8/4/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, seem to press forward again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brynlee Johnson with the Blue Shirt Group. Please go ahead.

speaker
Brynlee Johnson
Blue Shirt Group (Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to EverQuote's second quarter 2025 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 are Jamie Mendel, EverQuote's chief executive officer, and Joseph Sanborn, EverQuotes Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will 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 third quarter of 2025. Forward-looking statements may be identified with words and phrases such as expect, believe, intend, anticipate, 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 subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For discussion of those risks and uncertainties, please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Finally, during the course of today's call, we will refer 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. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jamie.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Brimley, and thank you all for joining us today. We achieved strong results in Q2, growing 34% year over year and delivering record adjusted EBITDA margin and net income. Against the backdrop of healthy carrier profitability, our team remains focused on helping carriers and agents accelerate growth. We continue to make progress toward our vision of becoming the number one growth partner to P&C insurance providers by efficiently delivering better performing referrals, bigger traffic scale, and a broader suite of products and services. In Q2, carrier demand remained stable, reflecting a carrier landscape that is broadly healthy, coupled with consumer shopping levels that remain strong. One large carrier grew spend to record levels, marking their full recovery, while another tightened budgets, seeking the optimal balance of growth and efficiency. And a few remained laggards, sharing plans to reactivate in the second half of the year. With the exception of certain challenge geographies like California, We anticipate being back to what we would characterize as a full carrier panel by historical standards by the end of this year. As carriers work to grow policies and force, we remain focused on differentiating our marketplace through superior performance that is underpinned by our data advantage. Our data scale enables us to deploy AI throughout our traffic and distribution bidding and routing systems. For example, As another major carrier adopted our ML-driven Smart Campaigns product, it drove immediate improvement in their spend efficiency by about 20%. Over time, greater adoption of Smart Campaigns propels our flywheel as higher ad spend efficiency in our marketplace compels carriers to shift more budget to EverQuote relative to alternative advertising platforms. And as we get more budget and outcome data, we feed this data to our AI-driven systems to enable further improvements to customer performance. Agent and captive carrier demand also remains strong in Q2, with continued growth from our local agent base. We are making progress in our transition from a leads vendor to a strategic growth partner for local agents by driving multi-product adoption. We continue to build on our foundation in leads by adding additional value-add products and services, broadening the ways we help agents grow, which in turn enables us to consolidate agent marketing budgets and positions us as the indispensable growth partner for these same agents. Over the last six months, our paid products per agent have increased by more than 15%, with over a third of our agent base now using multiple products. Our consumer acquisition teams executed well in Q2, driving 25% year-over-year VMD growth despite elevated competitive pressure in the broader advertising landscape, as carriers step up their direct advertising efforts as well. As monetization improves, And in order to keep pace with carrier appetite for growth, we are making investments in scaling incremental customer acquisition channels, including on several social and video platforms. As we continue to grow, we remain laser focused on increasing operating efficiency and productivity, evidenced by our record adjusted EBITDA margin and net income. On top of the expense management discipline honed over the last couple of years, we are increasingly layering on AI driven efficiency applications. For example, in our engineering organization, co-pilots have gained rapid adoption. We also have teams experimenting with rethinking how we can develop software more holistically using an AI-first approach to inference production-ready code faster and more efficiently than can be done by humans, inclusive of our ability to integrate, release, test, and maintain production quality code consistent with our performance requirements. In our call center operations, We have introduced AI voice agents with the goal of reducing reliance on human call centers over time. Lastly, we are testing AI agents to help automate operational tasks. We have stood up our first dedicated AI team, which will serve as our nucleus for building and supporting AI use cases across the business. In May, I shared our goal of exceeding $1 billion of annual revenue in the near future. Having just finished our most recent annual growth planning cycle, The roadmap to accomplish this is increasingly clear, and we are making the requisite investments to do so. We are confident that as we continue to execute our strategy, we will emerge as P&C insurance providers' leading growth partner. I'll now turn the call over to Joseph to discuss our financial results.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jamie, and thank you all for joining. I will start by discussing our financial results for the second quarter of 2025 before providing an update on our capital allocation strategy our guidance for the third quarter of this year. We delivered a strong second quarter as we further enhanced our operating performance and focused on driving expanding levels of profitability. Total revenues in the second quarter grew 34% year over year to $156.6 million. Revenue growth was primarily driven by stronger enterprise carrier spend, which was up over 61% from the comparable period last year. Revenue from our auto insurance vertical increased to $139.6 million in Q2, up 36% year-over-year. Revenue from our home and renters insurance vertical increased to $17 million in Q2, up 23% both year-over-year and sequentially. Variable marketing dollars, or VMD, increased to $45.5 million in the second quarter, up 25% from the prior year period. Variable marketing margin, or VMM, which is VMD as a percentage of revenue, was 29.1% for the quarter, up from 28% in Q1. Turning to operating expenses and the bottom line, as we scale and drive top-line growth, we continue to expand operating leverage in our business through disciplined expense management and by utilizing AI and other technology investments to deliver incremental efficiency. In the second quarter, we grew net income to a record 14.7 million, up from 6.4 million in the prior year period. Q2 adjusted EBITDA increased to 22 million, compared to 12.9 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to a record 14%. We reported record operating cash flow of 25.3 million for the second quarter, ending the period with no debt and cash and cash equivalents of 148.2 million, up from $125 million at the end of Q1. Cash operating expenses, which excludes advertising spend and certain non-cash and other one-time charges, were $23.6 million in Q2. Operating expenses were sequentially down in the quarter and lower than expected, reflecting some hiring and short-term projects being deferred to the second half of the year. Also announced today, I wanted to highlight our inaugural share repurchase program. The Board has authorized the company to purchase up to $50 million in shares of common stock over the next 12 months, evidence of the continued confidence we have in our business. We will be opportunistic in repurchasing stock and believe this program is a prudent use of capital and reflects our conviction in EverQuote's business, market opportunity, and cash flow. Going forward, we expect our strong cash flow generation to position us to retain a fortress balance sheet while continuing to invest in growth initiatives, including AI. In addition, on August 1st, we entered into a new three-year $60 million committed credit facility. While our previous $25 million line of credit was never drawn upon, and we have no immediate plans to utilize the new facility, the arrangement provides us with additional financial flexibility. Looking to the back half of 2025, as mentioned last quarter, we plan to increase investment in our AI capabilities technology, and data assets to drive continued operational efficiency and strengthen EverQuote's long-term competitive mode. We are already seeing evidence of the benefits of our strategic investments and will be disciplined in balancing incremental operating expenses to generate adjusted EBITDA margins at or near current levels. Now turning to guidance for the third quarter of 2025. We expect revenue to be between 163 and 169 million, representing 15% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect V&D to be between 47 and 50 million, representing 10% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. And we expect adjusted EBITDA to be between 22 and 24 million, representing 22% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. In summary, our performance to date this year reflects our steadfast commitment to strong execution and a clear strategy. Remain focused on delivering on a long-term target of approximately 20% annual revenue growth with 20% EBITDA margins. Believe that the strength of our operating model and future growth initiatives will position EverQuote to deliver continued growth, profitability, and free cash flow generation. Jamie and I will now take your questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder to everyone, if you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, that is to press star one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, just press star one again. Our first question comes from the line of Maria Rips with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

speaker
Maria Rips
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. First, given the uncertainty around tariffs and the potential impact on carrier profitability in the back half of the year, Could you maybe give us a sense of how committed your budgets are in the second half of this year based on your conversations with carriers? I guess just trying to get a sense of your level of visibility into the second half of the year.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Maria. While we don't have a committed spend model, I think all signs point to a very healthy carrier landscape right now. Carrier demand has been stable and building so far this year. And if you look at some of the latest prints from the carriers, the big carriers are showing 80s combined ratio, so extremely healthy. And then in every interaction that we have with carriers, that I personally have with carriers over the last few months, the dialogue has been entirely around growth and us finding more ways to help them grow. So we don't anticipate encountering any budget constraints or pullback over the back part of the year. We do know that the carriers have been watching the tariffs, but they're starting from a position of significant strength. And so we think they'll be able to absorb whatever impact ends up flowing through the system.

speaker
Maria Rips
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Got it. That's very helpful. And then can you maybe help us understand a little bit better how to think about the ongoing shift in the AI-powered search impacting or how it could impact your traffic acquisition strategy down the line?

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Yeah, I think it's fairly evident that search and shopping for everything will evolve over time. We believe there are reasons to believe it could move a bit more slowly in insurance There's an industry that is more opaque, so rates aren't readily available on the open internet. It's a regulated industry. It's a relatively high-value, high-stakes purchase for the consumer. But over time, clearly, more search volume and shopping will move over to these AI platforms. And we think we're really well-positioned to engage with that LLM-based traffic. Right now, we've started building LLM-based conversational workflows in our call center operations. And you can sort of think about those as effectively taking the top of the shopping funnel using agentic AI. And over time, we'll be working our way down the funnel to facilitate more of that buying experience. So I think how and when these platforms open up to advertisers is still a bit of an open question and how much of that is paid versus organic. But I'd say given our monetization and our AI capabilities that are sort of fast developing, we're going to be really well positioned to acquire this traffic.

speaker
Maria Rips
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Thanks, Maria. Your next question comes from the line of Corey Carpenter with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hey, good afternoon.

speaker
Corey Carpenter
Analyst, JP Morgan

Thanks for the question. Maybe to another one on tariffs, maybe just ask more directly, do you think that impacted carrier budgets in 2Q, and are you incorporating any potential impact from that in 3Q? And then maybe just at a higher level, the 2Q results in the 3Q guide imply pretty typical seasonality that we would expect in the auto business. Could you just kind of help us reconcile that with the fact that it sounds like you're still bullish on the potential for a step, but at some point as the recovery broadens to more carriers in the last remaining states open? Thank you.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Thanks, Corey. I'll start on answering and Jamie can add on. When you look at Q2, I'd say the question was, what was the impact of tariffs on Q2? Just to remind folks, tariffs were announced on April 1st. And so I think for carriers like most of the business community, I think the early part of Q2 was a bit of uncertainty saying, let's figure out what tariffs will mean to us. For the point of view of the carriers, you know, the carriers were worried about whether that would increase claims costs, right? So that was the question they monitored. You know, our sense as we looked through the quarter was I think carriers had very healthy combined ratios and underwriting margins throughout the period. And one of the things that we would observe as we thought through how the quarter would unfold, I think we might have thought that carriers were leaning in a bit sooner given their underwriting margins than they did. I think that reflects a little bit of hesitancy on how tariffs are impacting the Q2. That being said, as we progressed through the quarter and got to the latter part of the quarter, we actually saw the carriers step up as you got into June, and that has continued into July. And I think that in part reflects getting greater clarity on what's going on in the tariff environment, and that's obviously been reflected in the guide we gave for Q3. And as recovery broadens to more states, I think right now we generally have broad-based recovery in a lot of states. You know, there is still an outlier in California to some extent as well as a handful of other states. You know, as Jamie mentioned in his prepared comments, we see by the end of the year having sort of a full carrier panel back in line within the marketplace. And we think you'll start to see some of these laggard states come on in a more meaningful way in 2026. Exact timing, you know, we can't give you specifics. But, again, you're starting to see some of these states start to come on. Just it's happening quite gradually. In California, for example, you've seen the carriers, existing carriers, get rates so they'll stay in the state. It hasn't translated into dramatic increases in trying to grow and bring in new consumers, but you're starting to see some signs. And so we'll see how it plays out for the rest of this year and into next.

speaker
Corey Carpenter
Analyst, JP Morgan

Great. That's helpful. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's correct.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Your next question comes from the line of Zach Cummins with the Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

speaker
Zach Cummins
Analyst, Riley Securities

Yep. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just digging a little bit deeper into some of your carrier commentary here in Q2. It sounded like you had one major carrier that really ramped up spend while another was more so in a defensive mode here in Q2. So any additional context you can give around that and kind of where you're at with the rest of the carrier base in terms of ramping up budgets here in the coming quarters?

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So, you know, I would say that most of the carriers are back in growth mode and feel largely sort of stable in their budget levels. There was one carrier that was, you know, kind of fluctuating a bit over the first half of the year, and that was reflected in the commentary. But even they are now, you know, sort of fluctuating back up from where they were in Q2. But on balance, I would say the carriers feel oriented towards growth and the demand feels stable. There were a couple of carriers that have really not yet reactivated in our marketplace, but we've gotten signal from them that they do intend to reactivate in the second part of this year. And so we expect to exit the year with, as Joseph said, what we would characterize as a full panel of carriers relative to historical participation in the marketplace.

speaker
Zach Cummins
Analyst, Riley Securities

Understood. That's helpful on that side. And just given where the balance sheet is right now, nice to see the share repurchase authorization. Just curious on the flip side of that, if there's any interesting M&A that you're considering at this juncture and any sort of update to how you're thinking about potentially deploying that capital.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

So thanks for the question. I guess just to give some context on the buyback. So we're pleased to do our first buyback to $50 million, up to $50 million over the next 12 months been authorized by the board. And I think it really reflects the confidence we have in our business and really just the cash flow generation of the business. At the same time, obviously, we'll continue to look selectively at M&A. And M&A is certainly something we will think about, particularly as it accelerates what we're trying to do in our core markets of P&C and accelerates our long-term position to be the leader in that space. And so we'll continue to look at that. And we'll update you as we have more to share, but certainly part of the things we're looking at is over the next several months.

speaker
Zach Cummins
Analyst, Riley Securities

Understood. Well, thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck with the rest of the quarter.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Thanks, Zach. Your next question comes from the line of Jason Cryer with Craig Hallam. Please go ahead.

speaker
Jason Cryer
Analyst, Craig Hallam

Great. Thank you, guys. So you talked about kind of a full panel of carriers, a full panel of states. I'm just curious from a competition standpoint, if you've seen any greater competition for leads, if you think that's creating any more volatility or any more pressure on VMM, either in Q2 or as the year progresses.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, Jason. So we have seen, you know, over the course of this year, some of the competitive pressure to return to the advertising landscape has As carriers, obviously we benefit from their increased budgets in our marketplace, but they're also stepping into the more open advertising market as well. And so we have seen some competitive pressure in that regard. That being said, I think we've continued to execute really well in a more competitive traffic environment. We're continuing to build out our AI bidding solutions. We drove 25% BMD growth year-on-year, and we actually were able to achieve a step-up in our VMM margin from what it was, I think, around 28% last quarter to 29% this quarter. So, yes, more competitive pressure, but I think we're managing through it well, and we're focused on maintaining margin and kind of finding the growth through incremental channels, as I mentioned earlier.

speaker
Jason Cryer
Analyst, Craig Hallam

Great. Thanks, Jamie. So last year you saw a nice budget flush as we approached year end. You know, with the combined ratios of the carriers tracking so much below their targets right now, I'm just curious what your sense is for a similar budget flush as 2025 progresses.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

You know, I'm as curious about this as you are. intuition would suggest that the carriers will have quite a bit of room going into the back part of the year in terms of their combined ratios, particularly for those that manage to kind of a calendar year outcome. So we've received no indication from any carriers that there's some end-of-year budget flush coming. But in the past, when we've entered the end of the year and we've seen both pressure for growth and margin in profitability, we have seen some carriers deploy excess budget into the market at the end of the year.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Maybe I just add to that. That tends to be a phenomenon you see more with public companies than you do with some of the mutual companies. You just have a different sort of mentality about managing annual budgets. So just something to be cognizant of, and as a result, we've seen it in the past.

speaker
Jason Cryer
Analyst, Craig Hallam

Well, fingers crossed we see something like that again. Thank you, guys.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Your next question comes from the line of Rolf Schackert with William Bayer. Please go ahead.

speaker
Rolf Schackert
Analyst, William Bayer

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just on some of the pressures you're seeing in the search engine marketing channels from the carriers coming back online, would you sort of categorize this as sort of typical, I guess, pressures you've seen before and would have, you know, have to build workarounds for, or is there something different or more pronounced from what you see today? And maybe just a follow-up question there is, maybe if you could provide some perspective in what you're seeing in some of the incremental channels that you've been testing, that also would be helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so thanks, Ralph. I would say there's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the competitive pressure we're seeing. It's most acute, as you'd expect, in some of the industry-specific channels like search. We're seeing more stability in more generalized channels like social and video. And so that's where some of our dollars are being directed in order to kind of offset some of the competitive pressure in search. So nothing really out of the ordinary. What was this? Remind me of the second part of the question?

speaker
Rolf Schackert
Analyst, William Bayer

Yeah, just any sort of update you can provide or metrics around social or the video channels and just any progress that you're making there.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I got it. So these were channels that we were fairly active in before the downturn, and then as the auto-monetization kind of fell out, we pulled back a bit in these channels. And so there's a part of this that's just kind of reactivating the engine and rescaling the engine. And we're seeing some traction, right? So some of these channels are beginning to scale, and then there's some incremental platforms which we've not been as active in in the past, which now with monetization where it is, we believe we should be able to compete as well.

speaker
Rolf Schackert
Analyst, William Bayer

Okay, great. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, y'all.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Your next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon with Needham. Please go ahead.

speaker
Mayank Tandon
Analyst, Needham

Thank you. Good evening. Jamie and Joseph, even though you didn't provide specific guidance for the fourth quarter, could you just remind us of the seasonality just so that we get our model straight, go and get over our skis? Any thoughts around how we should think about the top line, VMD, and just the leverage of the model on the EBITDA front?

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So thanks for the question. In terms of seasonality, Q3 to Q4 tends to be down sort of single-digit, low single-digit percent, like 3%, 4%, 3% to 5%, I would say, is the zone. And then in terms of VMD, I'd say no change in what we've said previously, which is sort of looking at the high 20s is where we're targeting as we run the business. And then lastly, in EBITDA, as I said in my prepared remarks, sort of adding your current levels, Q1 was 13.5%. Q2 was 14% adjusted EBITDA margins. Q3 guide implies us basically in that same ballpark as well. You know, the midpoint is just shy of 14. So I think we're sort of planning to sort of maintain those levels is our goal. And that means that we'll modulate expenses we've been doing. What you're seeing implied in Q3 is a step up in expenses, you know, and some of that will continue obviously into Q4. And again, very much in line with what we said at the start of the year. We expected the back half of the year to have incremental investments, especially around our technology areas and AI and other areas.

speaker
Mayank Tandon
Analyst, Needham

Right. That's helpful. And then going from a short-term question to a long-term question, Jamie, you talked about the billion-dollar roadmap to get there. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more on how you think about the growth coming organically forward? Are you including M&A opportunities to get to that type of revenue growth target? And then also, I would add that, is this contingent on adding larger carriers that aren't clients today, or do you feel like you have enough headroom to grow within the account base to really get to that type of level?

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So hopefully it's not a long-term question. We hope to get there relatively soon. And we think we can do so organically and with our existing customer base. So the plan that we've got really relies on the distribution side. It's about continuing to improve performance for carriers and agents through AI products like smart campaigns. We've got a reliable pattern established now where when we deploy these products, they improve performance, we get more budget, we get more pricing. And so that's a part of it. With agents, we're expanding products to get more share of their wallet. And then on the traffic side of the marketplace, we think we can sort of size the opportunity in under and unpenetrated channels that we're beginning to sort of expand into and scale up. And then outside of auto, I think that the homeowner's vertical and other non-auto verticals could sort of round it out. So our plan to get to a billion of revenue does not rely on M&A, but as Joseph mentioned, and feel free to layer on Joseph, you know, that's a potential accelerant.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

And maybe what I'd add, Mike, is just, you know, just remind folks of our long-term model. We've said for some time we're going to average 20% top-line growth, and we're going to get to adjust the EBITDA margins to 20% in the long term. If you look at what we've done in EBITDA margins, last year was 11.6% for the year. If you look at where we're, you know, the messaging we've given today and what we've done through the first half of the year, we'll add at least a couple hundred basis points to that for this year. And so as you think about the path to getting to 20%, well, we had 200 basis points a year. You know, we're not saying we're going to do that every year, but, you know, I'd expect this to be at, you know, 100 basis points on average would be probably expected, and we'll see in some years it may be more. So I think that is the recipe we see. We see a real growth opportunity, but also continuing to drive profitability at the same time as we do that top-line growth.

speaker
Mayank Tandon
Analyst, Needham

That's great to hear. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Bayer.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Your next question comes from the line of Chad Kelly with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

speaker
Chad Kelly
Analyst, Oppenheimer

Hey, great. Thanks for taking the question. Just looking at the guidance in the VMM margin, you know, would you expect as the market sort of normalizes and we return to a steady state growth that you would expect your VMM margins to go back into the low 30s? Or how should we just think about the level of VMM margin predictability or VM dollars predictability over the next, you know, call it 18 to 24 months?

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

I think the way we think about VMM is the way we've been talking about since the start of the year. We see this sort of in the high 20s. Sometimes it may go into low 30s, you know, But givenly, I think on average it's going to be in the high 20s. That's sort of our view on how things will shake out. I think it's important to note, Jed, as we've talked about in the past, is we don't run the business on a day-to-day basis. The traffic teams do not sort of try to solve for VMM. They're really a driving VMD. Now, of course, we look at it regularly throughout each month. And, of course, there's a correlation between the maximum VMD point and also the VMM margin nicely overlap with where we're at that sort of high 20s level right now. So we feel good about that. It's the right way to manage the business.

speaker
Chad Kelly
Analyst, Oppenheimer

Got it. And then just the cash balance, great job. It looks like X to buy back could be approaching $200 million end of the year. Do you ever think about acquisitions in terms of helping you get some leverage over some larger carriers and reduce competitive spending on what you have to pay for traffic? Can you just talk about M&A and how you kind of think about using your cash balance to find additional growth?

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I guess when we think about M&A, it's focused on the current strategy. So we believe we want to be the leading growth partner to P&C carriers and agents. So it's not about getting leverage over carriers and agents, but how we help them be successful. How can we help them be more successful? How can we get more share of their wallet to help them grow their business? And that's how we think about the opportunity And I think M&A could, there are some M&A opportunities that could fit within that strategy. But again, I think our desire and our belief is that we win by our customers winning. And if we take the results they give us and we manage that business well, we'll get great results for shareholders. And that in turn helps our flywheel keep going and building shareholder value. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Thanks, Ed. Your next question comes from the line of Mitchell Rubin with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

speaker
Mitchell Rubin
Analyst, Raymond James

Hey, thank you guys for taking my call. This is Mitch on behalf of Greg Peters. So on slide 12, you guys have a table where you're breaking out the auto versus home revenue quarterly. It looks like it's sequentially increased each quarter since 1-2-2-4, and it came down a bit in the second quarter of 25 relative to the first quarter. So I was wondering if you could provide some color on this dynamic.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

I think what I'd say in the home business, the way to think about home, I think this page is actually a visual we give, page 12 of the Investor Deck, to help people see the breakouts of auto versus home revenues. I think looking at them, you know, the relative proportion of giving quarter, I'm not sure I'd quite look at it that way. It's generally been around 10%, give or take. I'd say with the home vertical specifically, maybe I could give you some context around that. That's a vertical that had nice performance in Q2. We had 23% growth year-on-year and also sequentially as well, so a really nice quarter. I think that reflected the broader landscape of home having strong underwriting pickup improvements relative to Q1. You may recall in Q1 we had an environment where the home environment broadly for carers had some pressure with cat losses. As you look into Q2, I think it's become a much more stable underwriting environment. So we feel good about home. will then continue to be an opportunity for us to grow for us over time. So I think that's probably the color I'd give you. It's probably the most important. And then in the visuals, I think in the page, look at the relative proportion. I think it just really reflects how fast auto has grown during this period of growth, given that it was coming out of a relative trough in 23 with the downturn.

speaker
Mitchell Rubin
Analyst, Raymond James

Thank you for the color on that. My next question is on the inaugural share with purchase program. How are you guys thinking about the quarterly cadence with that going forward? Is there going to be any seasonality or relatively consistent from quarter to quarter?

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

You know, the way we're thinking about it now, it's going to be opportunistic, you know, sort of based on market conditions. We don't have a prearranged plan to do certain things within a given quarter. But, again, it's one where we view it as very much, you know, why do we do this? We feel it's a good way to reflect the confidence we have in our business and the strong cash flow generation. I think it's also a way to give that value back to our shareholders in a way that we've talked about in the past is one of the things we consider. And so we're pleased to be able to do it, but it's the opportunistic in how we execute it for our first program.

speaker
Mitchell Rubin
Analyst, Raymond James

Thank you for the answers.

speaker
Joseph Sanborn
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

Thank you. And it seems that we have no further questions for today. That concludes the Q&A and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

speaker
Jamie Mendel
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you all for joining. We continue to make great progress. This quarter was punctuated by a number of records, particularly as it relates to our operating efficiency as we introduce more ML and AI more broadly across the business. We got to record levels of net income, operating cash flow, cash balance, adjusted EBITDA margin, and we're really energized right now. We're towards that billion-dollar revenue goal as we build EverQuote into the unambiguous leading growth partner for P&C insurance providers. Thanks all.

speaker
Operator
Conference Facilitator

This concludes today's conference. We would like to thank everyone for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a pleasant day.

Disclaimer

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