NIQ Global Intelligence - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 revenue grew 7.2% to $1.053B with 5.8% organic constant currency (OCC) growth; Adjusted EBITDA rose 24.9% to $223.7M (margin 21.3%, +300 bps y/y), led by EMEA strength and value-based pricing plus cross-sell/up-sell.
• Versus S&P Global consensus, revenue beat ($1.053B actual vs $1.039B estimate*) while adjusted EPS was below ($0.03 actual vs $0.072 estimate*); management nevertheless raised Q4 and FY25 guidance. Values retrieved from S&P Global.*
• Free cash flow inflected: Q3 free cash flow (FCF) was $224.4M (vs $56.5M y/y), with operating cash flow of $272.2M; FY25 levered FCF guidance lifted to breakeven (up $20M vs prior midpoint) and H2 FCF expected at ~$280–$285M.
• Capital structure improved: IPO and August refinancing lowered annualized interest by ~$100M; strong Q3 triggered an additional spread step-down worth ~$9M annual savings.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• EMEA-led growth and pricing power: EMEA revenue +10.9% reported (+8.8% OCC) drove outperformance; management cited “strong renewals, expansion… and cross-selling new capabilities,” with pricing a key contributor.
• Margin and FCF inflection: Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 300 bps to 21.3% on AI-enabled efficiencies and GfK integration synergies; Q3 FCF surged to $224.4M as DSOs improved seven days q/q and interest expense declined.
• Strategic positioning/AI: “AI is a powerful accelerator within the NIQ Ecosystem… widening and deepening our data moat, enhancing client outcomes, and driving operational efficiency” — CEO Jim Peck.

What Went Wrong

• EPS vs Street: Adjusted EPS of $0.03 was below S&P Global consensus of ~$0.072*, despite revenue upside. Values retrieved from S&P Global.*
• APAC profitability pressure: APAC Adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 17% from 21% y/y; APAC Adjusted EBITDA declined 16% y/y, reflecting mix and ongoing investments.
• One-time OpEx headwind: Expenses included a ~$50M one-time stock-based compensation catch-up related to the IPO, elevating OpEx in the quarter.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning and welcome to NIQ's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Will Lyons, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Will Lyons (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to NIQ's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Joining me today are CEO Jim Peck, COO Tracey Massey, and CFO Mike Burwell. Following Jim and Mike's prepared remarks, Jim, Tracey, and Mike will take your Q&A. As a reminder, our remarks today will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today's earnings press release. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Also, during this call, we will present both GAAP and certain non-GAAP financial measures.

A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which is available on our IR website, investors.niq.com. A replay of this call will also be available on our IR site. Lastly, just a quick housekeeping item. Posted alongside our 10-Q and Earnings Release, you'll find a supplemental file that reflects recasted financials related to our post-IPO legal reorganization. This includes a non-cash mark-to-market adjustment on the Nielsen Media Warrant for all historical periods prior to Q3 2025, where the instrument has converted to equity treatment. With that, I'll now hand the call to Jim.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Thanks, Will. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm very pleased to report that our Q3 results beat expectations across the board: 5.8% organic constant currency revenue growth, 21% margins up 300 basis points, and $224 million of levered-free cash flow, achieving most of our second-half cash flow guidance in Q3 alone. We've raised our 2025 outlook, and we're heading into 2026 with momentum. Q3 is further proof that we are reaping the financial benefits of our multi-year transformation. In terms of revenue, EMEA and Americas grew 8.8% and 4.1% respectively on an organic constant currency basis, and APAC growth improved. Intelligence revenue grew 6.6% in organic constant currency. Intelligence subscription revenue, our version of ARR, also grew 6.6%. This was our sixth straight quarter of 5-plus % organic constant currency growth and 6-plus % intelligence subscription growth.

Activation revenue improved in the quarter, and our pipeline remains robust. On profitability, net loss and adjusted net loss improved, while adjusted EBITDA of $223.7 million accelerated to 25% growth. We expanded adjusted EBITDA margin and we are tracking to significant expansion in 2026. With our strong Q3 performance, we now expect to be free cash flow break-even on a levered basis for the full year 2025. The first step of what we expect will be a multi-year free cash flow inflection. As an important reminder, levered-free cash flow in the first half of the year did not reflect the $100 million of annual interest savings we achieved as part of the IPO. Looking at high-level business performance, aligned to our revenue growth algorithm, Q3 was driven by strong pricing as well as innovation, cross-sell, and up-sell.

In intelligence, we're seeing continued strong adoption of our omnichannel measurement products such as e-commerce, consumer panel, and full-view measurement, which contribute nicely to our growth. We're also successfully executing our proven integration playbook at GfK. Tech and Durables revenue has grown year to date, and we're aiming to accelerate further in 2026. In activation, our AI-first BASES, analytics, and media products are growing rapidly, supporting 2025 revenue and bolstering momentum heading into 2026. Lastly, integrations of our GastroGraph AI and Emteryx acquisitions are going well, and we're penetrating new markets and converting new business. In short, it was a strong quarter. We're growing profitably and improving margin and free cash flow ahead of schedule. For the balance of my prepared remarks, I will address how AI is widening the moat around the NIQ ecosystem and improving our financial profile.

We are not simply participating in the AI revolution in consumer data intelligence; we're leading it. Let me start by highlighting three key takeaways. First, AI widens the NIQ data moat. Today and into the future, AI models need the right data in scope, accuracy, and depth. Our data assets are vast and hard to replicate, are enriched, are proprietary, and span decades of consumer spending behavior, and are updated constantly. Second, we are rapidly embedding AI across our solutions portfolio. We're also evolving the NIQ user experience to enable clients' speed to insights and further enhance our revenue growth. Third, we believe we're in the first innings of capturing significant AI-driven operating efficiencies and margin expansion. On my first point, today's consumer brands and retailers face a daunting and expensive reality. Consumer behavior is changing rapidly, and shopping data is exploding in volume and complexity.

Identifying, collecting, and analyzing this data across a rapidly growing number of channels and touchpoints is more challenging and costly than ever. As generative and agentic AI reshapes this competitive landscape, CPGs and retailers seek real-time, granular insights so they can act faster and compete smarter. General-purpose AI models alone are insufficient to extract meaningful signals from messy, unstructured data and not built to support high-stake decision-making. Try asking a general-purpose LLM who sold the most chocolate during October 2025, and the result is incomplete, outdated, and inaccurate. This is because the accurate data simply is not available in the public domain. We have this granular data at NIQ. To discover, clients can click into sales data by day, week, location, which specific candy bar, at what price point, sold through which retailer, why the consumer bought, what else the consumer bought, everything and more about that transaction.

In our ecosystem, we harness advanced technologies and draw on decades of industry leadership to amass the global superset of consumer shopping behavior data, which is continuously updated with first-party data. Our data covers every dimension that matters to clients, including geography, channel, and category. We also believe our data is the most granular available anywhere, down to the specific product SKU. This data moat is intentionally designed. Our data scale is vast, global, and proprietary. Our harmonized data assets are extremely difficult and highly impractical to replicate. We ingest retail point-of-sale data from thousands of retail chains in over 90 markets, and our robust industry reputation for data stewardship facilitates these exchanges. In traditional trade retail, our extensive network of field auditors and digitized collection methods enables us to cover consumer purchases with less technology for retailers in key developing markets, a feat unmatched by others.

We also believe we have the most comprehensive digital commerce assets, offering the most detailed view of the digital marketplaces as well as the largest global e-receipt consumer panel. In fact, panels are a key area of focus and differentiation for us. We have collected decades of consumer shopping data from our panels, and we're investing to expand our panel footprint. By pairing the what the consumer bought from our leading measurement data with the why from our robust panel data, we are uniquely able to deliver clients the full view of consumer shopping behavior globally. In addition to the massive amounts of data we ingest, it's the rich data that we create that further enhances our moat.

We generate a substantial layer of rich reference data and metadata, which includes tens of millions of product attributes, taxonomies, hierarchies, and harmonized product information across the 220 million items in our database. This includes brand, category, size, ingredients, packaging type, and more. Our rich layer of descriptive data enables NIQ to organize, analyze, and compare products at a granular level, making it possible for clients to uncover trends, benchmark performance, and make smarter decisions faster. Which brings me to my second point: how our solutions drive clients' speed to insights and unlock new growth. NIQ data and insights power mission-critical client decisions across their enterprise, and our clients are leaning in. By Q3, users on our Discover platform grew 9%. Total data points consumed grew 29%, and the average monthly data consumed grew 39% versus last year.

As clients increasingly rely on our data and insights, we're leveraging AI to deliver deep value. For example, NextIQ is our proprietary AI engine, which we purpose-trained on our 160 petabytes of global consumer and retail data. Unlike generic large language models, NextIQ understands the nuances of consumer shopping. This enables 10-12 times faster data processing than general-purpose LLMs and with near-perfect categorization accuracy. NextIQ isn't just automation; it's NIQ intelligence at scale, delivering real-time insights with unmatched precision and speed. Developed with partners like Microsoft, Snowflake, Google, and Intel, NextIQ is also the backbone of our AI-powered product suite, driving innovation across intelligence and activation products. We're building tools to transform how our clients make decisions, from predicting winning product concepts in minutes to generating automated KPI narratives.

NextIQ's integration into our ecosystem ensures that every insight is grounded in the most granular, harmonized data available, giving NIQ a defensible edge in the market. From this strong foundation, we're rapidly evolving our AI solutions. For example, version one of our GenAI Copilot, Ask Arthur, has accelerated speed to insights by 40% across our omnichannel measurement and consumer panel data. In 2026, we plan to launch Arthur version two, an intelligence research hub with predictive signals and analytic storytelling that can chat, anticipate, act, and summarize. Eventually, Arthur will be able to suggest NIQ products, data sets, and analysis based on client needs, enhancing our Discover software into an AI-powered cross-sell and up-sell engine. We're also driving AI innovation throughout our activation suite. For example, Revenue Optimizer is our AI-driven analytics solution, helping clients optimize pricing and manage trade spend for maximum profit.

PrecisionArea uses AI data harmonization to segment countries into local markets by demographics and by retail data. This enables clients to find the needle in the haystack in terms of growth opportunities and investment optimization down to the granular neighborhood level. This year, we also launched two AI-first solutions: Basies AI Screener and Product Developer. These solutions seamlessly combine our leading global data assets with our advanced analytics offerings. With Basies AI, clients can now rapidly test, develop, and commercialize products that consumers want to buy. We're driving expansion and seeing strong early client adoption. Basies AI Screener is now live in 11 markets across 129 product categories. Client feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we've added 18 large clients since launch. With Basies AI Product Developer, 31 clients, including our largest CPG clients to SMB, tested 500 product concepts in Q3 alone.

Unilever reported a 65% reduction in product development time, stronger innovation success rates, and accelerated speed to market, launching products up to six months sooner compared to traditional testing methods. As showcased in our IPO roadshow, Brown-Forman used Basies AI to identify a winning Jack and Coke formulation adapted for new markets and plan future line extensions. They reported a 350% sales increase, two and a half times sales velocity increase, and repeat consumer purchases that nearly doubled. AI is embedded broadly across our entire product suite, supporting revenue growth and innovation. We believe we're well positioned to capitalize further in 2026 and beyond. Lastly, on my third point, artificial intelligence is a key driver of operating efficiency and margin improvement at NIQ.

It helped us deliver better-than-expected margin expansion in Q3 and year to date, and it's laying the groundwork for continued expansion in the years to come. For example, we're harnessing agentic AI to automate our entire data operations workflow, from acquisitions to coding to delivery. We're finding that the combination of advanced AI and operational expertise boosts efficiency, elevates data quality, and accelerates our innovation. Clients benefit from our ability to bring products to market faster and to expand into new markets. On the customer support front, our globally launched NIQ service suite now delivers dynamic, personalized, and contextual support powered by GenAI. AI-driven support ticket routing and automated intelligence unlock faster resolutions and more seamless client experiences. Since launch, user engagement with GenAI support tools has increased efficiency by over 40%. Our agentic customer success ecosystem is setting new standards for end-to-end client satisfaction.

Across our corporate support functions, including HR, legal, and finance, we're deploying advanced AI and automation to streamline operations, enhance compliance, and unlock new efficiencies. In finance, AI-powered process automation has enabled us to standardize reporting, reduce transactional workloads, and deliver real-time insights for executive decision-making. In HR, intelligent analytics are helping us optimize talent acquisition and workforce planning, while legal teams leverage AI for faster contract review and improved regulatory compliance. In summary, we believe AI is a strength for NIQ on all fronts. It's a differentiator and a profitable growth enabler. We use it to turn global omnichannel consumer complexity into competitive advantage. We turn client questions and needs into client value. As we close out 2025, we are excited about what's ahead in 2026. We'll continue to lead, shaping, and building the AI-powered future of consumer intelligence.

With that, I'll turn it over to Mike to cover our financials.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Thanks, Jim. And good morning, everyone. Q3 was another strong quarter. We exceeded expectations across the board and demonstrated a powerful free cash flow inflection, delivering most of our back half levered-free cash flow guidance in Q3 alone. AI-powered automation is reducing manual effort and increasing efficiency across NIQ. This contributed to margin expansion in Q3 2025, and we expect it will be a margin driver in 2026 and beyond. We are raising our 2025 guidance. We believe this further demonstrates the mission-critical value we bring for clients and the embedded operating leverage in our business. Turning to our Q3 results, in Q3, organic constant currency revenue grew 5.8% to $1.1 billion, surpassing the top end of our August guidance.

We saw particular strength in our EMEA segment, with intelligent solutions driving renewals, value-based pricing, cross-sell, up-sell, and expansion into new verticals. On an organic constant currency basis, EMEA grew 8.8%. From a product perspective, total intelligence revenue grew 6.6%. Annualized intelligence subscription revenue also grew 6.6%, our sixth straight quarter of 6% plus growth. Annualized intelligence subscription net dollar retention and gross dollar retention remained strong at 105% and 98%, respectively, reinforcing the strength in our revenue growth algorithm. As Jim mentioned, Q3 activation revenue improved to year-over-year growth, and our client pipeline remains robust. On expenses, total operating expenses increased $89.3 million, or 8.9% on a year-over-year basis, driven primarily by a $50 million one-time stock-based compensation charge triggered by the IPO, which we previewed to analysts as part of our IPO process. This is a life-to-date catch-up related to pre-IPO equity awards.

Other factors driving expenses included higher amortization driven by our GastroGraph AI and GfK's acquisitions, as well as fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. It's important to note that outside of these aforementioned factors, OpEx growth remains modest and well below revenue growth. Net loss and adjusted net loss improved $16.1 million and $47.6 million on a year-over-year basis, respectively. We accelerated adjusted EBITDA growth to 25%, delivering $223.7 million for the quarter. We expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 300 basis points to 21.3%. Profitable organic revenue growth, as well as ongoing GfK integration and AI-driven synergies, remain key drivers this year. Importantly, we remain firmly on track towards our midterm margin target of mid-20% that we shared during our IPO roadshow. We expect 2026 will be another year of significant margin expansion as revenue growth flows through and we drive AI-powered efficiency across the business.

Turning to free cash flow, we delivered $224.4 million of levered-free cash flow, achieving most of our back half 2025 guidance in Q3 alone. This is driven by higher adjusted EBITDA, lower interest expense, and significantly improved net working capital as we improved DSOs by seven days compared to Q2, well ahead of schedule versus our August guidance. I'll also note that Q3 working capital benefited from a vendor payment that we accelerated in Q2 in exchange for more favorable contract terms moving forward. Better than expected Q3, we're raising full-year 2025 levered-free cash flow guidance to break even. This is an exciting inflection point for our business as we continue to improve and progress towards our steady-state profile in the coming years. Up $20 million from our previous guidance midpoint, full-year break-even implies a $225 million improvement versus 2024.

It also implies $280 million of levered-free cash flow in the second half of 2025, which is above the high end of our prior $245 million-$275 million range. As an important reminder, levered-free cash flow in the first half of the year was burdened by our pre-IPO capital structure and did not reflect the $100 million of annual interest savings we achieved by deleveraging the balance sheet and repricing our debt. In fact, our strong Q3 performance triggered another interest rate spread step-down, generating an additional $9 million of annual interest savings moving forward. Turning to our balance sheet, at the end of Q3, we had cash and cash equivalents of $446 million and $750 million of available capacity under our revolver for a total of $1.2 billion of available liquidity.

On capital allocation, as I've mentioned before, as free cash flow ramps, debt repayment remains our top priority. At the same time, we continue to pursue accretive, tuck-in acquisitions that complement our growth strategy. We are confident that our inflecting free cash flow and strong liquidity position enables us to simultaneously achieve our financial priorities. Now turning to our increased guidance. Based on our strong Q3 performance and favorable business dynamics, we're setting Q4 guidance ahead of what was implied at our August call. We now expect reported revenue growth of approximately 7-7.3%, organic constant currency revenue growth of approximately 5-5.3%, and adjusted EBITDA growth of approximately 25-26%. This implies adjusted EBITDA margin nearing 25%, or 360 basis points of expansion on a year-over-year basis. On free cash flow, we now expect to deliver positive $55-60 million for the quarter.

This implies that for the full year of 2025, we expect reported revenue growth of approximately 5.1-5.2%, organic constant currency revenue growth of approximately 5.5-5.6%, adjusted EBITDA growth of approximately 22-23%. This implies adjusted EBITDA margin nearing 22%, or 300 basis points of expansion on a year-over-year basis. Our expectation for break-even levered-free cash flow is a $20 million improvement versus the midpoint of our previously stated range. I'll note that margin expansion has exceeded our expectations in recent quarters. We attribute this outperformance to AI-driven operating efficiencies, including as part of our ongoing GfK integration. Heading into 2026, we're actively identifying additional AI-driven operational efficiencies across the business. In summary, it was a strong Q3, and we're excited about what's ahead. We're focused on closing out a strong 2025.

We're in the midst of finalizing our plans for 2026, which we expect to be another year of mid-single-digit growth, strong margin expansion, and significantly increased free cash flow generation. We intend to provide more details on our Q4 and year-end earnings call tentatively scheduled for late February.

Will Lyons (Head of Investor Relations)

Operator, we're ready to open the call for Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to allow everyone an opportunity to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Alexander Hess at JPMorgan.

Alexander Hess (Equity Research VP)

Good morning, Jim. Good morning, Tracey. Good morning, Mike.

NIQ exceeded its guidance at a—yeah, good morning. NIQ exceeded its guidance at a time when many of your CPG clients have been paring back their expectations for their calendar years or fiscal years, at least those that we follow. Can you walk us through the general trajectory of your clients' wallets of trade, R&D, marketing, sort of that wallet that you're able to capture a share of, and then what you guys are doing that's specifically increasing your share of wallet, which feels like sort of where you're at and what the trajectory is right now? Thank you.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Yeah, yeah, great question. It lets us explore a lot of questions that a lot of other folks might have.

I'll start out by saying, as you know, whether things are going really well or things aren't going so well for our clients, they really need our mission-critical services. In good times, they need us more for innovation. Maybe in bad times, they need more to help them understand where they want to spend their money and where they're going to get the most bang for the buck. That's holding true right now. Of course, we have a lot of new innovations that are part of our growth strategy that are increasing our share of our clients' wallets as they're on their own journey for growth. As you know, Tracey worked at one of the biggest manufacturers in the world, and I'm going to turn it over to her to give her perspective from kind of a client's perspective.

Tracey Massey (COO)

Yeah, our clients are in different places. Some of them are really driving innovative solutions. If you look at the market and performance of our clients, the ones that are winning, that have the best innovation, are the ones that are partnering with us with our BASES AI Screener or our BASES AI Product Developer. We're helping them get much quicker to market with their innovation with some of our new AI products. Also, we're able to help them with their innovation. If it's working, then we're to double down, increase your advertising, increase your trade. If it's not working, we're to pare back and we're to move your money around. Whether you're growing or you're struggling, we're absolutely critical to them across all their decisions.

If I look at our top customers, eight of our top 14 customers are growing mid to high single digit, some of them in double digit. Some of them are struggling a little bit more where they've had, and we've talked about this before, where they've got internal changes, like they've changed their CEO, or they've got restructurings, or they've got divestitures. They tend to double down internally for a few months, and then they pick their heads back up. We are seeing really good momentum with our clients as they get coming out of some of these internal changes. We expect to see even better performance from some of them that are picking their heads up now and looking at where they can drive innovation and growth. What you have to remember with these CPG clients, the ones that are growing are the ones that are winning.

So they're all looking for our help to maximize their growth performance. That's where they get the ROI from their spend with us.

Alexander Hess (Equity Research VP)

Great. Thank you. That's all from us today.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll move next to Manav Patnaik at Barclays.

Manav Patnaik (Managing Director and, Equity Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Jim, I appreciate all the detail on the AI debate. I think that was really important and helpful. I just had a follow-up in terms of, can you talk about the data acquisition that you get? I guess the debate is how much of that data do you buy that somebody else can buy and how much you collect yourself? I know you alluded to adding your context around it, but I was just hoping you could address that where the data comes from question.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Yeah. As you know, we get data from literally thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of sources.

Some of it, I'm not going to give you a percentage of anything, actually. Part of the moat around our business, which I think is what you're really asking me, is that to collect that amount of data is really quite improbable, I think, for someone to try and do that the way we do it. That's a chunk we get from retailers. Then we get another massive amount of data from going into a huge network of people going into stores in the traditional trade and actually having to, by the way, using AI-empowered technology, go in and understand what's selling in India, what's selling in different parts of Latin America, what's selling in different parts of Asia-Pac.

Of course, we have some of the biggest consumer panels in the world delivering us all their e-receipts, telling us who they are demographically. We collect that massive amount of information every day, every second, every day, and add it to our database. That data is often very messy. Not only do we have to do the normal cleaning, we also have to put it in context with which each of our clients view their world. That is part of what we call coding. There is a ton of metadata that goes into making our database function properly and function properly with AI, by the way, for our clients. That is really the moat.

I think you're trying to get at, well, someone can just go buy data and they'll slap on ChatGPT and they're going to create something. That's not going to happen. I try to give the example in my remarks. It's Halloween. I was like, "Okay, let's see what's out there. Who's selling the most chocolate bars right now in the United States?" I won't say which clients came back on top of it. I could easily tell right away, boom, this is what's happening real-time with chocolate sales. This is what's happening this day, this week, up to the month of Halloween or up to the day of Halloween. Here's what's happening in this region. Here's what's happening in this city. Here's what's happening in this store. Here's why they're winning.

Somebody is discounting pricing, so they're selling more units, but their prices aren't as high as they normally are. You can't get any of that kind of thing from anywhere where it's somehow going to come through somebody throwing an AI tool on top of some public data. You can go ahead and look it up yourself. Right now, you may be able—if there's an annual report out there, you may be able to see someone's annual report at a very high level. You're just not going to get to the level of granularity, even close, that our clients need to run their business. It's not going to be right. I'm going to go off on this one for a little bit. Our clients make huge decisions based on what we do.

If we give them the wrong information, they can make decisions that will cost them millions and millions and millions of dollars. We also have the responsibility to make sure this stuff works right. We do a significant amount of testing to make sure that our AI tools sitting on top of this information and other analytic tools are providing the right answers. While I've got this subject, if you think about it, we're sitting on all this data. What has been a constraint for any company like ours on providing more and more innovation is just enough access to capital or how much capital do we have to invest in all these new tools that we know we can build and that maybe others are building.

With AI now, we have kind of a way to develop things much more cheaply and efficiently. We know what our clients want. We can spend all day long innovating. I think what you're going to find is that we are the ones who have access to this information to actually build things and test them and get them in our clients' hands. It is just going to make our innovation engine run that much faster. I'll just conclude with that to do what we do, we have to have a lot—data stewardship is very, very important. Making sure that we're doing the right things with the data that we're allowed to do. It's not just a contract. It also has to be done technically.

There are a lot of things we have to do to make sure that certain clients' data do not get in the hands of others that they do not want them. That is a big part of our ecosystem as well. Just another moat around the business. Got it.

Manav Patnaik (Managing Director and, Equity Analyst)

Thanks. That is super helpful. Just to follow up, Mike, you talked a little bit about, I think you were planning for 2026. I missed that part a bit, but just early thoughts into this momentum continuing into next year and how we should think about the kind of prior numbers we had.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Yeah. I think the numbers that you had still make sense, Manav. When we announce at the end of February, we will give you guidance in terms of looking what 2026 is.

We're excited about the momentum that we're seeing, right, in terms of what's happening from a revenue standpoint and the launch of both of our AI activities in terms of what it's doing to drive revenue, as well as what it's doing for us in terms of coding and margin improvements as well. I'm excited to be able to give you more of that preview. I guess I just think we're continuing to move in that direction and momentum. I look forward to giving you that update when we get through Q4 and update your year-end in terms of what we look like for 2026. Nothing further at this point other than I like where we're trending.

Manav Patnaik (Managing Director and, Equity Analyst)

Got it. Fair enough. Thank you.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Yep.

Operator (participant)

We'll move next to Ashish Sabadra at RBC Capital Markets. Thanks for taking my question.

Ashish Sabadra (Managing Director and, Analyst)

I just wanted to focus on India in particular, where we've seen some really material acceleration in growth. I was just wondering if you could drill down further and talk about what's really driving that robust growth in Europe in particular.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Sure. When we look at Europe, we have been continuing, and I'm sure Tracey will comment on it. Our panel on demand service offering is doing very, very well. It's being widely accepted and that people can look at Discover. In Discover, they can get the overall market read, but they also then can look at consumer panel information. They get both what was sold and why it was sold. It's really powerful to be able to bring that together, particularly as you look across the markets that represent EMEA. It's been very, very well received. Tracey, maybe I don't know.

You want to comment on that?

Tracey Massey (COO)

Yeah, sure. There are two big impacts in our EMEA region. Firstly, it is where our GfK acquisition was the biggest. The tech and durables part of our business, if you remember, we acquired that in 2023. It was a bit of a drag on our growth in 2024. We have been able to turn that around this year. That is a big part of their growth as that business, that large business, turns around. Also, like Mike said, the consumer panel business is growing over 20% in EMEA. That is really a result of this panel on demand. If you remember, when we bought the GfK business, we had to divest our panels in Europe. We were not allowed to compete against YouGov until Q4 of last year. We have seen a massive acceleration once we have been able to compete in consumer panel.

We've built our own panels and significantly increased the size. We've seen many, many takeaways in that part of the world as we've done that. The main reason, like Mike says, is because we've got panel on demand. You can see measurement, which is our RMS solution, which tells you what happened. You can see why it happened, which is our panel solution. You can see it in one place. We're the only people that can do it in one place. I'll give you an example. One of our clients had some out-of-stock on one of their chocolate products, and they saw their sales go down. They were able to see that in our measurement business.

When they looked at why that happened, not only did they find that their sales went down because they were out of stock, but when they came back in stock, customers had switched, they'd switched to other brands, and they'd had an impact on penetration and loyalty. They can see all of that on one platform. You can't get that if you're with anybody else because you've got measurement in one platform, panel in another, and you've got to go in and out of systems, and you've got to try and work out what's going on. We're winning a ton of business in EMEA in particular because we can put both in one place. In particular, that panel business is really picking up. A lot of our RMS clients are getting more efficient too because if you can buy from one supplier, that's a cost saving.

Not only are they getting better information and being more efficient internally, they're more efficient on their spend because they're moving the second part of that business, the panel business, to us and having both together.

Ashish Sabadra (Managing Director and, Analyst)

That's great, Color. Maybe just on the activation side, again, we've seen some improvement there in the third quarter. Fourth quarter tends to be the seasonally stronger quarter for activation. I was just wondering the kind of visibility that you have for activation revenue in the fourth quarter. Obviously, your fourth quarter guidance was really strong, but any incremental color on the activation side? Thanks.

Tracey Massey (COO)

Yeah. We see strong momentum for our activation business quite often in Q4. Clients are trying to spend their budget. I know that sounds crazy, but they've got budget. They will spend it in the fourth quarter. They know where their business is going.

They know what they can and can't spend. We have very good visibility into our pipeline. Feeling good about that activation business. It picked up in growth in Q3, up against some very tough comps last year. We had very strong activation comps in Q2 and Q3 of last year. We expect to see a good Q4 on that activation side.

Ashish Sabadra (Managing Director and, Analyst)

That's great, color. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Andrew Nicholas at William Blair.

Hi. Good morning. This is Tom Rashawn for Andrew Nicholas. Thanks for taking my call. I was wondering if you could provide color on your pipeline in the fourth quarter and eyes in the year across intelligence and activation and just kind of the visibility you're having to both as well.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Yeah. This is Jim. We obviously have a ton of visibility in our pipeline.

I want to make sure I'm covering your question because we just talked about activation. Both in intelligence and activation, we actively manage our pipeline every day, of course. It is highly predictable to begin with, as you know. The variable part, which is, I think, what you're talking about, which would include new wins or new projects, is very, very, very visible to us. I want to let you have a follow-up question, though, because I don't know if there's something behind your question that you're trying to get at.

Yeah. I was mainly focused on new wins, you're seeing those come in during the fourth quarter thus far and kind of what are you projecting as you go into 2026?

It is really more of the same where we are focusing on multiple things right now.

Let's make sure we get all our various forms of price increases all set and ready to go in 2026. Let's continue to make the big push on SA&I or what we call activation as the year is ending. Our clients are just by their nature spending different parts of their budget, and we need to get that closed and fulfilled. We feel really good about that. Of course, just continuously as contracts come up with our clients, looking for new wins and looking to penetrate with our different innovation projects or different new product capabilities. We feel like we have good momentum there already, right? It's been building since last year, really, to 2024, to 2025. We just see the same as we run into 2026.

Thanks.

For my follow-up, I was wondering if we could double-click on the SMB market and just kind of what the health of the end market is, especially given all the tariff noise. If you have any color on the growth you saw in the quarter there.

Yeah. I think we'll let Tracey talk to that. She manages that every second of every day. Yeah.

Tracey Massey (COO)

Yeah. On the SMB market for the smaller clients, we grew 20% in 2024. We're growing 20% year-to-date in 2025. Very strong market for us. There's a big market out there that we've got opportunity to activate against. We're winning against our competition, taking business in that space, and also creating lots of new clients. It's a high-churn business. They go in and out of business.

Many of them go from small to then become bigger clients as they grow their business. We are very, very happy with that part of the business. Like I say, double-digit growth.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next, we will move to Zach Mueller at Baird.

Zach Muller (Group Director)

Thank you. Can you comment on the sustainability or runway for growth in panel on demand just as you anniversary the relaunch in EMEA? If you can comment on how adoption is going for it in other geographies or if they require more of a displacement sale.

Tracey Massey (COO)

We are— Sorry.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Go ahead. Go ahead, Tracey. No, go ahead.

Tracey Massey (COO)

We have got a lot of runway there. In terms of panel, we are not—in terms of RMS retail measurement, we are the largest player in terms of panel. We are not.

We have a long, long runway there and a lot of runway in many parts of the world. EMEA was a very strong growth rate because we were restricted from actually having that competition for a while. Now that restriction is off. Expect it to come down a little bit, but not a lot. There is a massive market out there. Like I say, nobody else can do both. Long, long runway and across the world.

Zach Muller (Group Director)

Okay. On the AI-driven margin improvement narrative, I just want to see if we can better tie that to what we are seeing in margins on a geographic basis. Because if it was more AI-driven, I would not expect the margin expansion to be so concentrated in EMEA. I would expect more in the Americas, if you can comment on that.

I think you were making a point that AI tools were helping with GfK synergies or something to that effect, if you could provide more perspective on that. Thank you.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Yeah. Let me just talk broadly about AI and then maybe Mike, or if you want to sweep in and talk about EMEA. You do not have to look hard at our company to know that AI applies. We are a data company. Everything from collecting the information for the people out in traditional trade, just helping them know where to go when they get in a store, helping them know what to look for, doing recognition. It is just going to keep getting better and better and better at doing that. That is not only enabling efficiencies, but that is enabling better collection, right?

You're going to find that helps us in areas that are emerging markets. AI also applies in how we code the data and how we prepare it to go online. That's some of our biggest costs. Just like any other company, we are using AI to get more efficient in HR, to get more efficient in finance, to get more efficient in legal, and all our support groups. Of course, we're using AI to get much more efficiency in our, let's call it, coding. Actually writing code, software code. You're seeing the beginning of that in our margin expansion. As we run into next year, I think you're going to see even more.

If I could foreshadow that, you're going to see even more expansion as we've, I think, even in the last six months, had further epiphanies on how we can use AI to get more efficient in everything we do. We're feeling very much on our front foot with understanding how to make it work. Every one of the people who report into me is becoming very, very, or has become very, very AI proficient in how to lead it and then how to generate results from it. It's something we're focusing on quite a bit. I think you're going to see it in our results. You're already seeing it in our results.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Maybe, Jim, just to add to your comment, when you think about the GfK business, and we've been focused on that integration, the largest piece of that historical business is in EMEA. A big part of margin improvement has been the integration that's been going on. That is the driver of why you're seeing that margin being driven. Equally, just to repeat back, pilot on what Jim said, when you look at our operations and we're doing coding more efficiently, what's that meaning for us in terms of margin and using AI to assist us in terms of coding, as well as customer success, as we continue to become more and more AI-driven in our customer success support, all of those are becoming operating efficiencies that are flowing through in terms of margin.

Zach Muller (Group Director)

Thank you both.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll move to our next question from Wahid Amin at Bank of America.

Wahid Amin (Equity Research Associate)

Hi. Good morning. Good morning. In your prepared remarks, I think you mentioned strong pricing and up or across within the quarter. Is there anything in particular that contributed more in this quarter or region-specific? I think last quarter was called out a bit, but any commentary there would be helpful.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Yeah. I'm going to re-repeat our revenue algorithm. The pricing just is consistent, right? That roughly equates to about 2.5% of our growth. The new capabilities, or what we call innovation, contributes roughly 2.5%. That's where you get your cross-sell, up-sell balanced across those initiatives. I think we would note that e-com and our consumer panels with panel on demand are especially strong and continue to contribute. Those also have a long runway for growth.

Our SMB is, again, it's like a machine. It's a steady drumbeat of establishing new clients, more like with telephonic sales, if you know what I mean. We have more of a machine there. We know who all the new entrants into the market are. We're able to identify them, tell them how we can create value. We already know how we're creating value. That's just a steady drumbeat. That algorithm continues to march on and will continue to march on every month and every quarter.

Wahid Amin (Equity Research Associate)

Got it. On a region-specific, America has sort of come down a bit on organic growth. I know it faces difficult comps, but is there anything you're seeing from a client perspective where you're a bit more confident on the go-forward basis of that region?

Tracey Massey (COO)

Yeah.

The biggest reason is the comps. In Q3 last year, we grew 9% in the Americas. The biggest reason for the slight deceleration is just that comp year-on-year. It's an easier comp in Q4. We're not seeing anything specific related to clients. That part of the business is also very strong. I would say some of the launches happened a little bit later. We recently launched our panel on demand in the U.S. later than we launched in Europe. That big omni-shopper panel, we moved to 500,000 consumers. That was only recently launched in the U.S. I expect to see an acceleration as we go into Q4 and into next year as that product really takes hold and people see the benefit of that much larger panel because it's a massive difference.

You can get much more granular in your understanding of the consumer, where they live, what they're doing, the bigger your panel is. Expect to see that continue. Nothing out of the ordinary. Seeing good pickup of our new solutions on full-view measurement, whether that be e-com or our Costco and Amazon reads. We're starting to see some really nice momentum there. In particular, momentum on the activation side of the business with Basies AI Screener.

Wahid Amin (Equity Research Associate)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll go next to Shlomo Rosenbaum at Stifel.

Shlomo Rosenbaum (Managing Director)

Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Hi. I want to—yeah, thank you. I just want to start out a little bit just getting a little bit more granular, if you could, on the status of the GfK integration.

It looks like the top-line growth is really moving in the right direction, which is, I think, usually the hardest part. Could you talk a little bit about what's going on in terms of the operational side and margins? How much of the margin expansion is because you're outperforming the top line versus the efficiencies you were trying to get? Where are you operationally? There was just also a comment about the integration driving higher ARDSO over there. Maybe you can kind of talk about that as well, and then I'll have a follow-up.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Sure, Shlomo. Maybe I'll start off here. When you think about it from a revenue standpoint, you may remember when we talked about it at the IPO timeframe, we said that the strategy was going to be rinse-repeat, similar to what we had done with NIQ.

We knew the playbook, and we were going to continue to execute it. Tracy alluded to it in her comments in that that's a playbook we've been running. We've gotten discipline around our service offering, discipline around our contracting process, and making sure we're exceeding clients' expectations overall, and making sure pricing is flowing through the same algorithm that Jim commented on. When you think about it in terms of price, what we're doing in terms of markets and what we're doing across sell and up-sell activities, that algorithm is in place and operating and driving top line for the legacy GfK business. I look at it roughly a couple hundred basis points in terms of being driven through that. When you look at it from the back office side, it really feels good as the back office is getting principally done.

Ops is going to be complete through next year, and we're continuing to drive margin through that. I think about half of that margin improvement that you're seeing from us is coming through the GfK integration. The top line's obviously helping that, but we'd anticipated that, and we're delivering it through the bottom line overall. Look, we're very pleased with where we are, what's going on, and how that business is performing. As I say, it was the same playbook we pulled out and executed and have been driving.

Shlomo Rosenbaum (Managing Director)

Okay. The next question I had is just to go through the sequential margin trends in EMEA as in APAC, where they were down a little bit. Is there a seasonal impact and mix issue or anything else about that?

If you could just put a bow on the last answer, just to comment a little bit about that ARDSO comment that was in the press release about GfK, what that was about.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Sure. When I look at what's been happening on the GfK side, we're continuing to see that margin improvement flowing through. When we look at the DSO comment, we did see when we put the two systems together at the end of Q2, we had a little bit of a timing issue in terms of getting that cash collected, billed collected, etc. Just as we integrated those systems, we were all over it. You saw that improvement happen in Q3, and you really saw that improvement being driven through that DSO drive or reduction of seven days that I commented on overall. The GfK, we're continuing to drop that bottom line.

Maybe, Shlomo, go back just to make sure I covered your questions.

Shlomo Rosenbaum (Managing Director)

Yeah. Just on that GfK one, it was just some kind of comment about DSO going up a little bit on GfK. That was the only thing I was wondering if there's some kind of lag that's still going on there.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Yeah. That was a Q2 and really not at all. When we've only seen working capital, as you're seeing it, the numbers really flow through in a very, very positive fashion.

Shlomo Rosenbaum (Managing Director)

Okay. Okay. So then we're fine on that. If you could just finish up on the sequential margin trends on Americas and APAC, if it's seasonal mix or something else.

Jim Peck (CEO)

When you look at the APAC margins, we're continuing to invest and improve coverage. That's really what's driving that side of the equation. I think we touched on EMEA.

When you think about North America, as Tracey said, you had a little bit tougher comps in terms of where that revenue was flowing. Therefore, with our fixed cost base, you saw a little bit of impact on that as it relates to margins. We look at it in aggregate and feel very good about where our margins are and continue to drive that 300 basis points improvement over the past versus a prior year and over 60 basis points improvement from Q2 to Q3. We are going to continue to drive margin improvements going forward, kind of going back to Manav's comment and question.

Shlomo Rosenbaum (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you so much.

Jim Peck (CEO)

No problem.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Jeff Silber at BMO Capital Markets.

Jeff Silber (Senior Analyst)

Thanks so much. I know it's late. I'll just ask one.

I hate to nitpick here, but when looking at gross margins, you did not have a lot of gross margin expansion on a year-over-year basis, and we have seen that play out in prior quarters. Was there anything specifically going on this past quarter in terms of mix or anything else?

Mike Burwell (CFO)

No. Nothing specific. I mean, we tend to manage the business really looking at EBITDA margins in terms of thinking about it in total. There is nothing that I would call out or that was unusual to make sure to call out to you. No.

Jeff Silber (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thanks so much.

Mike Burwell (CFO)

No problem. Thanks for the question.

Operator (participant)

We will move next to Jason Haas at Wells Fargo.

Jason Haas (Director and, Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. The fourth-quarter guidance does imply a desal on an organic basis from 3Q to 4Q despite the compares getting easier.

Your commentary sounds pretty positive on how the business is trending. I was just curious if there's any factors to think about that could be driving that desal in 4Q.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Yeah. As you know from the last quarter's guidance, right, and I have them in my opening remarks, we are very confident in our growth algorithm. We're really going to stick to that as we're kind of training the company and training ourselves to hit the targets or beat the targets that we're giving out. There's nothing systemic or something like that that you're looking for that we can, that you would associate with a slowdown. As you know, we're fairly conservative here. I think as a new company doing it, becoming public, that's the track record we just want to establish.

We're managing a whole portfolio of geographies, a whole portfolio of new initiatives, a whole portfolio of renewals and takeaways. We feel very comfortable in the range that we're in. You can expect us to continue that pattern going forward.

Jason Haas (Director and, Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. That's great. That's very helpful.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Thank you.

Jason Haas (Director and, Senior Equity Research Analyst)

As a follow-up, thank you. In the prepared remarks, you did—yeah, sorry, thanks. Yeah, just for the follow-up, I just wanted to ask about in the prepared remarks, there was a comment about you're expecting significant margin expansion next year. I know you're not giving guidance for next year, but what was the thought behind putting that comment out there? Are you trying to say that there's not any sort of one-time benefits in the margins this year and therefore this is the right run rate?

Yeah, what was the genesis behind that comment? If you can't talk to next year, maybe you could just unpack this year's margins so we know what's one-time, what isn't.

Jim Peck (CEO)

All right. I'll let Mike unpack this year's margins. Of course, our comments are very deliberate when we say something like that. Between continued synergies that we're going to get from the GfK integration, which will manifest next year, and continued just good operating efficiencies, we are going to see AI starting to contribute now, but it's going to continue to accelerate. We are very confident in the things that we're doing. They're going to allow that to happen. We'll be able to talk more about that, of course, next year when we're on this same call. Mike, do you want to talk about—

Mike Burwell (CFO)

Yeah, I was going to—yeah, Jim.

Just to add to your comments, we had been talking about getting to mid-20s margins in the midterm is what we had talked about. We are continuing to see AI, as Jim said, really kick in. We know that GfK's synergies are driving two-thirds of that margin improvement and organic revenue growth, as we've talked about previously, 50 to 100 basis points improvement. We are continuing to drive margin improvements, and we'll see that going forward.

Jason Haas (Director and, Senior Equity Research Analyst)

All right. That's great to hear. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Jim Peck for closing remarks.

Jim Peck (CEO)

Yep. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to continuing our journey with you and with our clients, with all the people who work for NIQ who do such an amazing job, and of course, with our investors.

We will see you in February.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.