NerdWallet, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NerdWallet Q4 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Jack Nichols. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to the NerdWallet Q4 2021 earnings call. Joining us today, our co-founder and chief executive officer, Tim Chen, and chief financial officer, Lauren St. Clair. Our press release and shareholder letter are available on our investor relations website, and a replay of this update will also be available following the conclusion of today's call. We intend to use our investor relations website as a means of disclosing certain material information and complying with the disclosure obligations under SEC Regulation FD from time to time. As a reminder, today's call is being webcast live and recorded. Before we begin today's remarks and question and answer session, I would like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may relate to future events and expectations and as such constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results and performance may differ from those forward-looking statements as a result of the factors discussed in our prospectus dated November 3rd, 2021 and in other reports filed or to be filed with the SEC. We urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information provided on this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should be aware that these statements should not be considered a guarantee of future performance. Furthermore, during this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release. With that, I will now turn it over to Tim Chen, our co-founder and CEO of NerdWallet.

Thanks, Jack. Good afternoon and thanks for being here. I'm excited to share our results for the first time as a public company. NerdWallet's mission is to provide clarity for all of life's financial decisions. Today, more than ever, financial decisions are relevant and important in people's lives as the pandemic has made economic situations difficult for many. Being a public company gives us a stronger platform and more resources to achieve our vision of a world where everyone makes financial decisions with confidence. We strive to make this vision a reality by empowering consumers and SMBs with trustworthy and knowledgeable financial guidance, while helping our financial services partners cost-effectively reach well-informed consumers who are a great match for their products. To accomplish this, we focus on three key areas. First, blending and expanding in new verticals and geographies. Second, deepening our integration within existing verticals. And lastly, engaging our consumers. We're happy to say that efforts in these areas are paying off. 2021 was a year of sustained momentum at NerdWallet, culminating in unseasonably high Q4 revenue. While COVID-19 impacted our business in 2020, we saw several positive signs of recovery last year, both in our financial performance and in our ability to make progress on several initiatives. there were plenty of accomplishments to celebrate in 2021. To name a few, we drove an average of 19 million monthly unique users, or MUUs, to our platform, and we continued our efforts to register and engage those MUUs, ending the year with over 10 million registered users. We grew across every revenue category. Credit cards, loans, and other verticals all posted over 50% growth in 2021, generating $380 million in total revenue. We continued the integration of Fundera by NerdWallet, resulting in strong engagement in SMB loans with a net dollar repeat rate for our Q1 2021 cohort exceeding 65%, which is even better than our pre-COVID cohorts. And we followed our 2020 launch of NerdWallet UK with the launch of NerdWallet Canada in July 2021. leveraging our extensible organic playbook to bring trusted financial guidance to our second international market. We're excited about our Q4 results in particular. In the fourth quarter, we achieved strong year-over-year revenue and MUU growth and generated positive adjusted EBITDA while investing both in our trusted brand and in our nerds. Our vertical integration of Fundera by NerdWallet continued to gain momentum. During the second half of the year, we launched two new SMB marketplaces, one for payment processors and one for insurance providers. Both of these marketplaces enable small business owners to get qualified for and matched with multiple providers at once, putting the power to make the right financial decision in their hands. We believe that product developments like these play an important role in driving the momentum of our other verticals and increasing our share of revenue from existing customers. At the end of Q4, we launched our Unlock Your Dreams brand campaign, highlighting how NerdWallet's financial guidance, tools, and products enable consumers to reach their dreams. The campaign has already appeared across a variety of notable media spots and will also be featured on new to NerdWallet marketing channels such as TikTok, HBO Max, and Peacock. We believe these investments will continue to build our brand awareness and establish NerdWallet as the trusted source consumers turn to and return to for all their money questions. Between stock market volatility, rising inflation, and the extension of student loan forbearance, the financial complexities confronting consumers today are unprecedented. To help them navigate these challenges and cultivate user engagement, our nerds have been disseminating high-quality guidance across all of these timely topics and more on various channels, including our Smart Money podcast, Instagram, YouTube, as well as in our CRM newsletter. Additionally, we made a key leadership hire in John Kane, our new Chief Product Officer, to accelerate our product development and deliver even more engaging product experiences. John has over 20 years of experience in building, scaling, and optimizing consumer products across desktop and mobile. We're confident that John will help us build products that better serve our consumers and also drive improvements in our conversion and monetization. Looking ahead, We will build on the momentum we saw in 2021 by finding new ways to engage our users, helping more consumers and SMBs, and serving our financial services partners even more effectively. We're confident that the investments we're making in these areas will enable us to address significant market opportunities ahead. At the same time, the events of the past several years have made it clear how critical it is for NerdWallet to do our part in creating a more equitable world. To that end, we will be investing in the growth of our nerds, helping to provide underserved communities with access to equitable financial products and services through our corporate social responsibility program, and doing all of the work necessary to achieve our vision, a world where everyone makes financial decisions with confidence. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Lauren St. Clair, our CFO, who will discuss our Q4 and 2021 full-year results. Lauren?