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Date

Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET

Call participants

  • Chief Executive Officer — Bryan Leach
  • Chief Financial Officer — Matt Puckett

Takeaways

  • Revenue -- $82.5 million, a 2% decline, with improving trends versus prior quarters driven by both product and publisher momentum.
  • Redemption revenue -- $73 million, down approximately 1%, reflecting continued recovery from double-digit percentage declines in prior quarters.
  • Third-party publisher revenue -- $54 million, up 12%, marking an acceleration from an 8% increase in the previous quarter.
  • Direct-to-consumer redemption revenue -- $19 million, down 25%, similar to the previous quarter due to ongoing shift toward third-party publishers.
  • Ad and other revenue -- $9.5 million, a 15% decline, partially offset by data revenue growth, and representing 11% of total revenue.
  • Total redeemers -- 19.7 million, a 15% increase, led by organic growth and the 2025 DoorDash launch.
  • Redemptions per redeemer -- 4.5, down 6%, narrowing from a 22% decline in the second half of last year; mix shift continues to affect frequency.
  • Redemption revenue per redemption -- $0.83, flat sequentially, down 7%, primarily due to a shift in redemption mix.
  • Total redemptions -- 88 million, up 6%, with third-party publishers recording a 15% increase.
  • Non-GAAP gross margin -- 78%, down approximately 300 basis points, attributed to higher investments in technology and related cost allocations.
  • Non-GAAP operating expenses -- Up 5%, now 71% of revenue, with sales and marketing up 17%, R&D down 21% due to increased capitalization, and general and administrative expenses up 5%.
  • Depreciation and amortization -- Up approximately $0.6 million or 60% from increases in technology assets.
  • First quarter adjusted EBITDA -- $8.7 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11%.
  • Non-GAAP net income -- $6 million, and diluted net income per share of $0.24.
  • Stock repurchase -- $45 million spent to repurchase approximately 1.9 million shares at an average price of $22.92; $90.3 million remains under the authorization.
  • Cash position -- $164.6 million in cash and equivalents at quarter end.
  • Free cash flow -- $23.3 million, representing a 56% increase, largely due to reduced working capital requirements.
  • LiveLift client dynamics -- Client re-up rates remain near 80%, with repeat users accounting for approximately 60% of LiveLift activity and average campaign sizes above the core product average.
  • New publisher partnerships -- Uber and Giant Eagle signed multi-year exclusive agreements, bringing digital promotions to Uber, Uber Eats, Postmates, and expanding in the grocery channel.
  • Guidance for the second quarter -- Expected revenue of $82 million to $86 million (midpoint down 2% year-over-year, up 2% sequentially) and adjusted EBITDA of $9 million to $12 million (12.5% margin midpoint).
  • Third quarter outlook -- Management expects a return to year-over-year total revenue growth in the low single-digit percentage range.
  • Redemption revenue trend -- Expected to return to year-over-year growth in the second quarter for the first time since 2025.
  • Chomps campaign validation -- Surcana-verified campaign delivered 15% higher spend per exposed household, 4.5x lift over snack benchmarks, and 9x household penetration versus industry standards.
  • Pricing model transition -- Moving from flat fees by price band to a continuous, percentage-of-AOV pricing structure, which has been "very well received" by clients and encourages lower average order value product promotion.
  • Cost allocation change -- Non-GAAP operating expenses now include depreciation and amortization, as reflected in disclosed non-GAAP metrics.

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Risks

  • Puckett said, "non-GAAP gross margin of 78%, down approximately 300 basis points," citing increased technology-related investments and higher allocations to cost of revenue.
  • Ad and other revenue -- Down 15% due to continued pressure from a decline in direct-to-consumer redeemers, with only partial offset from data revenue growth.

Summary

Ibotta (IBTA +0.41%) delivered sequential improvement in revenue trends supported by a recovering redemption revenue stream and organic user growth, particularly through third-party publishers. Management confirmed that new exclusive partnerships with Uber and Giant Eagle should bring incremental engagement and network diversification, though the near-term revenue impact is expected to be modest as integrations mature. Free cash flow saw a notable 56% increase, while a major share repurchase reduced the outstanding share count and signaled capital return focus. The company introduced a shift to a continuous percentage-based pricing model aimed at expanding participation from lower-priced CPG items. The guidance provided anticipates revenue stabilization with a return to total revenue growth in the third quarter, with improving margin potential as technology investment levels out.

  • Puckett indicated that the expense base is expected to stabilize, supporting future margin expansion as revenue increases.
  • Ibotta's transition to an industry-focused sales structure and expanded B2B marketing resources has resulted in deeper client engagement and more upstream integration into client planning.
  • LiveLift scaling is gated by continued AI enablement, automation developments, and ongoing model training sourced from new publisher data and campaign activity.
  • The early-stage ramp of Uber and Giant Eagle partnerships is not factored as a significant revenue driver until the back half of the year. Management emphasized offer supply as the primary gating factor for full impact realization.

Industry glossary

  • Redeemer: A consumer who redeems a digital offer or promotion through the Ibotta Performance Network, tracked as a unique active user engaging with promoted products.
  • Ibotta Performance Network (IPN): The platform operated by Ibotta that connects CPG brands, retailers, and publishers to deliver digital promotions to consumers.
  • LiveLift: Ibotta's outcome-based promotions product, leveraging data and AI for optimized campaign design, performance tracking, and automated optimization based on client goals.
  • Third-party publisher: External digital platforms or apps (e.g., Uber, DoorDash) that distribute Ibotta's offers to their user bases under contract.
  • CPG: Acronym for Consumer Packaged Goods, referring to manufacturers whose products are commonly promoted through Ibotta's network.
  • Surcana: A third-party measurement and analytics vendor cited as independently validating client campaign performance.
  • AOV: Acronym for Average Order Value, utilized in Ibotta's pricing structure for campaign fees.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Bryan Leach: Thank you for joining our discussion of first quarter results. We are pleased to report first quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA that are both above the top end of the guidance range we provided on our fourth quarter earnings call. We continue to anticipate that our year-over-year revenue trends will improve sequentially, returning us to overall revenue growth in 2026, which is consistent with the outlook we provided in February. The improved trajectory of our business is mostly the result of our sales team's success in deepening and broadening the supply of offers available to us. Our core promotions product is demonstrating strong market fit, while our more recent offering, LiveLift, continues to receive positive early feedback.

On the publisher front, we have added two new partners in quick succession, both of which have entered into multi-year exclusive partnerships with us. In late March, we announced the addition of Uber, meaning that later this year, Ibotta, Inc.'s digital promotions will appear within the Uber, Uber Eats, and Postmates apps. And today, we announced that Giant Eagle is also joining the Ibotta Performance Network. I will say more about the significance of these new publisher wins later on, but first I would like to provide a bit more context on our recent financial performance, and share additional details about the from-to pathway we see ourselves on. On a year-over-year basis, our redemption revenue performance has almost fully recovered.

In the first quarter, it was down 1% year over year, compared to being down 15% in the third quarter of last year and down 5% in the fourth quarter. This gradual recovery has been partly driven by Redeemer growth, with 15% more Redeemers in Q1 than in the same quarter last year. That said, increased demand for offers alone does not move the needle unless we also source enough offers to take advantage of it. This is all about having the right team in place spending more time in market, multithreading our outreach to stakeholders at different levels within an organization, and being more immediately responsive to our clients' needs.

Building trust in these ways is allowing our team to continue moving further upstream in our clients' strategic planning processes. We are also doing a better job of supporting our sellers and account managers with B2B marketing, training and enablement, and client-specific insights. Our product team is working hard to deliver new tools that make each step in the quote-to-cash process easier, faster, and more efficient. Encouragingly, our success has been broad based, which continues to increase our conviction in the path we are on. Our sales team is adding new clients, securing new—often larger—commitments from existing clients, and retaining the overwhelming majority of our clients. Our strategic partnership with measurement leader Surcana continues to generate sales and marketing momentum.

We recently published a case study available on our website that independently validates Ibotta, Inc.'s ability to deliver successful results for our clients. Chomps, the fastest-growing meat snack brand in the United States, ran a campaign earlier this year to drive trial and household penetration. The results were outstanding and were independently verified through a sales study conducted by Surcana. Households exposed to the Ibotta, Inc. campaign spent an average of 15% more on Chomps than their unexposed counterparts. Even more impressively, the campaign outperformed Surcana's snack category benchmarks for sales lift by more than 4.5x and surpassed household penetration benchmarks by a staggering 9x. Stacy Hartnett, the SVP of Marketing at Chomps, summarized the impact well.

She noted that achieving strong on-shelf presence was only their first milestone. Their strategy has now shifted toward winning new buyers through smarter promotional strategies. She stated that our partnership has become a key lever in that effort, and that the study reinforces that the IPN delivers impact well beyond a discount, helping them reach the incremental shoppers critical to their long-term growth. Turning to LiveLift, we continue to see positive signs of product-market fit even though it is still early days. We continue to limit access to those clients willing to spend a certain amount and run their campaigns for a certain duration.

For this reason, the revenue contribution from LiveLift remains modest for now; we are not forecasting a significant ramp in revenue until we loosen those eligibility requirements. I will have more to say on what that will require in a moment. Actual re-up rates among clients that have completed a LiveLift campaign remain consistent with the approximately 80% level we have discussed in prior quarters. Those clients who have not yet re-upped are primarily smaller CPGs, which we believe reflects our eligibility criteria rather than any dissatisfaction with the product, consistent with what we have said previously. Repeat users represented approximately 60% of LiveLift in the quarter, with the remainder being first-time users running pilots.

The average campaign size for LiveLift campaigns remains meaningfully larger than for our core product. The most common question I received after our last earnings call was, can you help me better understand what the pathway to greater adoption of LiveLift will look like? So let me try to shed some light on what that entails and why I believe we are making solid progress. Of course, as with any innovative product development process, it is impossible to know in advance everything we will learn along the way or exactly how long that will take. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our CPG clients to buy campaigns on the Ibotta Performance Network.

Some will prefer to stick with managed service, while others may take advantage of our self-service tools, which we will continue to refine and improve. In the future, our clients may also rely on agents to make more autonomous media buying decisions. Whichever interface they choose, clients will start by identifying the goals of their campaign. Our LiveLift platform then takes this information and evaluates a wide range of possible campaigns and chooses the best fit for their goals, projects the amount of redemptions, incremental sales, and cost per incremental dollar we think they will achieve, tracks these metrics on an ongoing basis—providing profitability readouts at various points during the campaign—and optimizes the campaign as necessary along the way.

Scaling LiveLift to our wider client base will require greater automation of these processes. With that in mind, we are focused on a few key initiatives. First, we are building a more sophisticated programmatic API layer so that our software, as well as any agents we create, interface with the various models and systems that power LiveLift, allowing our system to fully harness the power of AI to programmatically design, build, launch, optimize, and report on a campaign. This includes considering different scenarios and making the best possible projections and recommendations more quickly and at lower cost. Second, we are refining the underlying models that power LiveLift.

These models become more robust as we train them on the data generated by running these early LiveLift campaigns, as we receive additional data from existing publishers, and as we expand the publisher network, gaining access to new sources of data. Widening the availability of LiveLift requires continued model training through repeated experiments, and those take time. We are building a novel capability in this industry, and that necessitates a disciplined phased approach to scaling. Third, we are working on what I would broadly call AI enablement. That means documenting processes to create additional context for AI, defining standard operating procedures, and simplifying our product catalog to reduce complexity.

Creating this scaffolding takes time, but once we have a simpler set of products with the appropriate context, more reliable agentic AI flows become possible. We believe that the progress we are making along all these fronts will ultimately allow us to more meaningfully inflect the level of CPG offer supply. Switching to the demand side of the equation, we continued to see strong results this quarter, with healthy Redeemer growth driven by organic growth at our existing publishers and the 2025 launch of DoorDash.

One of our top priorities has been diversifying our publisher base, and we have begun doing that with the recent additions of Uber and Giant Eagle, both of which entered into multi-year exclusive partnerships with Ibotta, Inc. Adding Uber to the IPN allows us to intercept consumers in high-intent commerce moments and solidifies our leadership position in the fast-growing and important e-commerce delivery space. Our partnership with Giant Eagle further validates the strength of our model and enhances our presence in the traditional grocery channel.

As one of the nation's largest multi-format food and pharmacy retailers and a recognized industry thought leader, Giant Eagle chose to transition to Ibotta, Inc. in order to access a more robust and relevant offer gallery that moves the needle for their customers. We are pleased with the terms and the economic profile of both of these new partners. These partnerships demonstrate the extensive work of our business development and technology teams behind the scenes to enable these milestones. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Puckett, to walk through our financial results and guidance in more detail.

Matt Puckett: Thank you, Bryan, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased to have delivered another quarter that was ahead of our initial outlook, further validating that we are very much on the right track. With that, let me jump into the Q1 results. We delivered revenue and adjusted EBITDA that were, respectively, 325% above the midpoint of the guidance range that we provided on our fourth quarter earnings call. Now to unpack our top line results for the quarter. Revenue was $82.5 million, a decline of 2% versus last year. Within that, redemption revenue was $73 million, down approximately $0.4 million or 1% year over year.

Both redemption revenue and ad and other revenue trends improved on a year-over-year basis as compared to the fourth quarter. We continue to be pleased with the results our sales organization is driving and how both our core product offerings and LiveLift are resonating with our clients. As Bryan noted, the LiveLift re-up rate remains healthy, underscoring that clients are realizing the measurable benefits that these next-generation capabilities deliver. Third-party publisher redemption revenue was $54 million, up 12% versus last year and accelerating sequentially versus the prior quarter's increase of 8%.

Direct-to-consumer redemption revenue was $19 million, down 25% year over year and similar to Q4's result, where, as anticipated, we have continued to see redemption activity shift to our third-party publishers. Ad and other revenues, which represented 11% of our revenue in the quarter, were $9.5 million, down 15% versus last year due primarily to continued pressure on ad revenue as a result of lower direct-to-consumer Redeemers. This reduction was partially offset by growth in data revenue. Turning now to the key performance metrics supporting redemption revenue. Total Redeemers were 19.7 million in the quarter, up 15% year over year.

We saw another quarter of significant growth in third-party Redeemers across the IPN, including strong growth with our largest publisher partner, highlighting the continued health of the demand side of our network. In addition to organic growth with existing publishers, the quarter also benefited from the launch of DoorDash in 2025. Redemptions per Redeemer were 4.5, down 6% versus last year, a meaningful improvement in trend versus the second half of last year when redemptions per Redeemer were down 22%, but where the decline continues to be driven by both the quantity and quality of offers available to each Redeemer, as well as the growth in third-party Redeemers, which have a lower redemption frequency as compared to our direct-to-consumer Redeemers.

Redemption revenue per redemption was $0.83, which was flat versus Q4 and down 7% versus last year, driven primarily by the mix of redemption activity. Summing it all up, total redemptions were 88 million, up 6% versus last year, driven by 15% redemption growth on our third-party publishers. This represents a more measurable return to year-over-year growth in redemptions for the first time since 2025 after being flattish in the fourth quarter. Now switching to the cost side of our business. As anticipated, non-GAAP cost of revenue was up $2 million versus a year ago, largely driven by an increase in technology-related costs along with a more modest increase in publisher costs.

This resulted in a Q1 non-GAAP gross margin of 78%, down approximately 300 basis points versus last year. As we discussed last quarter, much of the increase in technology-related costs is a function of increased investment in product development, as well as a higher allocation of certain costs from R&D expense to cost of revenue. Before I review non-GAAP operating expenses, let me point out that we have made a change in how non-GAAP operating expenses are defined and shown on page 12 of the presentation that accompanies our earnings materials. You will notice we are now including depreciation and amortization in non-GAAP operating expenses. Now turning back to the results.

Non-GAAP operating expenses were up 5% versus last year, and were 71% of revenue, an increase of approximately 470 basis points year over year. Within that, non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses were up 17%, driven by higher sales labor, the cost of third-party lift studies, and B2B marketing expenses. Non-GAAP research and development expenses decreased by 21%, primarily a result of higher capitalization of software development costs and a higher allocation of labor expense to cost of revenue. This is due to more of our investment in R&D being directly focused on product development. Lastly, non-GAAP general and administrative expenses increased by 5%, while depreciation and amortization increased by approximately $0.6 million or 60%.

Similar to the last couple of quarters, while overall non-GAAP operating expenses grew year over year, our investments in areas related to our transformation—inclusive of both the P&L and what is being capitalized to the balance sheet—increased at a faster pace. This increase was approximately 12% and again was highlighted by higher labor costs in the sales organization and other technology-related costs. We delivered Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $8.7 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11%. Non-GAAP net income of $6 million and non-GAAP diluted net income per share of $0.24. Our non-GAAP net income excludes $16.7 million in stock-based compensation and it includes a $0.3 million adjustment for income taxes.

We ended the quarter with $164.6 million of cash and cash equivalents. In Q1, we spent approximately $45 million repurchasing approximately 1.9 million shares of our stock at an average price of $22.92. We had 25.6 million fully diluted shares outstanding as of 3/31/2026, and as of the end of the quarter, we had $90.3 million remaining under our current share repurchase authorization, which, as previously disclosed, was increased by $100 million upon authorization from the Board of Directors on March 11. Finally, we generated $23.3 million in free cash flow, an increase of 56% versus last year, largely driven by higher cash flow from operations as a result of decreases in working capital compared to 2025.

Now shifting to Q2 guidance. We currently expect revenue in the range of $82 million to $86 million, representing a 2% year-over-year decline at the midpoint and at the same time a 2% sequential increase versus Q1 at the midpoint. We expect Q2 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $9 million to $12 million, representing about a 12.5% adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint. With that, let me provide a little more color on our outlook. First off, as both Bryan and I have mentioned, we continue to be pleased with the consistency of our execution with our clients and publisher partners, both with core product offerings and with LiveLift pilots.

This has been the driver of improving revenue trends during the last couple of quarters and we expect that to continue. One other point to make on Q2 revenue: at the midpoint of our revenue outlook, we would expect redemption revenue to return to growth for the first time since 2025. Beyond our specific Q2 revenue guidance, we are confirming our expectation of a return to year-over-year growth in total revenue in Q3 in the low single-digit range. It is probably on your mind, so let me highlight the assumptions implied in our outlook specific to the two new publishers we are adding to the network.

We have assumed an immaterial impact on Q2 during the testing and piloting phase, and expect a small benefit to revenue in the second half of the year as we ramp up with these partners. I will note that offer supply will be the governor on the near-term revenue impact of this expansion on the demand side of our network. As it relates to costs, our expectations are broadly unchanged from last quarter. We continue to expect to see a modest sequential increase in quarterly non-GAAP cost of revenue and operating expenses throughout the balance of the year. That continues to be a function of investing in areas that are critical to our transformation.

Specifically within cost of revenue, as we said last quarter, we expect to have substantially less growth in publisher-related costs as compared to what we saw in 2025, and we do expect, similar to the first quarter, that the biggest factor driving an increase in cost of revenue will be higher technology costs, which is partially a function of where these costs are allocated in the P&L relative to last year. Lastly, with a healthy balance sheet and positive free cash flow, we will continue to prioritize investing in organic growth and the strategic priorities of the business while also returning cash to shareholders.

We remain excited and energized by the opportunities ahead and look forward to returning to year-over-year revenue growth in the second half of this year. We will now open the call for questions. With that, operator, please open up the line for Q&A.

Operator: For today's Q&A session, we will be utilizing the raise hand feature. If you would like to ask a question, click on the raise hand button at the bottom of the screen. Once prompted, please unmute yourself and begin with your question. We will pause a moment to assemble the queue. Thank you. Our first question will come from Ken Gawrelski with Wells Fargo. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Kenneth James Gawrelski: Can you hear me okay?

Bryan Leach: Yes.

Matt Puckett: Yes, we can. Thank you.

Kenneth James Gawrelski: Okay, great. Thanks so much for the question. Could Brian, could you talk about how, as you move more to LiveLift over time and you get this sales process really humming, when you look into, you know, ’27–’28, how do you think the financial picture may change? What does it mean for the margin structure of the business relative to, you know, the kind of post-IPO? What fundamental differences do you see there? Maybe this is the first one.

And then second, as you think about the progress you can make in the back half of this year and into early next year, how much of it is a change in the calendar year providing another opportunity to take another bite at the apple with some of those big CPG brands versus just getting your go-to-market strategy and process working? Thank you.

Bryan Leach: Thanks, Ken. I will take those in turn. The first one I will answer at a high level and then let Matt provide additional detail, and then I will have him pass it back to me for the second question. For the first one, I would say, broadly speaking, we feel like we are in a good place with our expenses to be able to build the products we need to drive the increase in offer supply over the next few years.

You asked about 2026, 2027, 2028, and so that should— in other words, we do not expect to have to continue to ramp expenses at the same rate that we are ramping revenue, and so that should be positive in terms of the margins and contribution to adjusted EBITDA over the next three years. We have ongoing innovation that is baked into the R&D that is part of our current effort. I think more time will allow us to get in front of our customers with the LiveLift message. It is an evolution in the industry that is moving from annual planning and annual allocation and annual measurement to more ongoing measurement and optimization using rule-based or outcome-based systems.

That go-to-market takes some time to build the necessary trust and conviction and then have the cultural changes that need to happen on the client side. But I feel like the developments that I described in my remarks will put us in a position where there will be a greater variety of different ways that people can buy on our network, and those ways will be more sophisticated and allow us to meet the needs of our clients more often and allow us to earn our way into larger and larger budgets, which is what is really going to move the needle and drive revenue in this business.

I will let Matt add any additional thoughts on that before turning to your second question.

Matt Puckett: Yeah, Ken, just a couple of things I would add, without being precise regarding our financial algorithm. A couple of things I will say—one is kind of more medium term and then longer term, which is really reiterating Bryan's points. We have been talking for a couple of quarters now about the investments that we were making, first in the sales organization—restructuring, reorganizing, and really just leveling up the capabilities in sales—as well as the investments we have been making in our technology as it relates to the transformation of the business and the capabilities that we have been building. We are nearing lapping most of those investments.

We are not fully there, but over the course of this year, we will lap all of those investments. That is factored into everything we have said about what the forward picture looks like. Once we have done that, then as we sit here today with what we see that needs to get done, we do not expect to have to add—there is not another step change in an investment profile from here. So as we see the top line stabilize and then we start to drive consistent, sustainable growth, we are going to see the opportunity to expand both gross margins and EBITDA margins over time. Hopefully, that helps answer.

Bryan Leach: The second question, Ken, about the back half and the change in the calendar year, I would say that different clients have different fiscal years. Some of our clients reset in July, some of them reset in the fall, some of them reset on the calendar year. While that is definitely a factor in situations where we have kind of gotten through the budget that was allocated to us the previous cycle, we get a chance to demonstrate the effectiveness of that—the level of performance earns us into a larger budget. That is true.

However, I think it is more a function just of being able to get in front of clients with our core product, demonstrate the scale that we have, that we are along the breadth of purchase in all these different places now, the addition of these new publishers—that allows us even intra-year to go back and make the case that this is where they should be spending more money at a time when they are aware that this is how they gain market share, by intelligently thinking about where they are pricing their products and how they are promoting their products. So I do not want to lean too much on that as some major driver.

We are always selling both in the annual planning process and then within that year. Our whole goal here is to move the industry away from that mentality of annual planning and into a mindset of “I always want to buy this as long as these rules and constraints are being met.” I want every dollar of top- and bottom-line revenue and profit that I can get through this platform, and I will spend until I am no longer seeing that level of efficiency.

That is ongoing, but I think it is safe to say that for now, we are still living in a world where we do participate in those annual re-up conversations—they are just thousands of brands happening all the time at different parts of the year. And Matt was going to add one more thing.

Matt Puckett: Yeah, Ken, just one more thing to make sure we got to the essence of part of your question there on the margin profile. As we grow LiveLift over time as a bigger penetration of the business, that does not materially change the margin profile. Whether it is core product offering or LiveLift, we would not see a different outcome. It is really about the investments we have made to enable the growth that will flow through our business model.

Kenneth James Gawrelski: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question will come from Tim with Raymond James. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Analyst: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple. First, if you could talk about some of the early progress with the Uber partnership and how that is tracking. Within that, on the initiatives surrounding LiveLift in terms of what it will take to ramp that a little further, any thoughts on what inning you are in and any progress made on those initiatives so far? Secondly, on the macro, are you seeing any impacts from energy prices, whether it be on CPG spend or on the health of the lower-end consumer? Thanks.

Bryan Leach: Great. Thanks, Tim. First on the Uber partnership, we were pleased to have announced that a little while ago. Like all of our publishers, they do not just turn that on overnight to 100% of all of their customers across thousands of stores that they support. They do that in a stepwise function, and we are in the early part of that rollout. We will then begin working with them on other aspects of that partnership to make sure that we are able to do the most sophisticated forms of measurement and personalization, marketing, reactivation, and activation—those best practices.

We are in a position where the technology to support this has been built, and we are early in the process of introducing that to different customers at Uber, and we are excited about that. As you know, we have a strong presence in that area, and that is something where we hope that it will also have the same level of uptake and high redemption rates that we have seen in that category more broadly. On the progress we have made on the ramp of LiveLift, I think we have made significant progress from the last time we had a conversation in late February. That is along all the different dimensions that I mentioned.

AI is evolving very rapidly, and so we are investing heavily in AI enablement to take advantage of the efficiencies that are available to us through using tools like Claude Code, but also our ability to create this programmatic API layer. We are absolutely working on that around the clock, getting that to a place where we will be able to automate more of these processes, which will benefit our entire business—not just LiveLift, but also all of our core offers benefit from having it be easier to design, set up, revise, and so forth from beginning to end of a campaign.

The models underlying LiveLift get better with more data, with more refinement of the model, and with more publishers you add. The addition of Uber and Giant Eagle will help us refine those models. That itself represents progress, but we also are seeing that as we get a second and third LiveLift campaign from some of these repeat customers—I mentioned 60% of LiveLift is from a repeat customer—they are able to test out different strategies and learn how the consumer responds to different structured promotions based on their goals. That then helps project the next campaign that much better. So those clients that are participating are gaining an advantage.

They are all aware that doing that in this environment is important, which is a good segue to your last question about the macro. The news you are reading is the same thing we are hearing from our clients. The American consumer is looking for value. We are excited that we are an integral part of that. Whether that is driven by the war in Iran or gas prices or tariffs, or some other exogenous factor, there is a lot of focus on this topic.

Even earlier today, the CEO of Kraft Heinz put out a message—Steve Cahillane—saying the new mantra is value. “Consumers are literally running out of money.” Those are the kinds of things that cause people to take a closer look at the product that we sell. We are making the case that there are smarter and less smart ways to deliver that value. We think the Ibotta Performance Network is a really good way to do that in a way that is also capitalizing on the latest technologies that are available.

I also want to stress that this is nondiscretionary spending, so no matter what the macro environment is, people are looking for value on the things they have to buy week in, week out. If you look at the press release we put out today from Giant Eagle, they commented on why they switched to Ibotta, Inc. They switched because they wanted to see an 8x increase in value delivery for their customers, and they are hearing consistently that is what makes the difference in why people shop at Giant Eagle versus somewhere else.

So both on the CPG side, for example Kraft, and on the publisher side, for example Giant Eagle, being in this field right now is particularly important.

Operator: Our next question will come from Stefanos Chris with Needham and Company.

Stefanos Chris: Hey. Can you hear me?

Bryan Leach: Yeah, we got you.

Stefanos Chris: Awesome. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask on third quarter revenue reflecting positive. What are the assumptions in there? Are you baking in a certain ramp in LiveLift? Are you including Uber and Giant Eagle? Would love to go through the assumptions there and where there could be upside. Thanks.

Bryan Leach: Great. I am going to hand that one to Matt.

Matt Puckett: It is really what we are doing today continuing. We have seen sequentially improving results in our business, particularly driven by redemption revenue, and that is really the driver versus Q1, and the same to be true for Q3 versus Q2. We expect to see that get better in Q2, and that is all going to translate into growth. There is no step change assumed in terms of LiveLift adoption or us further opening the aperture to that. Where we are today is the expectation.

We have assumed a very modest impact from the two new publishers in the back half of the year—that would be a little bit less in Q3, a little bit more in Q4, as a way to think about that—but it is really an ongoing kind of performance that we have seen to date driven by consistent execution, and the fact that our products, both core products and obviously LiveLift as well, are resonating with our clients.

Stefanos Chris: Thanks. If I could squeeze one more in: on the monetization of Uber and Giant Eagle, I assume Uber is similar to a DoorDash, but how about Giant Eagle? Is that similar to a Dollar General, or are there any differences in these two partnerships? Thanks.

Bryan Leach: Without going into the specifics of the economics of individual partnerships, broadly speaking, those are similar to how we have approached these in the past, and we are happy with the economics of those partnerships. As we get greater scale and more momentum and greater access to supply, we continue to see publishers more interested and motivated to deliver the best possible value for their customers, and we think that will continue to contribute to favorable economics going forward.

Operator: Our next question will come from Nitin Bansal with Bank of America.

Nitin Bansal: Thank you for taking my question. Bryan, can you provide some more details on your progress with the go-to-market transformation, specifically how the new sales motion impacted your Q1 results? And what additional changes are you making to the sales team that could impact your performance for the rest of the year? Thanks.

Bryan Leach: Thanks, Nitin. Absolutely. There are a number of different things that have been going on since the arrival of Chris Reidy on our team. That started with taking a look at the team itself and making sure we have the right people in the right roles to help ourselves with the kind of selling that we are going to need to do, which is much more of a consultative sale where we have to be fluent in the businesses of our clients. We reorganized the sales organization to be no longer geographic, but focused on an industry-based approach. We have experts in beverage, for example, or in household products, and so on.

We separated into enterprise clients versus emerging clients, with each having its own industry sub-verticals. We focused on a variety of support structures that were not in place that needed to be, such as bringing in an SVP of Enterprise Sales, an SVP of Business Marketing to help us with B2B marketing expertise, and we beefed up sales finance, sales operations, and training and enablement of our sellers. I think that was very important. We filled all those senior leadership roles by 2025, as I have said on previous calls, and we brought in excellent talent. That has helped us on a lot of different fronts.

We mentioned on the last call the thought leadership and the ability to be proactive and get in front of our clients. The example I gave was the SNAP program—we had a playbook that was designed, we reached out, and that led to incremental dollars being committed to Ibotta, Inc. that were not in their previous annual plan, which were opportunistic and really valuable. We have talked about other things that we have done. “Multithreading” is a term we have used—meaning teaching our sellers to go in at multiple different levels of an organization at the same time to speak to different needs and pain points of the people in those organizations, using the language of their business.

It is the simple fact of being on the ground more often, being in the room more often—the hustle factor—and continuity, so not handing people over between rep to rep. That is really about trust. Most of the structural changes were made last year, but we are continuing to build that trust. As we are doing that, we are getting invited into more important strategic conversations. We are getting clients that want to say, “Let us come out and spend a day with you,” and they are bringing significant senior members of their team to discuss where we think the industry is heading and how it is impacted by things like technology and AI.

We are being embraced more as a thought leader and invited more into upstream strategic planning conversations. I think the introduction of Surcana and ABCS has allowed our sales team to provide third-party independent analysis. That has given them another platform. We have done a better job with event marketing—Chris Reidy has been on stage at Adweek, NACDS, and lots of different conferences. We are getting in front of all different parts of the CPG organization. It is not one thing; it is a variety of different upgrades to how our team sells.

Of course, having something like LiveLift to discuss and having the ability to focus on incremental sales and really lead the conversation around rigorous measurement has given them a lot to talk about, and I am really proud of the work they are doing.

Operator: Our next question will come from Tim Huang with Citizens JMP.

Tim Huang: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to follow up about the pricing changes that were talked about in the prior quarter's call with regard to pricing being more linked to AOV. Could you give any color on how that has been received, and further progress during the quarter on pricing and what has been flowing through?

Bryan Leach: Thanks, Tim. Sure. You are right, and your memory is spot on. It is a question of moving from a flat fee that is applied based on the price band that a product falls within. The old system was: if your product was $3 to $4, you paid this cost per redemption; if your product was $4 to $5, $5 to $6, $10-plus, you might pay a different cost per redemption under the old model. The problem with that is that as you get to either side of that range, you get discontinuities. The ratio that your fee represents as a percentage of the overall product price—and the total economics available to the brand—varies, and that can create inadvertent inefficiencies.

It might make it unnecessarily expensive, for example, to use Ibotta, Inc. with lower-cost products where our fee per redemption cuts a high enough percentage that it is hard to deliver a cost per incremental dollar that is attractive—meaning lower than the contribution margin of that product consistent with a goal of profitability. The solve for that is to shift toward a system where it is continuous—so it is a fixed percentage of the price itself. That way, whether you are at $1.01 or $1.99, you are equally able to take advantage of that structure.

What we have been doing is introducing this transition in our pricing as part of a broader reset of some terms that we have in our preferred partnerships and agreements. That has been very well received. People view that as simplifying the system—dispensing with discrete fees for things like setup. It makes it simpler. Everything is wrapped into this one percentage-of-the-price fee. As I said, it is encouraging clients to promote lower-priced items. We are still very much in the middle of that transition because we did not want to just mandate that everybody turn on a dime.

But as we come back through these conversations on our annual preferred partnerships, that—along with other conversations around things like payment terms—are a natural part of our conversation. Broadly speaking, that is going well. We are seeing success in that transition, although we are still very much in the midst of it. And Matt is going to add one more thing.

Matt Puckett: I would just say—and you will see this in our results—our redemption fee metrics are going down a little bit in terms of the way to think about price. We pay attention to that and understand it, but it honestly does not scare us. In order to maximize revenue, in many cases it makes sense to lower fees. It allows our clients to have profitability objectives. Think about our business model: incremental revenue flows to the bottom line at a really high rate. So seeing revenue per redemption coming down as a result of fees, but then offset by higher volume, is actually a good answer for us in most cases.

Bryan Leach: Broadly speaking, Tim, it is fair to say we have had a greater level of analytical rigor. Looking at that is one of the reasons why we arrived at this transition in our pricing. We had a lot of conversations with our clients before we settled on this, and fortunately we properly prepared for the transition. I am happy with how it is going.

Operator: Once again, if you would like to ask your question, please use the raise hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. That now concludes the Q&A section. I would now like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Bryan Leach: Thanks very much, everyone, for your time today. We are pleased with the results that we have reported and the momentum in our business, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Operator: Thank you for joining today's session. This call has concluded. You may now disconnect.