Pattern Group Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 5, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Record Q2 performance: Revenue rose 47% year over year to $877 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased 54% to $54 million, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of EBITDA growth outpacing revenue.
  • Positive Sentiment: Strong partner retention and expansion: Net revenue retention reached a record 129%, up from 127% in Q1 and 118% a year ago, supported by technology-driven optimization, geographic expansion, and broader product selection.
  • Positive Sentiment: International and non-Amazon channels accelerated: International revenue grew 87% to $110 million, non-Amazon revenue increased 93%, and SaaS, logistics, and other revenue rose 123% to $17 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Full-year outlook raised: Pattern now expects 2026 revenue of $3.4 billion-$3.5 billion and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $211 million-$213 million, with full-year margin accretion despite increased R&D investment.
  • Negative Sentiment: Growth is expected to moderate in the second half: Tougher year-over-year comparisons and the shift of major promotional events into Q2 are expected to limit Q3 revenue growth to approximately 31%-34%; increased R&D spending and seasonal holiday costs may also pressure quarterly margins.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Pattern Group Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Pattern second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Hamish Chung, VP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Pattern's earnings call for the second quarter 2026. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations, assumptions, and forecasts about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please refer to our latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information on these risks and uncertainties. We may also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. We'll focus our remarks today on the key highlights and drivers. Additional detail is available in the earnings release.

Speaker 1

Joining us today are David Wright, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Jason Beesley, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's earnings is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our investor relations website following the call. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, David Wright. Dave, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Hamish, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered another record quarter. In Q2, revenue grew 47% year-over-year to $877 million. Adjusted EBITDA grew faster still, up 54% to $54 million. That is the fourth consecutive quarter of Adjusted EBITDA outpacing revenue. Before Jason takes you through the details, let me start with net revenue retention, then I will discuss the mix of that revenue. NRR is how we measure how well the machine is working. In Q2, NRR reached another record at 129%, up from 127% last quarter and 118% a year ago. Against a long-term target of 115%, those are pretty extraordinary numbers. We hold ourselves to NRR because it measures what matters most, the outcomes we deliver for our brands. When our brands win, we win.

Speaker 2

They stay with us, they expand with us, that record is the most persuasive thing our teams bring to the next brand considering Pattern. Strong partner results create a reinforcing cycle. Rising revenue across new marketplaces and geographies generates both data and logistics scale. The data gives us higher signal density. The scale gives us lower cost and faster transit times across the network. All of it starts and ends with being obsessed with our brands' outcomes. Inside the 47% revenue growth, three strategic highlights are worth calling out. First, international. International revenue grew 87% year-over-year to $110 million, our first quarter ever above $100 million. Second, non-Amazon. Non-Amazon revenue grew 93% year-over-year, with strength across Tmall, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and Coupang. Third, SaaS logistics and other. That line grew 123% year-over-year to $17 million.

Speaker 2

It is still a small share of revenue, it deepens what we do for each brand and gives us optionality as a business. In short, our model is working. We delivered another quarter of record results, we are again raising our outlook for the full year. Jason will walk you through the specifics. Since day one, our objective has been the same, achieve exceptional brand outcomes by optimizing the four levers that drive commerce, traffic, conversion, price, and availability. What makes that repeatable is an ontology, we believe ours is one of the most robust in e-commerce. The AI models will keep improving. The ontology keeps compounding regardless. Our ontology has three layers and 44 patents issued or pending across them. Number one, the data layer. 91 trillion data points accumulated across 13 years of execution in hundreds of brands, geographies, and marketplace.

Speaker 2

Second, the semantic layer, the entities and the map relationships between them. Price against inventory, competitive position against conversion. This is what makes the data reasoning ready rather than merely stored. Third, the execution layer. Pattern Intelligence, or Pi, which we launched in May. Pi runs a sensor actor framework across those relationships and writes governed actions back to the marketplace, millions a day, on behalf of our brand partners. With Pi's release, brand partners also have interactive visibility into that execution. They can review, approve, and modify inputs. Measurement runs in the execution layer. As part of our advancement in that layer, in Q2, we were awarded a U.S. patent covering True ROAS, our true return on ad sales methodology. True ROAS isolates what an ad actually generated, net of organic conditions, competitive dynamics, and long-term incrementality, so actions can be graded on incrementality, not just attribution.

Speaker 2

True ROAS pairs with Destiny, our patented ad tech platform. Measurement feeds allocation drives durable organic ranking. In April, we were named TikTok Shop's Strategic Partner of the Year. More than 100 of our brand partners now sell on TikTok Shop, that number is growing every quarter. Social commerce has become a meaningful channel for new brand partner acquisition, particularly in beauty and fashion. As of last week, through ROI Hunter, which we acquired last December, our brand partners can advertise in ChatGPT. From a single platform, they can reach consumers across Meta, Google, Snap, TikTok, and now ChatGPT. I'd like to give you a few examples of brand successes. We accelerated a U.S.-based prestige skincare brand from $5 million to $15 million in revenue over three years.

Speaker 2

These results were driven by a combination of improvements, including increasing conversion from 9% to 13%, a 36% lift, improving in-stock from 91% to 99%, and subscribe-and-save revenue doubled. One more example. A U.K.-based sports nutrition brand started with us on a single marketplace in Australia. Today, we manage their e-commerce business across 13 countries, including their flagship market in the U.K. That's a pattern we see consistently. Brands start with us in one market and expand globally as their confidence in Pattern grows. Zooming out to our long-term strategic positioning, we are tracking the shift from discovery to transaction within LLMs closely. We are making two long-term investments to position Pattern to win in both. The first is commerce infrastructure as a service. Every agentic transaction has to be fulfilled with real-time inventory, forward and reverse logistics, and customer interactions.

Speaker 2

We operate that layer today. We are extending it to agentic shopping. The second is our plan to continue expanding our brand agentic commerce acceleration capabilities, which optimize brands for LLM surfaces and carries that same infrastructure underneath. Pattern is building for both the intelligence to win on LLM surfaces and the infrastructure to meet customer expectations. Before I hand it over to Jason, I'll close with the point I care about most. E-commerce is a team sport. As a matter of fact, all businesses are a team sport. Everything you heard today came from an exceptional team at Pattern. Culture and execution are the same thing. In the last few months, U.S. News & World Report named Pattern one of the best companies to work for in 2026.

Speaker 2

We also ranked number 9 on America's Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces of 2026, our second year in the top 100. I am proud of what we are building and even more proud of the team building it. Jason, over to you.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon, everyone. Q2 was another record quarter for Pattern on many fronts. We continue to see broad-based strength across brand partners, geographies, and marketplaces. We delivered $877 million of revenue, up 47% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA grew 54%, outpacing revenue growth for the fourth consecutive quarter. Our performance gives us confidence to increase our full-year outlook for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Regarding Q2 growth, I'll start with our biggest revenue driver, existing brand partner revenue. We're excited to report that we delivered another record NRR of 129% for our brand partners, up from 127% in Q1 and 118% a year ago. We have three distinct drivers of that growth. Technology-driven optimization remains the foundation of our growth formula and primary driver. Our unified AI-native intelligence layer monitors and acts across the marketplaces we operate in, driving stronger conversion, traffic, and availability.

Speaker 3

Because it operates across multiple variables simultaneously, the impact compounds. We also grow by expanding marketplaces and geographies. Embedded in our international revenue growth of 87% to $110 million in the second quarter is a milestone worth noting. This is our first quarter with international revenue above $100 million. One highlight across our international regions is Asia. We entered our first Asian marketplace in 2019, and over the past seven years, we've grown and now operate in 20 marketplaces across China, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Japan, and Singapore. Not only are we building on our success in existing markets, we are expanding into new markets and continuing to accelerate our growth. On top of our financial success in the region, we also established ourselves as a key partner for domestic marketplaces.

Speaker 3

For example, Pattern was the only non-China-based company named a Gold Star service provider for the health category by Tmall. Finally, expanding product selection from our brand partners. Introducing more product lines and new products on existing marketplaces is another growth driver. These opportunities come every year and can vary in timing across quarters. We are pleased with revenue growth related to new brand partners across many categories, which tracked at a similar pace to last year. We also grew SaaS, logistics, and other monetization revenue up 123% in Q2 to $17 million. Turning to operating expenses and profitability, adjusted EBITDA was $54 million in Q2, up 54% year-over-year. Of note, we realized costs in the quarter related to Accelerate, our annual global e-commerce summit, startup costs related to our East Coast facility, and increased R&D investment.

Speaker 3

Our East Coast fulfillment facility is now operational, and early throughput is in line with our goals. Excluding stock-based compensation and related taxes, R&D expense was $12 million, up 89% year-over-year. We continue to invest ahead of revenue in our data infrastructure, Pi expansion, and AI capabilities while improving cost leverage in other areas. Variable cost components, cost of goods sold, marketplace commissions, and fulfillment grew slightly slower than revenue, consistent with Q1. This was primarily driven by revenue mix across various products and other monetization strategies. Turning to cash flow. For the trailing 12 months ended June 30th, we generated $136 million of operating cash flow, up 76% year-over-year, and $106 million of free cash flow, up 92% year-over-year. This was driven by our operating results, improved inventory turns, and tax-related benefits from the stock-based compensation expenses recognized at last year's IPO.

Speaker 3

We ended Q2 with $346 million in cash and cash equivalents, no outstanding debt, and $150 million of borrowing capacity. Our balance sheet continues to be a strategic asset. Turning to our outlook. The outperformance in Q2 was broad-based. Existing brand partner revenue acceleration, new brand partner revenue growth, strong non-Amazon international results, and overall healthy execution across the platform. Our recent performance and the momentum we are carrying into the back half gives us confidence to raise our full year outlook. We now expect full year revenue in the range of $3.4 billion-$3.5 billion, representing approximately 37%-38% growth year-over-year. As I mentioned previously, our year-over-year comps get harder in the second half.

Speaker 3

We will lap the record growth rates from last year in Q3 and Q4. We expect year-over-year revenue growth to moderate to the 30%+ range, which is reflected in our outlook. We are also raising our full year adjusted EBITDA outlook to approximately $211 million-$213 million, representing approximately 38%-40% growth year-over-year. We are continuing to grow the company in balance. We expect full year adjusted EBITDA margin accretion even as we continue to accelerate our R&D investment. We are extremely pleased with our NRR performance of 129%, and our updated outlook implies that the ending point of NRR this year will be approximately 123%-124%, above our long-term target of 115%. We continue to expect NRR to slowly moderate over the next few quarters based on the tougher comparables I already mentioned.

Speaker 3

When looking at Q3, it is important to note that Q2 benefited from large marketplace promotional events such as Amazon Prime Day, Walmart Deals, and Target Circle moving from the third quarter into the second quarter this year. This represented approximately four points of growth shift from Q3 to Q2, affecting both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. For the third quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $840 million-$860 million, representing approximately 31%-34% growth year-over-year. We expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $51 million-$53 million, growing 25%-29% year-over-year. In closing, this is our fourth quarter reporting earnings as a public company. In that time, we've delivered four consecutive quarters of 40%+ revenue growth with 50%+ adjusted EBITDA growth. Over that same last 12-month time period, our free cash flow has grown 92%.

Speaker 3

We are delivering significant revenue growth outpaced by adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow growth in a market with significant runway remaining. We believe this is a formula for long-term value creation and puts us in a unique group of companies that grow sustainably at scale. At the end of the day, what matters most is that we are delivering growth for our brand partners. NRR at 129% reflects that. With that, I'll turn it back to Dave before we open up the call for questions.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Jason. Q2 was our fourth consecutive quarter of 40%+ revenue growth. Also in Q2, NRR hit a record of 129%. International revenue was above $100 million for the first time. Pi is running at scale. Our brands can now reach consumers on ChatGPT. We enter Q3 with a platform and pipeline we feel great about. The surface area of e-commerce keeps expanding. Pattern will continue to complement brands in their execution and management of these vast surface areas. Pattern is built for both the intelligence to win in that environment and the infrastructure to fulfill what it generates. We remain focused on optimizing the e-commerce equation on behalf of brands, removing friction for brands, and delivering measurable outcomes at scale. Thank you for your continued support. We'll now open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please stand by. Our first question comes from Brett Pitts from BMO Financial Group. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thanks for the questions. Maybe with P&G's announced acquisition of Thorne, you can discuss whether a change of control creates any considerations for your relationship with Thorne. Maybe more broadly, how you think about customer retention when brands are acquired by larger strategic owners with more established distribution capabilities. Then I have a follow-up.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Brett. Appreciate your question. First off, I want to start with a congrats to the Thorne team and the P&G team. Regarding the sale that was announced yesterday, we found out about that at the same time as the market and have no comments on the specifics of that transaction. However, it's important to note that we already work with other brands in the P&G portfolio, and of course, we look forward to working with them in the future. We discussed this yesterday with Thorne management, and we both reiterated the importance of our partnership and our confidence in the future. What it means now is business as usual with Thorne. To your specific question, Brett, there is no change of control provision in our agreement, and we believe we've got runway to demonstrate our value to the partnership going forward.

Speaker 3

I'll turn it over to Dave for maybe the second part of your first question and probably a broader context.

Speaker 2

Yeah. It's a great outcome. If you step back a little, we do what we call a joint business plan with brands at the beginning of all significant time periods. And of course, we have discussions with the brands to say, "What are your objectives? What are you hoping for?" And I think all brands would agree as they watch Thorne, this has been a successful outcome. And I believe we played a small part in that, and the team has done a tremendous job. One of the things, over the years, we've worked with lots of brands who've had this type of success and have been acquired by larger CPG companies. Some of our best and longest partnerships are inside those CPG conglomerates. Some of them started there, and some of them have landed there via acquisition, successful brand outcomes, I believe.

Speaker 2

I guess one of the things we're excited about is when this happens, generally you have significant knowledge, resources, investment that go into the asset, into the teams. We expect that will come from this partnership. Thorne is just a tremendous brand, high quality. I expect that they'll continue to differentiate themselves with any brands that are just obsessed about their consumers. I think at the end of the day, this will just be a great outcome for the consumers of Thorne. We're excited about the future, and we see it as business as usual.

Speaker 3

You mentioned a second question, Brett.

Speaker 4

Yeah, just a real quick one. As you look across your customer base, how are brands balancing either marketplace participation or DTC investment, and what does that imply for the long-term risk of client attrition or channel shift? Any insights there? Because there's obviously a lot of options for some of the brands that are out there.

Speaker 2

Yeah. There is some, of course, conversations you always have where you say, "Hey, will one cannibalize the other? If a brand is successful on a direct consumer, their site, will it cannibalize marketplace revenue and so forth?" We haven't seen that as yet. We're generally always encouraging that collaboration. We believe that when they're successful in any of their channels, it tends to raise marketplace awareness and tends to do a great job there. I don't know if that answers your question. I think our goal is just what's best for a brand in terms of their outcomes, and anything that we can do to support that is where we go. It's usually best for Pattern as well.

Speaker 4

Thanks for the color.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Thanks so much for taking the question. I know this is a topic we've talked about before. Maybe just to pull on the thread a little bit, given the results you keep putting up. The net revenue retention numbers just keep kind of moving up. Kind of a two-parter. One, what is the signal you're getting about any ceiling that might exist in the business in terms of NRR among the existing and older cohorts that we should be thinking about? Conversely, as the business becomes more diversified over time away from Amazon and into more international markets, how do we think about a countervailing factor of faster growth in newer cohorts or newer verticals as diluting NRR, but also contributing wider to revenue growth for the platform? Thanks so much.

Speaker 2

The NRR numbers are sort of astounding if you take a look back and you say, "Okay, total digital growth is, say, 7%-9%," and we're rolling at 129%. We have some help. Our ability to execute on a technology roadmap, we believe has approximately doubled our expectation from, say, 12 months ago. That is essentially Software Factory, our ability to leverage AI in that process. We can go into some details there if you're interested. Overall, that allows us to hit more marketplaces. If you think of the problem we're solving, we need to solve for a brand, how do we optimize revenue, which will be traffic conversion, availability, price, of course, globally. Hundreds of countries, hundreds of marketplaces. The further we can get down a very complex technology roadmap, the better for brands, better for Pattern.

Speaker 2

I think you'll just continue to see acceleration there. We just have some tailwinds and some inflection that most companies are probably experiencing right now with AI. Luckily, we're positioned to sort of naturally be good there from day one. We had patents that we had submitted around what you would refer to as AI, back then, just classic machine learning, before it even became interesting. As those technologies have progressed, we've naturally progressed rapidly with it, and we're just seeing that in the results.

Speaker 3

Maybe, Eric, I'll add just a little bit more on kind of the cohort question of existing and older cohorts and new cohorts. We believe that one of the most powerful things about Pattern is that even brands who have been with us for many, many years can still outgrow the market in a significant way. That is a testament to what Dave talked about on technology optimizations, as well as there are still so many levers to help brands grow by expanding in marketplaces and geographies. To your question about kind of newer cohorts diluting NRR, that's always a possibility, but we're not seeing anything meaningful there. Again, we're just feeling like we're just getting started in a large opportunity set. We're going to keep going at it as fast as we can, expanding and bringing on more brands and more marketplaces to keep that going.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney from Evercore. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hey, guys. This is Austin Riddick on for Mark Mahaney. Thanks for taking the question. I think non-Amazon revenue of $82 million still implies over 90% of total revenue still runs through Amazon. I just wanted to get your thoughts on where do you see that non-Amazon share going in one to two years? Any color there would be helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Okay. Mark, I'll start with that one. It was a little hard to hear you, so I'm going to do my best to kind of fill in the gaps there. Sounded like you were asking about non-Amazon revenue concentration. Where do we see it going? Generally speaking, we love operating on Amazon. It's a great platform, very innovative, great for consumers, great for sellers, things like that. There obviously is a GMV split around the world that is lower in terms of Amazon's percentage of GMV than what we're currently at. As we grow and go where the consumer is at, it's a natural thing for us to diversify away from Amazon. I think some of the stats we shared in the prepared remarks is really strong non-Amazon growth, really strong international growth. Those stats continue to be very strong.

Speaker 3

High double digits, sometimes triple digits on good numbers. I think when you take a step back and even just look at a year ago, our non-Amazon revenue was 7% of our total business, and now it's 9% of our total business. That's in just one year. We've got growth rates in everything excluding Amazon at double or sometimes triple what the growth on Amazon is. We're not providing a specific projection on where that will go, but we like the trend primarily because it's where the customers are trending, and we want to help brands find customers wherever they are.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Maybe just two points of color I'll throw out there. The biggest single line item of the non-Amazon growth, if we break it down by individual marketplace and so forth, is quite simply our SaaS logistics and other bucket. That continues at a pace that's tremendous, gives us a lot of optionality. We're very excited about that piece. One thing that is just somewhat remarkable is to watch a Walmart. Walmart is making tremendous progress. From two years ago, our business on Walmart is up 3.4 times what it was two years ago. That's a combination, of course, our ability to execute there, but Walmart continues to do amazing things. I guess it's just fun to watch the ecosystem evolve. I think we'll be talking more and more about LLMs and agentic surfaces in the years to come.

Speaker 2

I'm sure there will be winners that we're talking about and excited to partner with. Again, one of the key strategic points on Pattern is we are agnostic to the channel. We're primarily focused on a brand. As the channels shift and folks do a better job with the consumer, then they will grow, and we will grow with them. As that shifts, we expect to shift. Jason's point on GMV is fantastic, because if you look at GMV around the world, you'll continue to see our diversification quite simply because that's where We started in the U.S. on Amazon largely, and as we continue to get larger and more scale and just more geographic reach, you'll just continue to see those numbers diversify.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ralph Schackart from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just on the overall growth profile of the business that's really been exceeding expectations since you've gone public. Maybe if you could walk through where you're seeing this really strong outperformance, through the categories that you outlined between technology, I think geography and marketplaces and selection. I think it'd be helpful to understand what's driving outperformance. Maybe a second question related to that is, this business continues to scale rapidly. Can you just kind of walk us through the infrastructure needs that you will need and currently have to support the continued really strong growth. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thanks, Ralph. Great question. Largely, the bulk of our performance always comes from the technology stack. There's just simply not a way to outperform a machine. Especially when you're talking about millions of actions taken a day. It's just impossible to do. It's not just about, hey, how much can we automate to reduce cost? But any automation is often better execution, and you see that in the results. Now, in terms of infrastructure, we have a phenomenal team there, one of the best in the business, I believe. They're continuing to look forward on what is needed. You saw that we launched Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, this year. We have some both hardware and software innovations there that are increasing our throughput, what we believe is currently at 2x, which is sort of astounding given where we already are.

Speaker 2

Those teams just continue to ideate and build technology around moving that forward. We have pretty, I would say, you might look at it and call it aggressive, but the team makes sure that they're measured growth in those areas. I don't think you've ever seen us, what you maybe refer to as an overbuild. I think that's just a tribute to that team. They do a phenomenal job there. I think we're in a great spot on infrastructure. Now, we're very bullish on the movement of boxes and this becoming a much more complex problem in the future. The more surface area you get, the more people who win there. Think of forward logistics as one thing, but the number I have, I don't believe it's been independently verified, is 19.3% of all goods globally are returned.

Speaker 2

That's a complex problem that a lot of marketplaces have solved, and some are still working to solve it. As we move into agentic surfaces, that problem has to be resolved, and it's a very interesting problem, very fun problem to solve. I think that our commerce infrastructure as a service, we're laying the foundation to do that.

Speaker 7

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Anmuth from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, this is Maggie on for Doug. Thanks for taking the question. Just following up on that, any chance you could provide some more color on the investments you're making across commerce infrastructure as a service, and then also those agentic commerce acceleration capabilities?

Speaker 2

Sure. Yeah, thanks for the question. On the infrastructure piece, we're very excited about it, but it's sort of a natural problem that we have to solve. It's not particularly interesting, no one's thought of. If you go to buy a good, if you think of what might surround that. Where is my inventory? What do my inventory pools look like? How many units do I have that are close to a consumer? How fast can I get it there? Okay, check that box. Once you have it there, maybe a consumer, maybe they need to redirect it, so there's a process that would be involved there. They might decide, "Hey, I bought the wrong size," and that would just be an exchange, or maybe it's a full return. There's an entire process around that. Customer experience is very important.

Speaker 2

That is infrastructure that we think will be more broadly used. If you think of some of the cost reductions that may come in the future, this is a bit down the line, but we like to think about them anyway. Autonomous driving, robotics. We believe there will be better customer experiences in the future, if you can imagine it. There's already great experience that exists today, but we're investing to be prepared to service that infrastructure for people who aren't quite as advanced as some of the most advanced marketplaces in the world. That's commerce infrastructure. On the agentic commerce enablement and acceleration side, of course, we have some phenomenal advantages. If you think about that problem, More about semantic intent. What you won't find in the SEO world, what you can piece it together if you start concatenating SEO.

Speaker 2

If someone, say, is searching, I use the example of a blanket. They're like, "Hey, I want to buy a blanket that fits underneath the seat of an airplane." When you build the product descriptions and your product catalogs for that blanket, if you don't include dimensions and size, and someone infers that as their intent to buy the blanket, you will get skipped in an LLM world. The mapping of that intent, which you can map, if you start really thinking deeply about our mode of data around SEO, it is incredibly useful to understand what that mapping might look like. You can probably understand where I'm going here with this. We're positioned very well to help brands accelerate on those surfaces just from a data perspective. It's just execution. We're very excited about the future there.

Operator

Okay, thank you. Our next question comes from Bernie McTernan from Needham & Company. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Great. Excuse me. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about margin trends. You mentioned 4 consecutive quarters of margin expansion with adjusted EBITDA growing faster than revenue. I think the 3.2 guide and the implied 4.2 guide given the annual guidance implies year-over-year margin contraction. Just wanted to see if there's any specific drivers of those trends. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks for the question, Bernie. Appreciate it. I think it's pretty important to just double-click on what I mentioned in the prepared comments about the calendar shift of marketplace events. That causes some noise between Q2 and Q3 on both the revenue and the EBITDA side on a pretty flow through margin basis. When you control for that, both the growth rate in Q3 and the margin rate in Q3 make a lot more sense. Also when you look at the growth rate in Q3 with that extra 4 points of growth compared to the growth rate in Q3 last year of 46%, it all starts to line up with what we've been saying all year about tougher comps in the second half. Specifically in the fourth quarter, there's always some seasonal pressure on EBITDA margin percentage. We see that every year.

Speaker 3

It's just a bit more expensive to do business in the holiday period, whether that's storage or moving logistics or promotional funding, things like that. That's expected when you look at it from a Q3 to Q4 perspective. The only real drag year-over-year is what we've been saying throughout the year, is increased investment in R&D faster than revenue. Overall, you take a step back, you look at the full year and you're still looking at margin accretion on a full year basis, with adjusted EBITDA growing faster than revenue. Interestingly, revenue growing almost at the same rate of what we grew revenue last year on a much smaller base. Feeling pretty good about the overall picture of it, and those are some explanations on your specific questions.

Speaker 9

Awesome. Thanks, Jason.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you can press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our next question comes from Justin Patterson from KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Great, thank you. Good afternoon. Dave, it looks like the number of data points on your platform has increased about 38% year-to-date to 91 trillion. Could you talk about how that drives the pace of A/B tests and feeds into product philosophy across the business? It seems like that could be one of the key variables behind just the compounding of the business and the NRR. For Jason, I was hoping you'd talk a little bit more about vertical performance. How's the health and wellness category comparing versus the other verticals you're in? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Of course, we run A/B tests. What we might be best in the world at in e-com, possibly, is just building a framework for measurement. I don't think anyone knows exactly what will work and will not in aggregate for a consumer. You might target a given persona and say, "Hey, I think I know what will resonate best." But if you have 5 to 10 personas in aggregate, what is the messaging that will drive the most dollars? It's a very difficult problem to solve. Of course, the data and the data moat that we have is invaluable at this point and is continuing to grow. Of course, it just keeps compounding because as our brands have success with us, they expand with us, and then other brands see that success, join the Pattern Pi platform, and that provides us more data.

Speaker 2

It's almost this virtuous cycle where we just get better and better, can provide better outcomes for brands, which strengthens the data moat. I think everyone understands that. Of course, there's exceptional nuance in the data, and we get better and better at running any A/B tests. But you almost have to think about them as aggregated A/B tests. I think it just is showing the results.

Speaker 3

Great. Then just on your question for me, Justin, as it relates to verticals or categories, maybe just as a general reminder, our focus is for every brand to just maximize the outcome that they're trying to get in whatever category they're in. We're in no way managing the category mix from the standpoint of brand results. Even in the world of health and wellness, we still consider ourselves very small when you consider the total GMV, and we love that space. It's great for e-commerce, and obviously you can see, based on transaction yesterday, that there's a lot of interest in that premium space. I would say, there's always great highlights about diversification. One of the ones I'd call out is beauty and TikTok. We mentioned that we were named Strategic Partner of the Year.

Speaker 3

We mentioned that a lot of our beauty inbound is coming through the TikTok channel. The fun part about that is when we do very well for them on TikTok, then we can bring them into the other marketplaces that we represent around the world on that side. As just a data point, beauty grew in the quarter 85%. Pet supplies continues to be fun at over 100% growth. Then in the new business side, and again, I'll just reiterate, this is happening naturally similar to our marketplace diversification, because we're going after so much GMV. We have a target opportunity list of $505 billion that we're attacking with many categories. But that new business, if you look at health and wellness as a percent of the new business, that's lower than the overall business.

Speaker 3

It feels like all of the theses that we had, which is you get into a category, you establish yourself with a track record of performance. That yields a reputation within the category. That can take years, as you have that flywheel of reputation, you sign more brands, you get better and better data and expertise in the category, and it keeps going. We feel like those same green shoots and growth we had in health and wellness is happening across many other categories, and we like how the business is performing in that space.

Operator

Thank you. Our last question comes from Colin Sebastian from Baird. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Thanks, good afternoon, guys. I guess two questions for me. First, Dave, on Amazon's call, they talked pretty positively about the performance of their first-party AI interface in terms of conversion rates and overall engagement. Curious, just given some of your efforts with AEO or GEO, if that's an area on the marketplace you're able to take an advantage of. As a second question on Pattern Intelligence, what's the near-term roadmap there to drive more engagement with brands? Is this something that we could see showing up as a measurable growth and margin lever in the relatively near term? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Our data confirms what Amazon indicated on the call. I guess it's not a surprise. It just allows you to get a better understanding of the consumer and what they're hoping the outcome is for the problem or solution they're looking to solve, which will be a product. The one thing that I think is important, as a general call-out for the future, or I think that you'll probably see a pretty incredible differentiation. The brands that are focused on quality, we're entering a world of much higher transparency.

Speaker 2

The brands that over the years have been obsessed about R&D, customer experiences, they will be paid back on. I think it's probably part of the thesis of why Procter & Gamble acquired Thorne, will be a tremendous asset for them, is that there's many other brands that also fit that category of just over the years, they've focused on great customer experiences, great products. If you think of an LLM world, rather than surfacing hundreds of pages of search results, you're starting to narrow in, okay, what did that customer really intend for? How might I shrink the surface area of what they have to review in order to make a decision? Product quality, all of those things. Also, the infrastructure bit, so say do factor on delivery timelines, the promise.

Speaker 2

Those things will all become, I think, paramount, and they will stay with the brands for the long term. Will be harder to shake negative experiences. I think where the world is going there will serve consumers better. I think that's where you're seeing Amazon's results. The more they invest there, the better their results will be. That's been great to see.

Speaker 3

Maybe specifically on your second question, in terms of Pi, Dave talked about a lot of the roadmap. We're doing 24/7 feature offers, a lot of outcomes happening. It's built on 13 years of everything we've built. It's a better interface layer for the brands with more transparency. Our focus is primarily the effectiveness that comes out of that and driving revenue growth. There will obviously be efficiencies that will come out of that in the future. We haven't put specific numbers on it, but we just know as we automate and make everything much more agentic, that that will be a natural output. What we do with those resources is completely up to us.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 11

Got it. Thank you.

Speaker 2

One bit of color I might add on the Pi point that Jason. Overall development in general. A unit of work that we think about for a developer would be a pull request or a unit of work that a developer would accomplish. For us, we've doubled those units year to date as of last year. You're starting to see Software Factories come into play, and accelerate results in general. I think it's just a fun place to be. The digital economy is growing, and I think we couldn't be more excited about the future, both for Pattern and consumers getting over the next three, five, 10 years.

Speaker 11

Thanks, Dave.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.

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