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Transcript Summary

Cardlytics' Q1 2026 earnings call highlighted a year of transition characterized by a pivot toward self-sustainability following the sale of its Bridg business and the exit of Bank of America from its network. CEO Amit Gupta reported that supply has stabilized and that the company is seeing strong performance in its U.K. operations, which grew 21% year-over-year. Management is focused on sequential growth and operational efficiency, having reduced operating expenses by 38% compared to the previous year. Financially, the company reported $34.3 million in revenue and $58.1 million in billings for its continued operations, marking a significant year-over-year decline. However, adjusted contribution margins reached a record high of 60.6%, and the company achieved a small positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.2 million. Liquidity was bolstered by the sale of PAR shares post-quarter. Q2 guidance anticipates sequential growth of roughly 9% for revenue and billings. A striking feature of the call was the total absence of analyst questions during the Q&A session, suggesting a period of observation from the investment community as the company attempts to prove its new business model can scale without its former anchor bank partner.

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Cardlytics, Inc.: A Depleting Asset Masked by Divestiture Gains and Excessive Dilution

Full Earnings Call Transcript — Q1 • 2026-05-08

Operator: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us, and welcome to Cardlytics' First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand the conference over to Nick Lynton, Chief Legal and Privacy Officer. Please go ahead.
Nick Lynton: Good evening, and welcome to the Cardlytics First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Call. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements based on our current assumptions, expectations and beliefs, including expectations around our future financial performance and results, including for the second quarter of 2026, our capital structure and operational and product initiatives. For a discussion of the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from today's discussion, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31, 2026, which has been filed with the SEC. Also during our call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures of our performance. GAAP financial reconciliations and supplemental financial information are provided in the press release issued today, which you can find on the Investor Relations section of the Cardlytics website. Today's call is available via webcast, and a replay will also be available on our website. On the call today, we have CEO, Amit Gupta; and CFO, David Evans. Following their prepared remarks, we'll open it up for your questions. With that, I'll hand the call over to Amit.
Amit Gupta: Good evening, and thank you for joining us. As I mentioned on our last call, 2026 is a year of execution for us. Our performance in Q1 reinforces our confidence that we can operate efficiently with a lower cost basis and still deliver on our stated business objectives. Our strategic priorities remain consistent. First, expanding our reach by deepening collaborations with bank partners and integrating new publishers into our network; second, driving incremental revenue growth for our advertisers by leveraging our advanced algorithmic and geo-centric capabilities; and third, continuing to invest in our technology platform to further differentiate our offering and improve operational efficiency. We are also benefiting from the addition of experienced go-to-market and FI-facing leaders who are helping us elevate our performance across several key areas. Let me start with our network and supply. After a prolonged period, we are pleased to report that our supply has stabilized and many of our existing FI partners are actively engaging with us to co-develop growth opportunities. For example, building on strong program performance and positive customer response, we will onboard new cardholder portfolios with one of our larger FI partners later this year. This momentum reflects the strength of our advertising content, the quality of our platform and the collaboration between our FI partners and our internal teams. Additionally, we are partnering with banks to better market and enhance reward amounts being paid out to their customers. In the case of one of our newer neobanks, the Double Days program continues to be a lever for increased consumer engagement and drove 0.25 million new activators during the event. We are expanding similar incentive programs with other FI partners. These engagement-focused programs tend to be adopted first by our newer banks, shifting more volume to these banks and leading to a more favorable revenue margin overall. Our push to meet new customers where they are continues. We continue to see interest in the Cardlytics Rewards Platform or CRP, from partners across multiple industries. We currently have three live CRP partners. And while still early, we are seeing month-over-month supply growth. We are also in discussions with larger partners about implementing CRP, and we'll share more as we make progress. Turning to our advertiser base. In Q1, we received a strong signal from our cohort of new enterprise advertisers that they valued our measurement, network reach and technology forward platform capabilities over our competitors. Our focus on new business is translating into meaningful year-on-year pipeline growth, and we expect it to be impactful in our U.S. business throughout the year. In Q1, we saw strong performance from the telecom, gas, and convenience verticals. One of the fastest-growing discount grocers following a successful Q1 campaign and strong iROAS performance is renewing in Q2 and is on track to become a top 10 advertiser for us this year. Several leading advertisers in our channel prefer the quality of our analytics and the reach of our network and have decided to consolidate CLO spend with Cardlytics despite the supply constraints. This has been a recurring narrative amongst our clients and reinforces the value that our multi-FI network can provide. To augment our measurement capabilities, we are adding new measurement partners to our network to support advertisers with their preferred measurement model of choice. At the same time, we continue to invest in offer performance and ad ranking. Optimization experiments in Q1 are driving higher activation and redemption rates, and we're seeing double-digit growth in redeemers across banks with stable supply. Feedback from advertisers continues to reinforce that we outperform other alternatives. Our U.K. business continues to deliver outstanding results with Q1 revenue surging over 21% year-over-year. This momentum highlights our omnichannel strength, particularly with the restaurant and retail sectors. We are proud to have served all of the U.K.'s largest grocers on our platform during the quarter. In the U.K., advertiser sentiment remains strong as we diversify our footprint. This allows partners to rely on Cardlytics as a single destination for high-quality relevant content for their card members. Turning back to the U.S. Due to macro events, we are seeing some budget pressure in the travel and hospitality sectors with approvals being delayed or pushed into future quarters. Overall, with supply stabilizing and execution improving, we believe we are well positioned for sequential growth. Turning to our technology platform. The work we did in 2025, particularly in data and AI is now delivering measurable impact. Our engineering efforts are improving both speed and efficiency across the platform. For example, our newly released Insights agent delivers weekly unique advertiser reports synthesizing macroeconomic data, industry trends and Cardlytics-specific insights. Our new campaign data sync infrastructure, starting with impact.com enables our sales team to share performance data with measurement partners for advertiser accounts in minutes rather than days. We standardized on a unified agentic development environment with common AI skills and MCP servers, giving our engineers AI-assisted tooling across the full development life cycle. We are now tracking development productivity metrics to measure adoption and scale these games. Now looking forward, with the Bridg transaction successfully closed, we are now fully aligned around our core platform with improved financial flexibility and the ability to move faster. Our focus remains on disciplined urgent execution against our strategic priorities. I'll now turn it over to David to discuss the financials.
David Evans: Thank you, Amit. As we talked about on our last earnings call, our core focus and strategic plan we set up for 2026 is quarterly sequential growth and self-sustainability. We are pleased to announce Q1 numbers that are above the midpoint of the guide across all metrics, including for the Q1 Bridg results. Our Q2 guide further represents and supports quarterly sequential growth. We have also taken another step towards self-sustainability since acquiring and quickly selling the PAR shares we received in consideration for the divestiture of the Bridg business, further improving our state of liquidity and balance sheet. Turning to Q1 results. For awareness, I will speak first to results and year-over-year comparisons from continued operations, which exclude Bridg results, followed by Q1 numbers that are inclusive of the Bridg operations, given these totals were included in our Q1 guidance. Bridg specific results can be found in the 10-Q and the earnings release. Also, the comments will be year-over-year comparisons to the first quarter of 2025, unless stated otherwise. In Q1, our billings were $58.1 million, a 37% decrease year-over-year. Total billings, inclusive of Bridg Results was $62.3 million. Despite the departure of Bank of America in January, we were able to retain the vast majority of our clients and are seeing results of our focus on driving new business to the platform. Q1 revenue was $34.3 million, a 39% decrease year-over-year. Total revenue, inclusive of Bridg results was $38.5 million. As Amit mentioned, our U.K. business remains a standout performer with Q1 revenue increasing over 21% year-over-year. Q1 adjusted contribution was $19.7 million, a 28% decrease year-over-year. Total Q1 adjusted contribution, inclusive of Bridg results was $23.3 million. Despite year-over-year decline, we continue to expand our revenue margin or adjusted contribution as a percentage of revenue to 60.6%, our highest on record. However, we do expect this to come down in future quarters due to the divestiture of Bridg. Q1 adjusted EBITDA was positive $0.2 million compared to negative $4.1 million in the first quarter of 2025. Total Q1 adjusted EBITDA, inclusive of Bridg results was negative $2.2 million. This improvement in adjusted EBITDA underscores our ability to execute towards our goals with a lower expense base. Q1 adjusted operating expenses was $19.5 million, a decrease of 38% from prior year. Total Q1 adjusted operating expenses, inclusive of Bridg was $25.5 million. This was largely due to reduction in force actions taken in 2025 and optimization of our cloud infrastructure. Q1 operating cash flow was negative $5.6 million compared to negative $6.7 million in the prior year. Free cash flow was negative $7.9 million compared to negative $10.8 million year-over-year, an improvement of $2.9 million. On the balance sheet, we ended Q1 with $35.7 million in cash and cash equivalents. Subsequent to the quarter closing, we liquidated all the PAR shares we received in connection with the Bridg sale. We used the proceeds to reduce the amount owed under our credit facility and improve our cash position. Our MQUs for the quarter were $197 million, accounting for the loss of Bank of America in January. ACPU for the quarter was $0.10, down 21.3% year-over-year. Now turning to our outlook for Q2 2026. All comparisons to prior year and prior quarters will exclude Bridg. For Q2, we expect billings between $61 million and $67 million, revenue between $35 million and $40 million, adjusted contribution between $20 million and $23 million and adjusted EBITDA between negative $2.7 million and positive $1.3 million. Our guidance represents quarterly sequential growth of 10%, 9% and 9% for billings, revenue and adjusted contribution, respectively, and excluding Bridg numbers in Q1 for comparison purposes. We continue to be committed to delivering sequential growth for the remainder of 2026. Our adjusted EBITDA guide further represents our belief in our ability to execute at a lower expense base, and we remain committed to driving operational efficiencies. We are laser-focused on executing against our core competencies to drive sequential growth in 2026. I will now turn it back to Amit for closing remarks.
Amit Gupta: We're moving forward with a stronger foundation to operate the leading purchase intelligence platform. Our team is heads down executing on our strategic priorities to deliver value for our advertisers, partners, shareholders and end consumers. I'll now turn it over to the operator to begin Q&A.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Amit for closing remarks.
David Evans: I'm not sure if Amit is coming through, but I can jump in here for closing remarks. I would reiterate for all of our listeners that as we stated at the beginning, we are executing against the plan that we set forth at the beginning of the year, which is to operate through 2026 showing sequential growth as well as being able to show and perform with self-sustainability. Amit, if you are back on, you want to have any other closing remarks or otherwise, we can conclude the call. But Amit, I'll turn it to you if you can hear us.
Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.