Ibotta Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 6, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Ibotta exceeded its Q1 guidance with revenue of $82.5M (down 2% YoY) and Adjusted EBITDA of $8.7M (11% margin), and management reiterated a return to year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 2026.
  • Positive Sentiment: Demand metrics show recovery — total redeemers rose to 19.7M (+15% YoY), total redemptions were 88M (+6%), and third-party publisher redemption revenue increased 12%, signaling strengthening network demand.
  • Positive Sentiment: Publisher expansion with multi-year exclusive deals for Uber and Giant Eagle (plus the earlier DoorDash launch) broadens the IPN, provides new data sources, and should deliver modest revenue benefits in H2 while supporting future scale.
  • Neutral Sentiment: LiveLift shows early product-market fit (≈80% re-up rate and larger average campaign sizes) but remains a modest revenue contributor today and requires further automation, model training, and AI enablement before a material ramp.
  • Negative Sentiment: Margins and investments — non-GAAP gross margin compressed ~300 bps to 78% and operating expenses rose as the company accelerates tech and sales investments, though it reported $23.3M free cash flow, $164.6M cash, and repurchased ~$45M of stock.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Ibotta Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Speaker 4

Good afternoon, welcome to Ibotta's Q1 2026 earnings conference call. With us today are Bryan Leach, Founder and CEO, and Matt Puckett, CFO. Today's press release and this call may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements about our future operating results, our guidance for Q2 2026, our ability to grow our revenue, factors contributing to our potential revenue growth, our key initiatives, our partnerships, and the capabilities of our offerings and technology, all of which are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, and changes. These statements reflect our current expectations and are based on the information currently available to us, and our actual results could differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors in our recent SEC filings.

Speaker 4

In addition, our discussion today will include references to certain supplemental non-GAAP financial measures and should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in today's earnings press release, our 10-Q, and our Q1 2026 earnings presentation, which are all available on our investor relations website at investors.ibotta.com. Unless otherwise noted, revenue and Adjusted EBITDA comparisons to prior periods are provided on a year-over-year basis. With that, I'll turn it over to Bryan.

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our discussion of first quarter results. We're pleased to report first quarter revenue and Adjusted EBITDA that are both above the top end of the guidance range we provided on our fourth quarter earnings call. We continue to anticipate that our year-over-year revenue trends will improve sequentially, returning us to overall revenue growth in the third quarter of 2026, which is consistent with the outlook we provided in February. The improved trajectory of our business is mostly the result of our sales team's success in deepening and broadening the supply of offers available to us. Our core promotions product is demonstrating strong market fit, while our more recent offering, LiveLift, continues to receive positive early feedback. On the publisher front, we've added two new partners in quick succession, both of which have entered into multi-year exclusive partnerships with us.

Operator

In late March, we announced the addition of Uber, meaning that later this year, Ibotta's digital promotions will appear within the Uber Eats, and Postmates apps. Today, we announced that Giant Eagle is also joining the Ibotta Performance Network. I'll say more about the significance of these new publisher wins later on, but first, I'd like to provide a bit more context on our recent financial performance and share additional details about the from-to pathway we see ourselves on. On a year-over-year basis, our redemption revenue performance has almost fully recovered. In the first quarter, it was down 1% year-over-year, compared to being down 15% in the third quarter of last year and down 5% in the fourth quarter. This gradual recovery has been partly driven by redeemer growth, with 15% more redeemers in Q1 than in the same quarter last year.

Operator

That said, increased demand for offers alone doesn't move the needle unless we also source enough offers to take advantage of it. This is all about having the right team in place, spending more time in market, multi-threading our outreach to stakeholders at different levels within an organization, and being more immediately responsive to our clients' needs. Building trust in these ways is allowing our team to continue moving forward further upstream in our clients' strategic planning processes. We are also doing a better job of supporting our sellers and account managers with B2B marketing, training and enablement, and client-specific insights. Our product team is working hard to deliver new tools that make each step in the quote-to-cash process easier, faster, and more efficient. Encouragingly, our success has been broad-based, which continues to increase our conviction in the path we're on.

Operator

Our sales team is adding new clients, securing new, often larger commitments from existing clients, and retaining the overwhelming majority of our clients. Our strategic partnership with measurement leader Circana continues to generate sales and marketing momentum. We recently published a case study available on our website that independently validates Ibotta's ability to deliver successful results for our clients. Chomps, the fastest-growing meat snack brand in the United States, ran a campaign earlier this year to drive trial and household penetration. The results were outstanding and were independently verified through a sales lift study conducted by Circana. Households exposed to the Ibotta campaign spent an average of 15% more on Chomps than their unexposed counterparts. Even more impressively, the campaign outperformed Circana's snack category benchmarks for sales lift by more than 4.5x and surpassed household penetration benchmarks by a staggering 9x.

Operator

Stacey Hartnett, the SVP of marketing at Chomps, summarized the impact well. She noted that achieving strong on-shelf presence was only their first milestone. Their strategy has now shifted toward winning new buyers through smarter promotional strategies. She stated that our partnership has become a key lever in that effort and that the study reinforces that the IPN delivers impact well beyond a discount, helping them reach the incremental shoppers critical to their long-term growth. Turning to LiveLift, we continue to see positive signs of product market fit even though it's still early days. We continue to limit access to those clients willing to spend a certain amount and run their campaigns for a certain duration. For this reason, the revenue contribution from LiveLift remains modest for now, and we aren't forecasting a significant ramp in revenue until we loosen those eligibility requirements.

Operator

I'll have more to say on what that will require in a moment. Actual re-up rates among clients that have completed a LiveLift campaign remain consistent with the approximately 80% level we've discussed in prior quarters. Those clients who have not yet re-upped are primarily smaller CPGs, which we believe reflects our eligibility criteria rather than any dissatisfaction with the product consistent with what we've said previously. Repeat users represented approximately 60% of LiveLift campaigns in the quarter, with the remainder being first-time users running pilots. The average campaign size for LiveLift campaigns remains meaningfully larger than for our core product.

Operator

The most common question I received after our last earnings call was, "Can you help me better understand what the pathway to greater adoption of LiveLift will look like?" Let me try to shed some light on what that entails and why I believe we're making solid progress. Of course, as with any innovative product development process, it's impossible to know in advance everything we will learn along the way or exactly how long that will take. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our CPG clients to buy campaigns on the Ibotta Performance Network. Some will prefer to stick with managed service, while others may take advantage of our self-service tools, which we will continue to refine and improve. In the future, our clients may also rely on agents to make more autonomous media buying decisions.

Operator

Whichever interface they choose, clients will start by identifying the goals of their campaign. Our LiveLift platform then takes this information and evaluates a wide range of possible campaigns and chooses the best fit for their goals, projects the amount of redemptions, incremental sales, and cost per incremental dollar we think they will achieve, tracks these metrics on an ongoing basis, providing profitability readouts at various points during the campaign, and optimizes the campaign as necessary along the way. Scaling LiveLift to our wider client base will require greater automation of these processes. With that in mind, we are focused on a few key initiatives.

Operator

First, we're building a more sophisticated programmatic API layer so that our software, as well as any agents we create, can interface with the various models and systems that power LiveLift, allowing our system to fully harness the power of AI and programmatically design, build, launch, optimize, and report on a campaign. This includes considering different scenarios and making the best possible projections and recommendations more quickly and at lower cost. Second, we are refining the underlying models that power LiveLift. These models become more robust as we train them on the data generated by running these early LiveLift campaigns, as we receive additional data from existing publishers, and as we expand the publisher network, gaining access to new sources of data. Widening the availability of LiveLift requires continued model training through repeated experiments. Those take time.

Operator

We are building a novel capability in this industry. That necessitates a disciplined, phased approach to scaling. Third, we are working on what I would broadly call AI enablement. That means documenting processes to create additional context for AI, defining standard operating procedures, and simplifying our product catalog to reduce complexity. Creating this scaffolding takes time. Once we have a simpler set of products with the appropriate context, more reliable agentic AI flows become possible. We believe that the progress we're making along all these fronts will ultimately allow us to more meaningfully inflect the level of CPG offer supply. Switching to the demand side of the equation, we continue to see strong results this quarter with healthy redeemer growth driven by organic growth at our existing publishers and the 2025 launch of DoorDash.

Operator

One of our top priorities has been diversifying our publisher base, and we have begun doing that with the recent additions of Uber and Giant Eagle, both of which entered into multi-year exclusive partnerships with Ibotta. Adding Uber to the IPN allows us to intercept consumers in high-intent commerce moments and solidifies our leadership position in the fast-growing and important e-commerce delivery space. Our partnership with Giant Eagle further validates the strength of our model and enhances our presence in the traditional grocery channel. As one of the nation's largest multi-format food and pharmacy retailers and a recognized industry thought leader, Giant Eagle chose to transition to Ibotta in order to access a more robust and relevant offer gallery that moves the needle for their customers. We're pleased with the terms and the economic profile of both of these new partnerships.

Operator

These partnerships demonstrate the extensive work of our business development and technology teams behind the scenes to enable these milestones. I'll now turn the floor over to our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Puckett, to walk through our financial results and guidance in more detail.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Bryan, and good afternoon, everyone. Right off the top, I'll repeat Bryan's comments. We're pleased to have delivered another quarter that was ahead of our initial outlook, further validating that we are very much on the right track. With that, let me jump into the Q1 results. We delivered revenue and Adjusted EBITDA that were respectively 3% and 25% above the midpoint of the guidance range that we provided on our fourth quarter earnings call. To unpack our top-line results for the quarter. Revenue was $82.5 million, a decline of 2% versus last year. Within that, redemption revenue was $73 million, down approximately $400,000 or 1% year-over-year. Both redemption revenue and ad and other revenue trends improved on a year-over-year basis as compared to the fourth quarter.

Speaker 2

We continue to be pleased with the results our sales organization is driving and how both our core product offerings and LiveLift are resonating with our clients. As Bryan noted, the LiveLift re-up rate remains healthy, underscoring that clients are realizing the measurable benefits that these next-generation capabilities deliver. Third-party publisher redemption revenue was $54 million, up 12% versus last year and accelerating sequentially versus the prior quarter's increase of 8%. Direct-to-consumer redemption revenue was $19 million. Down 25% year-over-year and similar to Q4's result, where as anticipated, we've continued to see redemption activity shift to our third-party publishers. Ad and other revenues, which represented 11% of our revenue in the quarter, were $9.5 million, down 15% versus last year, due primarily to continued pressure on ad revenue as a result of lower direct-to-consumer redeemers.

Speaker 2

This reduction was partially offset by growth in data revenue. Turning now to the key performance metrics supporting redemption revenue. Total redeemers were 19.7 million in the quarter, up 15% year-over-year. We saw another quarter of significant growth in third-party redeemers across the IPN, including strong growth with our largest publisher partner, highlighting the continued health of the demand side of our network. In addition to organic growth with existing publishers, the quarter also benefited from the launch of DoorDash in the second quarter of 2025. Redemptions per redeemer were 4.5, down 6% versus last year, a meaningful improvement in trend versus the second half of last year when redemptions per redeemer were down 22%.

Speaker 2

Where the decline continues to be driven by both the quantity and quality of offers available to each redeemer, as well as the growth in third-party redeemers, which have a lower redemption frequency as compared to our direct-to-consumer redeemers. Redemption revenue per redemption was $0.83, which was flat versus Q4 and down 7% versus last year, driven primarily by the mix of redemption activity. Summing it all up, total redemptions were 88 million, up 6% versus last year, driven by 15% redemption growth on our third-party publishers. This represents a more measurable return to year-over-year growth in redemptions for the first time since the first quarter of 2025 after being flattish in the fourth quarter. Switching to the cost side of our business.

Speaker 2

As anticipated, non-GAAP cost of revenue was up $2 million versus a year ago, largely driven by an increase in technology-related costs, along with a more modest increase in publisher costs. This resulted in Q1, a Q1 non-GAAP gross margin of 78%, down approximately 300 basis points versus last year. As we discussed last quarter, much of the increase in technology-related costs is a function of increased investment in product development, as well as a higher allocation of certain costs from R&D expense to cost of revenue. Before I review non-GAAP operating expenses, let me point out that we've made a change in how non-GAAP operating expenses are defined and shown on page 12 of the presentation that accompanies our earnings materials. Turning back to the results.

Speaker 2

Non-GAAP operating expenses were up 5% versus last year and were 71% of revenue, an increase of approximately 470 basis points year-over-year. Within that, non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses were up 17%, driven by higher sales labor, the cost of third-party lift studies, and B2B marketing expenses. Non-GAAP research and development expenses decreased by 21%, primarily a result of higher capitalization of software development costs and a higher allocation of labor expense to cost of revenue. This is due to more of our investment in R&D being directly focused on product development. Lastly, non-GAAP general and administrative expenses increased by 5%, while depreciation and amortization increased by approximately $600,000 or 60%.

Speaker 2

Similar to the last couple of quarters, while overall non-GAAP operating expenses grew modestly year-over-year, our investments in areas related to our transformation, inclusive of both the P&L and what is being capitalized to the balance sheet, increased at a faster pace. This increase was approximately 12% and again was highlighted by higher labor costs in the sales organization and other technology-related costs. We delivered Q1 Adjusted EBITDA of $8.7 million, representing an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 11%, non-GAAP net income of $6 million, and non-GAAP diluted net income per share of $0.24. Our non-GAAP net income excludes $16.7 million in stock-based compensation, and it includes a $0.3 million adjustment for income taxes. We ended the quarter with $164.6 million of cash and cash equivalents.

Speaker 2

In Q1, we spent approximately $45 million repurchasing approximately 1.9 million shares of our stock at an average price of $22.92. We had 25.6 million fully diluted shares outstanding as of 3/31, and as of the end of the quarter, we had $90.3 million remaining under our current share repurchase authorization, which, as previously disclosed, was increased by $100 million upon authorization from the board of directors on March 11th. Finally, we generated $23.3 million in free cash flow, an increase of 56% versus last year, largely driven by higher cash flow from operations as a result of decreases in working capital compared to the first quarter of 2025. Now shifting to Q2 guidance.

Speaker 2

We currently expect revenue in the range of $82 million-$86 million, representing a 2% year-over-year decline at the midpoint. At the same time, a 2% sequential increase versus Q1 at the midpoint. We expect Q2 Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $9 million-$12 million, representing about a 12.5% Adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint. With that, let me provide a little more color on our outlook. First off, as both Bryan and I have mentioned, we continue to be pleased with the consistency of our execution with our clients and publisher partners, both with core product offerings and with LiveLift pilots. This has been the driver of improving revenue trends during the last couple of quarters, and we expect that to continue.

Speaker 2

One other point to make on Q2 revenue. At the midpoint of our revenue outlook, we would expect redemption revenue to return to growth for the first time since Q1 of 2025. Beyond our specific Q2 revenue guidance, we are confirming our expectation of a return to year-over-year growth in total revenue in Q3 in the low single digit range. It's probably on your mind, so let me highlight the assumptions implied in our outlook specific to the two new publishers we are adding to the network. We've assumed an immaterial impact on Q2 during the testing and piloting phase, and expect a small benefit to revenue in the second half of the year as we ramp up with these partners. I'll note that offer supply will be the governor on the near term revenue impact of this expansion on the demand side of our network.

Speaker 2

As it relates to costs, our expectations are broadly unchanged from last quarter. We continue to expect to see a modest sequential increase in quarterly non-GAAP cost of revenue and operating expenses throughout the balance of the year. That continues to be a function of investing in areas that are critical to our transformation. Specifically within cost of revenue, as we said last quarter, we expect to have substantially less growth in publisher-related costs as compared to what we saw in 2025, and we do expect similar to the first quarter, that the biggest factor driving an increase in cost of revenue will be higher technology costs, which is partially a function of where these costs are allocated in the P&L relative to last year.

Speaker 2

Lastly, with a healthy balance sheet and positive free cash flow, we'll continue to prioritize investing in organic growth and the strategic priorities of the business, while also returning cash to shareholders. We remain excited and energized by the opportunities ahead, and look forward to returning to year-over-year revenue growth in the second half of this year. With that, operator, let's please open up the line for Q&A.

Speaker 4

For today's Q&A session, we will be utilizing the raise hand feature. If you would like to ask a question, click on the raise hand button at the bottom of the screen. Once prompted, please unmute yourself and begin with your question. We will pause a moment to assemble the queue. Thank you. Our first question will come from Ken Gawrelski with Wells Fargo. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Can you hear me okay?

Operator

Yes.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. thanks so much for the question. Could you maybe Bryan, could you talk about how as you move more to LiveLift over time and you get the sales process really humming, when you look into, you know, 2027 and 2028, how do you think the financial picture may change? Like, what does it mean for the margin structure of the business relative to, you know, the kind of post-IPO? What fundamental differences do you see there? Maybe as the first one.

Operator

Sure.

Speaker 1

Second.

Operator

I'll answer.

Operator

Maybe I would say-

Operator

I'm sorry. Go ahead, keep going.

Speaker 1

Go ahead, please. Yeah. No, no, that's okay. Please go ahead.

Operator

What's the second one?

Operator

I'll follow up.

Operator

Okay.

Operator

The second one is this. Like, as you think about the progress you can make in the back half of this year and early next year, how much of it is, like the year, like a change in the calendar year provides another opportunity, kind of another bite at the apple with some of those big CPG brands versus just getting your go-to-market strategy in process working? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Ken. I'll take those in turn. For the first one, I'll answer at a high level and then let Matt provide additional detail, and then I'll have him pass it back to me for the second question. For the first one, I would say, you know, broadly speaking, we feel like we're in a good place with our expenses to be able to build the products we need to drive the increase in offer supply over the next few years. You asked about, you know, 2026, 2027, 2028. That should, you know, in other words, we don't expect to have to continue to ramp expenses at the same rate that we're ramping revenue.

Speaker 2

That should be positive in terms of the margins and, you know, contribution to Adjusted EBITDA over the next three years. You know, we have ongoing innovation that's baked into the R&D that's part of our current effort. I think more time will allow us to get in front of our customers with the LiveLift message. It is an evolution in the industry that is moving from kind of annual planning and annual allocation and annual measurement to more ongoing measurement and optimization using rule-based or outcome-based systems. That go-to-market takes some time to build the necessary trust and conviction, and then have the cultural changes that need to happen on the client side.

Speaker 2

I feel like the developments that I described in my remarks will put us in a position where there'll be a variety of different ways that people can buy on our network. And those ways will be more sophisticated and allow us to meet the needs of our clients more often and allow us to earn the way into larger and larger budgets, which is what's really gonna move the needle and drive the revenue in this business. I'll let Matt add any additional thoughts on that before turning to your second question.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Ken, just a couple of things I would add. You know, without being precise, which obviously we're not gonna do about, you know, regarding our financial algorithm, a couple of things I'll say. One is kind of more medium term and then longer term, which is really kind of reiterating Bryan's points. We've been talking for a couple of quarters now about the investments that we were making, right? In first in the sales organization, which is restructuring, reorganizing and really just leveling up the capabilities in the sales organization, as well as the investments we've been making in our technology, as it relates to the transformation of the business and the capabilities that we've been building. We're kinda nearing lapping most of those investments.

Speaker 2

We're not fully there. Over the course of this year, we will lap all of those investments. That's factored into everything we've said about, you know, what the forward picture looks like. Once we've done that, as we sit here today with what we see that needs to get done, we don't expect to have to add. There's not another step change in investment profile from here. As we see the top line stabilize, and then we start to drive consistent sustainable growth, we're gonna see the opportunity to expand, both gross margins and EBITDA margins over time. Hopefully that helps answer.

Operator

The second question, Ken, about you know, the back half and the change in the calendar year. I would say that, you know, different clients have different fiscal years. Some of our clients reset in July, some of them reset in the fall, some of them reset on the calendar year. While that is definitely a factor in situations where we have kind of gotten through the budget that was allocated to us in the previous cycle, we get a chance to kind of demonstrate the effectiveness of that, the level of performance earns us into a larger budget. That's true.

Operator

However, I think it is more a function just of being able to get in front of clients with our core product, demonstrate the scale that we have, that we are along the path of purchase in all these different places now, the addition of these new publishers. That allows us even in between, you know, even in intra year to go back and make the case that this is where they should be spending more money at a time when, you know, they're aware that this is how they gain market shares by intelligently thinking about where they're pricing their products and how they're promoting their products. I don't wanna lean too much on that as sort of some major driver. We are always selling both in the annual planning process and then, you know, within that year.

Operator

I would say also our whole goal here is to move the industry away from that mentality of annual planning and into a mindset of, "I always want to buy this as long as these rules and constraints are being met." I want every dollar of top and bottom line, you know, revenue and profit that I can get through this platform, and I'll spend until I'm no longer seeing that level of efficiency. That's ongoing, but I think it's safe to say that for now we are still living in a world where we do participate in those annual re-up conversations. There are just thousands of brands happening all the time at different parts of the year. Matt was gonna add 1 more thing.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Ken, just one more thing to make sure we got to the essence of part of your question there on kind of the margin profile. As we grow LiveLift over time as a bigger penetration of the business, that doesn't materially change the margin profile. Whether it's core product offering or LiveLift, you wouldn't see a real, a different outcome. It's really about the investments we've made to enable the growth that'll flow through our business model.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question will come from Robert Mitchell with Raymond James. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 5

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I have a couple. First, if you could just kind of talk about some of the early progress with the Uber partnership and how that is tracking, and then within that commentary you gave on some of the initiatives surrounding LiveLift, in terms of what it's going to take to ramp that a little further. Just any thoughts on, like, what inning you're in, any progress made on this initiative so far? Secondly, just on the macro, curious if you're seeing any impacts from energy prices, whether it be on CPG spend or on the health of the lower-end consumer. Thanks.

Operator

Great. Thanks, Tim. First on the Uber partnership, pleased to have announced that a little while ago. That's like all of our publishers, they don't just turn that on overnight to 100% of all of their customers across thousands of stores that they support. They do that in a stepwise function, and we are in the process of the early part of the process of that rollout. We will, you know, then be working with them on other aspects of that partnership to make sure that we're able to do the most sophisticated forms of measurement, and, you know, personalization, et cetera, marketing, you know, reactivation, activation, those best practices.

Operator

I would say we're in a position where the technology to support this has been built, and we're, like I said, early days in the process of introducing that to different customers at Uber. We're excited about that. As you know, you know, we have a strong presence in that area, and that's something where we hope that it will also have the same level of uptake and high redemption rates that we've seen in that category more broadly. Second question, or I guess the second part of your first question was to do with the progress we've made on the ramp of LiveLift. I think we've made significant progress from the last time we had a conversation in late February.

Operator

That is along all the different dimensions that I mentioned. You know, AI itself is evolving very rapidly. We are investing heavily in AI enablement to take advantage of the efficiencies that are available to us through using things like Claude Code. But also our ability to create this programmatic API layer. We're absolutely working on that around the clock, getting that to a place where we'll be able to automate more of these processes, which will benefit our entire business, not just LiveLift, but LiveLift, LiveRamp, but also all of our core offers benefit from having it be easier to design, set up-revise and so forth, from beginning to end a campaign.

Operator

And then the models underlying, I think I mentioned that those get better with the more data, with the more refinement of the model and the more publishers you add. The addition of Uber and Giant Eagle will help us refine those models. That itself represents progress. We also are seeing that as we get a second, a third, you know, LiveLift campaign from some of these repeat customers. I mentioned 60% of LiveLift is from a repeat customer. They're able to test out different strategies, and we're able to learn something about the way the consumer responds to different structured promotions based on their goals. That then helps project the next campaign that much better. Those clients that are participating are gaining an advantage.

Operator

They are all aware that doing that in this environment is important, which is a good segue to your last question about the macro. You know, the news you're reading is the same thing we're hearing from our clients. The American consumer is looking for value. We're excited that we're an integral part of that. Whether that is driven by the war in Iran or gas prices or tariffs or some other exogenous factor, there's a lot of focus on this topic. Even earlier today, the CEO of Kraft Heinz put out a message, Steve Cahillane, saying the new mantra is value. Quote, "Consumers are literally running out of money." End quote. Those are the kinds of things that cause people to take a closer look at the product that we sell.

Operator

I think that we're making the case that there's smarter and less smart ways to do that, to deliver that value, and we think the Ibotta Performance Network is a really good way to do that in a way that's also capitalizing on the latest technologies that are available. I think that'll continue to be true. I also want to stress that this is non-discretionary spending. No matter what the macro environment is, people are looking for value on the things they have to buy week in, week out. If you look at the press release we put out today from Giant Eagle, they commented on why they switched to Ibotta.

Operator

They switched to Ibotta because they wanted to see an 8x increase in value delivery for their customers, and they're hearing consistently that that is what makes the difference in why people shop at Giant Eagle versus somewhere else. Both on the CPG side, you know, for example, Kraft, or on the publisher side, for example, Giant Eagle, being in this field right now is particularly important.

Speaker 5

Well, thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question will come from Stefanos Crist with Needham & Company.

Speaker 6

Hey, can you hear me?

Operator

Yeah, we got you.

Speaker 6

Oh, awesome. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to ask on third quarter revenue inflecting positive, what are the assumptions in there? Are you baking in a certain ramp in LiveLift? Are you including Uber and Giant Eagle? I would just love to go through the assumptions there and where there could be upside. Thanks.

Operator

Great. I'm gonna hand that one to Matt.

Speaker 2

It's really kind of what we're doing today continuing, right? We've seen sequentially improving results in our business, particularly driven by redemption revenue, and that's really the driver. You know, we expect to see that get better in Q2 versus Q1, and the same to be true for Q3 versus Q2, and that's all gonna translate into growth. There's no step change assumed in terms of, you know, LiveLift adoption or us, you know, further opening the aperture to that. It's kind of where we are today is the expectation. We've assumed a very modest impact from the 2 new publishers in the back half of the year. That'd be a little bit less in Q3 and a little bit more in Q4.

Speaker 2

That's, by the way, to think about that. It's really an ongoing kind of performance that we've seen to date driven by consistent execution and the fact that our products, both core products and obviously LiveLift as well, are resonating with our clients.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thanks. Actually, if I could squeeze one more in.

Speaker 2

Go for it.

Speaker 6

Just on the monetization of Uber and Giant Eagle, I assume Uber is similar to like a DoorDash, but how about Giant Eagle? Is that similar to like a Dollar General or any differences there in these two partnerships? Thanks.

Operator

Yeah, I think, you know, without going into the specifics of the economics of individual partnerships, broadly speaking, those are similar to how we've approached these in the past, and we're happy with the economics of those partnerships. I think that it's, as we get greater scale and more momentum, greater access to supply, we continue to see publishers that much more interested and motivated to deliver the best possible value for their customers, and that, we think, will continue to contribute to favorable economics going forward.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question will come from Nitin Bansal with Bank of America.

Speaker 3

Thank you for taking my question. Bryan, can you provide some more details on your, like, progress with the go-to-market transformation? Specifically, like, how did the new sales motion impacted your 1Q results, and what additional changes are you making to the sales team that could impact your performance for the rest of the year? Thanks.

Operator

Thanks, Nitin. Absolutely. There are a number of different things that have been going on since the arrival of Chris Riedy on our team. You know, that started with taking a look at the team itself and making sure we have the right people in the right roles to help ourselves with the kind of selling that we're gonna need to do, which is much more of a kind of consultative sale, where we have to be fluent in the businesses of our clients. We reorganized the sales organization to be no longer geographic, but focused on, you know, the actual industry-based approach. You know, we have experts in the beverage, for example, or in household products or what have you. We separated into enterprise clients versus emerging clients with each, you know, having its own industry subverticals.

Operator

We focused on a variety of support structures that weren't in place that needed to be, such as bringing in an SVP of Enterprise Sales, SVP of Business Marketing to help us with sort of the B2B marketing expertise, beefed up the sales finance, sales operations, training and enablement of our sellers, and I think that was very important. We filled all those senior leadership roles by early October of 2025 as I've said on previous calls, and we were, you know, we brought in the right people. We brought in excellent talent, and that has helped us in a lot of different fronts. We mentioned on the last call the thought leadership, the ability to be proactive, get in front of our clients. I think the example I gave was the SNAP program.

Operator

We had a kind of a playbook that was designed. We reached out. That led to incremental dollars being committed to Ibotta that weren't, you know, in their previous annual plan that were kind of opportunistic, which is really valuable. You know, we've talked a little bit about other things that we've done like multi-threading is a term we've used, meaning teaching our sellers to go in at multiple different levels of an organization at the same time to speak to different needs and pain points of the people in those organizations using the language of their business. The simple fact of being on the ground more often, being in the room more often, the hustle factor, continuity, so not handing people over between rep to rep, that is really about trust.

Operator

Most of the structural changes were made, you know, last year. We're continuing to build that trust. As we're doing that, we're getting, you know, invited into more and more important strategic conversations. We're getting clients that are wanting to say, "Let's come out and spend a day with you, and we're gonna bring significant, you know, senior members of our team to discuss where you think, you know, this industry is heading and how it's impacted by things like technology, AI, et cetera." I think we're being embraced more as a thought leader and invited more into upstream strategic planning conversations. I think the introduction of Circana and NCS has allowed our sales team to provide this third-party independent analysis. That's given them another important platform. We've done a better job with event marketing.

Operator

Chris Riedy has been on stage all over the place, you know. He's been in on the stage at Adweek and places like this, at Possible, NACDS, lots of different conferences where we're getting in front of all different parts of the CPG organization. I think it's not one thing, Nitin. It's a variety of different upgrades to how our team sells, and I think that, you know, of course having something like LiveLift to discuss, having the ability to focus on incremental sales and really lead the conversation around rigorous measurement, that's given them a lot to talk about, and I'm really, you know, proud of the work they're doing.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question will come from Tim Hwang with Citizens JMP.

Speaker 7

Hi, thank you for taking my question. I wanted to follow up about the pricing changes that were talked about in last quarter's call with regard to pricing being more linked to AOV. Just, like, could you give any color on how that's been received, or just, like, further progress during the quarter on pricing and what's been flowing through? Thank you.

Operator

Thanks, Tim. Sure. You're right, your memory is spot on. You know, it's a question of moving from a flat fee that is applied based on the price band that a product falls within. The old system was, you know, if your product was $3-$4, you paid this cost per unit sold or per redemption rather. If your product was $4-$5, $5-$6, $10+ dollars, you might pay a different cost per redemption under the old model. Of course, the problem with that is that as you get to either side of that range, you get kind of discontinuities.

Operator

You get the ratio that it, that your fee represents as a percentage of the overall product price, and thus the kind of total economics available to the brand, varies, and that can create inadvertent inefficiencies. It might make it, you know, unnecessarily expensive, for example, to use Ibotta with lower cost products where our fee per redemption constitutes a high enough percentage that it's hard to deliver a cost per incremental dollar that's attractive, meaning, lower than the contribution margin of that product consistent with a goal of profitability. The solve for that is to shift toward a system where it's continuous.

Operator

It is a fixed percentage of the price itself, and that way, whether you're at, you know, $1.01 or $1.99, you're equally able to take advantage of that structure. What we've been doing is introducing this transition in our pricing as part of a broader reset of some terms that we have in our preferred partnerships in our agreements. That has been very well received. I think people view that as simplifying the system, you know, dispensing with discrete fees for things like setup costs and things. It makes it simpler. Everything's wrapped into this 1% of the price fee. As I said, it's encouraging clients to promote lower priced items.

Operator

We're still very much in the middle of that transition 'cause we didn't wanna just mandate that, you know, everybody turn on a dime, you have to now institute this new pricing. As we come back through these conversations on our annual preferred partnerships, for example, that along with other conversations around things like payment terms, are a natural part of our conversation, and that's been, broadly speaking, I think going well. We're seeing success in that transition, although we're still very much in the midst of it. Matt's gonna add one more thing.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I would just say, and you'll see this obviously in our results, our redemption fee, those numbers are going down a little bit, right? In terms of kind of the way to think about price. We pay attention to that, we understand it, but honestly, it doesn't scare us. In order to maximize revenue, in many cases it makes sense to lower fees. It allows our clients to hit profitability objectives, and think about our business model. Our financial model as it sits here today, incremental revenue, flows to the bottom line at a really high rate. It's actually not a bad thing.

Speaker 2

We do understand it and pay attention to it, but, seeing revenue coming down as a result of fees but then offset by higher volume is actually a good answer for us in most cases.

Operator

Yeah, I think broadly speaking, Tim, it's fair to say we've had greater level of analytical rigor, and I think looking at that has caused us to. It's one of the reasons why we arrived at this transition in our pricing, and I think, you know, we had a lot of conversations with our clients before we settled on this. Fortunately, you know, I think we had properly prepared for the transition, and I'm happy with how it's going.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Once again, if you would like to ask your question, please use the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. This now concludes the Q&A section. I would now like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Operator

Thanks very much everyone for your time, today. We are pleased with the results that we've reported and the momentum in our business. We look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Speaker 4

Thank you for joining today's session. This call has concluded. You may now disconnect.

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