Good afternoon. My name is Elliot, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Nextdoor's Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. You may now begin your conference.

Thank you, operator. I'm John T. Williams, Head of Investor Relations. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us to review Nextdoor's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results. With us on the call today are Nirav Tolia, Chief Executive Officer; and Matt Anderson, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our SEC filings available on the SEC's website and in the Investor Relations section of our website as well as the risks and other important factors discussed in today's earnings release. Additionally, non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on today's conference call. A reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the Q4 2024 shareholder letter released today. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Nirav.

Thank you, John T. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm happy to be with you today to discuss our fourth quarter 2024 financial results and outlook. When we created Nextdoor, we did so with the belief that connected neighborhoods create stronger communities. Today, 14 years later, more than 100 million verified neighbors have joined our platform to improve their local lives. We've definitely made a real impact. At the same time, we haven't come close to fulfilling our potential, both as a business and more importantly, with our product. So about a year ago, I came back as CEO to drive complete transformation of our user experience we call it NEXT, a reimagined and significantly improved version of Nextdoor. Since my return, our team has worked hard to create a robust foundation for future growth. And while there is much more work to do, I'm encouraged by our progress and excited to share some specific details about the emergence of NEXT on today's call. But before setting the stage for what's next, no pun intended, let's talk about our Q4 and full year 2024 results. Q4 marked a strong finish to the year. Weekly active users increased 10% year-over-year, reaching $45.9 million. Revenue grew 17% year-over-year to $65 million. For the first time, we achieved positive adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow, an important milestone. Throughout Q4 and really all of 2024, and we showed that a disciplined balance between strategic investment and cost controls can drive sustained productivity gains. All of these results were made possible by an unwavering focus on execution and reinforce my most important belief about winning organizations. People are the core asset. Establishing the team was a key focus in 2024, and I'm confident that we now have the right talent in place across the organization to…

Thank you, Nirav, and good afternoon, everyone. In both Q4 and 2024, we saw progress across key measures of engagement, revenue and profitability. In Q4, nearly all of our new verified users joined organically. Among these new users, we saw the fastest growth from those aged 18 to 34. These younger users tend to have different usage habits when compared to our overall user base, but we believe that our expectations will increasingly align with the next user experience. Q4 WAU of $45.9 million grew 10% year-over-year, driven by a few factors. First, new user acquisition remains strong, particularly in the U.S. Second, we improved notification delivery and relevance prompting many previously inactive users to reengage. As we have noted in past quarters, when users come to the platform, they are engaging with more content in each session. These optimizations drove positive business impact, but we now look ahead to bolder transformation in 2025. Many verified users have joined Nextdoor, but are not as engaged as they could be. With NEXT, we see a big opportunity to reconnect with them. through richer local content, timely local alerts and community-powered local recommendations. Now on to monetization. Q4 revenue of $65 million grew 17% year-over-year driven by growth from self-serve advertisers and improved revenue retention. Q4 average revenue per weekly active user or ARPU grew 7% year-over-year to $1.42 and reflecting our ability to deliver more relevant ads to users. As a result, we delivered more ad impressions, more clicks and higher effective CPMs. Within our self-serve channel, revenue growth, account retention and net revenue retention were all strong. Self-serve advertisers, in particular, continue to embrace our click optimization capabilities. which delivered 47% lower cost per click compared to nonoptimized campaigns and represented more than 40% of our self-serve revenue in Q4.…

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Maybe 2, if I could. First, on the user side of the equation. Maybe talk a little bit more about the decision process around focusing on maybe going deeper and on the engagement side with the current pace of users or a subset of current piece of users rather than investments on the growth side in stimulating the broader base of users and how you think about what the output of that will look like for the platform and you look out over the next 12, 18, 24 months. And then one more maybe sort of micro question would just be on the ad impression headwind. So it sounds like that's fully reflected in Q1. Does that remain a headwind, meaning you expect to bring down ad impressions on a continuous basis deeper into the year? Or will that headwind will mostly be absorbed by the time you exit Q1, just thinking about the supply side for the advertising business.

Eric, this is Nirav here. Thank you for both questions. I'm going to take the first one on users, and then I'll let Matt comment on the ad impression question that you asked at the end. So when it comes to users, let me kind of take a step back and tell you where we are in our process of launching next. The way that Internet software is developed is never a big bang. It's always a series of iterative movements where you learn, you listen, you get better, you improve. And then ultimately, you may do a PR event that signals a big launch, but you're shipping all along. That is the process that we've been in for some time now. As we mentioned in the letter, we actually have been testing in 6 markets around the U.S. it is the best practice to cohort users that way and learn against the current base and so this is a very standard thing that we're doing. Ultimately, we will get to the point where we flip the switch for everyone. And that's what we talk about as we say, we're initiating to switch over to completely all users getting next. As it relates to engagement, particularly the question you asked around 12 to 18 months, what we're looking for is deepening engagement with an already sizable user base. So over 100 million verified neighbors, but what we need is more frequent and deeper engagement. And so those are some of the NorthStar metrics for us. They can actually ultimately translate into more visits over a shorter frequency of time and more time spent on those visits, whether it's a minute metric or whether it's a number of stories read. That's the goal. We are very optimistic given the early things that we've seen, but this is going to be a process. And that's why we talked about this idea that for the next few quarters, the optimal thing for us to do is to learn and optimize. And so that's where our focus is, and we're excited about where that takes us. I'll turn it over to Matt for the ad impression questions.

Yes. Thanks, Eric. So a couple of pieces. I'll start with where we came into 2025, which is over the last several years, actually had a really strong and consistent asset by growth. That's been really the core driver of our growth as we've been building our onstage. Now as we look internally and we look ahead to 2025 and beyond, our core discussion is what do we need to do today to ensure that growth sustains for many years to come, and that led us to the intentional action related to next. And really specifically, and when we talk about the first half of this year, we're really focused on ambitiously testing a number of different efforts that we think can give us a signal we need to drive durable growth. And Nirav talked about that for a few minutes. And so really, as we look at the first half, we do expect limited supply growth relative to our current baseline because we're doing those tests with a deliberate focus on learning, understanding how those things play out. And then this NEXT really becomes launched as we get into the midyear as we talked about in the past, that's where we can expect to see and observe all the different things that we're focused on. And so we think that will play out in a number of ways, but one of the things will be early signals around increasing that frequency that Nirav mentioned. And so we're going to be driving ambitiously towards that. But a lot of the supply dynamics that we're talking about today are delivered, they are tied to next and they are tied to a long-term growth.

We now turn to Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum.

So obviously, you're integrating with a bunch of different publishers to bring in kind of that local community content. Just curious where you're at in that continuum of securing that kind of information across various markets across the country.

Nirav here. And that's a great question. I just want to remind everyone on the call that we have 3 pillars of next. We have a new pillar and alerts pillar and a recommendations pillar you are talking about the news thing. And specifically, you're talking about the fact that for the first time, we are moving beyond primarily using user-generated content from neighbors as the new source to going and getting content and really establishing distribution for existing third-party publishers. By our estimates, there are probably anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000 local news publishers across the U.S. We already have several thousands. So I don't think getting coverage is ultimately the long pull. The thing that we're going to do that we think is different and better and ultimately, the most useful for our users is not just show them the articles. It's to bring them the articles and then allow them to have discussions with verified neighbors about the issues in those articles. And so if we take a step back, the hard thing here is not actually delivering the content to our users. The users can actually get the content today. It's actually not something that's unique to Nextdoor. What is unique to Nextdoor is over 100 million verified neighbors that you know are thinking about the same things you are because they live in your local community. And so to have the content bolstered by the neighbor conversation, that's what we think is really special. And we're excited to show that to the world.

And then just going back to the comments you made on the moves by large advertisers. Just wondering if there's additional detail you can provide or if there's conversations feedback you've gotten from those advertisers and how you gain comfort that this is macro related and not necessarily micro related?

Yes, Jason, I'm happy to take that one. So Really, it starts with something that I referenced in my comments, which is a focus on the advertiser value equation. And one thing that we talked about quite a bit over the last couple of quarters is driving performance for advertisers. This is where when we talk about things like improving cost per click, including retention, increasing self-serve. That's been a key part of this. Now as we've entered the year, 1 of our big focuses is understanding how do we get better at meeting where advertisers where they need to be, particularly larger advertisers. And we do have feedback for both new and potential advertisers that they ultimately want the option and the ability to buy programmatically. And so we see that as we look across our base of existing advertisers. It's a real opportunity to make it easier for them to buy to have multiple channels. And so it's really based on that feedback. Now there are other factors as well. I think it's too early to try and discern between macro versus idiosyncratic customer-specific dynamics, but we are very much focused on making it easier, especially for our larger advertisers to buy to come onto the platform. And then ultimately, as we move further towards next, we think we have an opportunity to deliver more value to that.

[Operator Instructions] We now turn to Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis with Citi.

Nirav and Matt. First for me, with 10% year-over-year WOW growth of flat net adds sequentially. As we think about next supporting session depth and retention, can we also revisit your leverage to drive top-of-funnel WAU growth? As well as the impact of the newer notification delivery strategies, feed ranking models and how you're driving usage with younger users.

Okay. Nirav, here, Jamesmichael. So the first is I think you probably have noted that a lot of the growth that we saw in Q4 in new verified neighbors was from a younger demographic. And so that's actually a really encouraging sign. And we think much of what we've built with NEXT will broaden our value proposition across our existing base of users and also for younger users for urban users for segments that maybe we historically have not served as well as we can. So that's kind of the first thing. As it relates to ad inventory, I just want to get specific because this question has actually been asked a couple of times. We are in the phase for the next few quarters where we are optimizing learning and specifically learning about engagement. As we learn more and we drive more engagement, that obviously gives us the opportunity to start to increase ad load or to create new ad units or to do all of the things that we can do to make sure that we are serving the needs of our advertisers. But that's something that comes after we understand the best way to serve our consumer base. The last part of the question, when you asked about new users versus existing users, we have a really large base. That large base is very familiar with Nextdoor. The first thing we want to do is understand how they are comparing before and after. It's really important for us. We think the new experience is dramatically better. We want to learn the ways that our existing users feel that as well. Within that existing user experience, there are lots of opportunities for our existing base to take the content on Nextdoor and share it with neighbors who are not yet on Nextdoor. So the way these social networks typically grows through virality, we know that if we do a good job of serving our existing user base, we will also drive new user growth. That is why we're focused on our existing base.

And Jamesmichael, I'll just add 1 other note to acknowledge your comment on Q4 specifically. Typically, in the fourth quarter, we see some seasonal flatness, particularly around the Christmas and New Year period when engagement tends to be lower. That's been obscured in past years. But ultimately, I think the year-over-year growth is a good indicator of our pros in the quarter.

Very clear. I have a follow-up. And then it's encouraging to see the positive EBITDA inflection with leverage across expenses, but led by S&M savings, particularly cut in branded performance marketing. Can you set some light on the strategic shift here in your customer and advertiser acquisition strategies?

Just to clarify, you were talking about operating leverage and sales and marketing expense. Did I hear you correctly?

Yes, operating leverage in talons and marketing.

Yes. So there's a couple of pieces there. One, I actually want to start with an overall comment, which is the leverage we've seen in the business, including the 30 points of the year-over-year margin improvement in Q4 is broad-based across every function, across every type of spend. And so that is, I think, an important point. Now the area as we think about how some of these strategic decisions will flow through our model, sales and marketing is a good example. It partly reflects the lower personnel costs, which is true across the company. But importantly, it reflects a couple of different things. It really shift towards organic growth. So one we talked about before, which is with substantially all of our neighbors coming to platform mechanically, we effectively do not spend on the acquisition. So over the course of the last couple of years, that's a real source of leverage. As we look forward, we then look to where are the areas where we can apply that same approach investing in a better product, investing in scalable growth. And so we look to other areas, for example, for SMBs, we do spend with some pay channels to acquire customers on the platform, but we're actually shifting our focus to invest in product to improve our road map so that we can help those SMBs have better tools with better organic presence. And so as we look forward over '25 and beyond, we are very focused on getting further leverage from F&B because we will really be based on improving product. And so that backward-looking improvement around NAR acquisition, we think there's an equal opportunity as we look at SMBs over the next couple of years.

We now turn to Rohit Kulkarni with Roth Capital.

Just to kick things off. On these short-term trade-offs versus long-term wins. Any more color you can give Nirav on over the last 6 months, what is it that you're seeing that gives you greater confidence that the next 6 months of pain is going to lead to a lot bigger in the longer term with regards to users or advertisers. Would love to get more color on kind of the leases that you're reading through the data as to the next switch over as such?

It's a great question. So let me actually take a step back and say that when we look at our feedback, we're really trying to pull together 3 different things. We have qualitative feedback directly from our users, and we have a great research team and our entire product development organization is always trying to listen to users to understand what we can do to better serve them. We have quantitative feedback, which is typically just dashboards and metrics and things that we can look at to understand with the system of our scale, how are the knobs and dials being moved. And then the third thing is we have our intuition. Because when you create a new product vision, you are actually creating something that you believe users need, but they haven't necessarily told you that they want those things because they don't even know necessarily that they want them. right? So it's balancing those 3 things. I will give you one example of something that we've seen as an early indicator that we are on the right track. And it's still early. The reason that we've taken the next few quarters to really learn and understand the impacts is because we're now at a stage where we can initiate the switchover and do so without having to incrementally optimize the current system. But one example is we have seen the third-party publisher content is resulting in infrequent users using the platform more. That's just one example. It's still early. We can't even really quantify it given the size of the audience that we're experimenting against and the different types of content that we're showing. But that is a very specific example of the fact that when we show more relevant local content, we know that Nextdoor begins to turn into a more habitual service.

And then a finance question on first half '25 guide maybe Deny can provide more color on the drivers underlying be it number of advertisers, number of users, revenue per user on the kind of first half revenue guide that you have and as a sub-question to that, what can you do to get the large advertisers who are shifting towards programmatic back onto the platform? Are there specific go-to-market things that you could do or some tech upgrades that you need to do to kind of reignite that spend bucket.

So happy to. I'll break down to a couple of pieces. So with regard to the first half, it goes back to something we've talked about a bit on this call, which is very simply, we have the total ad supply and inventory, which is tied to our user growth, but also decisions around frequency, depth testing, ad load. And we have never increased our halo over the last couple of years and it's really been come through organic feed item views. Now as we've talked about, we are going to test the different ways we can do things that might affect supply, less frequent or more dynamic notifications, certain dynamically changing ad load. Thinking about those types of dynamics will affect the total supply. But as I mentioned earlier, that is intentional. Now that does mean that as we flow that down through the model, that will constrain growth more than it would have, all else if we just proceeded with our continued optimization through the quarter. So a lot of it really is tied towards those changes, those optimizations, those tests. And that's why it is linked to that effort to drive towards the next mid-2025. As we move into the second half of the year, we'll be looking closely to see where those can start to drive things like supply growth, user growth, and we'll certainly share more on those as we go. And then as it relates to large advertisers, it is certainly, as I mentioned earlier, making it easier or present to buy. It's also making sure we're continuing to deliver performance. And so there's been an effort that's been underway and continues to progress, which is making sure those larger advertisers, including ones with whom we have a more active relationship that they are getting benefits from our ad server as well. And so the same way our self-serve advertisers are seeing leverage and better performance from the ad server, we're going to make sure that our larger advertisers see those same benefits, and we're continuing to march as expected through that ad SAC transition. And so when you pair that with the going-forward efforts around programmatic partnerships, and really just a focus on helping them reach the audience and evolving our go-to-market. We think there's an opportunity. It's not something that will change in a quarter. But in conjunction with Next, in conjunction with the new ways of buying we think there's a real opportunity to show progression here over the course of the full year.

Okay. I think we've taken all of the questions. And so before we close, I'd like to take a minute to briefly recap and reinforce the things that matter most, about where we are today and where we're going. First, in Q4 and in 2024, the team executed well. We created a solid foundation. We were able to balance strategic investment with cost controls, and that's why you saw sustained productivity gains. But second, we are now intentionally going to make short-term trade-offs to prioritize the long term. This will impact metrics, it will impact performance, but it's in the near term. And it's not something we take lightly. But it is the right thing to do because we are building this company to be a company for long-term investors. Third and most importantly, we are moving very ambitiously on the switchover to NEXT. The 3 pillars of NEXT, we talked about them, adding new sources of local content to help keep users informed upgrading live local updates to help keep her users safe and finally, servicing community-powered recommendations to help keep users smart. We are excited to share more with you about next in the coming months. We appreciate you joining the call, and thank you for your interest in Nextdoor.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's call has now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.