IBTA

Ibotta’s second quarter was marked by a meaningful return to year-over-year revenue growth, a full quarter ahead of expectations, and a market response reflecting strong investor confidence. Management attributed this outperformance to increased offer supply and robust execution in its core and new product lines, such as LiveLift. CEO Bryan Leach cited a 10% year-over-year increase in redemption revenue and highlighted the impact of upgraded commercial execution, particularly the verticalized sales structure and deeper client relationships. Leach noted, “We achieved year-over-year redeemer growth of 21% in the quarter,” underscoring the effectiveness of these operational changes. Is now the time to buy IBTA? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $88.91 million vs analyst estimates of $84.95 million (3.3% year-on-year growth, 4.7% beat) Adjusted EPS: $0.46 vs analyst estimates of $0.37 (24.2% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $16.54 million vs analyst estimates of $11.12 million (18.6% margin, 48.7% beat) Revenue Guidance for Q3 CY2026 is $88 million at the midpoint, above analyst estimates of $85.86 million EBITDA guidance for Q3 CY2026 is $13 million at the midpoint, above analyst estimates of $11.38 million Operating Margin: -2.1%, down from 1.4% in the same quarter last year Total Redemptions: up 15.76 million year on year Market Capitalization: $890.2 million While we enjoy listening to the management’s commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls is the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis (Citi): Asked about the drivers behind the improvement in offer supply and the impact of the verticalized sales structure; CEO Bryan Leach credited deeper client engagement and increased trust from CPG advertisers. Bernard McTernan (Needham): Inquired about the need for marketplace equilibrium with the addition of 7-Eleven; Leach explained that increased redeemers drive more offer supply, creating a reinforcing network effect. Kenneth Gawrelski (Wells Fargo): Questioned how Ibotta is unlocking more supplier budgets and the outlook for margins; Leach highlighted multi-threaded client relationships and validation from third-party measurement as key factors, while CFO Matt Puckett discussed margin leverage from revenue growth. Mark Mahaney (Evercore): Probed the significance and ramp timeline of the 7-Eleven deal; Leach described the partnership as years in the making and projected a phased rollout in the second half of the year. Nitin Bansal (Bank of America): Asked about the primary bottlenecks to further LiveLift adoption; Leach pointed to ongoing client education and the need for continued product enhancement as areas of focus. Heading into the next few quarters, the StockStory team will be watching (1) the pace and impact of newly signed publisher integrations, particularly 7-Eleven, (2) the adoption and measurable success of LiveLift and other new product capabilities, and (3) how automation initiatives improve sales efficiency and campaign performance. The ability to capture additional CPG budgets during key seasonal events will also be a critical driver. Ibotta currently trades at $38.53, up from $24.58 just before the earnings. At this price, is it a buy or sell? Find out in our full research report (it’s free for active Edge members). WHILE YOU’RE HERE: Top 9 Market-Beating Stocks. The best stocks don’t just beat the market once. They do it again. And again. Robust revenue growth, rising free cash flow, returns on capital that leave their competition in the dust. The market has already rewarded these businesses. But our AI platform says the party isn’t over. Find out which 9 stocks made the cut this week — FREE. Get Our Top 9 Market-Beating Stocks for Free HERE. Stocks that have made our list include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,460% between June 2020 and June 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Kadant (+214% between June 2020 and June 2025). Find your next big winner with StockStory today.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Monday, Aug. 3, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET Founder and Chief Executive Officer - Bryan Leach Chief Financial Officer - Matt Puckett Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Ibotta's Q2 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are Bryan Leach, Founder and CEO; and Matt Puckett, CFO. Today's press release and this call contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements about our future operating results, our guidance for Q3 2026, our ability to grow our revenue, our ability to grow supply and demand on our network, 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. 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 our earnings press release, our 10-Q to be filed this week and our Q2 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. Bryan Leach: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to report that in the second quarter, Ibotta delivered top and bottom line financial results that exceeded the high end of our guidance range. And importantly, we've returned to year-over-year revenue growth, a full quarter ahead of our expectations. This positive development was driven primarily by a steady improvement in our advertiser offer supply which continues to benefit from growth in both our core product and our newer capabilities like LiveLift. Our top line acceleration was led by our redemption revenue growth. In Q2, redemption revenue grew by 10% year-over-year, marking our fastest pace of growth in this core part of our business since the third quarter of 2024. Third-party redemption revenue grew 27% year-over-year. This growth corresponded to the continued growth in our redeemer base. We achieved year-over-year redeemer growth of 21% in the quarter. This represents our fastest rate of expansion since Q2 of 2025 at a time when our metrics were benefiting from the launch of our Instacart and DoorDash partnerships. What's most exciting about these results is that we're driving this redeemer velocity efficiently across a significantly larger network footprint, which speaks to the continued health in the demand side of our business. Today, we are reporting that we have 20.9 million redeemers. To put this in perspective, just 5 years ago, we had approximately 2 million redeemers, an increase of more than 10x since then. As you've heard me say before, increased demand for offers alone isn't enough. Until we have the depth of offer supply to match the demand, we can't capitalize fully on the opportunity it presents. There are positive signs on that front, including the fact that we delivered year-over-year growth in our third-party redemptions per redeemer for the first time since the third quarter of 2024. These results are a direct outcome of stronger execution by our team. With a few quarters now under their belt, it's clear that the new verticalized sales structure and broader revenue organization we put in place beginning in Q3 of last year is working as intended. Our teams are providing customers with an upgraded consultative sales and service motion, spending more time in market strengthening client relationships at all levels and ensuring the level of account management continuity required to unlock deeper advertising budgets. The recovery we're seeing is distributed broadly across our clients. In fact, within our enterprise client base, the majority of accounts that declined in 2025 were back to year-over-year growth in Q2. To share one anecdote to give you a sense of how this commercial inflection is playing out, one of our largest household products partners, a consistent top 20 client for us was actually an early pioneer who gave us feedback back in 2024 that help shape the initial concept of LiveLift. While their overall spend declined in 2025, we doubled down on our in-person engagement across several of their brand teams. We deepened that relationship significantly over the past year. In fact, our leadership team was invited to present at the client's internal marketing event earlier this year. We saw success by effectively multi-threading and engaging with teams across shopper marketing, analytics and sales. This high-touch service motion quickly translated into expanded business. With recent share losses in a key segment, the client has been hyper focused on driving incremental sales and household penetration. Given these objectives, LiveLift is a strong fit. After running a successful initial LiveLift campaign late last year, they expanded LiveLift in the first half of 2026 across the original brand as well as new brands in different product divisions. As a result of this upgraded execution and LiveLift expansion, our net revenue with this key partner is up 75% year-over-year in the first half of 2026. This upgraded commercial execution is aided by our seasonal events marketing playbook, which identifies opportunities for clients to leverage retailer native Ibotta offers during peak retail moments such as back-to-school, Prime Day and Walmart deal days. Since May, a substantial portion of our closed-won deals have directly benefited from this strategic playbook. As brands look to capture outsized market share and maximize visibility during times when consumer volume and engagement are high. From a vertical perspective, our growth this quarter was driven by 3 core categories: emerging brands, food and health and beauty. In emerging, we're seeing significant budget inflows from challenger brands that are leveraging our network to drive immediate, efficient, net new household acquisition. In food, which remains an important category and the one most challenged by the current macroeconomic landscape, our performance marketing message is resonating deeply, brand managers in this space view value delivery as a core mandate, and we believe they are leaning into our network because we provide scale and efficiency. In health and beauty, our strong growth is consistent with the relatively healthy industry trends for the category. Our performance across each of these categories illustrates how the Ibotta performance network benefits from its diverse content, driving critical volume in more challenged sectors like food, while capturing high velocity dollars in healthier expanding categories like health and beauty. We also continue to position ourselves as thought leaders in the promotion space. In June, our team was on stage at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity alongside key partners from Kenvue, Grupo Bimbo, DoorDash and Uber. In July, our team appeared with the SVP of Marketing and insights at Mondelez at the ADWEEK House SportsCenter. Those sessions demonstrated our commitment to continuously raising the bar when it comes to measurement rigor in our industry. Along with Circana, we recently released a comprehensive meta study and analysis, evaluating 48 different Ibotta campaigns across multiple CPG categories. The data from this independent study showed an average lift of 16.5% in incremental sales and a 17% average increase in new household penetration for the products promoted in our network. Crucially, the study also revealed a 10.9% average sales lift on nonpromoted items within the same brand portfolio, demonstrating that our promotions generate a powerful cross retailer halo effect for a brand's broader catalog. These campaigns exceeded Circana's standard sales lift benchmarks by a factor of 7x, showing the power of our promotions to move the needle for our CPG brand clients. As Circana's SVP of Global Media Enablement and Measurement noted in the release, "For years promotions and media have been evaluated on different standards, limiting marketers' ability to make true investment comparisons. What this research shows is that when you apply the same methodology used for traditional media, promotions can play a much larger role in driving incremental growth than many organizations currently assume." We believe that stronger execution, coupled with continued investment in innovation and thought leadership reinforces our position as a trusted partner our clients look to in order to deliver more revenue and grow market share. We continue to focus on making it as easy as possible for our CPG clients to buy campaigns on the Ibotta Performance network. This, we believe, creates a larger TAM opportunity and unlocks access to even greater offer supply. As it relates to the key automation initiatives I discussed last quarter, we remain on track and have made significant progress against all 3 work streams. We're building a powerful and intuitive next-generation buying experience for our clients which we believe will also free up our sales force to focus on selling rather than navigating administrative tasks as well as enabling greater scaling of LiveLift. At the same time, revenue from LiveLift continues to grow both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. Finally, as I alluded to at the top of my comments, we believe the value proposition of the Ibotta performance network is resonating on the demand side of the marketplace. Earlier today, we officially welcomed 7-Eleven, Inc. to the IPN, marking our third major publisher addition this year and significantly expanding our convenience store footprint. Ibotta will serve as the exclusive third-party provider of CPG digital promotions, excluding age-restricted items to the 7-Eleven 7NOW and Speedway apps reaching shoppers across more than 11,500 U.S. store locations. The convenience store channel is strategically vital for many of our largest food and beverage clients, and we are thrilled to bring Ibotta's national offer supply to this broad and important consumer base. Historically, this specific retail channel has lacked access to coordinated digital promotions. By embedding our digital offers natively into this environment, we're unlocking another high intent surface for our advertisers, giving them an opportunity to impact consumer consideration and purchase behavior at the C-Store digital shelf. This addition is also a great example of how our network reinforces itself as several of our key CPG clients actively helped us advocate for and secure this new publisher. In addition to this new signing, we officially launched our native offer experiences at Uber at the tail end of the second quarter, and our integration with Giant Eagle went live in July. Both onboarding processes are progressing smoothly and according to plan. Furthermore, within our existing footprint, we continue to benefit from close collaboration with our publishers with multiple retail partners, we're expanding how offers are integrated across digital and in-store experiences. For example, we're working closely with Walmart to help customers more easily discover manufacturer funded savings throughout the shopper journey, including in stores, thereby reinforcing the retailers value proposition while creating a more seamless customer experience. Our partners continue to see substantial strategic benefits from these integrations, including deeper digital engagement, greater loyalty and increased basket size. Across the board, our network is strong and growing. Our go-to-market engine upgrades and product road map are moving forward on schedule, and our team is delivering against our plans. We look forward to building on this positive momentum throughout the back half of the year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt to walk through our financial results and outlook in greater detail. Matthew Puckett: Thank you, Bryan, and good afternoon, everyone. We are encouraged with the recent performance of the business. These results marked the third quarter in a row that we delivered top and bottom line results above the high end of our guidance range. In addition, we achieved an even more important milestone. Total company revenue has returned to growth for the first time since the first quarter of 2025. We delivered revenue and adjusted EBITDA that were respectively, 6% and 58% above the midpoint of the guidance range that we provided on our first quarter earnings call. Now to share the details of our top line results in the quarter. Revenue was $88.9 million, up 3% versus last year. Within that, redemption revenue was $80.2 million, up 10% year-over-year, driving the stronger-than-anticipated performance in the quarter. As Bryan highlighted, this was the fastest pace of redemption revenue growth since the third quarter of 2024. During the quarter, we benefited from continued strong go-to-market execution, which led to increased offer supply. Specifically, we had great results this quarter, leveraging our seasonal events playbook. The pull forward of Walmart deal days into June this year from July last year represented exactly this type of opportunity and generated more revenue in the quarter than we had projected. In fact, it added approximately 2 to 3 points of growth versus our outlook. Finally, LiveLift revenue remains on track relative to our expectations and as Bryan mentioned, grew both year-over-year and sequentially versus Q1. Third-party publisher redemption revenue was $61.5 million or up 27% versus last year, accelerating meaningfully versus the prior quarter's increase of 12%. Direct-to-consumer redemption revenue was $18.7 million, down 24% year-over-year and similar to Q1's result where, as anticipated, we've continued to see redemption activity shift to our third-party publishers. Ad and other revenues, which represented 10% of our revenue in the quarter were $8.7 million, down 32% versus last year. We continue to see pressure on ad revenue as a result of lower direct-to-consumer redeemers, which is being partially offset by growth in data revenue. It is worth noting the year-over-year decline in ad and other revenue in Q2 was significantly larger than both what we reported in Q1 and what we expect to see in half 2. This quarter's comparison to last year was up against a period when CPG ad revenue grew. That was the only quarter in 2025 where that occurred. Turning now to the key performance metrics supporting redemption revenue. Total Redeemers were 20.9 million in the quarter, up 21% year-over-year. We again delivered significant growth in third-party redeemers across the IPN, including strong growth with our largest publisher partner highlighting healthy engagement on the demand side of our network. On top of organic growth with existing publishers, the quarter also benefited from the launch of DoorDash in the second quarter of 2025. Redemptions per redeemer were 4.4%, down 6% versus last year, a comparable result to Q1. The primary driver of this decline was the mix of redeemers, specifically the growth in third-party redeemers, which have a lower redemption frequency as compared to our direct-to-consumer redeemers. Notably, in another indication of improving offer supply, third-party redemptions per redeemer were 3.8%, up 2% year-over-year. representing a return to growth in this metric for the first time since the third quarter of 2024. Redemption revenue per redemption was $0.88, representing a 4% decline versus last year, driven primarily by the mix of redemption activity. Bringing it all together, total redemptions were 91.4 million, up 14% versus last year. This acceleration in growth versus Q1 was driven by 27% redemption growth with our third-party publishers. Switching to the cost side of our business. Non-GAAP cost of revenue was up $1.1 million or 6% versus a year ago, driven by an increase in both technology and publisher related costs. This resulted in a Q2 non-GAAP gross margin of 79.3%, down approximately 60 basis points versus last year, but up 170 basis points sequentially versus Q1. This increase versus Q1 coinciding with the step-up in revenue quarter-to-quarter demonstrates our opportunity to expand gross margins as revenue grows. Non-GAAP operating expenses were up 8% versus last year and were 64.5% of revenue, an increase of approximately 250 basis points year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating expenses were slightly favorable versus our prior expectations as we realized certain timing-related benefits in the quarter. Within that, non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses were up 17% versus the prior year driven by a planned increase in labor and the previously mentioned investment in third-party lift studies, partially offset by lower marketing expenses. Non-GAAP research and development expenses were unchanged, and lastly, non-GAAP general and administrative expenses, an area of the P&L where we are intent on driving leverage decreased by 5%, while depreciation and amortization increased by approximately $800,000 or 77%. As planned, our investments in areas related to our transformation, inclusive of both the P&L and what has been capitalized to the balance sheet, increased at a faster pace than our overall costs. This increase in investments was approximately 17% and again, was highlighted by higher labor costs in the sales organization, third-party lift studies and other technology-related costs. We delivered Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $16.5 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.6%, non-GAAP net income of $11.7 million and non-GAAP diluted net income per share of $0.46. Our non-GAAP net income excludes $15 million in stock-based compensation and includes a $2.1 million adjustment for income taxes. We ended the quarter with $148.2 million of cash and cash equivalents. And in Q2, we spent approximately $23 million, repurchasing approximately 700,000 shares of our stock at an average price of $32.33. We had 25.8 million fully diluted shares outstanding as of June 30. And as of the end of the quarter, we had $67.3 million remaining under our current share repurchase authorization. And finally, on cash flow, we generated $8.1 million in free cash flow in the quarter. Stepping back and looking at the year-to-date results, we generated $31.3 million in free cash flow in the first half, a decrease of 7% versus last year, but tracking a bit higher than our plans halfway through the year as a result of modestly higher earnings and favorable working capital. Now shifting to Q3 guidance. We currently expect revenue in the range of $86 million to $90 million, representing approximately 6% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. And we expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $12 million to $14 million representing about a 15% adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint. With that, let me provide a little more color on the outlook. As both Bryan and I have referenced, we are benefiting from the consistency and effectiveness of our go-to-market execution with our clients and publisher partners. It's showing up in our results with both our core product offerings and with LiveLift. This has been the catalyst for improving revenue trends during the last few quarters, and we are confident that can continue. I do want to highlight that while our guidance implies improving year-over-year growth rates in Q3, we do expect a slight quarter-over-quarter revenue decline at the midpoint. This is a result of the timing of important seasonal promotional events that shifted into Q2 and as I referenced in my comments earlier. Regardless, our current expectations for Q2 and Q3 in combination for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA are higher than a quarter ago. Looking forward, beyond our specific Q3 revenue guidance, we continue to expect a modest sequential increase in revenue quarter-over-quarter into Q4. And factoring that in, we'd expect to exit 2026 with mid-single-digit year-over-year growth. As it relates to our cost outlook, while there was spin timing affecting our second quarter results, we continue to plan for modest sequential increases in quarterly non-GAAP cost of revenue and operating expenses across the back half of the year. These increases will continue to be squarely in areas that are critical to our transformation and geared toward our largest growth opportunities. With regards to free cash flow, given the strong cash generation in the first half, we now expect full year free cash flow as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA to be approximately 70% as compared to our expectation of 65% at the start of the year. Lastly, with the healthy balance sheet and strong free cash flow generation, we remain committed to the balanced capital allocation approach, we've now consistently deployed across a number of quarters. Investing in organic growth and our strategic priorities while also returning cash to shareholders. We are excited by the renewed traction in our business and the significant gains we've made in the first half both in unlocking more offer supply and continuing to drive growth in redeemers from existing publishers and the addition of new publishers to the IPN. We look forward to making further progress along these vectors and driving even greater value for our CPG partners, retailer publishers and consumers in the coming quarters. With that, operator, let's please open up the line for Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ron Josey with Citi. Please feel free to ask your question. Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: This is Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis on for Ron Josey. Two questions here, if I may. On the steady improvement Ibotta has seen offer supply. Can you unpack the drivers of progress here and whether you're seeing macro improvement amongst CPG advertisers or having more success with this more verticalized sales structure? And then I have a follow-up. Bryan Leach: Sure. Thanks, Jamesmichael. Appreciate the question. Yes, as I mentioned in my remarks, we're seeing the benefits of the last year of improved go-to-market execution by our team. That has included the verticalized go-to-market structure, but it's far from a comprehensive list of all the things that we've been doing differently. Our team really deserves a lot of credit for spending more time in the room with our customers, meeting with more people when they visit in person with those customers, maintaining consistency, being more proactive, understanding their business more deeply. Our business-to-business marketing function has allowed us to have reasons to be in touch and ways to help our clients, for example, the Walmart deal days example or the example I gave last quarter relating to SNAP benefits. And those things have meant that when in a challenging environment, these CPG companies are increasingly turning to us because they trust our measurement. They trust our team will deliver what we say we're going to deliver. And you're seeing that in the turnaround account by account, accounts that were shrinking are now growing again. We're hearing that we're one of their most -- the first phone calls that they make when they face some of these headwinds in the macro. So I think, while there are challenges in their business, clearly, they view us as a partner that can help them navigate those challenges right now. Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Perfect. Appreciate it. And then on the pickup in new publisher wins, 7-Eleven, Uber Eats, Giant Eagle, et cetera. Curious if you have any update on your expectations for the long-term cadence of new publisher signings. Great to see the recent win rate, but curious if you're potentially expanding further into verticals outside core grocery as well. Bryan Leach: Yes. Thank you, Jamesmichael. We are, as you can see, now the leaders in multiple different verticals. So if you look at the mass vertical, we have Walmart, if you look at the dollar vertical, Dollar General and Family Dollar. If you look at the last mile delivery, you have Uber, you have DoorDash, you have Instacart. You look at something like 7-Eleven, and that's really the anchor tenant in the convenience channel. We also have Shell in that category. And so we're increasingly positioning ourselves as the place where you can put your content natively in the experience of the largest retailers in the country. We'll continue to do that. There are other categories that we haven't penetrated yet. That will be a priority. There are other companies within categories that we have that are a priority and we have ongoing conversations with a number of them. In fact, we're finding that our CPG brand partners are some of our biggest advocates and I want to call that out with regard to the 7-Eleven win. Without naming the client, there were a couple of different clients for whom this was a very strategic channel, very important, and they made their views known as references. And I think that, that just shows you the kind of network effects in action, but we plan to celebrate this, and then we will have, we believe, is a steady stream of additional announcements in the coming quarters. Operator: Our next question comes from Bernard McTernan with Needham. Bernard McTernan: Great. Bryan, I was hoping you could just dive into the balance of the supply and demand in your marketplace. Growth in the quarter was driven by new supply, obviously, bringing on 7-Eleven, some more redeemers. Was there a need from like a marketplace equilibrium perspective to bring on 7-Eleven now. Bryan Leach: Yes. So I think a couple of things. The first thing is it's true that we did increase overall redeemers. And over the last 5 years have grown from 2 million to 20 million in overall redeemers, and it's true that by doing that, it's allowed us to stimulate some offer supply. And I think in this category is a particularly good example. I just mentioned a couple of these clients that this is a really strategic channel for them. This is where they sell a lot of their individual pack sizes. And so by bringing this on, it will unlock different budgets that are specific to that channel for us to be able to add more offer content. So that's an example of how one leads to the other. It's also worth noting that this is the first quarter in some time in which we actually increased redemptions per redeemer. And that's important because it means that offer supply is growing far enough to exceed the growth in redeemer demand. And thus, you're seeing there's actually more offers per redeemer even with more redeemers. And I think that's a really valuable leading indicator in this instance shows that we're on the right path in terms of rebuilding our supply offer supply pipeline. And we think that this development with 7-Eleven will demonstrate even more momentum. We think that will affect the calculus of other publishers. And that in turn, sends a signal to the market that, look, this is the best place to drive incremental sales at scale. And now you can do that across a lot of different formats, a lot of different channels to a single set of technologies through a single set of relationships with one company, and we think that, that network is more valuable, the broader it grows. Bernard McTernan: Understood. And just as a follow-up, Bryan, you mentioned health and beauty is 1 of the 3 drivers in the quarter of strength. I don't think you've mentioned that a subcategory within CPG before, but can you just talk to in terms of how new it is for a revenue driver for you guys? Bryan Leach: Yes. I think it's a category that is expanding and doing well. We've had strength in that category for some time. we put more focus on the category in the last year, and I think that's paying dividends now. And I do want to clarify, Bernie, in response to your first question, that the growth in redemptions for redeemer that I alluded to is on the third-party publishers. But I think it's still a valid point because as we add more third-party publishers, we expect to be able to keep up with that on the offer supply side. Operator: The next question comes from Ken Gawrelski with Wells Fargo. Kenneth Gawrelski: Appreciate the questions. Two, if I may. First, I want to stay on the supplier side. It seems like from your commentary that you've seen some real progress there with your suppliers. Could you just talk about what's been effective at unlocking some more supply? Is this -- are you moving past the traditional kind of trade or promotional budgets and getting into the more traditional media side of the budgets, digital media side. That's question one. The second question is, when you -- maybe Bryan stepping back, when you think about the margin profile of the business, look out maybe 1 to 2 years, relative to the path you were on kind of prior to the sales reset, the go-to-market reset, how would you contrast over the future margin profile of the business relative to what the trajectory was prior to kind of the sales reset. Bryan Leach: Thanks, Ken. I'll take those questions in turn. I'll add a few comments on the second, but then I'll hand it over to Matt to comment in more detail. So with regard to your first question, I think there are a number of different factors. Fundamentally, it's about trust. It's about building deeper relationships so that these brands pick up the phone and call us and say, "I've got a problem this quarter. I need a solution I can turn to that can act very quickly to drive a meaningful amount of market share change in my favor." I think that we're being able to go into multiple different levels of an organization, something we call multi-threading. So we might be talking to brand leadership, but we're also talking to the shopper marketing and trade team, the marketing leadership within the overall company, revenue growth management, the media agencies. And it's not -- we have thousands of brands, hundreds of clients. So there's a wide range of different arrangements that we have. But I would say that, broadly speaking, they believe that our measurement is stronger and more credible than it was a year ago. The partnership with Circana, I think, has been very validating in terms of a third-party independent. We put out a major study at Cannes, a meta study showing that we were 7x more effective in driving incremental sales lift than the benchmark median. So these kinds of validating points create an environment where this stigma that may or may not have existed in the promotions category is no longer attaching to Ibotta. I think we are seen as transcending that as performance marketing that's delivering top and bottom line growth. I think the verticalization has paid off, and there's more specialized knowledge among our sellers. So they're going in proactively and saying, we noticed this trend. We think we can help you in this way. And I think that is not something that people have the data to do in many cases, and we can do it with the data that we have. So I think that being seen as a problem solver that's trusted and having those relationships is the primary unlock that we're seeing. Now we're continuing to work on the things that I mentioned last quarter, for example, making it easier to buy on our network, make it easier to sell and spend, therefore, more time selling rather than actually setting up offers and handling the kind of quote-to-cash logistics. I believe that, that will be a further tailwind to developing more and more offer supply. But what you're seeing now is the benefit of the last year of sustained commitment, better training, better incentives, alignment, better quotas, folks that are the right folks in the role, that's what you're seeing primarily right now. On your second question, looking out a year or 2 relative to the path we were on, I think what's exciting is these trends that I've just been alluding to are going to accelerate our ability to capture more offer supply. And we are dropping a high percentage of those incremental revenue dollars to our adjusted EBITDA line because we have relative to that a much more fixed or growing much more modestly, the cost profile of our business. And so because that we're getting favorable terms, broadly speaking, with these publishers that we're adding on, we're not seeing a lot of hit to our margin there. In fact, we're really pleased with the leverage that we're getting as our marketplace grows bigger and bigger. And as far as how that translates over that time period, I'll defer a little bit to Matt on that. Matthew Puckett: Yes. So yes, I'm probably not going to give you the answer you want, meaning I'm going to give you a number necessarily. But I'll give you a couple of data points I think could be helpful as you think about this. And I would just start by saying with consistent and sustainable revenue growth, we're going to have the opportunity to deliver strong incremental unit margin and overall margin expansion. We saw that play out just right now in Q2 relative to Q1, where a step-up in revenue kind of meaningful step-up just from a value standpoint, $82 million, $82.5 million in Q1 to $89 million in Q2. We dropped a lot of that increase to the bottom line quarter-over-quarter, right? So that gives you a sense as we see consistent top line growth, we're going to have the ability to drop more and more EBITDA to the bottom line. If you look at the business today, it's a very healthy business, although the margins are lower where they have been historically. We just generated on a trailing 12-month basis 16% EBITDA margin at a time when the business was declining about 7% on a same trailing 12-month basis. So the business is sound even in a moment where the business has been declining, and we've been investing through that transformation and through that decline because different to 2 years ago, the opportunity that we see in terms of the top line potential of this business, and the work that we're doing to transform the company gives us a lot of confidence in the upside potential of this business over time. And the investments that we've made over the last several quarters are, we think the right ones, and we think they're paying off already. And there's not a significant step change in investments from here. We need to get past to kind of lap the things that we've done, and we'll see that happen. To some degree, as we move through the end of this year and the early part of next year, and so we'll see kind of those increases begin to moderate a little bit. So we're set up really well both in terms of where we see the potential in the top line and how we see the opportunity to leverage the P&L as we deliver that over time. Operator: Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney with Evercore. Mark Stephen Mahaney: Okay. I may be old school, but the 7-Eleven deal sounds like a really huge win for you. So could you spend a little bit more time on that. The amount of time it took you to put that deal together. I know you got sort of endorsements from your network to get that going, but how long it takes to get that fully up and operational kind of across the 7-Eleven franchise and put this in context with other publishers. Less materials, equally material, more material than those 2 other major publishers that you've announced year-to-date. Bryan Leach: Yes. Thank you, Mark. I mean these wins are multiple quarters or some even years in the making. These are conversations that may involve creating new user experiences. They may involve sharing a level of data that these companies have not ever shared before or certainly not with folks in the promotion space. And the reason why is because we have a really robust innovative approach to measurement and that means we're going to be able to put this data into a way of tracking incremental sales that is really powerful from the standpoint of bringing content into these channels. And so we've taken the time to kind of make the case that we need to do this right so we can create an environment where people really feel good about the return on their investment and then you're able to pass more value on to the 7-Eleven shopper. You build these relationships with these large companies that have year, 2-year packed product road maps and then you have to find your way into those product road maps with a business case and then you have to negotiate all of the various agreements that surround this evolving not just the commercials, but other dimensions of the partnership. So as far as this particular partner. This is a different realm than loyalty and digital promotions has played in, in the past. This is the first time they will have a large access to those kind of offers, which is really exciting for their customers. I think they were made aware that, look, value is kind of the key thing. And so it bumped up the prominence of this opportunity. And then look, I think the more that we partner with companies like Uber, what we hear from companies like 7-Eleven is we really respect them if they've put the effort and thought and judgment into this, we ought to take a harder look at it. So you start to see these things snowballing a little bit. In terms of the rollout timing, we're looking at the second half of this year to roll this out. Of course, you have 11,500 stores. And as you mentioned, you have these other parts of their organization that are included, which are important. The 7NOW, the Speedway, et cetera, in addition to 7-Eleven, but I think they've begun the process of figuring out how they want to do this, and we work in parallel to do this as we're finalizing the commercial agreement. That will give us some time to make sure we get out and have the conversations we need to with our supply partners. In terms of the scale, there are a lot of different variables that go into that. On the one hand, the consideration is lower in the convenience channel, and so people are making more impulse purchases, not as many people will probably select offers prior to going into a store and plan their list the way they would a grocery trip. However, we know from the deals and the content they have right now that is heavily used and very popular and something people do open when they get into the 7-Eleven and it drives their purchase decisions once they're in the store. Where they choose to place our offers and how they show up in the results of searches and things like that will have a big effect on the redemption rate and thus, the size of this opportunity. So I'm not going to comment on the T-shirt size of it just yet, but we'll get a sense of that in the back half of this year and be able to factor that into the '27 commentary that we give you. Operator: Our next question comes from Nitin Bansal with Bank of America. Nitin Bansal: It feels like many of the foundational pieces are getting in place. You have completed the go-to-market transformation, making steady progress on the product front and expanding the publisher network as well. So as we think about the next leg of your growth and specifically LiveLift adoption, is the biggest hurdle like customer adoption and educating market around the new way of winning promotions? Or do you believe the remaining bottlenecks are like largely internal and within your control? Bryan Leach: I think -- thank you, Nitin, I think both of those are within our control to some extent. So let's take the premise of your question and break it down into both those. I think it's very astute to observe that just because you have a product that delivers profitable revenue that the entire market will adopt it when it has for a century viewed promotions as a risk of subsidizing purchases that are already occurring. That is why all the groundwork we've laid with measurement, the statistics, the approach, validating that, making sure to walk people through that, train them. And we had a whole on-site session with the top CPG here, in which we spent 8 hours talking about measurement and proof, that is starting to change those attitudes within the finance teams, within the people that control the purse strings and the budgets. And that is behavioral change on the ground level. But there still is a norm of allocating resources in an annual way with kind of an annual measurement process. And Nitin, as you might imagine, that is not the way you would do this if you were going to leverage things like machine learning and digital capabilities of the present. Instead, you would function more like a digitally native company where you set a set of rules or constraints around how profitable you want your promotion to be, and you have a target number of incremental sales that you're trying to achieve and then you essentially configure and change the parameters of a promotion as you go to get as close to those parameters as possible, and what's exciting is that if we deliver that, and we're giving ranges that are generally accurate and then hitting those ranges, the message we're hearing back from the market is we're going to keep doing that until those rules and constraints are no longer met. So it's not the old world of kind of an aliquot of money and then come back to me in a year no matter what, it's kind of like, if you can meet these conditions, we'll continue to invest in an ongoing way until you can't meet them and then we'll cut it off. And that's what we want. I think the second part that's going on is there are thing's on our roadmap that I discussed last quarter that we do need to improve. So we do want to make it so that people can buy on this network in a way that is much more self-service that allows them to see the relationship between efficiency and scale and choosing where they want to be on that kind of continuum that allows them to see the recommendations that we're making for opportunities. So we could scour the market and actually look and say, "Oh, here's an opportunity based on the data that we're crunching and then recommend a campaign design and have them implement that and then build confidence in our algorithms and our recommendations, those interfaces that make it feel more like buying media are being built right now. And that has required us to revisit the foundational data models and our program APIs and things like that, but we are making good progress on that. And I think as we head into next year, we're going to have a next-generation suite of products that grow out of those program APIs and that reimagined streamlined product catalog, things like that. So there's a lot of kind of behind the scenes getting ready to really scale. The road map is very clear. It's got total alignment in the business. And I think what remains to be seen is how fast will that help our sales team demonstrate that this is something new and different and change those behavioral norms that have been there for so long. But what we're seeing already is that the conditions for that are there, which is that they trust us. They believe that this is a valid way of measuring. If now you could get more data and build it with a benefit of more publishers like 7-Eleven, and you can actually have a signal that's even more powerful and more definitive with better predictions, it would allow more clients to use LiveLift because we would have more confidence in those projections even shorter into their campaign. They wouldn't have to run such a long campaign to benefit from LiveLift and that will open the aperture of access to that product. And I think they're confident in our current products. We have a whole new generation of products coming out. And it remains to be seen exactly the pace of adoption of that. And I think I will be -- I'll get more information on that, and we'll have a better insight as next year unfolds. But clearly, we are going to be not just relying on the improved go-to-market execution, but a host of these other innovations, and we believe we're investing more in innovation than anyone else ever has in this space, and we're excited to see how the market responds to that. Operator: Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Eric Sheridan: Great. Maybe building on that last question, Bryan, and I certainly understand the desire to get to a point where you're sort of always on and budget is sort of being toggled with relationships on that side. But when you think about the end of this year and the budget setting exercise that the CPG industry generally goes through and the priorities that are being set, what do you see as the mission-critical pieces of execution that you have to put in place to ensure that the budgeting cycle coming out of this year and going into next year sets the company up for the most incrementalism it can capture, especially when measuring at some of the innovation you guys have introduced into the market. Bryan Leach: Yes. So first of all, it's true. Most of our clients still do have an annual cycle. Keep in mind, not all of them are at the end of the calendar year, plenty of them are midyear, different times in the year. So it kind of is always happening. And I would say the most important things are to continue to be -- to have a seat at the table in the conversation about the strategy and high-level objectives of our clients. As long as we are upstream in understanding what they're trying to achieve, we can fashion a set of proposals that will make sense for their needs. Part of that is communicating to them the growth that we anticipate in our own network and what the actual opportunity size is for their brands right now. And that might be, hey, you've got 2 brands, but there's 9 brands that aren't participating here's the opportunity. It might be, hey, you've got 2 brands, but they're capitalizing on about 15% of the total capacity of our network, and our network is projected to grow by roughly this amount. We are already having lots and lots of those 2027 conversations. And it's important to get out in front of that because, as you said, they're going to lock in those budgets. I think that what's also interesting, though, I mentioned that on-site we have with the large CPG company what I heard them say very clearly was, look, it's true we have annual budgets. And to the extent we genuinely believe that you can deliver top and bottom line growth, we're going to invest in that. I don't care what time of year it is. I don't care what budgets look like, we're still convincing them. They're intrigued but there's some more work to do to completely convince all of our clients of that and to change that mindset. In a lot of cases, we are considered a marketing expenditure. And so when they go to protect their bottom line, the impulse is, well, let me cut anything that's in the category of marketing expenditure. And what we're trying to communicate is, okay, no, if you cut this, you're actually going to cut your bottom line. You're going to worsen your bottom line because we are accretive to your bottom line. We are not like some billboard that you invest in, on the theory of long-term brand equity, very, very different, very, very provable. And so distinguishing ourselves is kind of the substance of those forward conversations that we're having right now. And I think that these more trusted relationships with our sellers on the front lines is what's going to give me the confidence that we'll have strong enough partnerships that they'll be there to capitalize on a much higher percentage of our redeemer demand capacity than they have in the past. Operator: Our next question comes from Andrew Marok with Raymond James. Andrew Marok: Great. Maybe one on this revamped event strategy that you've talked about. Obviously, with 3Q coming up, we do have a back to school on the calendar. Just kind of how you're thinking about that in the context of this new event strategy and anything new that you might be trying out around that? Bryan Leach: Yes. So as you know, we've developed expertise over this -- over the years, and most notably our free Thanksgiving program, which has given away millions of free Thanksgiving meals and been a very big driver of usage and awareness of our platform. And we've just -- what we've done in the last year is add to the sales effort, a real kind of built-out scaffolding around them and a much more fully loaded revenue organization. Part of that is the B2B marketing division, which is sort of broken out of our old marketing department and put into our revenue function. And that what they've done is identify these moments that matter. And sometimes, you can see them on a calendar, like it will be back to school or it will be St. Patty's Day or Dads and Grads or Resolution. And they certainly got a packet of insights that are specific to each client and a proposal that makes sense. But really great companies also capitalize when things come up that they didn't necessarily think would come up. So gas prices are high or there's a challenge with changing consumer behavior because of a lettuce scare or you have something going on with Amazon that you need to defend against or worry about. These things then cause us -- or the SNAP example where just suddenly, okay, the government is going to change the allowance for SNAP. Being responsive, being the first one in their inbox with a hey, we're seeing the effect of GLP-1s on your business. Here's what we're going to do about it for you. We're seeing the effect of private label on your business. Here's what we think we can do. And the more we're hearing from them, what they're worried about, the better able we are to sort of see the world through their lens one by one. And so we're able to then hand our sellers -- think of it like a packet, but it's a kit, a set of data, a set of a collateral that they can go out with and win. And a big part of why we've done as well as we have in this last quarter and the beginning to see this going forward is that there is a kind of a trust factor between our sellers and the client analytics, client insights and the B2B marketing team, the product marketing team that's enabling this go-to-market to be much more effective and we made sure those incentives are better aligned and those teams are working better together. So I think it's the right thing to point to as an example of a variety of things we're doing, whether it's sales operations, sales finance, like I said, insights that are all supporting the sellers. And when I talk about making it easier, that's another way of supporting the sellers because that's getting the sellers as close to 100% as possible selling on the road, listening, developing solutions, creating solutions versus administering business that we've already won. Operator: Our next question comes from Andrew Boone with Citizens. Andrew Boone: I wanted to ask on D2C. As supply improves, what should our outlook be as we think about D2C broadly, Bryan, is there a point that, that should arrest in terms of declines and start to grow again? Or how are you guys thinking about that strategically? And then we've talked in the past about pricing. This quarter, there was a step up in third-party revenue per redemption. Is there anything behind that or anything you want to touch on in terms of pricing strategy that happened in this quarter and how we think about that going forward? Bryan Leach: Yes. I think the pricing point, it has a lot to do with the composition of where the redeemer growth is coming and where the redemptions are coming. The third-party revenue per redemption was actually flat. So it just is a function of that mix. But we feel like on pricing, we have gotten it to a place that is client-centric that is consistent with the goal of delivering highly effective promotions. However, that's defined by the client, whether that's profitable revenue growth or maximizing scale. And they want to know that we're able to charge them an amount that doesn't preclude that, and we've generally seen that reached a good equilibrium on that. It's also a more continuous rational pricing approach, and that's been, I think, well received by our clients, moving away from setup fees and things like that. As far as the D2C business more broadly, we continue to see that when inventory of offer supply is strong, we have the opportunity to lean more into user acquisition, user retention initiatives such that we feel confident there's enough value that we'll retain those savers within our D2C, which is why we've been focusing so much on unlocking offer supply because we know that's the primary kind of precondition for leaning back in. However, there are some things we're trying on the D2C app to try to arrest the decline and ad and another in particular. So some new kinds of ad units, things like that, that we hope may cause that to level out. And there may become a point where we have such a nice amount of offer supply and quality of offer supply that we choose to increase our investment in terms of marketing spend on the D2C property to regrow that. One of the things we're always focusing on is making sure that the data asset that we get in connection with the D2C property is not diminished. And we had some very big wins this last quarter in terms of turning that trend around and making sure we actually have more data than we did coming from D2C. So there's -- while that doesn't translate into revenue per se directly, it is important to everything else we do as we -- that powers a lot of the LiveLift capabilities and so forth. So I think the first step is to begin increasing offer supply. That is now starting to happen. You're seeing double-digit growth in redemption revenue, that's the headline. And then I think we will see on what time line we feel confident reinvesting in the D2C property. Operator: This concludes the Q&A session of the call. I would now like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks. Bryan Leach: Thank you very much for joining us today. We're very pleased with the progress in our business. I'm grateful to our team for their commitment to these actions we've taken over the last year. And I think we've pulled forward by a quarter the time line on which we've returned to growth as a company on the top line. We're really excited to see that inflection and think we can build on this from here. And I appreciate the questions, everyone, and we'll see you in November. Operator: Thank you for joining us today's session. The call has concluded. You may now disconnect. 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While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ibotta. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Ibotta (IBTA) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Interested in Ibotta, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Ibotta returned to year-over-year growth earlier than expected: Q2 revenue rose 3% to $88.9 million, redemption revenue increased 10% to $80.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA reached $16.5 million, or an 18.6% margin. Growth was driven by stronger advertiser offer supply, broader publisher relationships and improved sales execution. Third-party channels and publisher expansion strengthened demand: Third-party redemption revenue jumped 27% and total redeemers grew 21% to 20.9 million. Ibotta also added 7-Eleven to its Performance Network, with coverage spanning more than 11,500 U.S. locations and a rollout expected in the second half of 2026. Ibotta expects continued growth despite near-term seasonality: The company guided for Q3 revenue of $86 million to $90 million and adjusted EBITDA of $12 million to $14 million, while raising its full-year free-cash-flow conversion expectation to approximately 70% of adjusted EBITDA. Management expects modest sequential growth in Q4 and to exit 2026 with mid-single-digit year-over-year revenue growth. Ibotta Stock: Why the Buyback Looks Like a Bullish Bet Ibotta (NYSE:IBTA) reported second-quarter revenue growth that exceeded its guidance range, marking the company’s first year-over-year increase in total revenue since the first quarter of 2025. Management attributed the improvement to stronger advertiser offer supply, expanded publisher relationships and changes to its sales organization. Revenue for the second quarter was $88.9 million, up 3% from a year earlier. Redemption revenue increased 10% to $80.2 million, while adjusted EBITDA reached $16.5 million, representing an 18.6% margin. CFO Matt Puckett said revenue and adjusted EBITDA came in 6% and 58%, respectively, above the midpoint of the company’s prior guidance. → Lost in Space: Why Aerospace Valuations Are Plummeting Right Now Founder and CEO Bryan Leach said the company’s return to growth occurred a quarter earlier than expected, driven primarily by a steady improvement in advertiser offer supply. Ibotta’s third-party redemption revenue rose 27% year over year to $61.5 million, while direct-to-consumer redemption revenue fell 24% to $18.7 million as activity continued to shift toward third-party publisher platforms. Total redeemers increased 21% year over year to 20.9 million. Total redemptions grew 14% to 91.4 million. Redemptions per redeemer declined 6% to 4.4, which Puckett said reflected the growing mix of third-party redeemers, who tend to redeem offers less frequently than direct-to-consumer users. → MarketBeat Week in Review – 07/27- 07/31 However, third-party redemptions per redeemer rose 2% to 3.8, marking the first year-over-year increase in that metric since the third quarter of 2024. Leach said the result indicated offer supply was increasing at a pace sufficient to exceed growth in third-party demand. Management credited its verticalized sales structure and broader revenue organization, introduced beginning in the third quarter of last year, with improving client engagement. Leach said sales teams have spent more time with clients, expanded their relationships across client organizations and used a more consultative sales approach. → GE HealthCare Stock Climbs on Vital Diagnostics Demand “The recovery we’re seeing is distributed broadly across our clients,” Leach said, adding that the majority of enterprise accounts that declined in 2025 returned to year-over-year growth during the second quarter. Ibotta said its LiveLift product continued to generate revenue growth both sequentially and year over year. The offering is designed to help consumer packaged goods brands measure and optimize incremental sales from promotions. Leach cited one household-products client whose net revenue with Ibotta rose 75% year over year in the first half of 2026 after the client expanded its use of LiveLift across multiple brands and product divisions. He said the customer had initially tested the product late last year. Management also highlighted its seasonal-events marketing strategy, which targets retail events including Back to School, Prime Day and Walmart Deals. Puckett said the timing of Walmart Deals, which occurred in June this year rather than July last year, generated more revenue than Ibotta had projected and added roughly two to three percentage points of growth relative to its outlook. Revenue growth during the quarter was led by emerging brands, food, and health and beauty, according to Leach. He said challenger brands were using the network to acquire new households, while food clients were responding to Ibotta’s performance-marketing proposition amid a more difficult macroeconomic environment. Ibotta also discussed a study conducted with Circana covering 48 campaigns across multiple CPG categories. According to Leach, the analysis found an average 16.5% lift in incremental sales, a 17% increase in new household penetration and a 10.9% average sales lift on non-promoted products within the same brand portfolio. On the demand side, Ibotta announced that 7-Eleven Inc. joined the Ibotta Performance Network. Ibotta will be the exclusive third-party provider of CPG digital promotions, excluding age-restricted items, across the 7-Eleven, 7NOW and Speedway applications, covering more than 11,500 U.S. store locations. Leach described 7-Eleven as the company’s third major publisher addition this year and said the convenience-store channel could unlock budgets from food and beverage clients with significant exposure to individual-pack products. The rollout is expected in the second half of 2026. The company also launched native offer experiences with Uber near the end of the second quarter and said its Giant Eagle integration went live in July. Leach said Ibotta expects a “steady stream” of additional publisher announcements in coming quarters, though he did not provide a specific outlook for new signings. Non-GAAP gross margin was 79.3%, down about 60 basis points from a year earlier but up 170 basis points from the first quarter. Puckett said the sequential increase, alongside higher revenue, demonstrated the company’s opportunity to expand gross margins as sales grow. Non-GAAP operating expenses increased 8% year over year, while sales and marketing expense rose 17%, reflecting higher labor costs and investments in third-party lift studies. Ibotta ended the quarter with $148.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and generated $8.1 million in free cash flow. During the quarter, the company repurchased approximately 700,000 shares for about $23 million at an average price of $32.33 per share. It had $67.3 million remaining under its repurchase authorization at quarter-end. Third-quarter revenue guidance: $86 million to $90 million. Third-quarter adjusted EBITDA guidance: $12 million to $14 million. Expected year-over-year revenue growth at the third-quarter midpoint: about 6%. Expected third-quarter adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint: about 15%. Puckett said Ibotta expects a slight sequential revenue decline at the third-quarter midpoint because seasonal promotional events shifted into the second quarter. The company nevertheless expects a modest sequential revenue increase in the fourth quarter and anticipates exiting 2026 with mid-single-digit year-over-year revenue growth. Ibotta raised its expectation for full-year free cash flow as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA to approximately 70%, from its prior expectation of 65%. Ibotta (NYSE: IBTA) is a Denver‐based mobile commerce platform that connects consumers, retailers and brands through a unified cash-back rewards experience. Users access the Ibotta mobile app or browser extension to unlock rebates on everyday purchases, redeemable on groceries, retail goods, travel bookings and digital services. The platform integrates with major supermarket chains, big‐box retailers and online merchants, enabling shoppers to earn automatic cash-back both in physical stores and across e-commerce channels. Founded in 2012 by co‐founder and CEO Bryan Leach, Ibotta has evolved from a simple rebate app into a comprehensive performance marketing partner for consumer goods companies. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Ibotta Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Revenue: Total revenue was $88.9 million, up 3% year-over-year. Redemption Revenue: $80.2 million, up 10% year-over-year, the fastest pace of growth since Q3 2024. Third-Party Publisher Redemption Revenue: $61.5 million, up 27% year-over-year. Direct-to-Consumer Redemption Revenue: $18.7 million, down 24% year-over-year. Ad and Other Revenue: $8.7 million, down 32% year-over-year. Gross Margin: Non-GAAP gross margin was 79.3%, down 60 basis points year-over-year but up 170 basis points sequentially. Adjusted EBITDA: $16.5 million, representing an 18.6% margin. Non-GAAP Net Income: $11.7 million, with non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.46. Total Redeemers: 20.9 million, up 21% year-over-year. Redemptions per Redeemer: 4.4%, down 6% year-over-year. Third-Party Redemptions per Redeemer: 3.8%, up 2% year-over-year, returning to growth for the first time since Q3 2024. Redemption Revenue per Redemption: $0.88, down 4% year-over-year. Total Redemptions: 91.4 million, up 14% year-over-year. Free Cash Flow: $8.1 million in Q2; $31.3 million in the first half of 2026. Q3 2026 Guidance: Revenue expected between $86 million and $90 million; adjusted EBITDA expected between $12 million and $14 million. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Sign with IBTA. Is IBTA fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Release Date: August 03, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Ibotta Inc (NYSE:IBTA) returned to year-over-year revenue growth a full quarter ahead of expectations, with Q2 revenue of $88.9 million, up 3%. Redemption revenue grew 10% year-over-year, the fastest pace since Q3 2024, driven by a 27% increase in third-party publisher redemption revenue. Redeemer base expanded 21% year-over-year to 20.9 million, with third-party redemptions per redeemer returning to growth for the first time since Q3 2024. The company secured a major new publisher partnership with 7-Eleven, expanding its convenience store footprint to over 11,500 U.S. locations. LiveLift revenue continues to grow both year-over-year and sequentially, and the company is on track with its automation initiatives to enhance the buying experience. Direct-to-consumer redemption revenue declined 24% year-over-year, reflecting a continued shift of redemption activity to third-party publishers. Ad and other revenues fell 32% year-over-year, pressured by lower direct-to-consumer redeemers, though partially offset by data revenue growth. Redemption revenue per redemption declined 4% year-over-year due to a mix shift in redemption activity. Non-GAAP operating expenses increased 8% year-over-year, with sales and marketing expenses up 17% due to planned labor investments and third-party Lift studies. The company expects a slight sequential revenue decline in Q3 due to the timing of seasonal promotional events, with Q3 revenue guidance of $86-$90 million. Q: Can you unpack the drivers of the steady improvement in offer supply, and whether this is due to macro improvement amongst CPG advertisers or success with the verticalized sales structure?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, attributed the improvement to better go-to-market execution, including the verticalized structure, more in-person client engagement, and proactive business-to-business marketing. He noted that CPG companies are increasingly turning to Ibotta because they trust its measurement and team, leading to accounts that were shrinking now growing again. Q: What is the long-term cadence of new publisher signings, and are you expanding into verticals outside core grocery?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, highlighted that Ibotta is now a leader in multiple verticals (mass, dollar, last-mile delivery, and now convenience with 7-Eleven). He stated that CPG brand partners are acting as advocates to secure new publishers, and the company expects a steady stream of additional announcements in the coming quarters. Q: What has been effective at unlocking more supply, and how will the future margin profile compare to the trajectory prior to the go-to-market reset?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, said the primary unlock is trust and deeper relationships, allowing Ibotta to be seen as a problem solver. CFO Matt Puckett added that with consistent revenue growth, the company will deliver strong incremental unit margins and overall margin expansion, noting that the business is sound even during a period of decline and investment. Q: Can you provide more detail on the 7-Eleven deal, including the time to close and its relative materiality compared to other major publisher wins?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, explained that these wins take multiple quarters or years to develop, involving new user experiences and data sharing. He noted that the rollout will begin in the second half of 2026 across 11,500 stores, and while he wouldn't comment on the exact size, he expects to provide more insight for 2027 guidance. Q: As foundational pieces are in place, is the biggest hurdle for LiveLift adoption customer education, or are remaining bottlenecks internal?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, said both are within control. He emphasized that while the market is changing its view on promotions, there is still a need to shift from annual budget cycles to more dynamic, rules-based investment. He also noted that internal improvements, such as self-service buying and next-generation products, are being built to scale the offering. Q: What are the mission-critical pieces of execution to ensure the upcoming CPG budgeting cycle sets the company up for maximum incrementalism?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, stressed the importance of having a seat at the table in strategic conversations and communicating the growth of the Ibotta network. He noted that clients are intrigued but need more convincing that Ibotta is accretive to their bottom line, distinguishing it from traditional marketing expenditures. Q: How are you thinking about the revamped event strategy in the context of Q3, and what new things might you try?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, explained that the B2B marketing team has built a scaffolding around seasonal events like back-to-school, providing clients with data packets and proposals. He highlighted the ability to be responsive to unexpected market changes (e.g., gas prices, SNAP changes) and to be the first in clients' inboxes with relevant insights. Q: As supply improves, what is the outlook for the D2C business, and what drove the step-up in third-party revenue per redemption?A: Bryan Leach, CEO, said the pricing step-up was due to mix, with third-party revenue per redemption flat. He noted that as offer supply improves, Ibotta may lean back into user acquisition for D2C, but first, they are focusing on new ad units and ensuring the data asset from D2C is not diminished. For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.

Ibotta’s second quarter financial results exceeded the upper end of the guidance range for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA Revenue grew by 3% year-over-year to $88.9 million Redemption revenue grew by 10% year-over-year to $80.2 million and third-party publisher redemption revenue grew by 27% to $61.5 million Generated net loss of $1.2 million, representing net loss as a percent of revenue of (1.4)%, and adjusted EBITDA of $16.5 million, representing an 18.6% adjusted EBITDA margin DENVER, August 03, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ibotta, Inc. (NYSE: IBTA), the performance marketing platform for promotions, today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. "We continue to build strong operating momentum, delivering second quarter results that exceeded our expectations and returning to top-line growth one quarter ahead of schedule," said Ibotta CEO and Founder, Bryan Leach. "Redemption revenue grew 10% year-over-year, our fastest pace of growth since the third quarter of 2024, a direct outcome of increased advertiser offer supply and consistently strong execution by our team." Second Quarter 2026 Financial Highlights: Total revenue of $88.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 3%. Total redemption revenue of $80.2 million, an increase of 10% year-over-year, driven by increased offer supply. During the quarter, the IPN had 20.9 million redeemers, compared to 17.3 million redeemers in the second quarter of 2025, an increase of 21% year-over-year, driven by growth with existing publishers and the launch of DoorDash during the second quarter of 2025. Third-party publisher redemptions of 74.4 million, compared to 58.6 million in the second quarter of 2025, an increase of 27% year-over-year. Generated net loss of $1.2 million, representing net loss as a percent of revenue of (1.4)%, and non-GAAP net income of $11.7 million, representing non-GAAP net income as a percent of revenue of 13.2%. Delivered adjusted EBITDA of $16.5 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.6%. Generated cash from operating activities of $13.3 million and free cash flow of $8.1 million. Repurchased 0.7 million shares for a total of $23.0 million at an average price per share of $32.33, exclusive of broker commissions and excise tax. The following table summarizes the Company’s financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025: The following table summarizes the Company’s performance metrics for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025: Note that certain figures shown above may not recalculate due to rounding. Second Quarter 2026 Business Highlights: Ibotta offers became available to Uber customers during the quarter with the overall program expected to ramp in the coming months. Subsequent to quarter-end, Ibotta offers became available to Giant Eagle customers. Subsequent to quarter-end, we announced that 7-Eleven, Inc. and Ibotta have formed a partnership in which Ibotta will be the exclusive third-party provider of CPG digital promotions (excluding age-restricted items) to the 7-Eleven, 7NOW, and Speedway apps, reaching shoppers across more than 11,500 U.S. store locations. Financial Guidance: Third quarter 2026 outlook summary: Revenue of $86 - $90 million, a year-over-year increase of 6% at the midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA of $12 - $14 million, representing a margin of 14.8% at the midpoint. Guidance for adjusted EBITDA is earnings before interest income, net, provision for income taxes, and depreciation and amortization, and excludes stock-based compensation and other expense, net. We have not reconciled adjusted EBITDA to GAAP net income for our guidance because we do not provide guidance on GAAP net income and would not be able to present the various reconciling cash and non-cash items between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures since certain items that impact these measures are uncertain or out of our control, or cannot be reasonably predicted, including share-based compensation expense, without unreasonable effort. The actual amounts of such reconciling items could have a significant impact on the Company's GAAP net income. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Information Included within this press release are the non-GAAP financial measures of adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP net income as a percent of revenue, non-GAAP diluted net income per share and free cash flow that supplement the condensed financial statements of the Company prepared under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The non-GAAP financial information is presented for supplemental informational purposes only and is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. Please see the accompanying tables for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to their nearest GAAP equivalents. Adjusted EBITDA is earnings before interest income, net, provision for income taxes, and depreciation and amortization, and excludes stock-based compensation, restructuring charges, and other expense, net. Adjusted EBITDA margin is calculated as adjusted EBITDA as a percent of revenue. Non-GAAP net income excludes stock-based compensation, restructuring charges, and the related income tax effects. The income tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments is the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP income tax expense. Non-GAAP income tax expense is computed on non-GAAP pre-tax income (GAAP pre-tax income adjusted for non-GAAP adjustments). Non-GAAP diluted net income per share is calculated as non-GAAP net income divided by non-GAAP diluted weighted average common shares outstanding. Free cash flow is defined as cash provided by operating activities, less additions to property and equipment and capitalization of software development costs. The Company's management believes that these non-GAAP measures can assist investors in evaluating the Company's operational trends, financial performance, and cash-generating capacity. Management believes these non-GAAP measures allow investors to evaluate the Company’s financial performance using some of the same measures as management. Investors are cautioned that there are material limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures versus their nearest GAAP equivalents. The Company’s definitions may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited. In addition, other companies may not publish these or similar metrics. These non-GAAP measures are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the comparable GAAP measures, but are included solely for informational and comparative purposes. Non-GAAP financial measures are subject to limitations and should be read only in conjunction with our condensed financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. In light of these limitations, management also reviews the specific items that are excluded from our non-GAAP measures, as well as trends in these items. Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Webcast and Conference Call Details Key Business Terms and Notes Ibotta Performance Network (IPN): A platform that allows clients to deliver digital promotions to consumers via a network of publishers, consisting of our owned properties and third-party publishers. Redeemer: ​​A consumer who has redeemed at least one digital offer within the time period specified. If a consumer were to redeem on more than one publisher during that period, they would be counted as multiple redeemers. Year-to-date redeemers are calculated as the average of current year quarter-to-date redeemers. Redemption: A verified purchase of one or more items qualifying for an offer by a client on the IPN. Redemption Revenue: The Company’s customers promote their products and services to consumers through rewards offered on the IPN. The Company earns a fee per redemption which is recognized in the period in which the redemption occurred. The Company may also charge fees to set up a redemption campaign which are deferred and recognized over the average duration of historical redemption campaigns. About Ibotta ("I bought a...") Ibotta (NYSE: IBTA) is the leading provider of digital promotions for CPG brands, reaching over 200 million consumers through a network of publishers called the Ibotta Performance Network (IPN). The IPN allows marketers to influence what people buy, and where and how often they shop – all while paying only when their campaigns directly result in a sale. American shoppers have earned over $2.9 billion through the IPN since 2012. Ibotta is headquartered in Denver, and has been listed as a top place to work by The Denver Post and Inc. Magazine. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Any statements relating to expectations concerning matters that are not historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements by our CEO and founder about our strategy, product capabilities, the ongoing strength of the Company’s network and core product offerings, our ability to grow and timing of our programs, and the Company’s financial guidance, such as revenue and adjusted EBITDA. When words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "will", "outlook" or similar expressions are used, the Company is making forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot give readers any assurance that such expectations will prove correct. These forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those related to the Company’s relatively limited operating history, which makes it difficult to evaluate the Company’s business and prospects, the demands and expectations of clients and the ability to attract and retain clients. The actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. These and other factors are disclosed in the Company’s annual and quarterly reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available at www.sec.gov. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company does not intend to update any forward-looking statement contained in this press release to reflect events or circumstances arising after the date hereof, except as required by law. The following table disaggregates the Company’s third-party publishers and direct-to-consumer revenue by redemption and ad & other revenue: Non-GAAP Financial Metrics(In thousands, except shares, per share amounts, and percentages) The following tables show the Company’s non-GAAP financial metrics reconciled to the comparable GAAP financial metrics included in this release: View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260803571507/en/ Contacts Corporate CommunicationsChris Boyd, [email protected] Investor RelationsShalin Patel, [email protected]

Ibotta (IBTA) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.46 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.4 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.08 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +15.00%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this digital company that offers consumers rewards and rebates would post a loss of $0.21 per share when it actually produced a loss of $0.43, delivering a surprise of -104.76%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates two times. Ibotta, which belongs to the Zacks Technology Services industry, posted revenues of $88.91 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4.97%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $86.03 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates four times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Ibotta shares have added about 5.6% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 9.4%. While Ibotta has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Ibotta was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.39 on $85.1 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $1.62 on $346.5 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Technology Services is currently in the bottom 44% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. Algorhythm Holdings, Inc. (RIME), another stock in the same industry, has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. This company is expected to post quarterly loss of $0.36 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -50%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. Algorhythm Holdings, Inc.'s revenues are expected to be $3 million, up 10.3% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Ibotta, Inc. (IBTA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Algorhythm Holdings, Inc. (RIME) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Ibotta’s first quarter performance reflected a mix of improving commercial execution and ongoing product transformation, with management attributing the gradual revenue recovery to efforts in expanding the supply of promotional offers and adding new publisher partners. CEO Bryan Leach emphasized that the sales team’s ability to secure deeper and broader partnerships was central to near-term progress. Additionally, the introduction of exclusive deals with Uber and Giant Eagle highlighted Ibotta’s growing traction in both e-commerce and traditional grocery channels. Management acknowledged ongoing investments in technology and sales capabilities as essential to supporting these advancements. Is now the time to buy IBTA? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $82.48 million vs analyst estimates of $80.95 million (2.5% year-on-year decline, 1.9% beat) Adjusted EPS: $0.24 vs analyst expectations of $0.26 (6.6% miss) Adjusted EBITDA: $8.72 million vs analyst estimates of $7.18 million (10.6% margin, 21.5% beat) Revenue Guidance for Q2 CY2026 is $84 million at the midpoint, roughly in line with what analysts were expecting EBITDA guidance for Q2 CY2026 is $10.5 million at the midpoint, above analyst estimates of $9.88 million Operating Margin: -13.1%, down from -3.3% in the same quarter last year Total Redemptions: down 12.11 million year on year Market Capitalization: $761.6 million While we enjoy listening to the management's commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls are the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Kenneth James Gawrelski (Wells Fargo) asked about the long-term margin structure with LiveLift growth and the necessity of further investment. CEO Bryan Leach and CFO Matt Puckett explained that margin expansion is expected as current investments are absorbed and that LiveLift does not materially change the margin profile versus core offerings. Kenneth James Gawrelski (Wells Fargo) also questioned the relative importance of annual client budget resets versus improved go-to-market execution for revenue growth. Leach responded that while annual planning cycles matter, ongoing engagement and demonstration of value are more critical to winning larger budgets. Tim (Raymond James) inquired about progress with the Uber partnership and the ramp-up of LiveLift. Leach highlighted phased onboarding with Uber and emphasized ongoing automation and AI enablement for LiveLift as key to scaling both products. Tim (Raymond James) further asked about macroeconomic pressures on consumer and CPG spend. Leach stated that value-seeking behavior is intensifying, making Ibotta’s platform more relevant, and that their focus on nondiscretionary categories insulates the business from some volatility. Nitin Bansal (Bank of America) queried the impact of the revamped sales approach on Q1 results and further sales team initiatives. Leach detailed the industry-focused team structure, consultative selling, and expanded B2B marketing as drivers of improved client engagement and incremental revenue. In upcoming quarters, the StockStory team will focus on (1) the pace and impact of Uber and Giant Eagle integrations, (2) progress in automating and scaling the LiveLift platform for broader client adoption, and (3) evidence that the revamped sales organization is sustaining growth in offer supply and client commitments. The evolution of Ibotta’s pricing model and its ability to translate new publisher partnerships into recurring revenue will also be key areas to monitor. Ibotta currently trades at $32.67, down from $37 just before the earnings. Is there an opportunity in the stock?The answer lies in our full research report (it’s free for active Edge members). ONE MORE THING: Top 6 Stocks for This Week. This market is separating quality stocks from expensive ones fast. AI taking down whole sectors with no warning. In a rotation this fast, you need more than a list of good companies. Our AI system flagged Palantir before it ran 1,662%. AppLovin before it ran 753%. Nvidia before it ran 1,178%. Each week it produces 6 new names that pass the same tests. Get Our Top 6 Stocks for Free HERE. Stocks that have made our list include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,326% between June 2020 and June 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Kadant (+351% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today.

Interested in Ibotta, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Ibotta beat Q1 expectations, with revenue of $82.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $8.7 million both coming in above the top end of prior guidance. The company also said it still expects total revenue growth to turn positive again in the third quarter of fiscal 2026. Business trends improved as total redeemers rose 15% year over year and third-party publisher redemption revenue climbed 12%. Ibotta said growth is being driven by a broader supply of offers, stronger publisher activity, and a continuing shift away from direct-to-consumer redemption revenue. New partnerships and buybacks support the outlook, with Uber and Giant Eagle joining the publisher network and share repurchases totaling about $45 million in the quarter. Management said the new partners should add only a small revenue benefit in the second half of the year, while free cash flow reached $23.3 million. Ibotta Stock: Why the Buyback Looks Like a Bullish Bet Ibotta (NYSE:IBTA) reported first-quarter results ahead of its prior guidance and said it still expects to return to year-over-year revenue growth in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, as the digital promotions company points to improving offer supply, growing third-party publisher activity and new partnerships with Uber and Giant Eagle. Founder and Chief Executive Bryan Leach said first-quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA both came in above the top end of the guidance range provided on the company’s prior earnings call. He said Ibotta continues to expect sequential improvement in year-over-year revenue trends, with overall revenue growth returning in the third quarter. → Beyond NVIDIA: Picks-and-Shovels AI Plays with Strong Momentum “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,” Leach said. He added that Ibotta’s core promotions product is showing “strong market fit,” while its newer LiveLift offering continues to receive positive early feedback. Chief Financial Officer Matt Puckett said first-quarter revenue was $82.5 million, down 2% from a year earlier. Redemption revenue was $73 million, down about $400,000, or 1%, year over year. Puckett said both redemption revenue and ad and other revenue trends improved compared with the fourth quarter. → 3 Ways to Target the Resources Powering AI and Data Centers Third-party publisher redemption revenue rose 12% to $54 million, accelerating from 8% growth in the prior quarter. Direct-to-consumer redemption revenue fell 25% to $19 million, which Puckett said was similar to the fourth-quarter result and reflected the continued shift of redemption activity to third-party publishers. Ad and other revenue totaled $9.5 million, representing 11% of total revenue and down 15% from a year earlier. Puckett said that decline was primarily due to pressure on ad revenue tied to lower direct-to-consumer redeemers, partially offset by growth in data revenue. → Quantum Earnings Season Is Ramping Up—What to Watch From 2 Major Players Ibotta reported 19.7 million total redeemers in the quarter, up 15% year over year. Total redemptions were 88 million, up 6%, driven by 15% redemption growth on third-party publishers. Puckett said this marked a more measurable return to year-over-year growth in redemptions for the first time since the first quarter of 2025, after being roughly flat in the fourth quarter. Puckett said adjusted EBITDA was $8.7 million, representing an 11% adjusted EBITDA margin. Non-GAAP net income was $6 million, and non-GAAP diluted net income per share was $0.24. Non-GAAP net income excluded $16.7 million in stock-based compensation and included a $0.3 million adjustment for income taxes. Non-GAAP cost of revenue increased $2 million from a year earlier, largely due to higher technology-related costs and a more modest increase in publisher costs. Non-GAAP gross margin was 78%, down about 300 basis points from a year earlier. Non-GAAP operating expenses rose 5% year over year and equaled 71% of revenue. Sales and marketing expenses increased 17%, driven by higher sales labor, third-party lift studies and business-to-business marketing expenses. Research and development expenses decreased 21%, which Puckett attributed mainly to higher capitalization of software development costs and a higher allocation of labor expense to cost of revenue. Ibotta ended the quarter with $164.6 million in cash and cash equivalents. The company spent about $45 million to repurchase approximately 1.9 million shares at an average price of $22.92. As of quarter-end, it had $90.3 million remaining under its share repurchase authorization. Free cash flow was $23.3 million, up 56% year over year. Leach said LiveLift remains in the early stages and that Ibotta continues to limit access to clients willing to spend a certain amount and run campaigns for a certain duration. As a result, he said LiveLift’s revenue contribution remains modest, and the company is not forecasting a significant ramp until it loosens eligibility requirements. Leach said re-up rates among clients that completed a LiveLift campaign remain consistent with the approximately 80% level discussed in prior quarters. Repeat users represented about 60% of LiveLift campaigns in the quarter, with the balance coming from first-time users running pilots. Average LiveLift campaign size remains meaningfully larger than for the core product, he said. Leach outlined several initiatives aimed at scaling LiveLift, including building a programmatic API layer, refining the models that power the product and advancing what he called “AI enablement.” He said broader availability will require greater automation and continued model training through repeated experiments. “We are building a novel capability in this industry,” Leach said. “That necessitates a disciplined, phased approach to scaling.” Ibotta highlighted two new publisher partnerships. In March, the company announced that Uber would join the Ibotta Performance Network, bringing Ibotta’s digital promotions to the Uber, Uber Eats and Postmates apps later this year. On the call, Leach said Giant Eagle is also joining the network through a multi-year exclusive partnership. Leach said the Uber partnership positions Ibotta to reach consumers during “high-intent commerce moments” and strengthens its position in e-commerce delivery. He said Giant Eagle’s addition enhances Ibotta’s presence in the traditional grocery channel and validates the company’s model. Puckett said Ibotta expects an immaterial revenue impact from Uber and Giant Eagle in the second quarter during testing and piloting, followed by a small benefit in the second half of the year as the partnerships ramp. He said offer supply will govern the near-term revenue impact of the expanded demand side of the network. For the second quarter, Ibotta expects revenue of $82 million to $86 million, representing a 2% year-over-year decline at the midpoint and a 2% sequential increase from the first quarter. The company expects adjusted EBITDA of $9 million to $12 million, or about a 12.5% margin at the midpoint. Puckett said that at the midpoint of the second-quarter revenue outlook, Ibotta expects redemption revenue to return to growth for the first time since the first quarter of 2025. He also confirmed the company’s expectation for total revenue to return to year-over-year growth in the third quarter in the low single-digit range. During the question-and-answer session, Puckett said the third-quarter outlook does not assume a step change in LiveLift adoption or a major contribution from new publishers. Instead, he said it reflects continued execution with clients and publisher partners. Leach also addressed the macroeconomic environment, saying clients are focused on value as consumers seek savings on non-discretionary purchases. He said that dynamic supports demand for Ibotta’s offerings from both consumer packaged goods brands and publisher partners. Ibotta (NYSE: IBTA) is a Denver‐based mobile commerce platform that connects consumers, retailers and brands through a unified cash-back rewards experience. Users access the Ibotta mobile app or browser extension to unlock rebates on everyday purchases, redeemable on groceries, retail goods, travel bookings and digital services. The platform integrates with major supermarket chains, big‐box retailers and online merchants, enabling shoppers to earn automatic cash-back both in physical stores and across e-commerce channels. Founded in 2012 by co‐founder and CEO Bryan Leach, Ibotta has evolved from a simple rebate app into a comprehensive performance marketing partner for consumer goods companies. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Ibotta Q1 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for May 2026.