Image source: The Motley Fool.
Date
Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025 at 5 p.m. ET
Call participants
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer — Nirav Tolia
Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email [email protected]
Takeaways
Revenue -- $69 million in revenue for Q3, representing a quarterly record, with robust performance from self-serve advertisers.
Self-serve revenue -- Self-serve revenue grew 33% year over year in Q3, comprising about 60% of total revenue.
Adjusted EBITDA -- $4 million in positive adjusted EBITDA for Q3 2025, a 6% adjusted EBITDA margin.
GAAP net loss -- Net loss for Q3 was $13 million.
Revenue per employee -- Revenue per employee has increased 21% year to date.
Cash position -- $403 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at quarter-end, with zero debt on the balance sheet.
Platform weekly active users (WOW) -- Platform WOW, defined as users who engage directly on the Nextdoor app or website, was 21.6 million in Q3, a modest sequential decline tied to intentional reductions in notifications and email volume.
Q4 2025 guidance -- Expected revenue of $67 million to $68 million; adjusted EBITDA projected between $3.5 million and $4.5 million.
Full-year 2025 outlook -- Anticipated revenue growth of 3%-4% for the full year and an approximately $3 million adjusted EBITDA loss for the full year; reaffirmed expectation of adjusted EBITDA breakeven for 2026.
Programmatic supply integration -- Completed, enabling advertisers to access Nextdoor audiences through Yahoo DSP; management stated, “we have completed the supply-side platform integration earlier this year, and we are currently testing the off-platform deal with Yahoo.”
Content initiatives -- 4,000 local publishers active and local news accounting for 7% of total feed content; management plans further growth in user-generated content with emphasis on neighbor recommendations.
Product enhancements -- Launch of new real-time local alert system and integrations with Waze and US Geological Survey for traffic and earthquake alerts.
Leadership update -- Indrajit Panambelan appointed as next Chief Financial Officer, effective Dec. 1, 2025.
Summary
Nextdoor (NXDR 4.97%) delivered its highest-ever quarterly revenue of $69 million in Q3, underscoring continued momentum in self-serve advertising. Management cited a deliberate reduction in user notifications and acquisition efforts, prioritizing long-term engagement quality and durability of growth initiatives. The company has accelerated both first-party and third-party content integration, including more than 4,000 local publisher partnerships as of Q3 and newly launched real-time local alert features for users. Strategic investments in programmatic ad infrastructure, such as Yahoo DSP integration, position the platform for further advertising efficiency without increasing ad load.
CEO Tolia stated, “We will avoid chasing short-term metrics in favor of investing in durable, compounding growth initiatives.”
Local news now constitutes approximately 7% of the user feed as of Q3, but CEO Tolia noted that “7% of new content, which is what the news represents, is not enough,” emphasizing the goal to increase high-quality content and engagement depth.
Management highlighted that, despite notification volume reductions, revenue growth in Q3 suggests improved ad platform effectiveness and enhanced advertiser value.
Upcoming quarter guidance reflects the impact of a recent workforce reduction that will generate savings, offset by continued investment in platform capabilities.
Industry glossary
WOW (Weekly Active Users): Number of unique users who engaged on the Nextdoor app or website within a given week.
Programmatic supply integration: Incorporation of Nextdoor ad inventory into automated advertising platforms (such as Yahoo DSP), enabling advertisers to buy ads programmatically rather than through direct sales alone.
DSP (Demand-Side Platform): An advertising platform that allows advertisers to automate the purchase and management of digital ad inventory across multiple sources.
Adjusted EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, excluding certain nonrecurring or noncash items, as defined by company management.
Cold start experience: The initial user experience for someone signing up for Nextdoor for the first time, distinct from returning or long-term members.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Nirav Tolia: Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. I am Nirav Tolia, Co-Founder and CEO of Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. Q3 was a quarter of steady execution, and our results are consistent with the plan we have communicated. We delivered our highest quarterly revenue ever and generated positive Q3 adjusted EBITDA. In addition, we are on track for positive adjusted EBITDA in Q4 and are reaffirming our expectation for full-year 2026 breakeven. Let's talk more about Q3. Revenue grew to $69 million, 5% year over year, reflecting strong demand from self-serve advertisers who continue to be drawn to our Nextdoor ads platform.
Even amidst reduced ad load, on the large customer front, we delivered on our commitment to complete our programmatic supply integration, enabling deeper collaboration with scaled parties who are looking to reach audiences on Nextdoor more efficiently. Our self-serve channel continues to be a growth engine. Q3 self-serve revenue grew 33% year over year and made up roughly 60% of total revenue. Advertisers saw meaningful gains, including higher click-through rates and lower cost per click. We also grew our active customer base and associated net new advertiser spend. In short, our ad tech investments are delivering results, and we expect the introduction of new ad formats and deeper AI integration over the coming months may further improve monetization.
Q3 platform WOW, defined as users who engage directly on the Nextdoor app or website, was 21.6 million, a modest sequential decline. This was driven by an intentional decision to reduce notification and email volumes, reflecting our focus on engagement quality over quantity. In the short term, platform WOW may continue to fluctuate due to seasonality and our continued commitment to delivering the best user experience. As I have said many times before, we will deliberately make trade-offs, even if they are difficult, all in the interest of driving long-term and sustainable growth. Continuing Q3 GAAP net loss was $13 million. Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $4 million, a positive 6% margin representing eight points of year-over-year improvement.
This reflects our strong revenue performance and continued focus on operating the company as efficiently as possible. Further, revenue per employee has now increased 21% year to date. At quarter end, we had $403 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, along with zero debt. Now let's move on to our financial outlook. We expect Q4 revenue between $67 and $68 million and adjusted EBITDA in a range between $3.5 and $4.5 million. This implies full-year 2025 revenue growth of 3% to 4% and an approximately $3 million adjusted EBITDA loss. We do continue to expect full-year adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2026. Here are some key factors to consider related to our Q4 outlook.
Our Q4 guidance reflects normal seasonality and a full quarter of savings from our recent workforce reduction, partially offset by incremental platform investment. We do not plan to increase ad load in Q4 or into 2026 as we continue to prioritize the best user experience. Consistent with this approach, we also expect to intentionally reduce new user acquisition efforts during Q4. Those are the numbers. Now I am excited to go into more detail about our product, the true driver of long-term value. The first phase of our transformation, marked by the launch of the new Nextdoor, rebuilt our foundation. We reset our expense base, strengthened our team, and instilled greater operating discipline.
At the same time, we enriched the platform by pairing user-generated content with trusted third-party local information that drives meaningful conversations and real-world utility. At quarter end, more than 4,000 local publishers are live on Nextdoor, and local news now accounts for approximately 7% of total feed content. We also created a real-time local alert system to help neighbors stay informed and safe during high-impact local events such as fires, inclement weather, and utility outages. New integrations include Waze's real-time traffic and road updates and instant earthquake alerts from the US Geological Survey. Looking ahead, we will continue leveraging third-party content to reinforce Nextdoor as the neighborhood's go-to source for what is happening nearby.
This foundational work has helped clarify what users truly value and has given us a stronger and more sustainable baseline for growth. That said, the takeaway is clear. We must continue to dramatically increase high-quality content and distribute it more effectively to the right users at the right time. So now we are entering the next phase. We are moving beyond the content feed to build a stronger neighborhood ecosystem, grounded in a vibrant, useful, and trusted local community. Community-driven content has always been part of our DNA. Our opportunity now is to modernize how we surface and connect it, focusing on the interactions that drive real-world utility for neighbors and visibility for local businesses. Authenticity is what matters.
We have a material opportunity to invest further in neighbor recommendations. Trusted neighbors want to know why a business is real. Recommendations from verified neighbors build that trust, and we know that is what sets Nextdoor apart. With this in mind, we plan to reinvent our recommendations ecosystem to turn authentic word-of-mouth into actionable insights that help neighbors make smart decisions and help local businesses thrive. We believe these efforts can meaningfully improve engagement and monetization across our platform. Ultimately, our goal is to create more relevant and trusted connections that reflect how neighbors engage in the real world, with each other and with local businesses. The first phase gave us stability and insight.
The current phase is where we take bold swings and begin to see the results. As we move forward, we will focus on a few key indicators: quality and quantity of content, depth of engagement, and the value we create for advertisers. We will avoid chasing short-term metrics in favor of investing in durable, compounding growth initiatives. Transformation takes focus, it takes courage, and it takes time. It is not a straight line, and it is neither predictable nor immediate. But it represents the best path for us to unlock the next phase of growth for Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. and create lasting value for our users, advertisers, and shareholders.
Before wrapping up, I would like to share an important leadership update. I am pleased to announce that we have hired our next Chief Financial Officer. Indrajit Panambelan will be joining Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. as CFO, effective December 1, 2025. Indrajit brings more than two decades of experience leading high-performing finance and operations teams, most recently as CFO at Premion, an industry-leading connected TV advertising platform, and prior to that, at Maps Group, Time Warner Cable, and AOL. He has a proven track record of driving growth, achieving operational excellence, and financial rigor at scale, and we are thrilled to have him on board.
In closing, we remain laser-focused on building a platform that makes neighborhoods more vibrant, more connected, and more useful. At our core, Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. is about real local connections that create value every day. That vision will continue to guide us in everything we do. Thanks for joining our earnings call today. I will now turn it over to the operator to begin Q&A.
Operator: As a reminder, to ask a question, press star and one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis from Citigroup. Your line is live.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Good afternoon, Nirav. First from me here, and by the way, thank you for taking my question. We are only about four months out from the launch of the new Nextdoor Holdings, Inc., and understood the commentary around it being a nonlinear transformation. But we would love any insights you have into the underlying customer engagement, specifically that depth of engagement metrics that you mentioned. And then I have a follow-up.
Nirav Tolia: Great. Thank you for the question. And, yes, we are four months out, and we are excited about the progress. You may remember that initially, we talked about the new Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. as being focused on news, alerts, and recommendations. We now have news that is approaching 10% of new feed content. We know that alerts are essential to our users, and we have seen that in the metrics. And then finally, I talked about in the comments that recommendations is the big swing that we plan to take next because we think it has the most potential of anything that we have worked on. What we are seeing with our user base gives us a lot of optimism.
We know that we have made the content more relevant, even amidst reducing notifications and keeping ad load exactly where it is. What we also know is that 7% of new content, which is what the news represents, is not enough. The way Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. works best is when there is so much content that is showing up in your neighborhood that we can use AI and ML to show you the most relevant things for you, whether that is from a proximity standpoint or from your affinity standpoint. And so the real focus for us is on dramatically increasing the amount of content.
What we have learned from the new Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. is when we add more high-quality content, we see deeper engagement. And so we now have the signal that we need to really bear down and do our best for it.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: That is helpful. Thank you. Second here, and potentially a little bit more tactical, the notification changes in Q3 and the planned pullback in new user acquisition for Q4. Can you update us on how you see your user acquisition strategies evolving into 2026?
Nirav Tolia: Yeah. It is a great question. So the reason that we mentioned that is because as we continue to focus on the best user experience, the thing that we need to do is to ensure that the first time a user comes to Nextdoor Holdings, Inc., they have the best possible experience. We have a number of things that we plan to release over the next couple of months that we believe will create a better cold start experience, and we use cold start to represent the first time that you come into Nextdoor Holdings, Inc.
Today, when you come into Nextdoor Holdings, Inc., you see the same thing that someone who has been a member for ten years may see. And we know that it should be a different experience. And so as we work towards a specialized experience that will be fully suited for the new user to Nextdoor Holdings, Inc., it makes sense for us not to be aggressive in the user acquisition. We just wanted to make that statement as an example of how we are looking at long-term value creation versus trying to make all the metrics go up in the short term.
Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis: Understood. Thank you very much.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jason Michael Kreyer from Craig Hallum. Your line is live.
Jason Michael Kreyer: Thank you, guys. Nirav, so when you talk about adding more content, can you just give us a sense of where that comes from? Like, are you talking about inspiring more user-generated content? Or is this an expansion of some of the third-party publisher partners that you have already started to ingest on the platform?
Nirav Tolia: Jason, thank you for the question. And you kind of answered it, but I will give you more specifics. So we have now got, at quarter end, 4,000 publishers that are pumping news content into Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. We think there is more upside there, and we certainly think that there is more in integrating more third-party alerts. But as you indicated, we believe the greatest opportunity is where Nextdoor Holdings, Inc.'s DNA is, and that is user-generated content.
And so the next phase for us is to think less about integrating external content and to think more about revving up our internal user-generated content engine on Nextdoor Holdings, Inc., which has really been, again, at the DNA of how we were created. We think that a natural place for that to start and potentially the most impactful is in neighbor recommendations. And so you should expect to hear a lot more about that in the months to come.
Jason Michael Kreyer: Yeah. That is great. Also, I just wanted to see if you could give an update on the build-out of your programmatic capabilities. Curious on kind of what you are doing on platform and then off-platform. You know, I know you recently did a deal with Yahoo. So maybe a little perspective on both would be great. Thanks.
Nirav Tolia: Yeah. That is a great question as well because we have spoken about this throughout the year. So the first thing to say very specifically is that we have completed the supply-side platform integration earlier this year, and we are currently testing with the We have announced that off-platform deal with Yahoo. So now an advertiser can go into Yahoo DSP, find Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. audiences, target against, and then campaign directly from Yahoo. The way we see this is programmatic generally complements direct sold inventory and is additive. It was a capability that we were asked to add to what we were doing at Nextdoor Holdings, Inc., and we always knew that we would.
We announced it back, I think, in the Q4 earnings call almost six or seven months ago. And I am delighted to say that we have actually lived up to what we said. And so we expect that to pay dividends again in the months and quarters to come.
Jason Michael Kreyer: Great. Thank you.
Operator: Your final question comes from the line of Naved Khan from B. Riley Securities. Your line is live.
John T. Williams: Great. Hi. Thank you for taking our questions. This is Ryan Paolo on for Naved. So I wanted to ask another question on the alerts and notifications. So, obviously, you mentioned that you had reduced the alerts. Was there an improvement in engagement for the alerts that you were surfacing? And then also, were there any differences in trends for users coming from alerts versus entering the app organically?
Nirav Tolia: Thank you. That is a great question. So, obviously, if we are materially decreasing the number of notifications but yet experiencing a growth in revenue, you can see that the alerts and notifications that we are sending are more effective. And so that is obviously playing out in the numbers. We expect that to continue to play out. In terms of what we are seeing specifically in user behavior, the third-party alerts in particular around inclement weather, around now traffic with Waze, and earthquake alerts from the USGS, those are particularly effective at resurrecting users who may not have been to Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. in some time.
And so if we are very honest with ourselves over the past few years, we lost our way a little bit, and the content was not as relevant as it should have been. Alerts, on the other hand, particularly the way we built the new alerts platform, which targets a particular area that is very specifically being affected by the alert, those perform quite well. And we think that they are a way to get lapsed users back onto the platform. And when they come back on the platform, because of the other improvements that we have made, they should come back more frequently. Thank you.
Nirav Tolia: Okay. I think that was our final question. And so I would just like to make a few closing remarks. We are very excited about this next phase of our transformation. We know that our foundation is strong. We have stabilized the business, driven material gains in productivity, and our products and operational changes are starting to bear fruit. But it is very, very important for us to state that we are fully committed to building the best product. There are no shortcuts here, and we will make the necessary trade-offs to unlock long-term and sustainable growth. And that is all because our conviction in Nextdoor Holdings, Inc.'s potential has never been higher.
We have a clarified strategy, the team is super focused, and now it is all about having the courage to do what it takes to win. So with that, thank you for joining the call and for your interest in Nextdoor Holdings, Inc.
Operator: That concludes the meeting. You may disconnect.