Lauren StClair : Great. I’ll take the first part of your question and then I’ll hand it off to Tim for the insurance piece. I’ll just to your question around margins. I’ll just remind everyone that Timberland or wallet for the long-term and this is also how we think about margins, we’ve been working towards margin accretion that would get us back to and eventually surpass our 2019 adjusted EBITDA levels, which in the range of our outlook for full year 2024, we would get back to this year. And we’ve worked to achieve this through getting leverage in the portion of our cost base that is relatively fixed in nature. That includes one, hitting a logical ceiling on our brand spend; two, no longer having the step change in G&A expenses as a result of becoming a public company; and three, continuing to gain leverage in areas such as R&D and the organic portion of our sales and marketing.
We’re really proud that we’ve been able to deliver consistent margin accretion on an annual basis since our IPO in late 2021 even in difficult macroeconomic environment. And our outlook showcases our commitment to continuing this trend. So if the top line picks up faster than what we are currently contemplating. We will clearly lean in on things like variable expenses that we’ve talked about. So when it’s profitable and period, we will lean into things like performance marketing, you could expect those costs to come up. But for the fixed and a portion of our cost base, I would expect to get leverage out of those over the long-term.
Tim Chen : And it’s a great question on insurance, if it is a big strategic question that we’re constantly trying to work our way towards, you’re right, it’s a huge market there. And there are a lot of challenges in terms of providing consumers with a sensible experience there. And all I can say is that we’re trying to be creative and exploring a bunch of different avenues and hope to have something to talk about in the coming years there. But it’s going to be a long investment.
Jed Kelly : Thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Youssef Squali with Truist Securities. You may proceed.
Youssef Squali: Hi. Thank you. Couple of questions. One for Lauren – maybe for Lauren. You talked about for full year adjusted EBITDA margin, the 18% to 19.5% of revenues. And so thanks for that. And now the obvious question is kind of what’s your base case on to get either to the low end or the high end and that in terms of growth, I’m assuming it’s a mix and kind of the – the acceleration in the second half. But any kind of guardrails you can you can kind of share that for that would be helpful. And kind of related to that, is that also kind of related somehow to changes in the rate environment? Just maybe Tim, what’s your – what’s your some kind of base case for further rate environment as we go through it because obviously, it’s been very, very fluid in the last four weeks.
Lauren StClair: So the first part of your question Youssef, in terms of full year adjusted EBITDA. As we said before, we’re really proud of the margin accretion that we’ve been able to continue to show for full year even despite some volatility in the macro. But what we’re expecting in terms of full year on the top line, we said that we currently expect to return to double-digit rates of revenue growth starting in the second half. This would be led by SMB product and insurance. And I will reiterate what I said in my remarks though that the exact timing of the recovery, especially in areas such as balance transfer cards as well as any interest rate driven demand changes in both banking and loans will influence how high those double-digit growth rates will be and by wind.
Tim Chen: Yes. And in terms of the base case, we’re trying to be – it’s hard to call exact timing on a lot of these things. So we’re definitely trying to be conservative. I will paint the overall macro picture just as being, if there is a soft landing scenario that would be pretty ideal for us because what would happen is you’d see, easing headwinds in credit cards and loans businesses, balance sheet constraints in underwriting loosen and you’d also see an increase in refi demand across all lending areas as rates decline. And then we’d also see easing headwinds in our insurance business as inflation continues to moderate and carriers get back on their feet as this pricing flows through, so should we experience more of a hard landing scenario?
You should expect revenue recovery to take a bit longer possibly even getting more challenged in the near-term and all we’ll be prudent with our expense management in order to deliver on our margin commitments. The timing of any material changes in the macro environment could impact shorter term progress in some of those margin efforts.
Youssef Squali: Thank you. Just one quick clarification maybe Lauren, when you talk about same brand spend levels in 2020 as in 2023. Is that on a percentage base or is that in aggregate dollars?
Lauren StClair: That’s for the full year in absolute dollars.
Youssef Squali: Absolute dollars, okay. Great. Thank you both.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Justin Patterson with KeyBanc. You may proceed.
Justin Patterson: Hi. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Tim, could you talk about some of your top priorities each year across your big three growth pillars but what we expect around land and expand, vertical integration and engagement initiatives? And then I’ll have a follow-up to Lauren.
Tim Chen: Yes. Thanks for the question. So those are three growth pillars, right? I’d say, land and expand is really more of our tried-and-true playbook. I mean we’re always pushing on that in terms of the as stuff that’s going to be a bit more novel over the coming several years. I think it’s really in terms of the vertical integration and the registration and data-driven engagement. So we’re thinking really hard about where there’s still gaps and customer experiences, where we can uniquely play on NerdUp is a great example of that. But also things like we’ve launched late drive like a Nerd. We’ve launched NerdWallet Advisors. So there’s a lot of different thought processes that were explaining a lot of hypotheses that we’re eager to evaluate.
Justin Patterson: Got it. Thanks. And then the follow-up for Lauren. I appreciate the details you gave around just the revenue growth in the second half of the year. I wanted to confirm was that double-digit growth on the second half as a whole or on a quarterly basis? And then as you’re thinking about just the growth vectors in there, how should we think about the puts and takes between user growth versus just brand spend or advertiser spend starting to improve again, thank you.
Lauren StClair: Sure. So the first part of your question Justin was around revenue growth. So what we said was that we expect to return to double digit rates of growth for revenue year-over-year starting in the second half. And then, the second part of the question was, I believe around MAU growth and user growth as well as brand spend. Is that correct?
Q – Justin Patterson: Yes. Just thinking about the buckets in there, user growth is obviously, well above total revenue growth right now. So just wondering, if there’s any views off of, how users persist versus say pricing recovery that’s driving that reacceleration?
Lauren StClair: Yes. Let’s talk a little bit about a new use, and we’re really proud of that growth in Q4, we grew roughly 24% year-over-year from strength in many verticals both from high levels of consumer intent, as well as our success in landing and expanding similar to areas where we saw growth in revenue. We see growth in MUU. You can think of banking and personal loans, and we also saw high consumer interest in areas like travel and investing. As we expected to your point and MUU grew faster than revenue again in Q4. This trend gives us confidence that consumer demand remains healthy despite ongoing partner conservatism, and we expect that this outperformance of MUU versus revenue. We expect that to continue into Q1, as we see really strong engagement, with our learning content as consumers are continuously looking for unbiased guidance and financial content during this complex, macroeconomic times and despite some of the near term revenue pressure, we expect that the strength in MUU combined with our ability to match consumers, with our financial service providers will accelerate our growth as the macro environment improves.
Q – Justin Patterson: Yes.
Tim Chen : I guess just to add on about there? Yes, in past cycles right as the macro recovers, you definitely get this tailwind is you know, partners are loosening underwriting. They’re getting more aggressive around acquisition. So, and pricing should definitely be a tailwind as well.
Q – Justin Patterson: Got it. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Pete Christiansen with Citi. You may proceed.
