1stdibs.com Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

com (NASDAQ: DIBS ) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation.

3 million for Q2 2026, both above guidance, driven by improved conversion rates and average order values. The company has re-engineered its cost structure, resulting in a notable adjusted EBITDA margin of 6%, reflecting a 13 percentage point improvement year-over-year. Strategic initiatives include advancements in AI-driven personalization, price parity, and shipping enhancements, with Discovery, Trust, Shipping, and Service as key focus areas. Management highlighted that ongoing improvements in their product roadmap are not dependent on a luxury market recovery, positioning them well for future growth.

com is scaling its Tastemakers Ambassador program and expects to further capitalize on its unique audience through sponsored events. Full Transcript OPERATOR Hello everyone. com Q2 2026 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star-one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star-one again. I will now hand the conference over to Kevin LaBeuz, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

com earnings call for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. I'm Kevin LaBeuz, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Joining me today are Chief Executive Officer David Rosenblatt and Chief Financial Officer Tom Medardino. 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.

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 risks 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 Rosenblatt, CEO 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.

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. 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. com 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.

com 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.

9 million listings. More broadly, we continued our progression toward 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've 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. com, 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. com. Price parity is one of many elements of consumer trust in our platform.

com, including authenticity, seller quality, and platform integrity. Pricing gives buyers confidence in the value of an item. Trust gives them confidence in the platform itself. And 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% to 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 up front, 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 improved 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. com 50, our annual celebration of the world's top interior designers, marked its ninth year in May. This year, for the first time, we introduced paid event sponsorships.

Mila, House of Roll, and Ciroc partnered with us to reach our audience of top interior designers and high net worth buyers—an audience they cannot easily access elsewhere. The core insight is straightforward. Over the years, we have aggregated a uniquely valuable audience, and live events give us a new and differentiated way to monetize it. The timing is right as well.

com events deliver. It's early, but the initial sponsor interest validates the premise that our audience has real commercial value beyond the marketplace itself. We plan to host one additional sponsored event in 2026 and to scale events in the future. com 50 is a reminder of what makes this platform distinctive: a community of influential designers, a catalog of one-of-a-kind objects, and a level of trust that brands and buyers alike are willing to pay for.

Q2 confirms that the roadmap is working, but we are early. The work of improving Discovery, Trust, Shipping, and Service across a marketplace as complex as ours is a multi-year endeavor. We have made a strong start, and there is a great deal more to do. Thank you for your continued support.

I will now turn it over to Tom to review our second quarter financial results and third quarter outlook. Tom, Chief Financial Officer 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 toward 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. com 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.