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CEO & Chair Fidji Simo confirmed that the diversification strategy is working, as growth from emerging and mid-sized brands more than compensated for a pullback from a large CPG partner. She noted that off-platform advertising is at an earlier stage; while foundational partnerships are in place and performing well, the focus is now on developing the right motion to scale these businesses. Simo believes the fundamentals are now nailed, positioning this channel for future growth.

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CEO Fidji Simo noted strong diversification with 7,000 active brands and that new metrics help justify budgets. She elaborated on AI's critical role in improving order quality, citing 300 million replacements in 2024 with a 95% satisfaction rate, which she stated is absolutely critical for driving customer retention.

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CEO Fidji Simo clarified that slow adoption is not pushback but reflects long, complex integration cycles, which in turn create a competitive moat. CFO Emily Maher added that most retailers are already non-exclusive and that recent transaction revenue improvements came from shopper efficiencies, not contract changes. She stated they are happy with the current take rate and will continue reinvesting any gains back into the business through incentives or lower-cost products.

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CFO Julia Donnelly stated that 2025 margin expansion will be more modest than in 2024 due to planned investments in R&D (AI) and sales capacity. CEO Bill Ready explained the Instacart partnership will make food and beverage content actionable by allowing users to order recipe ingredients for delivery, opening up a large, endemic category for monetization through seamless purchase handoffs.

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CFO Julia Donnelly stated that while margin expansion will continue, it will be at a lower rate than the first half as Pinterest invests in R&D and sales capacity. CEO Bill Ready explained the Instacart partnership will make food and beverage content actionable, allowing users to order recipe ingredients for delivery, similar to how direct links work for retail.

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CFO Julia Donnelly responded that while overall business trends remain healthy, the Q2 guidance reflects a slightly expanded range due to a fluid environment. She confirmed a reduction in spend from some Asia-based e-commerce retailers in the U.S. but noted this was partially offset by their diversification into Pinterest's European and Rest of World markets.

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CFO Julia Donnelly clarified that the Q4 guidance of 15-17% growth continues Q3's momentum, driven by lower-funnel strength and ramping partnerships. She noted that softness in the CPG food and beverage vertical is an ongoing headwind. Donnelly also stated that the full impact of the new Performance Plus ad product is expected in 2025, as advertiser adoption is typically slower during the peak holiday season.

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Founder and CEO David Baszucki explained that the game's discovery was driven by their core recommendation algorithm, which is inherently repeatable and continuously improving at projecting long-term user value. CFO Naveen Chopra provided a key data point, stating that 75% of 'Grow a Garden's' daily users also engage with at least one other experience, demonstrating the platform's 'flywheel' effect is successfully driving cross-game discovery.

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CEO David Baszucki stated that the game's discovery was driven by their recommendation system, which is intrinsically repeatable and constantly improving at projecting long-term user value. CFO Naveen Chopra noted that cross-pollination is working, as 75% of 'Grow a Garden's' daily users also engage with at least one other experience on the platform.

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CEO Vivek Shah and CFO Bret Richter clarified there were no structural changes to the cost profile. They attributed the quarterly margin fluctuations to the 'lumpiness' of smaller segments, mix dynamics, and M&A integration costs, such as with CNET. Shah also noted the sunsetting of a PC game investment business was a minor drag on the Tech and Shopping segment's margin.

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CEO Vivek Shah confirmed that the pharma upfronts were strong, providing good full-year visibility, particularly with a recovery on the direct-to-provider side. He noted other ad categories lack this visibility due to shorter booking cycles. Regarding OpenAI, Shah stated that after good-faith negotiations failed to produce acceptable terms for the unauthorized use of their content, litigation became the necessary course of action to defend the company's intellectual property.

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CEO Vivek Shah explained that the ad business outlook is viewed categorically, with strength in tech and gaming continuing from 2024 and an expected rebound in Health & Wellness after a strong upfront season. He noted a planned revenue reduction in the B2B business creates a 150 basis point headwind. Shah emphasized that Ziff Davis's leadership in endemic categories provides a buffer against shifts seen in the broader open web. CFO Bret Richter added that their 2025 plan assumes a benign macro environment, similar to 2024.

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CEO Vivek Shah explained that the newly formed CNET Group provides unique scale that is changing advertiser conversations, with tailwinds from consumer tech and AI interest. While not giving 2025 guidance, he expressed bullishness on bottom-line growth. CFO Bret Richter attributed the high free cash flow conversion to strong EBITDA, working capital improvements, and payment timing, while reaffirming the long-term target in the mid-50% range.

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CEO Luis von Ahn explained that AI model improvements have varied impacts: minimal for generating language content but significant for math content. He noted that falling costs of older, still-powerful models are a major benefit. To improve 'video call,' von Ahn said the company is fine-tuning its own models for engagement and is now optimizing for a new key metric: 'average number of words spoken per max subscriber.' This metric encourages the AI to ask open-ended questions and create better conversations, leading to weekly improvements in the user experience.

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CEO Luis von Ahn explained that AI advancements help differently across the product; they are very useful for creating math content but less so for language content where models were already strong. For 'video call,' he highlighted that they are fine-tuning their own models and have adopted a new key metric: 'average number of words spoken per max subscriber.' Optimizing for this metric is making conversations more engaging, adaptive, and effective for learning.

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CEO Luis von Ahn called the ruling 'brand new' and said they would be 'foolish not to test' alternative payment flows, while acknowledging the conversion benefits of frictionless in-app payments. CFO Matt Skaruppa confirmed that payments to providers are 'well over a majority' of COGS, meaning any shift would be accretive to gross margins, but emphasized it is early days.

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CEO Luis von Ahn explained that Max penetration is correlated with Super penetration but is boosted among English learners, citing Japan as a highly penetrated market. He clarified that the growth in published course units translates to KPIs by adding new courses, which increases the user base, and by adding more advanced content, which helps attract and retain more advanced learners, particularly in English.

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CFO Matt Skaruppa and CEO Luis von Ahn Arellano clarified that Max generates more gross profit dollars per subscriber than Super, but has a lower gross margin percentage due to LLM costs. The higher price point makes it accretive to overall profitability. Von Ahn added that expected decreases in AI costs will allow them to offer Max at more attractive prices in developing countries, unlocking a significant opportunity among English learners.

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CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah did not provide a specific vehicle number but emphasized that at least half of free cash flow is committed to share repurchases, framing AV investments as a 'modest redeployment' of capital. He also suggested the Nuro/Lucid deal could yield better economics for Uber due to its structure. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated that while expanding with Waymo is desirable, the current focus is on execution. He then outlined three potential AV business models: a merchant model (fixed payment to partner), an agency model (revenue share), and an asset ownership model (Uber or a partner owns vehicles).

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CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah attributed the strong Delivery margin expansion (3.7% of Gross Bookings) primarily to advertising growth and operating leverage from scale. He noted that the grocery and retail business is now accretive at a variable contribution level after hitting breakeven in Q4, signaling significant future upside. He highlighted a 9% incremental margin for Delivery in Q1 but advised modeling for steady, not accelerated, long-term margin expansion.

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CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explained that the two-city focus with Waymo is to ensure proper liquidity and a return on the significant investment required to launch each city, including mapping and infrastructure. Regarding other AV players, he acknowledged Waymo as the leader but stated that other partners are developing technology globally. He expects to see deployments from other AV partners on the Uber network, particularly outside the U.S., in 2025, positioning Uber as the ideal partner for driving utilization.

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President & CEO Jamie Iannone clarified that ASP growth was driven by factors like the Klarna partnership, not competitor issues. He noted collectibles growth was broad-based across subcategories. Regarding fashion, he expressed significant optimism, highlighting it's already a $10B+ business for eBay and that new technologies like generative AI and targeted marketing efforts are just beginning to unlock its full potential.

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CFO Stephen Priest acknowledged that U.S. sellers sourcing from China is a factor contemplated in their tariff scenario planning. CEO Jamie Iannone added that eBay is more resilient in a downturn due to its value-oriented inventory. He noted that focus categories like luxury and collectibles often attract higher-income buyers who are less subject to demand elasticity, and the strategic pivot to non-new in season goods has diversified the business.

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CEO Jamie Iannone noted the U.K. results are similar to Germany's, with a 20-point improvement in new listers and seller reactivations. CFO Stephen Priest clarified that due to the phasing of buyer fees and managed shipping, there is a temporary take rate headwind. However, for the full year, he expects the U.K. C2C take rate to be slightly higher than pre-initiative levels. He also confirmed that full-year operating margins are expected to be relatively flat despite net headwinds of about 70 basis points.

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CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted that their end-to-end stack provides a meaningful advantage in cost and performance, which is passed on to developers, driving adoption. CFO Anat Ashkenazi clarified the financial services strength was a one-time step-up in insurance and declined to quantify the 2025 impact, instead pointing to FX and leap year headwinds for Q1.

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CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the Gemini question by pointing to recent product momentum and model advancements, stating that having the best model will drive adoption. He reiterated that 1.5 billion users interact with their AI via AI Overviews. Philipp Schindler, SVP and Chief Business Officer, commented that YouTube's brand advertising had solid growth in Q1, driven by cultural moments and strong contributions from finance and retail, but noted it was too early to comment on Q2.

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CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted strong momentum for Gemini across all touchpoints, including a 14x growth in API calls in six months, but avoided a direct competitive comparison. Regarding the DOJ trial, he stated that Google will vigorously defend its position, arguing that users choose its products for their quality and that the proposed remedies could harm the tech sector.

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CEO Sundar Pichai asserted that for a transformative technology like AI, the risk of under-investing is significantly greater than over-investing, noting the infrastructure has long-term utility. He added that progress is not hitting a wall, as there are still major optimizations and real-world use cases to develop, regardless of how scaling laws evolve.

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CEO Evan Spiegel described Sponsored Snaps as a "profound evolution" of the ad business, citing early data showing a 2x increase in conversions and higher engagement. CFO Derek Andersen explained that an ad platform issue, combined with other factors, caused ad revenue growth to slow to 1% in April before recovering. He noted that post-reversion, ad revenue growth was in the 3-4% range in June and July.

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CFO Derek Andersen acknowledged that the macro environment is changing quickly and that while Snap is still growing in Q2, they have seen some headwinds. He noted that it's prudent to lower full-year operating expense guidance by $50 million to maintain healthy flow-through and progress toward profitability, reflecting a balance between investment and realized revenue growth.

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CEO Evan Spiegel stated that the immediate focus is on building the developer ecosystem to solve the 'chicken and egg' problem of content availability for new hardware. He emphasized Snap's unique assets like Lens Studio and its decade-long vision for AR. He affirmed the company will remain focused on its own strategy and execution, without directly commenting on competitive timelines.

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Co-Founder and CEO Tim Chen attributed the 246% YoY Insurance growth to funnel improvements and market normalization, noting growth will moderate. Auto insurance is the largest component, but opportunities exist in home. CFO Jun Lee added that the updated full-year guidance accounts for this normalization. Tim Chen clarified that performance marketing is managed for in-quarter profitability and does not anticipate a material change in leverage as comps get tougher.

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CEO Tim Chen attributed the 821% year-over-year growth in insurance to improved user flows, personalization, proficient performance marketing, and a strong end market with rising premiums. CFO Lauren St. Waugh explained that the Q1 margin guidance, which implies a contraction, is a result of increased year-over-year brand spend, including a Super Bowl ad, and a larger mix of revenue coming from performance marketing.

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Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith, explained that the core strategy is to build direct relationships with audiences, reducing reliance on third-party platforms. He noted that traffic from Google search has fallen from ~60% to ~33% of the mix while overall traffic has grown, validating this approach. He positioned the People app and My Recipes project as major initiatives in this direct-to-consumer push, with more to come.

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Barry Diller, Senior Executive and Chairman, expressed great confidence in his colleagues and described his role as stimulating the process, focusing on capital allocation, and seeking new opportunities. Christopher Halpin, an IAC executive, described D/Cipher Plus as a powerful growth driver that can rapidly scale revenue by accessing new inventory pools, stating it will be supportive of DDM's target for 40%+ digital incremental EBITDA margins.

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IAC CEO Joey Levin explained that the OpenAI integration allows D/Cipher to map and score inventory beyond DDM's own sites, creating an opportunity to sell larger ad packages across 30 million more URLs. Executive Christopher Halpin added that while D/Cipher covers all of DDM's supply, it currently only addresses about half of its demand. He highlighted that D/Cipher campaigns are growing 25% versus 5% for non-D/Cipher campaigns, with a roadmap to expand its reach into programmatic channels.

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IAC CEO Joey Levin attributed DDM's outperformance to strong traffic growth from content investment and distribution diversification (email, social, Apple News) and robust monetization from both direct and programmatic advertising. IAC Executive Christopher Halpin clarified that about half of the licensing line's dollar growth came from the OpenAI deal, which only represented a partial quarter of revenue.

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CFO Susan Li described the capacity landscape as dynamic, with both supply and demand being fluid, and stated there is no fixed timeline for meeting all internal compute demand. On ad performance, she highlighted that conversion growth remains strong and outpaces impression growth, driven by innovations like the new GEM model. She emphasized that advertising is a relative performance game and Meta continues to invest heavily in improvements.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that agentic AI involves performing multi-step tasks, which will make current products feel smarter and create new form factors beyond simple chat. However, he reiterated Meta's standard process: build, scale to a billion users, and then focus on monetization. He cautioned that while Meta AI will scale this year, a meaningful business contribution is not expected in 2025, as the near-term business impact comes from applying AI to core ads and feeds.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that Llama's open-source nature drives quality and efficiency improvements from the community that Meta can incorporate. More importantly, it encourages hardware makers like NVIDIA and AMD to optimize chips for Llama, reducing costs. He expressed confidence in the infrastructure team's execution, noting they are building out capacity faster than initially expected, which enables the delivery of world-class models.

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CFO Jarrod Yahes explained that the company has already been investing in Vector while expanding margins. He noted the business has high leverageability with 80%+ adjusted gross margins, which will make margin expansion easier as revenue growth accelerates. The near-term priority is investing for growth, but they will also continue to drive margin.

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CEO Matthew Bromberg positioned Unity as an agnostic "assembly point" for content, stating that the explosion of third-party AI tools is beneficial if it helps developers. He clarified that Unity's internal AI focus is on simplifying complex workflows within its editor to accelerate development, not competing on asset generation. He also noted that AI leaders like DeepMind are Unity customers, underscoring Unity's foundational role.

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CEO Tony Xu responded that the opportunity is significant in both areas, stating that even in its oldest market, U.S. restaurants, DoorDash's penetration is still in the single-digit percentages of total industry sales, describing the company as a 'speck of dust' in the overall market. He emphasized that the path to growing both penetration and frequency is through continuous product improvements in selection, quality, and affordability.

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CEO Spencer Rascoff explained his decision was driven by the company's compelling mission, the strength of its iconic brands, the transformative potential of AI to create a business inflection, and the large total addressable market (TAM) for online dating, which he believes is much larger than currently perceived.

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CEO Bernard Kim attributed the MAU weakness to potential iOS issues and trust and safety enhancements, emphasizing a product-led strategy over marketing. CFO Gary Swidler explained that Tinder's high margins have already been reduced to fund product development and they will remain cautious with further investment until product improvements show tangible results.

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CEO Andy Jassy explained that the AI space is in an earlier, more dynamic phase with lower margins, similar to the early days of AWS. He expressed confidence that as the market matures and Amazon leverages its expertise in capacity management and logistics, the generative AI business will achieve very healthy margins over time.

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