Cars.com Inc. Common Stock

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CARS.com first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 8, of 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Catherine Chen, President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the CARS.com, Inc. First Quarter 2025 Conference Call. With me today are Alex Sutter, CEO, and Sonia Jane, CFO. Alex will start by discussing the business highlights from our first quarter. Then, Sonia will discuss our financial results in greater detail along with our outlook. We'll finish the call with Q&A. Before I turn the call over to Alex, I'd like to draw your attention to our forward-looking statements and the description and definition of non-GAAP financial measures, which can be found in our presentation. We will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted net income, and free cash flow. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the financial table included with our earnings press release and in the appendix of our presentation. Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our SEC filing, including those in our most recently filed 10-K, which is available on the IR section of our website. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. And now, I'll turn the call over to Alex.

Thank you, Catherine. We delivered a solid first quarter, making important progress on growth initiatives while also strengthening our bottom line. Revenue of $179 million was within our guidance range, and adjusted EBITDA was a highlight for the quarter, exceeding the high end of our expected range by more than a point. Strong free cash flow also enabled us to repurchase 22 million of shares during the quarter, which pays well ahead of our capital return commitment for the year. Before we get further into Q1 results, let's take a step back to ground our long-term strategy in light of the changes happening in automotive. Our platform strategy, which combines a leading and scaled consumer marketplace with dealer software tools, has been key to our diversified growth. there is still significant opportunity to deepen product penetration, and we are seeing elevated interest in Accutrade and Dealer Club as the industry focuses on used cars. Thoughtful product innovation, leveraging AI and data intelligence positions us well to meet industry demand to simplify car buying and selling. And the same is true for consumers, where our sustained investments in shopping tools and brand leadership are translating into record marketplace metrics. While we're not immune to near-term uncertainty that has affected the automotive outlook, the core value proposition of our platform remains incredibly strong and arguably even more relevant for the industry today. We gained share in each of our end markets to exit March with much stronger momentum relative to the soft start in January that we discussed on our last call. Dealer count rose to 19,250 dealers. the best quarter of sequential organic customer growth since mid-2022. Our solutions portfolio was a standout in Q1, adding over 100 new website customers and additional AccuTrade subscribers. For consumers, our in-depth editorial and news coverage of tariffs is resonating with shoppers, helping set a new record for unique visitors in Q1. As a result, OEM business also grew 6% year-over-year. reflecting the value automakers place on our high-quality and market audience. These broad-based improvements, from unit growth to operational efficiency, are strong signals that dealer revenue will return to year-over-year growth. We are also particularly well-placed to benefit from the emerging tailwinds in the marketplace and used car solutions. The Cars.com marketplace is supporting a surge in consumer interest that peaked in March and stayed strong through April. reflecting a better user experience as well as incremental demand from tariff-motivated shoppers. A record 29 million average monthly unique visitors utilized CARS.com to browse, research, and submit leads in Q1. Overall traffic of 170 million visits was also up 1% year-over-year after adjusting for an extra lead day in 2024. Specifically, traffic to our news and editorial content was up more than 50% year-over-year, driven by resources like our American-Made Index. Multi-year investments in brand marketing and editorial are producing clear and strong ROI for our marketplace, and we expect to sustain engagement with content like our Affordability Report and the next American-Made Index update due in June. Attribution and marketplace analytics also remain at the forefront of our engineering and product development roadmap. In the second quarter, we'll be incorporating additional data intelligence into cars.com leads, expanding dealers' access to important and actionable insights like consumer shopping behavior and estimated budget. We expect this enhancement to improve lead quality and also boost long-term dealer satisfaction. This feature will be bundled into Marketplace packages and another example of our commitment to enhancing value delivery. We're optimistic that audience strength and product innovation combined with new commercial leadership will help Marketplace contribute to overall dealer revenue growth in 2025. Turning to the supply side, we are well positioned to drive adoption of AccuTrade and Dealer Club as the market focuses on acquiring used vehicle inventory. Accutrade appraisal volume was up over 813,000 appraisals in Q1, up a substantial 16% quarter-over-quarter, and putting us well on our way to over 1 million quarterly appraisals. On an appraisal-per-dealer basis, the 14% quarter-over-quarter increase in Q1 was the best sequential growth we've seen since starting to track this metric. This strong activity points to not only the success of our redesigned sales onboarding and account management support model, but also the increasing importance of acquiring in-demand, late model, high-quality vehicles directly from consumers. On average, the top quartile of Accutrade users acquired nearly 50 cars through the service lane in February and March, demonstrating the importance and scale of Accutrade's impact. Dealer Club, the latest addition to our platform, also opens up a new channel for used vehicle acquisition or disposal via transparent, reputation-based dealer-to-dealer auctions. In its first two months of integration with the Cars Commerce platform, Dealer Club increased active users by 60% and nearly doubled its volume of completed transactions from February to March. We also grew our pipeline by over 2,500 prospects in Q1 alone, leveraging our industry reach to accelerate dealer adoption. Dealer Club users have already benefited from early integration with the Cars Commerce platform, which I also note has been some of our fastest development work to date. In Q1, we updated Dealer Club options with AccuTrade pricing data, providing real-time insights to empower informed buying and selling decisions. Just last week, we also turned on the one-click ability for dealers to push AccuTrade appraisals directly into dealer club auctions. Looking ahead, we plan to use our inventory intelligence to help dealers identify aging inventory on our marketplace or retail websites to manage inventory lifecycle within our platform. Shifting to progress on websites, Dealer Inspire and D2C Media were up nicely in Q1, adding over 100 new customers quarter over quarter. Shortened website time to launch and improved website speed and performance both contributed to the net growth we achieved in the quarter. Moving to our OEM and national business, Q1 revenue was up 6% year over year, and around one-third of our OEM partners increased their spending on cars commerce media. However, late in the quarter, there were early signs from a handful of OEMs looking to more closely manage their media commitments. With auto industry outlook being revised down for the year, we need to operate on the basis that that media spending trend may persist, putting pressure on new car sales for OEMs and franchise dealers. Based on those trends, we believe it's prudent to suspend full-year revenue guidance until external visibility improves. However, the value of our platform remains clear, and we're focused on driving commercial improvements platform innovation, and product adoption, and we remain confident in our ability to drive full year revenue growth. We have also consistently demonstrated sustained cost discipline. Our existing cost controls are performing well, and we have additional operating levers to manage the business across a range of macroeconomic scenarios. As such, we are reaffirming our adjusted EBITDA guidance. In closing, Q1 produced many positive key takeaways that give us confidence and our ability to deliver consistent growth and long-term value creation. Our business is fundamentally strong and resilient, and we believe that we're poised for growth in the current cycle. We're confident that we can execute through dynamic external conditions and reaccelerate our growth trajectory. Now, I'll turn the call to Sonia to discuss first quarter financial performance and our outlook. Sonia.

Thank you, Alex. While first quarter revenue was down slightly year over year, we are pleased that we made progress on multiple growth drivers. We outperformed adjusted EBITDA margin expectations and supported strong capital return initiatives during the first quarter. First quarter revenue of $179 million was within our range of expectations based on the exit rate from Q4 into Q1. and also reflected a handful of discrete timing shifts, primarily stemming from customers reacting to the tear-up environment. Dealer revenue was down 2% year-over-year from a softer-than-normal start to the year for Marketplace, and some pressure on media products, such as in-market video. Re-accelerating Marketplace performance remains a key focus area, and we saw growing signs of improvement throughout the quarter. We were pleased to grow total marketplace customers month over month in February and March, driven by strength in winning independent dealers. Additionally, we improved on the slightly elevated churn that we called out in December and have seen levels improve since January. Alex already pointed out our accomplishments around audience strength in Q1, which we believe is a leading indicator of underlying marketplace health and growth potential. Our solutions portfolio demonstrated strong performance in the quarter, helping offset some of the pressure on marketplace and media. We added over 100 new website customers in Q1, with over 70% of those wins coming from Dealer Inspire. As previously discussed, renegotiating legacy agreements that govern DI packages is a growth initiative for 2025. We completed three of these negotiations during Q1, a strong start to the year that helps us better compete for and win subscribers. Furthermore, we are optimistic that we can favorably revise two to three additional agreements by year end. Accutrade also steadily expanded its user base, crossing the 1,000th subscriber mark during Q1, as we noted in our February earnings call. Sourcing used vehicle inventory is once again in sharp focus after production forecasts were slashed due to recent policy changes, and our new commercial leadership has prioritized converting this influx of interest to drive greater Accutrade and dealer club growth for 2025. Turning to OEM and national, revenue was up 6% year over year, delivering a solid first quarter performance in what is typically a seasonally slower period. Incremental funding also reached its highest Q1 level since 2018, across a broad spectrum of automakers. However, as is to be expected when uncertainty rises, we also saw early indicators that OEMs are more closely managing their marketing and advertising investments. Sell-through rates of our media products remained high, but stepped down modestly from February to March as more tariffs were announced. In general, both OEMs and dealers are signaling that they prefer more flexibility on the timing of media investments to match the faster news cycle as macro factors continue to evolve. We're confident that our value delivery and consumer scale will continue to draw strong spending from our partners despite decreased visibility into the specific timing of investments in this part of our business in the short term. Now switching to operating expenses. First quarter expenses were $173 million compared to $167 million a year ago, up 3% year over year, primarily from higher sevens related costs and the inclusion of new dealer club expenses and partially offset by lower lease costs. First quarter adjusted operating expenses were $155 million, roughly flat to the same period a year ago. Product and technology expenditures increased less than a million dollars year over year on both a reported and adjusted basis. The majority of this increase was attributable to compensation expense, partially offset by lower software licensing costs. Marketing and sales costs increased a million dollars year over year on a reported basis, primarily driven by compensation expense, and was roughly flat on an adjusted basis. as we supported our scaled and growing consumer marketplace with efficient investments in paid and brand marketing. General and administrative expense was up $3 million year-over-year on a reported basis and down $1 million on an adjusted basis. The majority of the reported increase was attributable to severance-related costs, resulting from a targeted headcount reduction in March to optimize marketing, technical operations, and commercial teams. In addition, we simplified organizational structure and increased focus on core strategic initiatives. That loss for the first quarter was $2 million, or negative three cents per diluted share, compared to net income of $1 million, or one cent per diluted share, a year ago, with the variance primarily attributable to the severance-related costs just described above. Adjusted net income for the first quarter was $24 million, or 37 cents per diluted share, compared to $29 million, or 43 cents per diluted share, a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA performance of $51 million in the first quarter was down slightly year over year. We delivered adjusted EBITDA margin of 28.3% in the first quarter, exceeding our outlook. and a result of continued cost discipline coupled with lower than anticipated integration costs associated with the dealer club acquisition. Moving to key metrics. Dealer count of 19,250 customers, not including dealer club users, was up more than 40 dealers quarter over quarter, growing well to start the year. Solutions growth was a bright spot, particularly on websites. In addition, we saw sequential independent dealer growth within Marketplace, a known opportunity for us, and one we actively repositioned resources to drive. Looking ahead, we expect to drive dealer count growth from additional solution sales, improve demand for Marketplace, and converting and cross-selling dealer club users into our subscription-based products. For ARPD, first quarter performance of $2,473 was roughly flat quarter over quarter. and down $32 year over year, primarily reflecting changes in our customer mix. We continue to believe we can return to ARPD expansion in 2025 based on multiple growth initiatives that we previously laid out. First, packaging more value into our marketplace subscriptions, such as with media products, which we will begin to roll out around mid-year as planned. Second, driving more AccuTrade subscriptions through product differentiation and by leveraging OEM endorsements. As more dealers pivot to acquiring used vehicles due to tariff-related production constraints, our sales team reported a notable increase in dealers asking to demo and trial both our Accutrade and Dealer Club solutions in late Q1. Repackaging legacy agreements for websites is also an uplift for ARPD, and our success to start the year gives us confidence we can complete more of these negotiations, which will help align pricing with value delivery. Shifting to our cash flow and balance sheet, net cash provided by operating activities totaled $29 million for the first quarter. Free cash flow was $24 million during the period, down slightly year over year, and reflecting adjusted EBITDA performance. We repurchased approximately 1.6 million shares for $22 million in the first quarter, a strong demonstration of our commitment to return capital to shareholders. Recall in February, we announced the Sherry purchase target of $60 to $70 million for 2025, and we're substantially overachieving this target on an average quarterly basis in Q1. Then outstanding remained at $460 million as of March 31st, 2025, bringing total net leverage to 2.1 times, still at the low end of our target range of 2 to 2.5 times. Total liquidity was $321 million as of March 31, 2025, which provides ample future capacity to invest in our growth strategy and pursue thoughtful capital allocation to create long-term value. Now, let's conclude with second quarter and full year 2025 guidance. As touched upon in the earlier revenue discussion, we are seeing signs that the magnitude and timing of some media investments may continue to shift. given greater near-term macro and tariff-driven uncertainty. This uncertainty is pressuring the new car market, where we are more indexed than other players due to our diversified revenue and strong relationships with OEMs and franchise dealers. While our business is fundamentally strong and we have confidence in the growth opportunities ahead, particularly around the dealer business, we believe it is prudent to adjust our approach to guidance to reflect changing market conditions. As such, we are suspending full-year revenue guidance until visibility improves. To give some color in the absence of an outlook range, we do expect Q2 revenue to be up year over year and quarter over quarter. We also continue to expect full-year revenue to be up year over year, driven by growth initiatives related to greater product adoption, repackaging, and product innovation, including dealer clubs. Growth for the year is expected to be back half-weighted as subscription-based revenue compounds in later quarters. Setting aside external volatility, we remain firmly in control of our cost structure and operational levers. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the second quarter of 2025 is expected to be between 27% and 29%, roughly flat year-over-year at the midpoint, reflecting revenue mix and marginally higher investments in our stated growth initiatives. We are also reaffirming an adjusted EBITDA margin outlook for fiscal 2025 between 29% and 31%. Consumers and dealers are increasingly gravitating to our platform, and upcoming product releases and enhancements to our commercial approach should further amplify our platform differentiation and appeal. Despite some market uncertainty, our business remains strong, and we are confident in our ability to deliver full-year growth. And with that, I'd like to open the call for Q&A. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, Please lift the handset before pressing any keys.

One moment, please, for your first question.

Your first question comes from Naved Kan of B. Riley Securities. Your line is already open.

Thank you very much.

I have two questions. understanding that the tariffs have created a ton of uncertainty for the different players, including the OEMs, the dealers, and the marketplaces. I'm just trying to sort of understand the impact, and it seems like it could be twofold. One is obviously the dealer and OEM ad spending on the platform, and the second is maybe really driven by how the used car volumes might be affected, may or may not be affected because of the tariff. So trying to understand the magnitude, relative magnitude and the uncertainty in these two buckets. And then the second question I have is around AccuTrade, but I'll save it after you answer the first one.

Sure, Naveed. Thanks for the questions. Well, first of all, on the consumer side, certainly the tariff news has pulled forward a lot of pent up demand of consumers flocking to the marketplace, looking for deals and looking to lock in purchases before tariffs are impacted. And so we are seeing very favorable consumer traffic trends. We think with inventory shortages, like we saw during the COVID pandemic, When there's limited supply, marketplaces also get elevated traffic levels because consumers search far wider radius. So we have a ton of degree of confidence that, you know, organic traffic trends we think are going to persist throughout this year and give us a tailwind of natural consumer usage and value delivery for our customers. I think obviously on the dealer side, we're feeling very front footed. We grew marketplace in February and March. We see positive sentiment from dealers that are leaning into technologies like Accutrade and using dealer club to source used cars, fearing that they won't be able to get new car supply. So fundamentally on the dealer side, we see a lot of health. On the OEM side, I think that's where it's much harder to predict. We had a large OEM say that their upfront commitment, they're no longer committed. They think they'll spend the money, but they want to move to month to month until they get better visibility. And so it's really that uncertainty on the OEM side that gives us pause on our full year view, because that had been a nice growth engine for the business all of last year. And even this year, we grew OEM revenue in the first quarter 6%. So we feel good about the business, but the signals that we're getting give us less certainty on their commitment.

Okay, great. And so my follow-up question was around AccuTrade.

I think you, on the last call, had announced some endorsements and you were optimistic of winning even more endorsements through the course of 2025. So I wanted to get a sense of how we should think about the growth in customer count. Sequentially, I think the numbers look flat. Wondering... if there's a lag there in terms of endorsements translating into dealer wins, or maybe is there something in terms of elevated churn that might be eating away into the basis? Any color would be helpful. Thanks.

No, first of all, I think we feel very confident about AccuTrade and our growth potential. We flagged the numbers in terms of usage growth over the quarter. which fundamentally signals dealers' behavioral change is shifting aggressively to sourcing inventory differently from their service lane customers and also sourcing from marketplaces like cars.com. So we've actually seen elevated interest in both AccuTrade and Dealer Club in the current period because dealers are not confident that they're going to get steady new car supply. So It's slower to ramp on solutions because of the onboarding training and engagement that we need from the dealership to install Accutrade and get them using it. But fundamentally, we feel very good about the inbound interest that we're getting with Accutrade and the sentiment we're getting from the dealers who are using, particularly the power dealers, right? We flagged at the top The quartile of dealerships are acquiring 50 cars a month using our software. So as word of that spreads to other dealers, we anticipate more adoption.

And maybe one other thing to just add related to the endorsement. Those do take kind of a little bit of time to season in the market. So we were expecting to see more impact from those endorsements rolling into our Q2 numbers versus Q1 numbers. And I think from where we sit today, looking at kind of April and the way April shook out, we're feeling good about kind of that upward trajectory in terms of net new AccuTrade units, in addition to the utilization metrics that Alex talked about, which really supports strong long-term retention.

Very helpful. Thank you. Your next question comes from Rajat.

Gupta of JP Morgan. Your line is already open.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I just have like a couple, you know, firstly on the first quarter results, you know, clearly good progress here on several fronts, you know, dealer count going up as well. I mean, you were pretty much in line with, you know, your guidance for revenue, but clearly well ahead on, you know, the EBITDA. I was curious, you know, Was there like some proactive measures that you had started to take, you know, maybe like in March, you know, around cost and investments, you know, as the tariff news, you know, started to gain traction? I was just curious, like, what drove the margin upside versus your initial expectation? And just have a quick follow-up.

Yeah, no, thanks for the question, Rajesh. I think in terms of EBITDA, you know, we've always really focused on managing the cost structure of the business well. I'd point out to a couple different things related to where adjusted EBITDA margins landed. I think, number one, we're excited about the progress we've made in in the dealer club integration process, but the cost did come in a little bit lower than we'd originally planned. So we've been able to move quickly and efficiently OpEx was just generally flat on a year-over-year basis, on an adjusted basis. So that's just general cost discipline. We did make some adjustments late in the quarter. These are actually unrelated to tariffs, more focused around how we want to run the business and tighten up our areas of focus. We did make a targeted headcount reduction. That's less of an impact Q1 in terms of a benefit from a cost structure perspective, more something that you would see in the following quarters.

Understood. That's very helpful. And you mentioned a couple things around, you know, you're starting to see some signals from dealers and OEMs on maybe, you know, just changing spending patterns on media. Okay. But you also guided to second quarter revenue being up. Could you help us tie up those comments? I mean, are you still expecting dealer up and OEM down? Just trying to understand the mix of that. And what are you actually seeing on the ground today, like in April, in terms of just incremental customers? What exactly... are the customers seeing in terms of, you know, have you already started to see a drop in spending, or is it something you just expect in the second half?

Thanks. Yeah, I think that's part of the reason why it's a little bit harder to predict, Rajat, because we are getting mixed signals from both segments. I'd say on the dealer side, we've seen some pullback in media commitments. Like dealers have said, I'm not going to run video advertising this quarter. I'm staying on marketplace. In fact, as I mentioned, we grew marketplace in February and March. So we're seeing dealers understand the importance of getting their inventory found on our marketplace. But we are seeing a pullback in terms of discretionary or ancillary media solutions running alongside or on top. And it's same on the OEM side. I think we're seeing steady commitment. A third of our OEMs actually increased their spending with us in the quarter, but equally we saw some of our bigger OEM clients signal to us that they want to move to month-to-month as opposed to lock in, you know, quarterly or six-month commitments until they see a clearer picture. So I guess the positive is, you know, they still are seeing opportunities with us. They're just unwilling to make the same media commitments Again, our software solutions rock solid. Websites were up over 100. Dealers aren't pulling back on their websites in any macro environment. And then our software tools like Accutrade and Dealer Club continue to get strong organic growth. It's really the media side that's harder to predict.

And it's the visibility on the media side. It's not as though OEMs and dealers don't see the value in the product and don't want to get in front of consumers. it's really become, I think, a bit more of a timing question as to when they deploy those funds to maximize kind of impact on the inventory they, in fact, have available to sell. Understood.

Great. Thanks for all the color and good luck.

Your next question comes from Tom White of Davidson. Your line is already open.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe hoping you guys could just double click on the comments just about the improvement in the marketplace business over the course of the quarter kind of relative to how things were trending exiting last year. I guess I'm just trying to understand the comments around February and March being better sequentially. Is that Is that mostly some of the progress with the independent dealers that you touched on? And what are sort of the drivers of that? Is it sort of sales outreach? I guess I'm just trying to put that commentary with, you know, maybe some of the comments you just made about, you know, dealers generally being strong, but there being a little bit of trepidation maybe on some of the media stuff kind of on the side. So, yeah, just trying to understand that. the sequential improvement in marketplace over the course of the quarter.

Sure, Tom. We've seen this behavior before in the dealer environment where seasonal or macro events can trigger reactionary behavior. Q4 typically is relatively soft. This year, Q4 for us was much softer than than we were anticipating as dealers began pulling back rather aggressively. And that persisted into January. However, when you saw the consumer demand and consumer traffic levels remained elevated, we started to see dealers blink and realize, wait a minute, the market's continuing to grow. I don't have to overreact here. And we've even seen some of the dealers that we lost in Q4 come back. So we saw growth in Marketplace in February. We saw growth in Marketplace in March, and we continue to see positive trends there heading into Q2. Again, I think where we're seeing more of the softness is saying, I just want to run on the base marketplace. I'm not going for the $10,000, $15,000 a month media campaign on top of that. But core marketplace metrics, both on the consumer and the dealer side, remain strong.

Maybe one clarifying comment, because we do have a marketplace package that's called the base package, is we still see, we haven't seen any material change in the tier distribution of our packages. To Alex's point, they want marketplace. They want to be in the package they're in on marketplace. We continue to skew up tier from a package perspective. It's just those ancillary media attach rates feel like they're under a little bit more pressure.

Okay, that's very helpful. And then maybe just one little housekeeping follow-up. The reported dealer count, is dealer club included in that, and will it be included in it going forward? It doesn't sound like it, but I just want to make sure I understand.

It's not included in the number right now. I think it's still a little bit on the smaller side, you know, transparently. You know, relative to our subscription business, Dealer Club is a transactional business. It doesn't mean that at some point we won't think about these dealer account numbers together. But for now, we're trying to present you kind of a clean, more subscription-based number.

Okay. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from Marvin Fong of BTIG.

Your line is already open.

Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First question, just on all the positive activity around AccuTrade and Dealer Club. So maybe two-part question. Just the 2,500 prospects, I believe that was for Dealer Club specifically. How quickly does that close? It would seem to me that that's – something that could be done a lot faster than the AccuTrade product. And the second part of that question is just on monetization, right? I think dealer club is currently, you're not really charging for that on the seller side. You know, what are your thoughts there, you know, given the interest you're seeing? Do you see now as a time to continue to build market share or is there a monetization opportunity that you can sort of accelerate there? And I have a follow-up.

Sure, Marvin. Well, first of all, obviously, the immediate growth to Dealer Club, I think, underscores the synergy that the Cars Commerce platform can help bring to the club and enable dealer volume. We've had over 2,500 prospects reach out to inquire more and register for Dealer Club. And so we've been onboarding dealerships aggressively each and every month. And we're excited about that volume. I think obviously it's a subset of that that are actually transacting on the platform, but those numbers are growing at 60% per month. And so we're excited to see that volume. Increasingly in this environment, sourcing used cars is a real pain point. And the fact that dealers can do this far more cost effectively than the traditional marketplaces that are now charging premiums because of elevated wholesale prices. So there's multiple economic benefits here for dealerships to change their sourcing strategy, and Dealer Club is well positioned. In the quarter, we really focused on integration to benefit our Accutrade subscribers so that it strengthens Accutrade. We shared on the call that now dealers can one-click appraise the vehicle. And if they're not interested in retailing it, they can launch it for sale in Dealer Club. And that workflow improvement creates a lot of efficiency because dealers have to manually enter cars into the other marketplaces. So we think that'll strengthen both Accutrade and Dealer Club volume as well. So we've got more initiatives planned on the integration, but preliminary, I think we've hit a very solid double out of the gates We're dealer club with momentum to come.

That's great. Great to hear. And second question, just on OEM and national, obviously understand why that's under pressure. Can you just help us understand? I mean, we had previously talked about the strength in the upfront. I think you made a comment, though, that upfront may not be actually a firm commitment. So as we think about how much of this is a timing issue, modulation versus essentially, you know, some might actually, some commitments might not actually get spent. You know, how much of the upfront commitments are actually at risk? And can you just remind us kind of how much of the total ad spend in a year is typically attributable to the upfront? That'd be very helpful. Thanks. Sure.

Marvin, I think this is more timing than it is anything else. We've even had OEMs signal to us as soon as they get clarity that they can give us equal clarity. But right now they're operating week to week and therefore, you know, their commitments to us, you know, at best are month to month. So I'm empathetic to their plight and certainly have a ton of respect for the challenges that they're dealing with. And so to me, it's purely timing. And we even saw this with some of the dealer pullback in Q4 and even January, the fact that we're now seeing those same customers reassume work with us because the consumer demand persists and even is elevated gives me confidence that we'll see a similar behavior once the macro news settles down and the picture is clearer for our clients. Donia, you want to comment on what percent is total ad spend is attributable up front?

Yeah, it's somewhere in 50-50 right now. But I think what I would reiterate what Alex said, I think the challenge at the moment is not that we're getting spend pulled, it's that we're seeing spend shift. And so just from a visibility perspective, as we look to give you guys insight into business performance, that certainly creates like a little bit more challenge than normal But again, the quality of the audience, wanting to get in front of our in-market audience, that remains of interest. It's really just a timing question of when those dollars come into play.

And when you say timing, just a follow-up, I mean, you're saying it would still be spent this calendar year, or do you think the shift could move into... next year?

It's hard. Unfortunately, that's the crux of the challenge. It's hard to say. So as an example, we saw some OEMs who had spend planned in April shift some of that spend into June and July. And so you're starting to see a little bit of shifting like that, as Alex kind of mentioned, instead of they're going more to a month-to-month management of their spend. But generally speaking, What I would say is based on what we know today, based on our Q1 numbers, which were roughly at the midpoint of our guidance range and the growth driver's performance, we feel good about where we are and the progress we've made. We expect to be up on revenue on a year-over-year basis. We expect to deliver a solid Q2. It's just the visibility and the specificity is a little bit harder to nail down right now.

Okay, that's perfectly understandable. Thanks so much.

Your next question comes from Joe Spack of UBS. Your line is already open.

Great, thank you. I actually wanted to pick up right there on the visibility because I think as you sort of described the environment, it's understandable about the guidance for the year, especially it sounds like there's way more uncertainty in the back half, but I do want to, I guess, get a better sense of your true visibility in the near term. And I know you ended up providing a little bit more color on 2Q, but you've got a little bit over a month and a half left. I thought the subscription stuff, which is like 80% of sales, is pretty low variance in the short term. It doesn't sound like there's any real change there. So just maybe you could sort of go over this again, but how much visibility do you really have on... the ad side, because you've even said a couple of times, like they're going month to month, but it would seem like you should have a pretty good sense of that even by now in, you know, as we're in May.

So I think on the subscription side of the business, you know, like we said, marketplace is growing. We feel confident in our ability to deliver dealer websites. Those were up a hundred in the quarter. Accutrade is showing strong signals from Q1 rolling into Q2. I think where there's a little bit of uncertainty continues to be on media. And some relatively discrete shifts in spend can have an impact on how those overall numbers do tend to roll up. I mean, if you look at OEM and national individually and think about that on an annual basis in terms of total revenue, or even on a quarterly basis in terms of total revenue, you can kind of do a little bit of math on what a small, relatively small change on that number could do to a guidance range.

Okay. I mean, is it possible, if not plausible, that OEM national number is down this year?

We still feel good about the ability to deliver year over year growth in the business, which I think would be contingent on seeing growth in both dealer revenue and OEM revenue. I think what's a little bit harder to say right now is a specificity on the range of what that growth is going to look like and in what timeframe that growth is going to be delivered. But, you know, on the media side of the business, you know, when you think about some of the audience metrics that we put up for Q1, that gives us confidence. That's what drives that media portion of the business, that high quality and market audience and all the signals are green.

Okay. And then just the second question. I know you've talked about your exposure to new versus used. And in the past, you've given us that franchise versus independent dealers, which is a good proxy for that, I guess. Maybe you could just remind us of that split. But I'm also just curious if you can or are willing to provide your estimated revenue split just as it relates to new versus used, if that's even possible.

Yeah, we don't break it out just because our subscription includes new and used exposure, and so we don't segment it out. But we do mirror the market, right? Like 15% to 20% of our revenue is anchored more on new car-oriented traffic, and the bulk of it is on used. So you can infer it, but it mimics sort of vehicle sales volumes between new and used. I think on the franchise-to-endance split, we don't break that out, but I will say there's been increased interest from independent dealers because consumers clearly are looking for more affordable vehicles and more cost-effective options than some of the higher-priced new cars. And so we are seeing steady pickup on independent dealer volume in the current quarter.

I'd probably say Indies are roughly, call it like a third of the marketplace mix.

Sorry, what was that? Roughly a third of the marketplace mix. Current mix is about a third independent. Okay, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1. There are no further questions at this time.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.

Goodbye.