EverQuote, Inc.

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's EverQuote fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. My name is Megan and I'll be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the conference over to Brinley Johnson of Blue Shirt Group.

Brinley, please go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to EverQuote's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. We'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued today after the market closed. With me on the call this afternoon is Jamie Mendel, EverQuote's Chief Executive Officer, and John Widener, Chief Financial Officer of EverQuote. During the call, we'll make statements related to our business that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws, including statements concerning our financial guidance for the first quarter and full year 2023, our growth strategy and our plans to execute on our growth strategy, key initiatives, including our direct-to-consumer agencies, Our investments in the business, the growth levers we expect to drive our business, our ability to maintain existing and acquire new customers, our expectations regarding recovery of the auto insurance industry, and other statements regarding our plans and prospects. Our looking statements may be identified with words and phrases such as we expect, we believe, we intend, we anticipate, we plan, may, upcoming, and similar words and phrases. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be considered our views as of any subsequent date. We specifically disclaim any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements except as required by law. Forward-looking statements are not promises or guarantees of future performance and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For discussion of material risks and other important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations, please refer to those contained under the heading Risk Factors in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q or annual report on Form 10-K. that are in a file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Investor Relations section of our website at investor.everquote.com and on the S&P's website at sec.gov. Finally, during the course of today's call, we referred to certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe are helpful to investors. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures was included in the press release we issued after the close of Market Today, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.everquote.com. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jamie.

Thank you, Brinley, and thank you all for joining us today. 2022 proved to be a formidable year as our team's resolve and our business model's resilience were tested by the difficult auto insurance market, which caused carriers to dramatically pull back customer acquisition spend while they worked to increase rates. Against this backdrop, we delivered full-year revenue and variable marketing margin, or VMM, of $404.1 million and $128.3 million, respectively. and we generated adjusted EBITDA of $5.9 million. Throughout the year, our team continued to demonstrate its agility and strength by adjusting operations to a rapidly changing environment to deliver solid financial results. We implemented disciplined expense management to deliver adjusted EBITDA profitability for 2022, exceeding the high end of our original adjusted EBITDA guidance despite significantly lower revenue. as carriers pulled back on marketing spend more than initially expected. Our customer acquisition team swiftly recalibrated to frequent and large reductions in carrier demand, and we drove higher efficiency in our resilient agent distribution channels, enabling us to achieve a record annual level of VMM as a percentage of revenue. Turning to 2023, We continue to see auto insurance carriers raising rates to restore adequate profitability as inflationary loss pressures persist. In Q1, thus far we have seen a significant sequential increase in auto enterprise demand driven by a limited subset of carriers. While we remain optimistic about demand improving over the course of the year, the exact timing and shape of recovery remains uncertain. Amidst the continued volatility, in 2023 we will work to restore revenue growth, bring profitability back to pre-downturn levels, and generate positive cash flow. Despite the unsettled nature of the past 18 months, Everquote enters 2023 in a stronger position than ever before. We continue to make steady progress in a market opportunity that remains enormous. Insurance distribution and advertising is a $170 billion market. Unlike nearly any other vertical market of scale, insurance distribution still lacks a clear digital category leader. At the same time, data continues to point to a more digital future. Internet shopping is still growing. Insurance carriers are steadily building digital competencies and shifting distribution spend online, with upstart digital first carriers advancing that curve more quickly. And applications to deploy new technology, machine learning, and AI to solve industry challenges are becoming more accessible. Insurance distribution is ripe for disruption. As a market leader, EverQuote continues working to redefine the category of insurance distribution for the digital age. Our mission is to make it easy for customers to protect life's most important assets, their family, health, property, and future. In pursuit of this mission, our vision is to become the largest online source of insurance policies by using data, technology, and knowledgeable advisors to make insurance simpler, more affordable, and personalized. What makes us uniquely positioned to define this category? I would point to two important competitive differentiators. First, EverQuote continues to be a data and technology company first. This element of our DNA has enabled us to scale our customer acquisition platform into one of the largest sources of online insurance policies in the US. Our strength continues to build and compound as we amass more data, and deploy machine learning across more aspects of our business over time, ranging from traffic bidding to experience personalization to product recommendations. This will make our marketplace both more effective for consumers and providers and more efficient for EverQuote. Second, EverQuote has assembled a one-of-a-kind combination of insurance distribution assets, which enables access to a comprehensive set of insurance products across major personal lines. Carriers provide access to their insurance products through different channels. Some distribute directly to consumers, others through captive agents, and others through independent agents. Some carriers use multiple channels, depending on their preference for a digital sales funnel or a telephonic one. EverQuote has built a hybrid marketplace which supports all carriers in their pursuit of profitable growth. Those who distribute digitally and direct to consumer can participate in our digital marketplace. Those who distribute exclusively through captive agents can plug into our local agent offerings. And carriers who distribute through independent agents can appoint our direct-to-consumer agency, Eversurance, to access our shoppers. From the consumer's perspective, this hybrid marketplace enables EverQuote to offer a comprehensive set of insurance options, resulting in each consumer being more likely to find the right product for them delivered in their preferred manner. We will focus increasingly on leveraging these distribution assets to build a unique and differentiated insurance shopping destination for consumers, through which they can access the industry's widest set of insurance products across major personal lines, receive personalized recommendations on the right products for them, and easily access advice from knowledgeable experts as needed. Success will set the stage for deeper and more enduring customer relationships, through which we will manage consumers' insurance needs across multiple products and over time. To be clear, we are still in the early stages of this journey, but we have now cleared a challenging and important milestone of assembling and integrating requisite foundational assets. We still have much work to do to achieve our vision. That said, we believe that EverQuote is the only company with the assets, team, and conviction to deliver the type of insurance shopping experience that we believe the industry including its carriers, agents, and consumers, ultimately needs to bring the full potential of the digital age to insurance buying and selling. Our team is energized by the opportunity ahead, and we look forward to sharing our progress this year as we continue to build the industry's preeminent one-stop insurance destination. Now I'll turn the call over to John to discuss our financial results.