1stdibs.com, Inc. Q2 2026 earnings call

Good morning, and welcome to the 1stDibs earnings call for the quarter ended June 30th, 2026. I'm Kevin LaBuz, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Joining me today are Chief Executive Officer, David Rosenblatt, and Chief Financial Officer, Tom Etergino. David will provide an update on our business, including our strategy and growth opportunities, and Tom will review our second quarter financial results and third quarter outlook. This call will be available via webcast on our investor relations website at investors.1stdibs.com. Before we begin, please keep in mind that our remarks include forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding guidance and future financial performance, market demand, growth prospects, business plans, strategic initiatives, business and economic trends, and competitive position.

Our actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements as a result of risk and uncertainties, including those described in our SEC filings. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our beliefs and assumptions as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update them except to the extent required by law. Additionally, during the call, we will present GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which you can find on our investor relations website, along with the replay of this call. Lastly, please note that all growth comparisons are made on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, David Rosenblatt. David?

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. Our second quarter results confirm that we are on track to sustainable top-line growth and positive adjusted EBITDA. GMV of $96 million, up 7%, came in above the high end of our guidance range and was our strongest growth since the fourth quarter of 2024. Despite ongoing headwinds from our sales and marketing reductions, we believe that we gained market share in the second quarter based on credit card panel data we track. Driving that result is a product that is measurably better than it was a year ago. Conversion grew for the 11th consecutive quarter, average order values expanded, and the number of sessions stabilized sequentially. The improvements we have been making in our platform in discovery, pricing, shipping, and service are showing up in the numbers.

Based on Q2's performance, we now expect GMV to grow year-over-year for 2026 as a whole. We also continue to expect that GMV will grow in Q4. The demand environment remains challenging. The U.S. housing market continues to hover near a 30-year low, and the spring selling season ended on a weak note. High-end furniture demand, based on the credit card data we track, continues to decline year-over-year and has not shown material improvement. Our 2026 GMV growth expectation does not depend on a macro recovery. Q2 is evidence of that. When conditions do normalize, as they eventually will, we are well positioned to benefit. Turning to the financials, the second quarter demonstrated that our re-engineered cost structure is working as intended.

GMV of $96 million and revenue of $23.3 million both came in above the high end of guidance and did so despite substantial sales and marketing reductions. Adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 6% came in well above the high end of guidance, an improvement of over 13 percentage points versus a year ago. From 2022 through 2025, we re-engineered the business to be able to convert revenue recovery into outsized margin expansion. This dynamic was on full display in Q2, and our confidence in positive full-year adjusted EBITDA remains. With that context, let me walk you through the drivers of the quarter's performance. The funnel told an encouraging story on all three dimensions. Traffic declines moderated relative to the first quarter, and in absolute terms, sessions were flat sequentially, an encouraging sign. Conversion grew for the 11th consecutive quarter, a streak that reflects compounding product improvements.

Average order value expanded as well, supported in part by two high-value art sales in the quarter, totaling over $2 million. That speaks to something important. The trust that buyers place in 1stDibs to facilitate transactions at the high end of the market is a genuine strategic asset, and it is reflected in our AOV trends over the past year. Together, these three dynamics, moderating traffic declines, expanding order values, and continued conversion growth, drove a return to GMV growth. All three give us confidence that our 2026 roadmap is working. That roadmap is organized around four pillars: discovery, pricing, shipping, and service. Each designed to solve specific customer problems that exist independent of the macro environment. AI-assisted development now accounts for over 70% of our new code, up from over 50% last quarter, enabling our team to ship faster than ever.

Let me walk you through our progress in the second quarter. Discovery is where we are making the most visible progress, and search is at the center of it. Our goal is to make 1stDibs searchable in the way that buyers naturally think, rather than the way design experts talk. A buyer who spots a cocoon pendant in a hotel lobby shouldn't need to know what it's called to find something similar on our marketplace. Our catalog is full of one-of-a-kind items that can be difficult to describe. Yet many buyers can recognize exactly what they want when they see it. They simply lack the design vocabulary to search for it. In June, we launched image search on mobile web and desktop, allowing buyers to upload a photo and find visually similar items across our catalog of nearly 1.9 million listings.

More broadly, we continued our progression towards semantic and natural language search. This is not a single feature launch, but a year-long build toward a search experience that understands buyer intent rather than just keywords. To date, we have made real progress by enriching our catalog with AI-powered metadata and by beginning to test semantic hybrid search. On personalization, we are building something meaningfully different from what existed a year ago. Historically, our recommendations worked by surfacing items similar to what a user had viewed, favorited, or searched. Today, we are developing genuine user-level understanding, matching each buyer's affinities and behaviors to inventory they may never have found on their own. The early data is compelling. Personalized homepage recommendations, which launched in Q2, generated our highest-ever click-through rate on a homepage recommendation module.

The homepage itself is now evolving to reflect this shift, moving from an editorialized destination to a personalized feed, with improvements rolling out over the coming quarters. Favorites is also a critical enabler of this strategy. In Q2, we overhauled the favorites experience to make saving, browsing, and organizing items easier, and we are driving broader adoption across the platform. This matters because favorites provide powerful personalization signals. The more buyers engage with them, the more precisely we can tailor their experience. Since last quarter, our favorite rate has improved, a trend which has continued in Q3. Notably, favorites usage is one of our strongest predictors of repeat purchase on 1stDibs, creating a positive feedback loop between engagement and customer lifetime value. Our Tastemakers Ambassador program completed its pilot in the second quarter with tangible results.

Our Instagram following topped 1 million, our Reels production doubled year-over-year, and total video view time on Instagram tripled versus the first quarter. This content is doing double duty, building organic reach and brand affinity while simultaneously improving the efficiency of our paid media program. By incorporating Tastemaker video into our creative mix, we expanded reach and reduced the cost per ad impression, making new buyer acquisition more efficient even as we maintain spending discipline. We plan to scale the Tastemaker program significantly in the second half of 2026. Once a buyer finds what they are looking for, the next question is simple: Can they trust the price? That is what our pricing roadmap is designed to answer. In the second quarter, we doubled our price parity coverage using AI to identify and flag items priced inconsistently across competitor sites. Initial results validate the approach.

Items corrected for price parity are showing an increase in sell-through rates. This sends an important signal to buyers that they don't need to cross-reference pricing on 1stDibs. Price parity is one of many elements of consumer trust in our platform. Based on our progress this quarter, we are expanding our pricing pillar into a broader trust initiative, one that addresses the full range of signals buyers rely on when deciding whether to transact on 1stDibs, including authenticity, seller quality, and platform integrity. Pricing gives buyers confidence in the value of an item, trust that gives them confidence in the platform itself. Given how central trust is to our brand and to buyer confidence, we believe that expanding this work will drive conversion. More to come on this evolution in the third quarter. Even a buyer who trusts the price can be stopped by shipping uncertainty.

That is the friction our shipping roadmap is designed to eliminate. Three priorities guide that effort: upfront competitive pricing, on-time delivery, and accurate tracking. In Q2, we made the most progress on the competitive pricing front. In May, we deployed ML-powered freight quoting, increasing freight pre-quote coverage from approximately 50%-75% of listings and growing overall pre-quote coverage to nearly 90%. More items now show an upfront shipping cost before a buyer reaches checkout, reducing a common source of purchase friction. We also optimized our parcel rates, making certain shipping categories up to 8% cheaper. For verticals like furniture and art, where shipping can represent a meaningful portion of the total purchase price, lower rates directly improve the economics of a transaction and reduce a barrier to completing a purchase.

On tracking, we integrated with a third-party logistics platform that will significantly expand our carrier coverage over time, giving buyers greater visibility into their purchases from seller to doorstep. Together, these improvements are building blocks of our broader multi-year vision, a shipping experience that is fully transparent and cost-competitive, anchored by all-in pricing so that every buyer knows their total cost before they commit. All-in pricing eliminates one of the most persistent sources of checkout abandonment in our category, the moment a buyer discovers the shipping cost. When the total price is visible upfront, the path from intent to purchase becomes more direct. Exceptional service extends an order into a relationship. That is the animating idea behind our fourth pillar. In the quarter, we launched a pilot of an AI-powered customer service chatbot built in partnership with a top provider in the space, available to both buyers and sellers.

Early results are promising. The chatbot is resolving a meaningful share of inquiries without human intervention, allowing our service team to focus on the complex high-touch interactions where human expertise matters the most. For sellers, we improve the item listing creation process in our seller app, reducing the friction involved in bringing inventory to market. The easier we make it for sellers to list, the faster high-quality supply reaches buyers. The through line across all four pillars is growing confidence. Confidence that our roadmap is the right one, that our team is executing against it, and that the results are showing up where it matters. Our roadmap is not the only place we are building new revenue streams. The first 1stDibs 50, our annual celebration of the world's top interior designers, marked its ninth year in May.

Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone. From 2022 through 2025, we systematically re-engineered our cost structure, reducing headcount, rationalizing expenses, and rebuilding the foundation of this business with one objective in mind, ensuring that when revenue growth resumed, it would flow disproportionately to the bottom line. Q2 provides early evidence that this is working exactly as designed. Across all three metrics, GMV, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA margin, we beat the high end of our guidance. GMV grew 7%, revenue grew 5%, and adjusted EBITDA margin reached approximately 6%. Critically, that margin expansion is happening alongside a deliberate rebalancing of our team towards product and engineering, the highest ROI investment we can make. We are expanding margins while simultaneously concentrating more of our resources on the work that will drive our next phase of growth. Let me walk you through the numbers.

GMV of $96 million was up 7% and above the high end of our guidance range. That growth reflected progress across all three dimensions of our funnel, easing traffic declines, expanding average order values, and continued conversion growth. Traffic declines moderated relative to the first quarter, and sessions were flat on a sequential basis. We ended the quarter with approximately 75% of traffic from organic sources, a continued reflection of the enduring strength of the 1stDibs brand. Average order value reached approximately $2,850, up 10% year-over-year. Median order value, which excludes the impact of outlier transactions, also grew 10% to approximately $1,500. That trend tells us order value expansion is broad-based, a clear signal of the trust buyers place in our platform. Conversion grew for the 11th consecutive quarter, reflecting the compounding impact of our product investments and giving us continued confidence in our roadmap.

While order volume declined year-over-year, orders grew sequentially. Consumer and trade GMV both grew year-over-year. Together, the two channels reinforce the same story. Our platform is gaining traction across buyer types independent of the macro environment. On a vertical basis, growth rates improved across all categories relative to the first quarter, with strength in vintage and antique furniture, art, and fashion. We ended the quarter with approximately 57,700 active buyers, down 10%, reflecting the deliberate reduction in sales and marketing spend enacted in late 2025. Turning to supply, unique sellers held steady at approximately 5,700, flat sequentially, reflecting continued stabilization following our 2024 and 2025 pricing actions. Listings grew 1% year-over-year to nearly 1.9 million, providing buyers with a deep and expanding catalog of one-of-a-kind inventory.

Turning to the income statement, net revenue reached $23.3 million, up 5%, exceeding the high end of our guidance range. Transaction revenue, which is tied directly to GMV, represented approximately 74% of total revenue. The quarter also included approximately $270,000 of non-endemic advertising revenue related to the 1stDibs 50 sponsorships, an early but tangible contribution from this nascent revenue stream. Take rates declined approximately 30 basis points year-over-year, largely driven by a mix shift to higher value orders, which carry a lower blended commission rate. Gross profit was $17.2 million, up 8%. Gross margin was 73.9%, up 210 basis points year-over-year, and at the high end of our target range of 72%-74%, helped by modest reductions in professional services, depreciation, and shipping costs. Total operating expenses were $19.3 million, down 11%. That decline did not come at the expense of product investment.

Technology development continued to grow year-over-year, consistent with our decision to rebalance resources towards product and engineering, even as total OpEx declined. Sales and marketing expenses were $5.4 million, down 34%. This reduction reflects the strategic realignment implemented in late 2025, which fundamentally reset our marketing organization and rationalized performance marketing spend, as well as lower headcount-related expenses following our first quarter reorganization. Sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue was 23%, down from 37% a year ago. Technology development expenses were $6.3 million, up 7%. This increase reflects continued investment in product and engineering in support of our 2026 roadmap, including the impact of our annual merit cycle in March. Technology development as a percentage of revenue was approximately 27%, flat year-over-year. General administrative expenses were $6.7 million, up 1%, reflecting the ongoing discipline in our overhead cost base.

General administrative as a percentage of revenue was approximately 29%, versus 30% a year ago. Lastly, provision for transaction losses were approximately $930,000, or 4% of revenue, in line with our historical range of 2%-4%. As I mentioned previously, total operating expenses were $19.3 million, down 11%. In addition, operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were at the lowest level since we went public in 2021. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.3 million, representing a margin of approximately 6%, well above the high end of our guidance range. This result is a direct product of the cost structure we rebuilt starting in 2022. Revenue upside flowing disproportionately to the bottom line, exactly as designed. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash equivalents, and short-term investments of $67.7 million, down $17.6 million sequentially. That decline primarily reflects two items.

$11.1 million in share repurchases and approximately $5.9 million related to a change in our agreement with our payment processors that resulted in an accounting reclassification of cash and cash equivalents to receivables from payment processors and seller accounts. This reclassification has no economic impact. It is a presentation change only. Total assets remain unchanged. The offsetting liability to sellers is unchanged, and there is no impact to net income, working capital, or overall financial position. The cash balance appears smaller, but this cash was always offset by an equal payable to the sellers. The offset now simply sits against a different asset account. Excluding it, cash declined approximately $11.7 million, driven primarily by capital returns to shareholders. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.4 million shares for $11.1 million under our 2026 stock repurchase program, exhausting the authorization.

Since inception of our repurchase programs, we have repurchased approximately 11.4 million shares for approximately $55.3 million. Before moving to guidance, I want to address our full-year free cash flow directly. Our 2026 financial framework includes a commitment to positive free cash flow, and the operational performance of the business supports that. If anything, performance has exceeded our expectations year-to-date. However, the reclassification I just discussed affects our reported free cash flow and means we are no longer likely to generate positive free cash flow in 2026. Excluding the reclassification, the underlying business is generating cash ahead of our original expectations. Turning to the outlook, our guidance reflects quarter to date results and our forecast for the remainder of the period. We forecast third quarter GMV between $89 million and $94 million, or flat to up 6%.

Net revenue of $22 million-$22.9 million, or flat to up 4%. Adjusted EBITDA margin between -1% and +2%. Our GMV guidance reflects three factors. First, product-driven growth. Continued year-over-year GMV growth at the midpoint, a reflection of compounding roadmap progress against the backdrop of significant sales and marketing reductions. Second, quality-driven performance. While traffic remains a headwind, we expect continued growth in conversion and AOV. Third, seasonal dynamics. The third quarter is our seasonally softest period, and we are facing our toughest year-over-year GMV comparison of 2026. Our revenue guidance reflects take rate dynamics. Revenue is expected to grow year-over-year, though at a modestly slower rate than GMV at the midpoint, reflecting a continued mix shift towards higher value orders. These transactions carry a lower blended commission rate. Our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance reflects two factors. First, structural efficiency.

Continued operating expense discipline from actions taken in late 2025. Second, seasonal dynamics. The third quarter is our seasonally softest period. A sequential step down in revenue is the primary driver of lower margin versus Q2. Turning to our 2026 financial framework, we are upgrading our expectations for GMV growth based on Q2 performance. Our revised financial framework is, we now expect GMV to grow year-over-year for 2026 as a whole. We also expect Q4 GMV to grow year-over-year, our original milestone. We expect revenue take rates of approximately 24%-25%, down from our prior outlook of 25%-26%, as higher order values, which carry a lower blended commission rate, represent a growing share of our GMV.

We expect to deliver a third consecutive year of revenue growth, reflecting the resilience of our marketplace in the face of a soft market for luxury home goods. We expect gross margins of 72%-74%, up from 71%-73% in 2025. We remain focused on efficient growth with a full-year outlook of positive adjusted EBITDA. On free cash flow, as discussed, because of our accounting reclassification related to our payment processor agreements, we are no longer likely to generate positive free cash flow for 2026. Underpinning this plan is the assumption that macroeconomic conditions, particularly those impacting the housing market and the consumer discretionary spending, remain stable. In 2022, we began resetting our expense base with a specific goal in mind, ensuring that when revenue recovered, it would flow disproportionately to the bottom line. Q2 is the clearest evidence yet that this design is working.

GMV, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA all came in above the high end of guidance. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached approximately 6%, and we achieved all this while continuing to invest in product and engineering, the engine of our long-term growth. We are on plan, we are executing, and our conviction in the path ahead has never been stronger. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to updating you on the progress in the coming quarters. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to the operator to take your questions.