ThredUp Inc.

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ThredUP second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lauren Frasch, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss ThredUp's fourth quarter and 2025 financial results. With me are James Reinhart, ThredUp CEO and co-founder, and Sean Sobers, CFO. We posted our press release and supplemental financial information on our Investor Relations website at ir.thredup.com. This call is being webcast on our IR website, and a replay of this call will be available on the site shortly. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that we will make forward-looking statements during the course of this call. Such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results can differ materially. Please refer to our earnings release, the supplemental financial information, and our forms 10-K and 10-Q for more information on these expectations, assumptions, and related risk factors. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release and supplemental financial information, which are distributed and available to the public through our investor relations website located at ir.threadup.com. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to James. James?

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm James Reinhart, CEO and co-founder of ThredUP. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, I'll walk through our Q2 results, the key drivers behind them, and how we're thinking about the back half of the year. I'll then hand it over to Sean Sobers, our chief financial officer, to walk through the financials in more detail and provide our outlook for Q3, Q4, and the full year. We'll close with a question and answer session. First, let me start with the results. In the second quarter, revenue was 90.8 million, up 16.9% year over year. First margin was 79.9%, up 40 basis points. Net loss was 5.9 million, and adjusted EBITDA was 4.8 million, or 5.3% of revenue. Active buyers on a trailing 12-month basis also grew 21% year over year, but orders were up 22%. All of these metrics exceeded our expectations. We're pleased with our Q2 results. but this was a tougher consumer environment than we would have expected at the beginning of the year. Despite a record quarter for new buyers acquired and record active buyers, we had to be incrementally promotional to drive conversion among our most price sensitive shoppers. This approach in Q2 led to lower ASPs and average revenue per buyer. And ultimately we estimate a $3 million headwind to our top line results in Q2. Turning to the back half of the year, as we continue to move throughout 2026, our focus remains on the three strategic priorities that I outlined last quarter. Continuing to grow and retain high value buyers, scaling high quality premium supply from a diverse group of sellers, and developing AI technology that helps customers discover and shop across our vast marketplace. New buyer growth was again strong, up 13% in the quarter, lapping the 72% growth from the prior year quarter. Q2 was our strongest quarter on record for new buyers acquired. This is especially promising due to the higher expected LTVs of these new buyers and is consistent with our ongoing shift to a more premium buyer. We are continuing to reduce spend on Google PMAX in favor of Meta and Pinterest, where LTVs are higher, customer acquisition costs are coming down, and volume is scaling quickly. As such, new customer volume on Meta and Pinterest grew 130% and 145% year-over-year respectively. Brand is a big part of why that shift is working. We believe that those who discover secondhand through creators and culture rather than through search or promotions tend to be stickier over time. Our most recent campaign, Dress the Party, generated hundreds of millions of earned impressions this June, proof that we can create an owned cultural moment, not just buy media around one. On the supply side, active sellers grew to record levels with quality keeping pace. The volume of premium bag items was up 32% year over year, representing 12% of the overall mix. We're targeting an even stronger mix by year end through seller incentives, new acquisition channels for premium sellers, and continuing investment in the seller experience. In June, we opened direct listings, our peer-to-peer offering, to everyone in our marketplace. Since then, items listed are up 89% month over month. and there are now more than 100,000 items listed with an average listing price of $80. While just a small fraction of total available items, we're pleased with the steady organic growth and premium mix of these items. Let me turn to resell as a service. This quarter, we launched three new brand storefronts, Steve Madden, Dolce Vita and Betsy Johnson. As a reminder, each new brand gives us access to an entirely new set of sellers, customers with real affinity for that brand who send us their clean-out kits because they trust the storefront carrying a name they already shop. That's a distribution advantage we don't get from any other channel, and it compounds every time we add a new brand to the roster. Now let me talk about the product experience. We're now more than two years into our AI transformation work. No longer do we merely, quote, work on AI products. Rather, they are, quote, the foundation of everything we build across the enterprise. I'm often asked what's the biggest impact short and long term. On the short term, it's efficiency and cost leverage. I'm confident that advancements in AI technology will provide significant cost savings for the business by reducing the need to grow headcount as fast and by helping our teams to be more productive. But the phase we're entering now is closer to what I think the long term impact will be. The speed at which we can test, learn, adapt is accelerating. The rate at which we can develop next-generation product experiences, test pricing algorithms, design new backend operations processes is unlike anything I've seen in my years running the business. Of course, many companies will speed up, and the rate of change we will see across consumer experiences will likely accelerate. But we think that we'll only make our unique, defensible competitive advantages more pronounced. generative AI will commoditize a lot of the technology stack but it will not replace the fact that we still put real clothes on every day our continued investments in our supply chain and processing infrastructure our compounding data advantage and our trusted marketplace enable us to build world-class buyer and seller experiences with that context let me turn to recent promise advancements over the past several calls i've walked you through individual features that use AI to make a 5 million single skew catalog feel more easily shoppable. I believe the most powerful example for where our technology is going now is with our real-time personalization engine. We see more than 250,000 anonymous sessions a day. Historically, the experience stayed largely static until our systems adapted for the shopper's next visit. Our new real-time engine reads intent within seconds and retailers the feed on the very next and Fetch of Inventory. In our first A-B test, I drove a 5% lift in item engagement and a 7% lift in profit per buyer for new customers. It's early, but it's a real signal on what this system can unlock. We've also now widely deployed several AI-driven product experience to cut down the overwhelm of shopping secondhand. Clustering, Exact Match and Notify Me all get at reducing cognitive shopping friction and are especially effective for newer customers. Clustering brings visually similar items together into a single browsing experience, keying off buyer intent and preference. Exact Match goes further and aggregates listings of the exact same item into a single product page, where one item means one page, where a user chooses their size, color, or condition, rather than seeing the same item show up as 10 near-identical listings. Both features remove visual redundancy and bring secondhand shopping closer to a traditional e-commerce experience. critical technology for scaling our marketplace. This advancement also unlocks a Notify Me feature. Notify Me turns a sold out single SKU item from a dead end into a reason to come back once it's restocked. And opt-ins from Notify Me have grown more than 50% week over week since its launch. For someone new to resale, this makes our marketplace feel as easy to shop as buying new. Taken together, this is why we believe that advancements in AI create a structural advantage for us. It makes our marketplace more fun to shop and more efficient for us to run. Now let's look ahead. While Sean will discuss our second half guidance in more detail, I want to be clear that we likely could have maintained our original second half outlook. However, doing so would have required just about every variable to fall in our favor. Gas prices to come back down and uncertainty to abate. These are acceleration that has proved to be unpredictable the last few years and flawless execution of price, promotion, and customer targeting. This seemed a high bar and one that could risk investor confidence if even one of these things moved against us. Our view is that the business is executing at a high level with growing active buyers, strong new buyer and seller growth fundamentals, and an exceptional product pipeline. Even with our updated guidance, our two-year average revenue growth rate in the second half of the year is projected to be 16.6%. Our current approach now allows us to stay committed to building durable compounding performance over time without compromising our long-term vision for short-term gains. With that, I'll turn it over to Sean.

Thanks, James. I'll begin with an overview of our results and follow up with guidance for the third and fourth quarters and full year of 2026. I will discuss non-GAAP results throughout my remarks. We're pleased with our second quarter results. Despite a more challenging consumer and macroeconomic environment than we had anticipated, we delivered strong revenue growth, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA, all of which exceeded our internal expectations. For the second quarter of 2026, revenue totaled $90.8 million, an increase of 16.9% year over year. Our performance was primarily driven by strong buyer trends and higher repurchase rates supported by elevated promotional activity. These drivers resulted in another record quarter for new buyers acquired with new buyer acquisitions up 13.1% year over year. I finished the quarter with 1.8 million active buyers for the trailing 12 months of 21% over last year, while we had 1.9 million orders in the second quarter of 22% year over year. For the second quarter of 2026, gross margin was 79.9%. A 40 basis point increase versus the same quarter last year as a result of improved efficiency and logistics. The second quarter of 2026, gap net loss was $5.9 million compared to gap net loss of $5.2 million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $4.8 million or 5.3% of revenue for the second quarter of 2026, outperforming our internal expectations. Our Q2 result represented 140 basis point increase over last year. Turning to the balance sheet, we began the quarter with $54.4 million in cash and securities and ended the quarter with $57.4 million. We invested $2.7 million on CapEx and generated $3 million in cash in Q2. We continue to expect similar levels of CapEx investment in 2026 as of last year, or 2025. Now I would like to turn to guidance. As James noted, our underlying fundamentals remain strong. In this environment, we are choosing to prioritize buyer engagement, and that means investing more in promotions in the second half. We believe protecting buyer engagement is essential to long-term value creation. Because we expect these elevated promotions to create a revenue headwind of approximately $7 million in the second half, we are updating our revenue and EBITDA margin expectations for the balance of the year. In the third quarter, we now expect revenue in the range of $87 to $89 million, representing 7% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and a 20.3% two-year average growth rate. Gross margin in the range of 78 to 79%, adjusted EBITDA of approximately 4% of revenue, and basic weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 132 million shares. In the fourth quarter, we now expect revenue in the range of $85 to $87 million, representing 8% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and a 13.2 two-year average growth rate. Gross margins in the range of 77.5% to 78.5%, adjusted EBITDA of approximately 6% of revenue, and basic weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 133 million shares. For the full year of 2026, we now expect revenue in the range of $344.4 to $348.4 million, reflecting 11% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and a 15.5% two-year average growth rate. Gross margin in the range of 78.7 to 79.1%, adjusted EBITDA approximately 4.7% of revenue, representing approximately 30 basis points expansion versus last year, and basic weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 131 million shares. Lastly, we expect to continue to be cash flow positive for the full year. As we progress through the back half of 2026 and throughout 2027, we will balance growth investments while planning to drive EBITDA expansion. Despite the temporary macroeconomic friction outside of our control, we remain confident in the core fundamentals of our marketplace, our proven ability to engage buyers, and our path forward towards long-term growth and profitability. James and I are now ready for your questions. Operator, please open the line.

We will now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Our first question will come from the line of Dylan Corden with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'm curious just sort of coming off the quarter that you had and with the idea that you're sort of engaging a stickier buyer and presumably incentivizing or stimulating demand through a higher promo, why sort of the level of caution that you're embedding in the guide? You know, maybe if you can speak to what you're kind of currently seeing in the business or, you know, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Dylan. Yeah, I mean, Q2, you know, we beat all of our internal expectations. But, you know, as I indicated, you know, it was grindy out there, you know, in June. You know, it was just more challenging to get customers to convert. You know, we saw lots of visitors, lots of traffic, but you could tell that people, you know, needed incentives and promotions to convert. and so you know we noticed that through June and I think as we came into July we saw some of that same behavior you know coming out of fourth of July you know certainly through the first couple of weeks and so you know I think that we probably could have sort of powered through it but I think it's going to be challenging Dylan in this you know with some of the segments of customers that have been a little bit more price sensitive and so I think We just decided to be a little bit more cautious with how we thought about the back half of the year, knowing that we will have to be incrementally promotional to maintain buyer engagement. But again, I think the most important thing when you hit these types of points is to maintain strong cohorts and strong buyers. And so I think we made the conscious decision to be a little bit more promotional, especially to this segment of more budget shoppers. which again I just want to emphasize it's really that segment of our customer base which is probably less than 20% at this point customers making under $60,000 a year that's really where this is landing and we think that that's going to be temporary and we're continuing to shift our mix of customers out of that but I think it's going to be a little bit of a headwind in the back half of the year and so that's why we made the change we did.

Yep, and just two follow-ups from that. When you say more promotional, do you mean adjusting price or actually kind of going out with real, more traditional type of discounts or offers? And then just to confirm the hit on the EBITDA margin line, what's sort of driving that as far as your prior outlook for the year? Thanks.

Sure. I'll let Sean cover the EBITDA one, but on price and erosion, I appreciate you asking. We're really emphasizing... discounts on aging inventory. And so we used to be able to sell items that say were 60 days old or 90 days old at higher prices. But what we're finding is that we want to really protect the marketplace, willingness to pay of buyers, fresh inventory, new listings. And so we're not discounting that product. We're discounting older inventory, and I think that's what's causing us for these elevated pricing promotions. And to be really direct, the reason why I think that we could have maybe squeezed through the back half of the year, but we would have had to do things to discount kind of our best fresh inventory that's coming online in ways that I think are unnatural and in ways that I think actually really hurt us in 2027. with customer expectations, willingness to pay. And so I think this is totally the right strategy. It's just something that we're going to have to navigate for these couple of quarters.

And Dylan, on the EBITDA side, obviously the biggest hit is revenue and the flow through from there. So if you can kind of just take the revenue that you reduce it to down to like the gross margin rate about, you know, 79, 80%. But I think the piece that makes it a little more impactful is that We are staying on the investment mode in marketing and in processing because we believe in the business and we're very confident this is temporary. So those two together really have an impact on the EBITDA in the short term in Q3 and in Q4.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Oliver Chin with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Hi, James and Sean. On your comments, what's driving your thoughts that this could be temporary in terms of What you're seeing lately on that price sensitive consumer. And also as we think about ASP, what's happening with how we should model ASP in light of what you're seeing as well. Thank you.

Yeah. Hey, Oliver. You know, I think, you know, we think that the higher gas prices that have come from, you know, sort of conflict in the Middle East, I think, you know, are weighing on, again, Oliver, this sort of budget customer issue. The reason why I think it's a little bit more temporary is that we are shifting our mix of customers away from that budget customer. On a percentage basis, that budget customer is as low as a percent of our overall mix as it has been in a very, very long time. What we're seeing among customers who are making $100,000, $150,000 a year is that their growth rate is significantly higher than that budget customer. We are shifting the business into that premium segment, not luxury by any means, but more premium. I think our strategy is to move away from having that exposure, but I do think it's still part of our mix today, which is why we think the combination of gas prices and the combination of the current mix is a temporary thing. As far as average selling prices, We're not probably going to... I wouldn't move them for 2027. I think we will be a little bit more promotional with some of our older inventory in the back half of 26. But I think in general, the mix of goods is actually improving and prices are going up. But again, we're just discounting this segment of our aging and older inventory.

Okay. And on the mix strategy, is that... What's limiting that to be even better? Is it supply or demand? It sounds like you're getting good acquisition, but supply also matters too. And we talk regularly about AI, but what's changed the most since we last talked in AI? It sounds like reinforcement learning is coming into play, but can AI offset some of the weaknesses you're seeing in terms of the model?

Well, yeah, I mean, on the mix, you're exactly right. I mean, we're shifting the buyer mix up. So I think part of the channel shift into Meta and Pinterest is really proving to be valuable. Those customers have significantly higher LTVs than the Google PMAX customer. And I think, as you saw in the prepared remarks, premium as a percent of our mix is also growing, and that is having success. So I would say we're slowly moving the entire marketplace up in that direction. But it doesn't happen overnight. But I think the general trend is right. And then on the AI front, I think where the most impactful work we're doing is what I commented on, which is just the ability to real-time personalize browsers. We're seeing lift in that for window shoppers, for our new buyers. and I think part of why the acquisition engine is continuing to work as well as it is is conversion rates of new visitors and that new visitor conversion rate is being amplified by the work in AI. So I do think it is helping and we'll just kind of keep executing against that.

Thank you. Best regards.

Our next question will come from the line of Ike Borico with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hey, this is Robert. I just want to clarify. So it sounds like you guys are maintaining the investment into demand creation. So as we look towards the back half of the year, should it be more like average order value being impacted from promotions? And will orders or active buyers continue to maintain the same level? Is that how we should be thinking about it?

Yeah, Robert, that's right. I mean, you should see average order values come down a little bit. But you should see orders continue to be strong, buyers continue to be strong And then again, we're working every day to sort of refine that and improve that And I think to the extent that the environment gets a little bit better, some of the seasonal acceleration takes place I think we're going to have room to take those average order values up But I think that's probably the right way to model it right now

Yeah, and just as a follow-up, usually you pull back in marketing in 4Q. Is that going to be the case here, or are you going to ramp up through the back half?

I think right now we're not planning to do anything different than we did last year on the marketing side, so I would not characterize it as a ramp up or a big ramp down. I think Q4 last year was stronger than our expectations, and I think we feel like we're well-positioned for Q4 in the guide that we provided. Gotcha. Thank you.

Our next question will come from the line of Matt Carando with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Can you just clarify, I guess, how much of the guidance cut is attributed? It sounds like mostly you're attributing it to weakness with your lower-end customer, but it also sounds like there's a bit of an assortment reset going on where you're trying to get rid of some older inventory and maybe reprioritize. Some new elements in the assortment that may be higher AOV over time to cater to a higher end customer. Can you parse that out for us? I just want to make sure I understand what's going on there.

Yeah, Matt, I mean, I would say both things are true. So the weakness that we're seeing is by and large from this segment of buyers making under $60,000 a year. I mean, we can see it so clearly in the data. which is why it's actually very easy for us to tell you what we think the quantum of the myth is because you can just see it in their purchasing behavior and frequency and what they're buying and what types of promotions and credits are required to get them to move. So it's actually quite easy. We were testing this all in June, trying to understand the credit elasticity, the discount elasticity to drive purchases of that lower income product. cohort. And that's how we were able to really see what we think will happen in the back half of the year. At the same time, we are definitely like shifting the mix and improving kind of the fresh products that are coming online. And if that mix becomes a larger part of what we do in the back half of the year, I think there is potentially some upside there. But at the same time, we know we need to move some of that older stuff and we can do it effectively with this more budget shopper. But again, we're really making the decision to not discount our best stuff, Matt. It would be easy to start to say, hey, let's discount the brand new products that are coming online. They're very attractive to customers. We can drive incrementality. But I think that's a very slippery slope when you're building a brand and you're building credibility. And I don't want to do that because I think it ultimately degrades Brand Equity and Willingness to Pay Over Time. And so we're going to maintain standards and expectations there for new product coming online and really push on the older stuff.

And Matt, to add to that, the weakness in the customer and the mix shift that we're doing, again, are both back to driving forces of the macro economic environment, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. And then just maybe... How long do you think the assortment reset takes? Like, can it be completed by the third quarter so that theoretically you could see growth in AOVs and even maybe better top line growth by the fourth quarter if you've met enough conservatism here? Or how should we think about, I guess, the timing of the reset of the assortment and how long that takes?

I think the assortment, I mean, I wouldn't characterize it as a reset of the assortment. I mean, we're continuing to push Put more product online than ever. I mean, the ops engine and processing is very strong. I would say that the challenge that we saw as June concluded and into July is that you just need to be more promotional on some of this older stuff to move customers off the couch to purchase. And so the environment just being incrementally weaker, I think is what we're trying to do. So versus trying to discount your freshest product, which we think doesn't make sense. And so we're trying to weaponize older inventory to drive engagement and conversion of that more budget consumer. Okay, I'll leave it there, guys. Thank you.

Our next question will come from the line of Bobby Brooks with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, team. Thank you for taking my questions. I thought it was really interesting to hear the average listing price coming through the peer-to-peer model was $60 or $80, I think you said. Is it fair, then, to think that this supply funnel is skewing more to the more premium than what is coming through the clean-out bags? I just want to hear your thoughts there.

Yeah, Bobby, yes, the stuff coming through direct listings is definitely more premium. You know, we're still making a lot of progress on premium, you know, core marketplace bags. You know, as I noted, premium items is up 32%, you know, year over year. So we're making a lot of progress in premium kind of across the spectrum. But yes, direct listings items are premium. certainly higher priced. And that's by design from an average listing price because we don't accept certain low quality brands. We don't allow you to price items below $20. So we've put some guardrails in there, Bobby, again, to create conditions for an improving assortment as we continue to grow that part of the business.

Awesome. And then just curious to hear on the peer-to-peer piece, Have you seen the sell-through rates? Is it comparable to what the managed marketplace is seeing? Any differences there? I would think that maybe the peer-to-peer, they're going to be asking for higher, maybe asking for more than what it's worth, and so it's slowing. I hear more there.

Yeah, sell-through is definitely slower in direct listings, but it's sort of consistent across, I think, other peer-to-peer sites. And yes, sellers tend to overprice items relative to what the market clearing price data should be. So yes, the sell-through is slower, but I think we're going to educate sellers. Got it.

And then maybe just wanted to hear, obviously, definitely a dichotomy between kind of the more stressed consumers versus the higher, you know, the more affluent consumers that have kind of been gravitating to the site more recently. Just maybe wanted to hear, is there a different, and obviously you've made the point of like that older inventory discounting that to engage those, you know, more stressed consumers, but just like on the broader marketing plan, are there any other key distinctions between how you're targeting those two groups or is it kind of the same strategy throughout both?

Yeah, the shift that's been consistent I think all year has been away from the Google PMAX customer who tends to have a lower acquisition cost but definitely a lower LTV and I think the shift has been moving to more meta, more Pinterest and What's really working there is that those customers have significantly higher LTVs, but we're almost driving the tax much lower than we would have thought six months ago. And so the paybacks are strong in those channels. Customer acquisition continues to be robust. And so that's part of what makes us feel really good about this shift to this more premium customer. And again, we need more premium supply to sort of feed that engine. And again, that more premium customer is growing at a much faster rate than our budget choppers. And so what we're really seeing in June and through this portion of a weaker environment is really just this budget chopper. And so we just have to sort of navigate and transition through that.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Dana Telsey with Telsey Advisory Group. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. In this environment where it seems like the focus is more on a wardrobe update than core replenishment, with the products that you're talking and obviously that lower income consumer, Is there a difference between what you're seeing the lower income consumers spend on and category-wise versus what you're seeing your $100,000 plus income spend on? And what does this mean for the RASP business? Getting Steve Madden, Dolce Vita, those are all very growthy brands. Is there more there and anything you're seeing by category? Thank you.

Yeah, Dana, I don't have specific nuanced category data, but I think your instincts are right. It's definitely the customer who's doing better in this K-shaped economy is definitely buying for fun and delight and travel. We've seen a lot of that over the summer for holiday vacations and things like that, whereas your budget shopper, and again, I think part of the discounting approach is to move some of the staples and sort of basics to that budget shopper, but you have to do that at a lower price than you did 12 months ago. But it's very clear in the data around the behaviors of the group that's doing well and the group that's not. And so I think we just need to keep inching the assortment and inching the buyer base up. And we've been doing that over the last couple of years, but You know, it's not all the way there.

Got it. And on the RAS part, are there other new brands that are coming in?

Yeah, on the RAS side, sorry. Yes, you know, we're definitely focused on more elevated brands. I mean, we did something in the spring, a big push with Reformation. You know, we're planning to do this with a number of brands in the fall. And yes, our RAS strategy is really focused on Those brands that serve the customer who is doing well. And I think we're definitely having some success there. So we're going to keep doing more of that. But RAS is in a nice rhythm now of adding clients to the roster and getting those clients to be active. So I'm feeling quite good about that momentum.

Thank you. and this concludes the question and answer session. I'll hand the call back over to James Reinhart for any closing comments.

Well, thank you all for joining us today. Thank you especially to the ThredUp team for your continued hard work in this operating environment and look forward to seeing you all on our next call. Thank you.

That will conclude today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.