for us to achieve the growth targets we discussed. At the same time, we believe there’s an opportunity to emerge as the leader in this space, the winner in this space over time. And scale could be part of that. So we could see some amount of dollars going towards M and A. And then the third part is, how do we return capital to shareholders?

We thought about this. And we announced last Monday on our earnings call, we announced a $50,000,000 buyback plan. We said it was our first buyback plan to be executed over the next twelve months. And we said it’d be opportunistic in how we execute it. As we thought about that $50,000,000 really, it was two things that we wanted to convey to investors.

Really, I guess, maybe three things. One is, we feel very good about our cash flow generation. We feel very good about the trajectory of our business. And third is, we think our stocks are pretty good buy. So if there’s any investors, this is time to think about that message.

We think it’s a pretty good buy. And so that’s how we thought about allocating the $50,000,000 to a share buyback. Then in terms of how we execute the share buyback, we announced yesterday morning that we bought back $21,000,000 from our largest investor, David Blunden, who’s a co founder of the business and our nonexecutive chairman. We’re very fortunate how this worked out. David’s position went from 21% to 19%, so very modest for him.

He was taking the investments to he’s an early stage investor, who’s putting the money into investments in his fund, which is heavily focused on AI. And so he wanted to do that. It was a chance for us to acquire stock in a very efficient manner because it didn’t impact the liquidity in the public market, which we loved. And I think the last piece in our minds was it was a way for us to really jump start the program. And the price at which we purchased that was the special committee of the board, I think, on a very good pricing relative to any sort of benchmarks of VWAPs and discount, etcetera.

And then over time, how we use the program, it’d still be opportunistic, but we were pleased with our first move on it.

Maria, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Perfect. That was a great recap. It was a great discussion, gentlemen. Thank you so much for Thanks, joining And thank you all for coming.

Joe Sandborn, CFO, EverQuote: Thank you, Maria. Thank you.

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