Trustpilot Group plc

Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Trustpilot's full year 2025 results and a warm welcome to everyone joining on the webcast. Hannah and I look forward to walking you through what was an excellent year. Our performance was driven in no small part by the rapid evolution of ai and the increasing value of the human trust signals that Trustpilot collects i'm looking forward to taking you through some operational highlights before handing over to Hanno for the financials i'll then come back with a deeper look at strategic progress three key takeaways from today's results first great execution We grew bookings 18% in constant currency and scaled highly profitably, driving a 69% increase in adjusted EBITDA and returning $72 million to shareholders through buybacks. Second, the expanding strategic advantage. The growth flywheel is thriving, fueling a 20% increase in active reviews to 361 million. By opening our proprietary data set to large language models, Trustpilot is now an essential part of the rapidly evolving area of answer engine optimization. Click throughs from AI search grew nearly 15 fold year on year. Large businesses care deeply about their exposure in AI search, so this was one of the key drivers of success in the enterprise segment. Finally, upgraded guidance. 2025 has given concrete evidence that AI is increasing the value of Trustpilot feedback and therefore widening our competitive moat. This coupled with the operational efficiencies we can already see AI delivering gives us immense confidence in the future. So today we're upgrading our medium term outlook to 25% adjusted EBITDA margin in 2028 and 30% in 2030. Let's take a look now at operational performance. In essence, Trustpilot products collect customer feedback and turn it into influence over the actions of people and businesses. Because the feedback has influence, people are motivated to write more of it and businesses want to engage with it. In 2025 our users submitted more new reviews to Trustpilot than in the first 12 years of the company combined. Our unique data set expanded to 361 million active reviews representing a 20% year-on-year increase. The scale of this unreplicable data set and the ability of AI to derive more value from it is a key defensive moat for the business. The healthy growth flywheel drove excellent financial and operational results. Bookings grew 18% on a constant currency basis with momentum accelerating in the second half and businesses paying us over $20,000 per year growing 35%. growth is particularly strong in North America at 21%. Because of the inherent operating leverage in our model, 20% constant currency top line growth resulted in a 69% increase in adjusted EBITDA to $40.7 million, delivering a margin of 15.6%, comfortably ahead of already upgraded expectations. Finally, on the AI front, authority continues to compound. In January this year, Promptwatch ranked Trustpilot as the fifth most cited domain globally on ChatGPT. This means ChatGPT is directly referenced or linked to Trustpilot as a source of information when answering a user's prompt. This is driving heightened interest from enterprise clients. Increasingly, our sales teams are leading with AEO as businesses look to secure their reputation in AI models. Let me touch now on the regions individually. In the UK, our largest market, we delivered 16% constant currency bookings growth to $116 million. The network effect here is particularly well established, resulting in the highest regional contribution margin at 65%. This shows what the wider group can look like at scale. Because the brand awareness and network effects are so deeply embedded, we were able to drive excellent profitability. As other regions continue to mature, the UK proves the long-term margin potential inherent in the model. The strategy to focus on larger enterprise accounts continues to deliver. We welcomed a wide variety of flagship brands in the UK in the second half of the year, including Sky, Samsung and United Utilities. The share of ARR from businesses paying over $20,000 rose to 47% by the end of the year. With market penetration of just 5%, the runway for growth remains significant. Turning next to Europe and the rest of the world. We delivered strong bookings growth of 20% at constant currency to $113 million. A few notable wins in H2 included Ineco, Total Energies, Costa Cruises and Canva. The region demonstrates what happens when we focus go-to-market efforts into specific geographies. Growth in both Germany and Italy, our focus markets, was well ahead of the regional average. The enterprise segment is particularly strong in Germany, where by the end of the year businesses paying more than $20,000 accounted for 58% of ARR. This is supporting a robust regional contribution margin of 55%. Moving to North America, which comprises the US and Canada, it was the fastest growing region, delivering 21% constant currency bookings growth to $62 million, building on an already strong comparator last year. We're seeing accelerated enterprise velocity here, helping to drive a 4 percentage point improvement in contribution margin to 38%. Both sides of the flywheel are growing well, with reviews submitted in the year rising 27% to 13 million. Brand awareness is also growing rapidly, aided by initiatives like the inaugural Writer Review Week in October, which delivered our highest ever US traffic week. On the business side, Trustbox impressions rose to 32 billion, up 38% on the year, naturally embedding the brand across the North American digital landscape. We welcome notable enterprise clients in the second half, including Liberty Mutual and Squarespace. The US remains a substantial opportunity for Trustpilot and we'll touch on this again later. I'll now hand over to Hanno to take you through the financials in detail.

Thank you Adrian and good morning everyone and happy St. Patrick's Day. 2025 was another record year of bookings margin expansion and exceptional cash conversion. Let's dive straight into the numbers I'm happy to report that FY 25 bookings grew 18% in constant currency reaching 291 million dollars as you can see on the top chart we've established a clear consistent track record of top-line growth and have by now surpassed 300 million in AR and As shown on the bottom chart, we're scaling profitably and we have transformed the margin profile of the business. In 2025, we delivered a 4.2 percentage point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin to a record 15.6%, generating $40.7 million in adjusted EBITDA and $46.6 million in adjusted free cash flow. Looking at the retention rate in more detail, net dollar retention was 102%. The slight moderation from 103% last year was entirely expected as we analyze the one off package migration benefit from 2024. We landed major new product features in the year like visitor insights and review follow ups, while simultaneously driving an improvement in the gross dollar retention rate to a record 87% up from 85% in the prior year. there are a number of factors driving this improvement starting at the top with the growth flywheel and product innovation as awareness of the Trustpilot brand grows the value of the businesses being active on the platform also increases you'll hear this firsthand from a customer later net expansion remains strong at 15% and product innovation fuels this we're increasingly weaving AI and LLM capabilities directly into our tools below that you see how we operationalize those products through our go-to-market execution and enterprise strategy we have embedded a globally consistent sales methodology and shifted to a proactive data-driven customer success model which has reduced churn with early warnings for those customers that are at risk moving on the chart on the left perfectly visualizes the compounding power of our subscription model The revenue base is incredibly stable, with each new cohort stacking on top of the last. Big growth drivers are customers paying more than $20,000 per year. As we push further into this higher value segment, we're bringing on larger customers. These customers stay longer and provide resilient compounding value. As you can see on the pie chart, the share of total bookings coming from this segment has grown from 25% of bookings in 2022 to 43% in 2025. The underlying unit economics of these accounts are excellent. Gross dollar retention for this segment is 93%, and net dollar retention is 111% in 2025. Let's take a look at the income statement from a management view down to adjusted EBITDA, excluding stock-based comp and DNA. As always, an IFRS statement and reconciliations can be found in the appendix of this presentation. We delivered revenue of $261.1 million and a gross margin of 82.7%. The improvement in gross margin reflects the normalized sales commission we discussed in the first half, as well as operating leverage in our cost structure as the business scales. Network and infrastructure costs grew at a fraction of revenue growth in 2025. This is also the result of active optimization work carried out through 2024 that we fully realized in 2025. Support costs also fell year on year despite higher volume. Sales and marketing remain relatively flat as a percentage of revenue at 27.4%. While we faced an accounting headwind here due to the amortization of capitalized sales commissions, underlying cash efficiency is actually improving. We continue to make conscious, deliberate reinvestments into new customer acquisition and improving efficiency every year. Our main focus is funding the enterprise sales motion, where the underlying economics are fantastic, with customers exhibiting higher retention rates. The group LTV to CAC ratio expanded slightly to 3.6 times, up from 3.4 times last year. where we saw the most significant leverage was in technology and content which dropped from 25.3% to 23.6% of revenue. This was driven by AI enabled efficiencies across technology where the teams are using copilot and now also cloud code in our content integrity teams. G&A also dropped to 15% of revenue as we maintained disciplined cost control. Finally, I want to highlight the improvement in impairment losses. As a proportion of revenue, they accounted for 0.6% down from 1.2% in the same period last year. As remarked last year, 2024 was unusually high as we wrote off age receivables from the COVID period, which had previously been considered recoverable. Overall, we demonstrated strong margin expansion across the entire P&L. This bridge clearly illustrates the mechanics behind the 4.2 percentage point margin expansion. Thanks to our subscription business model, the long-term margin potential of the business is significant, and we delivered leverage across the P&L. This includes CAC, if you normalize for the impact of capitalized sales commissions, which were 2 million in 2025, down from 3 million in 2024. Product innovation remains a crucial part of the business because it directly drives retention and expansion. As we develop these features for a rapidly growing customer base, it naturally generates structural leverage over time. Trust spend combines elements of all these buckets, except CAC, and grew in 2025 as a proportion of OPEX, as we double down on our commitment to trust. Specifically, total spend on trust increased substantially as a share of OPEX. For this year, we expect further operating leverage to flow primarily through G&A with some leverage in sales and marketing as these newly acquired enterprise cohorts mature and renew. Moving down the P&L, let me touch briefly on the non-cash IFRS stock-based compensation charge of $12.5 million up from $9.5 million last year. This increase reflects new necessary share awards to attract and retain executive talent and high performers. However, the P&L Church does not tell the full story of shareholder value. I want to draw your attention to the actual impact on dilution. Grants will be on average 1% diluted per annum in each 10 year period as you would expect. Our active share buyback program more than offsets shares granted and total diluted share count fell 4% from 450 million to 431 million by year end. The clearest measure of underlying performance is cash generation. We generated $59.2 million in adjusted operating cash flow, driven by business growth, improved profitability, and a benefit from more customers signing up to annual upfront payment. In particular, as we're signing up more enterprise customers, annual prepayments are a standard term, and we estimate the improvement in average prepayment across the portfolio pulled forward almost $10 million in cash flow. This is a structural recurring improvement in the working capital dynamics of the business. After capitalized development costs and leases, we delivered adjusted free cash flow of $46.6 million on an adjusted free cash flow margin of 17.8%. The increase in adjusted free cash flow reflects a 173% increase year on year. On a per share basis, adjusted free cash flow was up 174% to 10.7 cents. This proves the exceptional cash generative nature of our model. We closed the year with $47.6 million in cash, even after returning $71.6 million to shareholders in the period. Since we started the buyback program two years ago, we have returned $115 million and 9% of the diluted shares outstanding at the beginning of the share program. This brings me to the capital allocation framework, which remains unchanged. First, we invest in organic growth. deploying an incremental $24 million last year whilst keeping product investment at a steady 3% of revenue. Second, we retain flexibility for strategic M&A that can accelerate our roadmap. Finally, we return excess capital to shareholders. Therefore, given our strong cash position and confidence in future cash generation, we intend to purchase a further £30 million of shares, of which £7.5 million will be via our employee benefit trust to satisfy future share awards. Turning to the outlook. Based on the strong bookings momentum in 2025, which is a leading indicator of revenue, we expect to deliver high teens constant currency revenue growth for 2026. Alongside this top line growth, we expect operating leverage to continue flowing through the business, delivering a further two to three percentage point increase in adjusted EBITDA margin. The ongoing share buyback then compounds this value and drives further improvement in the free cash flow per share. And this brings me to our upgraded out-of-year margin guidance. We have always talked about 30% margins being achievable. Today, we're putting a clear timeframe on this. Over the past few years, we have transformed the margin profile of the business. We have strong top-line growth and structural operating efficiencies, which, combined with the benefits that we're beginning to see from AI, gives us confidence that we will reach a 25% adjusted EBTA margin in 2028 and 30% in 2030. In addition to our strong track record of growth and margin improvement, AI gives us the confidence to put this timeframe on the margin progression for three key reasons. First, AI is driving the value proposition within the enterprise segment where we see the highest margin. Second, it allows us to deliver higher value products quicker. And third, it contributes directly to internal operating efficiency. With a high gross margin, we have a choice about where to deploy capital, and we have demonstrated over the past few years that we can deliver operating leverage across the P&L. And with that, I will hand it back to Adrian.

Thanks, Henrik. So in 2025 we successfully executed against three core priorities, trust in the age of AI, enterprise growth and product innovation. Let me walk you through exactly what we did in each of these areas. Let's start with trust. Trustpilot's relevance in the age of AI is becoming increasingly clear. Whatever capabilities AI develops in the future, there will still be people and there will still be businesses. People will always be interested in and want to share their experiences with those businesses. As you can see from the chart, the rise of AI has coincided with a surge in the number of reviews people are writing on Trustpilot and the number of businesses they cover. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, cumulative review volume has grown by 47% in just three years. The 62 million reviews written on Trustpilot in 2025 was more than in the first 12 years of the platform combined. A key reason for this is that the rise of AI has motivated more businesses to ask their customers for Trustpilot feedback because that feedback influences how they show up in AI search. The growth in reviews provides the verified human data set required to train safe AI and deliver the trusted citations that power modern answer engines. but volume without trust is meaningless and in 2025 we removed 7.8 million fake reviews an increase of 74% year on year let's walk through how we protect the platform using connected system of technology people and community all underpinned by increasing regulation When a review is submitted, the first line of defence is technology. Every single review undergoes automated multi-signal screening where AI models scan device, network and behavioural metadata such as location indicators and timestamp patterns. Given the volume of incoming data, we use a sophisticated range of techniques from AI, machine learning models and neural network analysis. Out of all the fake reviews we catch, in 2025, 91% were removed by our automated detection efforts. The volume of historic reviews on Trustpilot with all the accompanying metadata is what enables our technology to be so effective. Technology is supported by people who conduct specialist assessments and perform testing to continuously improve detection. This is all reinforced by the Trustpilot community. Any consumer or business can flag a review they view as suspicious. These reports act as a vital feedback loop, triggering further checks that initiate our standard automated and expert reviews. We never claim to be perfect and operating at our scale, it's inevitable that some misuse still occurs. But the evidence is that AI is helping us more than it's helping bad actors, meaning the platform is becoming safer and more useful than ever. Integrity also means applying the same moderation standards to all reviews regardless of whether the business is a paying customer. The chart on the page shows the percentage of reviews we remove across different star ratings. You'll notice this distribution is virtually identical, whether a business is paying us or using free tools. The vast majority of fake reviews we remove, around 75%, are actually five-star reviews. The algorithms are blind to a company's commercial status. They only care about the authenticity of the data. Protecting platform integrity is work that never stops. As we improve our existing models and develop new ones, we first apply them to new reviews coming onto the platform and once we're confident that they're performing as intended, we run them back over historical reviews. This is the absolute core of our business and we have a lot more to share here. Therefore, I'm pleased to announce we'll host a dedicated trust-focused event on the 6th of May. Here our Chief Trust Officer Shehzadi Stinton who joined us recently and was formerly General Counsel at Money Group and her team will take you through what we do in more detail and I'm delighted that Shehzadi could be with us in the room today. All right moving on to the second priority of enterprise growth. When we talk to business leaders the conversation starts with a really simple reality. private customer experience data that they collect, like an internal NPS or CSAT score, is incomplete, it's invisible to large language models, and it does nothing to help you win your next customer. To get a complete picture and to grow, businesses need to operationalize public feedback. We give them the tools to do exactly that. Let me set out here exactly how Trustpilot helps large businesses, those enterprise customers, succeed. First, Build Trust. Potential customers, investors and employees can all read your Trustpilot feedback. Engaging with the platform builds trust with all of these groups. Numerous businesses include Trustpilot scores in their board decks and bonus plans and increasingly Trustpilot appears in annual reports including those of many FTSE 100 constituents like Admiral, BT, Centrica and Lloyds Banking Group. Next, Trustpilot feedback directly helps businesses grow faster by boosting their presence in Google and on large language models, and by improving conversion and engagement with marketing assets through social proof. A major US cybersecurity business told me they gained market share by using Trustpilot reviews throughout their conversion funnel for new customers to accelerate sign-ups. Third, Trustpilot helps businesses improve operational efficiency. a large logistics business I met found that thanks to their huge volume of Trustpilot feedback they can identify faulty physical lockers quicker than their internal maintenance team can finally Trustpilot galvanizes entire organizations to care about customer service and because the reviews are public it enforces accountability I gave you an example at the half year of HSBC another great example is the CEO of a major European car leasing business who told me he holds the managers of each of over 500 branches accountable for Trustpilot feedback at their location and part of their job is responding personally to unhappy customers through our platform The focus on larger customers is delivering tangible results. Because of the immense value they get from our products, we have more customers paying us large amounts of money and getting a fantastic return on their investment. If you look at the middle chart, the number of paying customers between $10,000 and $20,000 a year has grown at a 25% compound annual growth rate over the last three years. In fact, we've nearly doubled our customer base in that segment since 2022. The number paying us over $20,000 a year, which make up the largest share of total ARR has grown by around 36% a year over that same period. To put that in perspective, we've grown this critical segment by 150% in just three years, scaling to nearly 3000 customers today. This strategic shift towards larger customers improves unit economics, enhances the quality of earnings and accelerates the growth flywheel faster because big businesses invite millions of people to write feedback and showcase the Trustpilot brand at great scale. One business you'll all know that's embracing every part of the Trustpilot value proposition is the leading UK retailer AO. They are now very close to hitting a million Trustpilot reviews. For an online-only business selling high-value items like washing machines, trust and quality of service is their primary differentiator. AO uses Trustpilot as a key operational tool. They mine scores, reviews and trends to actively manage their customer service and inform their core business propositions. They've integrated Trustpilot into national TV campaigns and their core brand positioning. Who better to bring this to life than their founder and CEO, John Roberts, in conversation here with our new Chief Trust Officer, Shehzadi Stimson.