Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ACV second quarter conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the call will be open for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Tim Fox, ACV's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining ACV's conference call to discuss our second quarter 2022 financial results. With me on the call today are George Chamoun, Chief Executive Officer, and William Zerella, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, please note that today's comments include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding future financial guidance. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and involve factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. A discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to our business can be found in our SEC filings and in today's press release, which can be found on our investor relations website. During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.
A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided in today's earnings materials, which can also be found on our investor relations website. With that, let me turn the call over to George.
Thanks, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our second quarter performance, with revenue and EBITDA both exceeding guidance. The ACV team once again delivered strong results in a challenging macro environment for our dealer partners. With that, let me turn to second quarter highlights on slide four. Our market momentum continued in the second quarter with record revenue of $115 million, year-over-year growth of 18% versus very strong results in Q2 2021. GMV of $2.7 billion also set a new record and increased 27% year-over-year. We sold 148,000 vehicles on our digital marketplace, a 6% sequential increase from Q1, and a modest decline versus record unit performance in Q2 2021. Overall, we are very pleased with our execution in Q2 and our progress on key strategic initiatives.
We delivered strong results despite wholesale market conditions that softened in June, resulting from continued supply challenges, weakening retail demand, and vehicle price depreciation. Market conditions have remained challenging in Q3. In our prudence, we have assumed that wholesale volumes will remain constrained in the back half of 2022. Our guidance now reflects this more cautious view of the macro factors impacting the dealer wholesale market. Our guidance also reflects our commitment to investing in growth while ensuring we remain squarely focused on our path to profitability. As Will will detail later, we have adjusted our operating expense plans to account for expected market headwinds. We are focused on improving our foundation to drive profitable growth when market headwinds turn into tailwinds for ACV. Turning to slide five.
To frame the rest of our discussion today, we will focus on the three pillars of our strategy to drive long-term shareholder value, growth, innovation, and scale. I will begin with growth. Moving to slide seven. I'll again provide context on the dealer wholesale market in relation to the broader automotive retail market. First, to illustrate the demand side of our market, we provided data on overall used car transactions and wholesale pricing trends. As you can see in the chart on the left, retail sales of used vehicles declined sequentially from Q1 and declined about 15% year-over-year versus strong performance in Q2 2021. As a reminder, consumer demand for used vehicles is a key driver of wholesale demand and supply because consumers purchasing a vehicle typically have a trade-in. Chart on the right illustrates how continued softening of consumer demand has impacted wholesale prices.
After reaching historically high levels in 2021, wholesale prices declined during the first quarter, recovered in early Q2, but have been trending down since June. As we discussed last quarter, price deflation has contributed to conversion rate compression across the industry as dealers have become more price sensitive when buying vehicles in the wholesale market. Now turning to slide eight. Let's look at the supply picture. New vehicle sales remain well below historical averages and were down about 21% year-over-year in Q2 due to the ongoing supply challenges impacting vehicle production. This is reflected in the chart on the right, which shows that supply of new vehicles remains historically low. Because consumer trade-ins for new purchases are a significant input into the wholesale market, the supply chain issues continue to weigh on the market we serve.
While there have been a few positive signals from auto OEMs regarding production improvements later this year, we have not assumed this in our 2022 outlook. On slide nine, we provided additional insight into our business that underpins our confidence in ACV's market position and long-term growth opportunity. The chart on the left shows quarterly listings in our marketplace, which is a measure of dealer growth and marketplace adoption. After all, moderating the second half of 2021, as supply issues mounted, listing volume turned positive in Q1 and then increased again in Q2. For the first half of 2022, listings grew 27% year-over-year, reflecting strong execution on dealer penetration and wallet share growth. In fact, the number of listing dealers increased 30% year-over-year in Q2, which positions ACV for strong growth once wholesale volumes recover.
In the figure on the right, we provided an updated view of the quarterly variance in marketplace conversion. As we discussed last quarter, pre-COVID conversion rates on our marketplace were in a pretty tight range, then increased significantly as pandemic-related supply, demand, and wholesale pricing factors drove very strong marketplace engagement. Beginning in the first quarter this year, as vehicle prices and consumer demand moderated, cautious buying behavior resulted in conversion rates returning to normal pre-COVID levels. This trend continued in Q2 with conversion rates ticking down quarter-over-quarter. For context, the year-over-year change in conversion rate in Q2 resulted in a 30,000 unit headwind versus Q2 2021. We believe conversion rates in our platform will increase in the future when the macro environment normalizes and as we help dealers manage price expectations with new data-enabled solutions.
However, based on the latest data showing weakening consumer sentiment and depreciating wholesale market prices, we believe it's prudent to assume conversion rates will remain at the lower end of the historical ranges for the balance of 2022. Turning to slide 10. You can see that units grew sequentially from Q1 and declined modestly year-over-year compared to record high unit performance in Q2 2021. Unit growth was 68% on a two-year basis. GMV grew 27% year-over-year to a record $2.7 billion. About half of the year-over-year growth was driven by higher wholesale prices, with the other half reflecting a broader mix of vehicles on our marketplace. Moving to slide 11. Based on our internal analysis, we estimate that the U.S. dealer wholesale market remains well below normalized volumes and contracted around 20% year-over-year in Q2.
Despite this macro backdrop, we continue to execute, gain market share, and attract new dealers to our marketplace. Given our 3% year-over-year unit decline in Q2 and an estimated market contraction of 20%, this implies that ACV grew market share by 17% year-over-year. Next, I would like to wrap up the growth section with highlights on our value-added services. Our investments in the technology and resources to scale ACV Transportation and ACV Capital are driving strong top-line growth while also creating efficiencies for both our partners and for ACV. On slide 12, you can see that ACV Transportation continues to deliver strong results. Our growing carrier partner network and fast cycle times resulted in attach rates once again exceeding 50% in Q2, with transport revenue growing 20% year-over-year.
In Q2, over 70% of our transports were automatically dispatched, an increase of 20% points from Q1. The investment we are making in technologies like auto dispatch and our carrier transportation app are attracting new carriers to our marketplace and driving operating efficiencies. In fact, our transport business had a key milestone in Q2 with positive revenue margins in the mid-single digits. As a reminder, our 2026 financial targets assume transport revenue margin of 15%. Hitting the mid-single digits in Q2 2022 puts us on a strong path to achieving this target. Turning now to slide 13. We are very pleased with the execution in our ACV Capital business. Capital attach rates more than doubled year-over-year in Q2, resulting in over a hundred percent loan volume growth. Our investment in technology to power our capital business is paying dividends.
ACV Capital portal launched in Q1 and adoption has been strong, with 75% of active ACV Capital dealers now leveraging this value-added post-auction financing solution. We also ramped up our investment in ACV Capital sales capacity to drive adoption and dealer engagement, which will further enable ACV Capital to be an important growth and profit driver going forward. Turning to the second element of our strategy to drive long-term shareholder value. Innovation. Turning now to slide 15. I would like to highlight the innovations we're delivering to enable our dealer partners to drive consumer-sourced inventory. Live Appraisal was one of our first offerings in this category and provides a unique way for consumers to have their vehicles sold on ACV's marketplace by our dealer partners. Live Appraisal listings grew 30% year-over-year in Q2, highlighting the market traction this offering is gaining.
In addition to Live Appraisal, we are developing a more comprehensive set of solutions for our dealers leveraging technology from Drivly, Monk, and MAX Digital. The initial market reception for Drivly has been very promising, with the number of dealers launched doubling quarter-over-quarter in Q2. Dealers are now able to offer a seamless consumer buying experience powered by the ACV pricing engine, our condition-adjusted model for vehicle valuation. Looking ahead, we are working to leverage Monk's AI-driven imaging technology to enable consumers to do a self-inspection right from their own mobile device, which will further inform the price dealers can offer consumers. We are in the early stages of launching dealers on these new offerings and are very excited about consumer sourcing because it offers attractive TAM expansion and strong unit economics for ACV by leveraging technology prior to incurring the cost of inspecting vehicles.
Moving to slide 16. I am pleased to share an update to our advanced buyer solution, SAM, which was formally launched last month. As a reminder, SAM provides dealers with specific and relevant notifications and intelligent auto-bidding capabilities. SAM not only enhances the buyer experience in our platform, it also creates persistent demand, price realization, and ultimately higher conversion for our sellers. Following the July launch, dealer adoption has accelerated with over 800 new dealers leveraging SAM in Q2. We believe SAM will be a big growth driver for us as we expand its use cases and capabilities. On slide 17, I'll wrap up on innovation with an update on APEX, our next generation data collection device that we introduced in March at our analyst day. APEX expands on ACV's existing AMP technology by incorporating upgraded audio capture capabilities and sensor detection, including vibration, displacement, and ultrasonics.
This more comprehensive data set leads to a better understanding of the operating condition of a vehicle's engine and powertrain, which increases dealer confidence while buying online. APEX also increases inspection efficiency for our teammates and provides a better quality audio experience in our marketplace. This wireless device is integrated with our single inspection application and is live in select markets today, with broad deployment planned later this year. To wrap up on innovation, we are very excited about our growing suite of data-enabled solutions and technology roadmap that expands our competitive moat, creates even more value for our dealer partners while improving margin to drive sustainable long-term growth. With that, let me hand it over to Will to take you through our financial results and how we're driving growth at scale.
Thanks, George, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We are pleased with our Q2 financial performance. We delivered upside to our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance despite the challenging macro factors George outlined earlier on the call. Turning to slide 19, I'll begin with a review of our second quarter results. Revenue of $115 million was above the high end of guidance and generated year-over-year growth of 18% versus strong results in Q2 2021. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $14 million or 12% of revenue beat our guidance range and EBITDA margin improved approximately 500 bps sequentially versus Q1 2022. Turning to slide 20, I will cover some additional detail on revenue. Total revenue of $115 million represented a 60% CAGR since Q2 2020.
Auction and assurance revenue, which was 57% of total revenue, grew 9% year-over-year versus very strong Q2 2021 growth of nearly 100%. Year-over-year growth in ARPU of 13% was driven by higher GMV due to the strong mix of vehicles sold on our platform and the buy fee increase we instituted last December. Marketplace services revenue, which was 36% of total revenue, grew 23% year-over-year, reflecting the continued adoption of transport and capital that George outlined earlier. Our SaaS and data services products comprised 7% of total revenue and had very strong revenue growth of 127% year-over-year, primarily reflecting revenue from the MAX Digital acquisition. Turning now to slide 21, I will review costs in the quarter. Note that on this slide I'm comparing Q2 results to Q1 2022 results.
Q2 cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue decreased approximately 300 bps quarter-over-quarter. The improvement was driven by three factors. First, recall that in Q1 we increased our incentives to help our dealers acquire vehicles as market conditions weakened. We successfully executed on pulling back on these incentives in Q2, as discussed on our Q1 earnings call. The second factor driving revenue margin improvement was lower arbitration costs resulting from improvements in training, process, and enabling technology. The third factor was our transport business, which delivered a positive revenue margin. I'll reiterate George's comments earlier about this key milestone for transport. Our 2026 financial targets assume 15% revenue margins for transport. To achieve mid-single digits in Q2 2022 is a strong indicator of the long-term profitability of this business. Also a reminder, our transport revenues are recorded on a gross basis.
Therefore, margin improvement has an outsized impact on our overall blended margins. Operating costs excluding cost of revenue also trended positively in Q2 as we increased our leverage by approximately 300 bps quarter-over-quarter. Moving to slide 22, let me provide context regarding our investment strategy, operating leverage, and path to profitability. Given ACV's leading market position and large addressable market opportunity, we have remained focused on investing in growth and extending our competitive moat with differentiated technology. We have also remained equally focused on investing prudently to ensure a clear path to profitability. Given these commitments and our revised revenue outlook for the balance of 2022, we have taken steps to reprioritize our spending plans and accelerate operational efficiency. We're doing this while also preserving key go-to-market and technology investments to ensure ACV is in an even stronger position when market conditions improve.
More specifically, we have reduced our 2022 year-over-year non-GAAP operating expense growth to 23%, a full 10% points lower than our original 2022 guidance. Exiting Q4 this year, we're expecting our annualized OpEx run rate to be approximately $40 million below our initial 2022 guidance. This has the effect of lowering our revenue break-even point heading into 2023 and better positioning ACV to achieve EBITDA break even. Next, I'll highlight our strong capital structure on slide 23. We ended Q2 with $512 million in cash and equivalents and marketable securities, and $71 million of long-term debt to finance our rapidly growing ACV Capital business. Note that our Q2 cash balance includes $124 million of float in our auction business.
As we discussed previously, the amount of float on our balance sheet can fluctuate meaningfully based on business trends in the final two weeks of each quarter, and it has a corresponding impact on operating cash flow. For example, Q2 cash flow used in operations was $41 million, $27 million of which was driven by the sequential change in float from Q1. Based on our current outlook for the back half of 2022, we are expecting float to be flat to marginally increased, and along with lower expected EBITDA losses, expect cash used in operations to decline relative to the first half of 2022. Now I'll turn to guidance on slide 24.
For the third quarter of 2022, we are expecting revenue in the range of $104 million-$107 million, a growth rate of 13%-17% year-over-year. On a two-year basis, our Q3 revenue growth is expected to be approximately 56%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be a loss in the range of $13 million-$15 million. For the full-year of 2022, we are lowering revenue guidance approximately 6% at the midpoint to reflect our more cautious view of the macro factors impacting wholesale volumes in our market. Revenue is now expected to be at a range of $427 million-$432 million, a growth rate of 19%-21%.
Despite this lower revenue outlook, our adjusted EBITDA loss is expected to increase just $3 million at the midpoint due to the cost reduction efforts I outlined earlier. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be a loss in the range of $57 million-$59 million or 13%-14% of revenue. As it relates to our 2022 guidance, in addition to the macro factors impacting wholesale volumes, we are assuming that conversion rates remain at or below the lower end of our historical range, and therefore, current market conditions persist through the second half. Finally, we're now expecting non-GAAP operating expenses to grow approximately 23% year-over-year, which is below previous guidance and ten percentage points below our guidance at the beginning of the year. Let me wrap up on slide 25 by reviewing our 2026 financial targets.
We're very pleased with our execution in what has proven to be a very challenging macro environment, and we remain confident in our ability to achieve $1.3 billion of revenue and $325 million of EBITDA in 2026. With that, let me turn it back to George.
Thanks, Will. Before we take your questions, let me summarize. We are very pleased with our continued strong execution while navigating through unprecedented times in our industry. We are especially proud of our ACV team that has delivered these results. We continue to gain market share by attracting new dealers to our marketplace and by gaining wallet share within our existing customer base, which positions ACV for strong growth when market conditions improve. We are executing on our territory penetration plans. Our marketplace offerings are gaining traction in the market, and we see some very promising growth synergies emerging from our SaaS and data-enabled services. We are delivering on an exciting product roadmap to further differentiate ACV and expand our addressable market. We are on track to generate over $1 billion in revenue with attractive margins through a proven business model that we believe will drive significant shareholder value.
We remain committed to continuing to build a world-class team to deliver on our goals. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star one one on your telephone. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of John Colantuoni with Jefferies. Please proceed.
Hey, George . Thanks for taking my questions. So you had a big geographic ramp throughout most of last year. I think it would be helpful if you could just dimension how customer engagement and retention has trended in your older markets in comparison to your newer markets. In addition, you know, maybe you could just give us a sense for what units would have been in the second quarter if you excluded the geographies that you expanded into last year.
Hey, John Colantuoni, it's George Chamoun. Thanks for coming on board and asking the question. I don't think we have anything notable to report on differences between new markets and existing markets. I'm not prepared to really report on anything like any standout data. In general, what I would say is, our strength in our early markets have remained strong. We've remained strong across the country. We would love to have more listings and a higher sell-through. We do have pockets of areas across the country where, you know, conversion has remained stronger than other areas. There are some pockets.
In general, I don't really have anything substantial to answer there that is differential on. I would say, early markets versus later markets.
Okay, great. Just a quick follow-up. The second quarter exceeded your expectations, but you're tempering the full-year outlook. That sort of implies there's been a more recent deterioration in the operating environment. Maybe you could just talk to how the wholesale market has progressed over the past few months and what KPIs or data points, you know, we should be looking for to get comfort that the industry backdrop isn't worsening further. Thanks.
Yeah, certainly, John. We were very pleased with our listing growth in the first half of the year, you know, up 27% year-over-year. We've been very excited about the growth we've been able to penetrate across many of these territories. However, at the end of the quarter, we did start to see consumer demand at dealerships weakening. I'm sure you've been following a lot of the data across the industry, sort of, as we've seen sort of the year-over-year data on retail shift more negatively. As we are being more prudent on the back half of this year, we, like everyone else right now, is trying to keep our eye on the economy. We're trying to keep our eye on overall retail and trades.
You know, based on, you know, we really thought about the back half of this year, assuming things do not improve materially. We've already started to see retail go down. And that's really sort of our assumption is the current market conditions sort of persist throughout the year. Will, any more you want to add to that?
No, I think that describes it. John, we're just assuming, you know, that what we're seeing so far through the third quarter kind of perpetuates through the rest of the year.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
One moment for our next question, please. Our next question is from Ali Faghri with Guggenheim Partners. Please, proceed.
Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Hey, George. So on the conversion headwinds you're citing, seems like that's being driven by the recent price deflation we're seeing, which probably continues for the foreseeable future. What causes this headwind to normalize and get the buyer and seller expectations to converge again?
Yeah, I think when you follow this back to the consumer and then work your way back to dealers, really what we're seeing is consumers are saying these used car prices are too high. We're starting to see consumers buy less cars, right? Dealers start to be more careful. They're not gonna lean in and pay what they believe are overpriced. You start to look to Ali to get the core of your question, how do you end up getting to that clearing price? You know, every car has a price that dealers are willing to pay, right? It's just really what is that value?
We're starting to see this slow decline, which we've also mentioned in the call. We're starting to see a slow decline in GMV. As that decline is happening, we are starting to see some small signs that conversion rate, you know, has at least leveled out. Maybe we will see modest improvement. We can't predict that yet, but we're starting to see prices starting to come down, and we're starting to see the behaviors. At least, I think dealers are starting to really realize, okay, whatever they bought the car almost doesn't matter. This is the new price. I think we're starting to see trends, but not trends that yet, Ali, make us, I would say, comfortable that it's gonna go up materially the back half of the year.
I think at least we've gotten to the point where they've leveled off. Now we have to start to see it and come back up. Will, any more you want to add to that?
Nope.
Thanks, George. That makes sense. As a follow-up here, I appreciate you don't guide to volumes, but maybe you can help us understand what you're expecting for second half marketplace units. You mentioned that your guidance assumes new car supply and conversion headwinds don't improve in the second half. Does that imply your internal model is assuming no quarter-over-quarter volume growth in the third and the fourth quarter?
Hey, Ali. Yeah, as you mentioned, we don't guide obviously to units or to ARPU for that matter. Just to give you a little more color. Yes, we're assuming the supply remains muted, you know, through the second half due to the weaknesses, you know, that we've seen and that we're all seeing in consumer demand. We're also assuming, as we just discussed, that conversion rates are at the lower end of the historical ranges. You know, we're not expecting or projecting any improvement at this point, and that's what we've baked into our guidance. You know, when you look at the numbers obviously and do the math, you know, our unit outlook has declined. That's what's implicit in our revenue guidance for the second half.
In terms of, you know, vehicle ASPs, you know, we're expecting those to moderate as well in the back half. We're already starting to see some of that, right? That'll put some pressure on ARPU, you know, depending upon what the mix is. Again, you know, all of this is driven by, right, the supply of trades that come into the wholesale market, and then conversion rates, right? You know, if any of these dynamics change in terms of new vehicle supply, et cetera, you know, then obviously that could create a variance versus what we've, you know, baked into our guidance. That's kind of the methodology, and that hopefully gives you a little more color.
That's helpful, Will. If I could just squeeze one more in here, on the reduced operating expense outlook, can you give some more specific color on what exactly is driving that, the cost reductions?
Yeah, sure. Look, I mean, you've seen us so far this year, you know, be very diligent in terms of managing and balancing our OpEx spending, right? Trying to align that with the macro conditions and our revenue outlooks. You know, our focus is to do this while we also, you know, maintain a certain level of service to all of our dealer partners, while also preserving our growth investments, right? We're well positioned, you know, as the market improves going down the road. We just continue to be very thoughtful about how we prioritize all of our spending across every aspect of the business. We're continuing to look, you know, for ways to optimize, you know, which kinda again, cuts across all functional groups in the company.
You know, we have a very clear focus on this, and that's reflected in our, you know, revised OpEx guidance, and George and I's commitment to manage basically the bottom line and adjusted EBITDA margins.
Great. That's helpful. Thanks, Will. Thanks, George.
Okay.
Thanks, Ali.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ron Josey with Citi. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask about just dealer adoption and knowing listings are up, but conversions are down and we got the units sold here. Wondering if you can talk to us if there's been any change or approach in terms of the sales process in terms of how it's evolved, you know, over the past several years now that we're sort of in this new normal, if you will, as things normalize. More just a question on the sales process as you're going to dealers and getting them to sign up, because I think the fact that listings are still up is pretty interesting. Then if you could just talk a little bit more about consumer sourcing and the progress here.
You know, there's a lot more competition out there for consumer sourcing, so would love to hear how that's going. Thank you guys.
Yes, certainly. Thank you. We're very pleased with the fact that we increased dealers listing 25% year-over-year. It's really showing that our customer acquisition strategies are working both in our emerging markets and as well as the markets we've been in for a while. We're very happy about you know, growing the dealer base. I know I think you're looking for a little bit more color on maybe the things we're doing different.
If I had to pick some areas of difference, of maybe some of the reasons why we are growing so well there, Private Marketplace has added dealerships from large groups. I don't think we give out the percentages and are prepared for the second, but we have been growing rooftops in large groups at a higher pace than the single stores out there. So that's been a great investment. We are somewhere in the nature of 30+ of the top 300 dealer groups in the country now using ACV Private Marketplace to trade among themselves, which gives us a competitive advantage with large groups. As you know, with the consolidation going on out there, we end up winning stores every month simply when one of our large groups buys a store.
That would be one difference to your question than from a few years ago. Drivably and MAX are two great software sort of data products that have helped us differentiate to win sellers out there. We've, you know, just for example, there's a dealer group out there that's in trial, a large dealer group on MAX and in Private Marketplace. It's a dealer group we weren't working with as much previously. Now because of our data products and whatnot, we're starting to win there on the auction side of things. That's an example. Hopefully that's, you know, I wasn't prepared on that answer, but hopefully that gives you, like, a little color on the things that are different.
The second one, really consumer, and I think somewhat related, our primary consumer offering, as you know, has been Live Appraisal, and Live Appraisal has grown. Live Appraisal, just to remind everybody, is when we auction the consumer's car, typically done with our inspector on site or our inspector at our, at a consumer's home. It's grown year-over-year, if I remember correctly, 30%. 30% growth year-over-year. Growing nicely. Where we're going with consumer is to really leverage technology prior to having to inspect the vehicle. We're still early in this, but very excited. Products like Drivably, and then once we release a month later this year, these are products that allow for a consumer to inspect or a dealer to inspect the vehicle.
Allows us to get our valuation engine out there to outside of our inspectors. We're very excited about the investment. Those investments in the technology and the plan are all still in this sort of modest investment plan. We're still investing in these areas. So far, Live Appraisal is going well. The other products are still a little young, right? We're gonna make them material over the next few quarters. A part of this is investing in the now and investing in the future, which we feel great about.
That's great. Thank you, George.
Certainly.
Thanks a lot.
One moment. For our next question, please. Next question is from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thanks so much for taking the questions. You know, guys, maybe just first a bigger picture question, sort of zooming out. Obviously, you're dealing with elements of both the supply chain and demand in the current environment, but you're still thinking about sort of longer-term targets looking out over the next four years. You know, can you help investors better understand your confidence interval, what you're seeing to bridge to some of those longer-term targets on both the revenue and the EBITDA side? And maybe just following up on some of the initiatives like capital, you know, going a little bit deeper in terms of what some of those newer initiatives are doing in terms of driving more unit economics to the platform. Thanks so much.
Yeah. Eric, it's Will. I'll start with the first question. Yeah, so if you think about our long-term targets going out to 2026, right? The fundamental growth drivers and the margin levers are still very much intact. If anything, actually, we're feeling a little better about this than we were even a few months ago based on the progress that we're making. Maybe I should just rifle through what those are to kind of hit on each of those from a high level. You know, first, you know, as you know, intact, and if anything, actually, we're feeling a little better about this than we were even a few months ago based on the progress that we're making.
Maybe I should just rifle through what those are to kind of hit on each of those from a high level. You know, first, you know, as you know, we established territories across the U.S., and that was a very big initiative last year that enables us to target, you know, all 17,000 independents across the country. You know, we've already kind of checked that box last year. You know, we believe that's a key lever in terms of, you know, driving market share growth over time. You know, so you're already seeing in terms of our territory, you know, penetration strategy, it's yielding strong results, you know, by attracting new dealers to our marketplace. That's all intact.
You're seeing us grow listings, you know, nearly 30% year-on-year in, you know, what's a really tough environment, you know, which shows that we're also gaining market share so, and wallet share rather. You know, all of these drivers continue to be intact. We're delivering now a bunch of new, you know, solutions like SAM, right? That are rapidly gaining traction, and investing in a bunch of other tech to improve operations. You know, we're driving margin improvements now in various parts of the business. We talked about transport, and getting to mid-single-digit margins in Q2, frankly, which is, you know, way ahead of plan because, you know, as a reminder, our, you know, our targets by 2026 are 15%.
Frankly, we're, you know, call it a little less than halfway there, only a few months after we talked about, you know, these targets back in March.
On the OpEx side, you know, we're getting much more focused on operational efficiency, while also again preserving our growth investments so that, frankly, even better positions us for operating leverage as volumes recover. Right. You know, these are kind of some of the key tenets behind our long-term model that we articulated at the Analyst Day in March, and all of those are intact. Obviously, what's changed right now is the market that we're operating within. We believe, you know, over time the market will normalize, right? This market, you know, at some point will return to more historical levels. I don't think any of us know exactly when that will be, but all of these levers and, you know, kind of growth drivers are intact from our perspective. Again, if not.
If anything, we're a bit ahead of target or timelines that we've identified when we built our five-year model. We still feel great about achieving those targets. Now, the road might be a little bit different to get there, again, because we're not sure when these macro drivers kind of normalize. When we take a step back and think about the long-term, we feel really great about achieving these targets. On capital, George, did you wanna touch base on anything there?
On ACV Capital?
Yeah.
At the end of the day, we're achieving our goals both on attach rate and, you know, success of ACV Capital as well as when I think about, you know, transport are two primary value-add services that as all of you look at 2026 over the last, you know, year, you had to really believe can ACV get to a certain attach rate? Could we improve our margins and still do all the other things? When you look at our execution quarter-over-quarter, we showed incredible success in attach rates, incredible success of increasing margin and transport. We also had other headwinds, if you remember a quarter ago, you know, day-to-day things we were taking care of which overall helped us. You know, we went to overall margin improvement.
Really when you think about how do I believe in 2026, you're believing we're gonna scale out our territories across the country, which we continue to do. You're believing that we're gonna get the attach rate and focus on our margin objectives. I couldn't be more proud of the quarter-over-quarter execution.
Appreciate all the color. Thanks, guys.
Yeah.
One moment for our next question, please. It's from Chris Pierce with Needham & Company. Please go ahead.
Hey, Chris.
Hey, good afternoon, fellas. How are you? Can you talk about the higher average price you guys realized on units in the second quarter, especially where we've seen, you know, retail, not necessarily wholesale competitors, but we've seen average price come down. Is it dealers getting more comfortable selling higher priced units digitally? Is it a new subset of dealers you're adding? Are you taking share from someone at a higher price point? I'd just love to hear more about it.
There's probably two parts to that.
Yeah. I first can talk about price.
Sure.
Right. In terms of price, I mean, our GMV per unit increased 32% year-over-year in Q2. That was basically evenly, almost exactly evenly split between higher ASPs and a change in mix. That's pretty much been the story for the last year or so that, you know, it's been half and half ASPs and mix. I'll pause there. Then what was the second part of your question?
Yeah. When you think about what are we doing to win more share of higher ASP, you know, vehicles. Products like SAM help us on the conversion rate as it relates to the higher priced vehicles. Because what it is franchise dealers and others who wanna buy these vehicles can now either just get a better filter based on them setting up their profile and or automatically bidding. However they decide to use SAM, it does help in that area. Think at a really high level, what we'll see between now and the back half of the year is prices will likely come down. Overall, we will see prices come down, but we may still gain more share in the higher ASP segment.
How that comes together, right, you know, is the tricky part. Because as overall prices are coming down, you know, we will remain kind of going upmarket. I think what we're really signaling is, yes, we believe our, the overall GMV will go down, modestly throughout the year, even though we'll be gaining more share in the higher segment.
Okay, perfect. Just kind of an education question for me. You know, I hear other people talk about, "Hey, we use third party, you know, inspectors," and, you know, you guys obviously use the VCIs. Are there? I'm just kinda curious what sort of advantage that gives you in the sense that are there six other condition reports that dealers have to wade through from six other different, you know, third party inspectors, or are they standardized by whatever platform uses those third party inspectors? I'm just kinda curious about the, you know, the inspection report advantage you guys have.
I believe what you're referring to is we may have competitors who use third parties versus employees. I'm not exactly sure of the question, but if I assume that's the question, then the pros and cons of each of these models are once you get density in a geographic area, like, you know, you start to get several hundred units in any geographic area. You can send your inspectors to a given customer more often to get more wallet share, and you can likely have a higher control of your quality from a CR arbitration. You saw, for example, we mentioned in last earnings call we had some challenges as related to arbitration.
Well, we made some technology changes, some process changes, some training, and we really improved quarter-over-quarter on arbitration and goodwill in a market that got harder, right? The market got harder, and we did better. There are advantages to having your own team. The advantages to our competitors who don't have employees is when you don't have as many sales in any given region, their cost structure is lower. We're paying for inspectors across the country in dozens of territories where we have full-time inspectors, where we don't have enough for those inspectors to be doing, you know, eight or nine or 10 or 12 inspections per day. We're still early. In those markets, our competitors would have a cost advantage, right, while you're growing at scale.
I think there are strengths to either one of these models. Obviously we like our model. It, we believe, it gives us certain competitive advantages. Hopefully that answers your question.
It does. Thank you.
Yes, certainly.
Thanks, Chris. One moment for our next question, please. From Bob Labick with CJS Securities. Bob. Great.
Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. Obviously, given how much we've talked about conversion rates, it's an important topic, and I'm sure you guys have studied it internally. I was wondering if you could maybe tell us or share with us what you've learned about higher converting dealers versus lower converting dealers and what practices you can, you know, take from the higher conversion dealers and help the lower conversion guys with. Specifically, what tools you have right now to increase conversion and how your toolbox is gonna roll out over the next several, you know, quarters, years to also increase conversion.
Yeah. Bob, thank you. That's a great question. To your point, even today, we have dealers with 90%+ conversion. You are right on. Those dealers will leverage the ACV Market Report to help them understand where cars are trading now compared to, you know, if they were trading a couple thousand dollars more several months ago. That's one area where they could use the ACV Market Report. Another product that helps them understand the value of a trade is Live Appraisal. When they take in the car, instead of guessing the value, is you run a Live Appraisal 'cause the, you know, the Live Appraisal gives you the actual cash value, the ACV of the car. Not whatever the data said it was worth a month or two months ago is no longer relevant.
That's another best practice. Where we're going with Drivably and MAX and our newer products. The first two, we've tried to scale well to all of our customers, and some take our advice, some don't. Then the other two, I would say, more newer, the newer products, the Drivably and MAX, allow them to get to more structured answers quickly, whether it's the consumer on the dealer's website. When you think about one of the problems dealers have is they've got all these different widget things on their websites with all these different brands. I won't name them. When the consumer shows up at the dealership, they value it a different way. Dealers ignore how they're doing it on their website. We're really the first one in the market to come with a condition-adjusted pricing.
'Cause on any given car, when the car gets traded in on any make and model, it could be a $4,000-$5,000 difference between a low and a high. Let's say on a $20,000 car, it could be $15,000, it could be $25,000 based on the condition. These tools that we've been developing and making good strides will help dealers make the right decision at trade. Now, we are in the midst, though, of dealers having to decide what they do on inventory they bought months ago. Just think like right now for the next six months, it's not just about the new trades which have to be priced, it's also about the trades and/or cars they were trying to retail that they bought several months ago at much higher pricing.
That just goes to realization, that you're either gonna have to retail it for a higher amount, or if you want to wholesale it's the new wholesale price. Bob, hopefully that gets us to the what you're looking there from a question. Great question.
Super. No, that's a terrific answer. A lot of color there. Appreciated. That's it for me today. You answered a bunch of the other questions, so thank you.
Thanks, Bob.
All right. One moment for our next question, please.
From Rajat Gupta with J.P. Morgan, please proceed.
Great. Thanks for taking the question.
Raja.
I'm not sure if I missed this, but, you know, are you reiterating the second half, EBITDA positive guidance today?
I'm sorry. Say that again?
The second half EBITDA profitability target, are you reiterating that today?
Oh.
I'm not sure.
You mean for 2023?
Yes, yes.
We previously committed to exit next year at EBITDA breakeven. We're maintaining that commitment, albeit we're actually entering into next year at a $40 million lower OpEx run rate, so that lowers our breakeven point and obviously, you know, puts us in a better position to achieve breakeven, you know, subject to whatever the market conditions are and our ability to grow the top line next year, of course.
Got it. Are there any more levers you could pull to get there even sooner? You know, if volumes do remain sluggish, you know, maybe, you know, some more cuts around discretionary spending or tech spending? Just curious on your thoughts there.
All I would tell you is, you know, we're continually looking at our OpEx spend rates across the business, and we're gonna continue to optimize everywhere we can. You know, we're making, you know, this level of commitment on the call today, but that doesn't mean we're gonna stop looking for efficiencies and, you know, where we can optimize our operations. You know, I'm not gonna put out any numbers, but, you know, look, you know, we obviously have multiple levers at any point in time. What we're trying to do is preserve our ability to continue to grow and grab share. You know, George and I have committed to manage the bottom line, and we're gonna do everything we can to continue to execute against those commitments.
An example of where we've been managing our resources more effectively than our original plan is our spend on tech. We have a great team in North America, folks here in Buffalo and Toronto and folks all over the country, but we were able to augment that team with some offshore development this year. We've been able to deliver an unbelievable product in tech roadmap with significantly less headcount in North America. That's an example of something my product and tech team did that I'm just so proud of them. You know, you've probably heard a lot of companies talk about this. We did it. We are executing on a really incredible roadmap.
The folks here in North America are delivering our, and our folks in Paris, France are delivering, but then we've got other offshore development folks in other places that are helping us deliver great products at a lower cost. Yeah, we're doing it now. I think what Will is saying is we're doing it now. Look at our overall cost infrastructure. We had initial cost basis in the business, and we're looking for ways to achieve our results in a more optimized way.
I think one more data point that I would just add to augment what I discussed earlier is I think you could look at the Q2 results, especially our, you know, quarter-on-quarter increase in margins, you know, 300 bps as an indication of our ability to execute on kind of pulling those levers and generating results, in this case very quickly, versus Q1, for example. That's just a reflection of our ability to continue to steer the ship and kinda achieve that target of exiting next year at breakeven. Obviously we would try to get there earlier if we can. We'll do everything we can to do that. Right now that's our commitment, and we're standing by it.
Got it. That's helpful color. Maybe, you know, just on your volume numbers, obviously tough market backdrop. You know, you're continuing to gain share. You know, and your growth was much better than, you know, one of your larger, more sizable peers. Is there anything you would attribute that to, in particular? I mean, did the ADESA acquisition have any impact, you know, in terms of, you know, just getting those incremental customers? Just curious on your thoughts there. Thanks.
Yeah. I believe we outperformed many of our competitors on everything from conversion rate to quarter-over-quarter with one of the other ones. You know, I think we outperformed several competitors. If you ask, okay, why? One is if the market gets a little softer, the demand side needs to trust the condition reports. You've heard me say things. When markets are hot, almost anybody can sell a wholesale car, right? Raja, many of you heard me say this for the last few quarters. When markets are hot, when prices are going up, dealers will bid on almost anything from anybody. When markets start to get more difficult, which is the way it was for like 40 years, dealers have to be more careful on what they're bidding and buying.
You need to trust the asset you're buying. That's a really key thing that we've got a massive differentiator. Number two, products like Private Marketplaces are really paying off for us right now. We are growing more rooftops. We're growing rooftops without even having to go out and, you know, by just, in a way, getting introduced to a new general manager because they became part of a dealer group. That's key. By focusing on dealer groups, there's gonna be more and more consolidation. We have a competitive advantage with dealer groups over our competitors. When you look at the demand side, we have a competitive advantage. On the supply side for larger groups, we have a competitive advantage. There's more here.
At the end of the day, our investments in our team, the relationships out there in the field, and our technology mix is paying off.
Got it. Great. Thanks for that color and good luck.
Thank you, Raja.
Thanks, Rajat.
Thank you. This ends our Q&A session for today. I will turn the call back to Tim Fox for final remarks.
Thank you, Carmen. I'd like to thank everybody for joining us on the call today. Please note that ACV is gonna be participating in a number of investor conferences this quarter. You can find all the details on our website. We look forward to seeing you on the road. Thanks again for your interest in ACV, and have a great evening.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.