... Day two of the Citi Tech Conference. I'm Tyler Radke, Citi's co-head of U.S. Software, and to kick things off, we're excited to have the CCC team. We got Brian Herb, the CFO, and Bill Warmington from investor relations. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us again this year. And, for those, you know, listening along, I thought it'd be great, Brian, if you could just give an overview of the CCC business, for those who aren't familiar.
Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for having us again this year.
Yeah.
It's great to be here. Yeah, so CCC, we're a SaaS platform. We serve the insurance economy, so the business has largely been focused through auto claims and helping to facilitate an auto claim process, and so our software, our platform, tools, and AI, we connect a multi-sided network, so we have our software into insurance companies, about three hundred insurance companies. We connect them to body shops. We have 30,000 body shop clients, over 30,000 . We connect them to part suppliers, over 5,000 part suppliers, and so that software and our workflow connects those trade partners to help facilitate the resolution of an auto claim, and that's where the business has largely focused. We have expanded more recently with an acquisition, and I'm sure we'll talk about that.
But we closed a deal in January of this year, a company called EvolutionIQ, and it expanded us into workers' comp and to disability. So software, again, using AI and software, helping insurance companies facilitate and process a disability claim or a workers' comp claim. So that business was acquired this year. When you think about the financial profile of the business, we're about $1 billion of run-rate revenue. We have margins in the forties. We have the software is very sticky, along with the multi-sided network. We keep clients for a very long time on the platform. We have a gross dollar retention of around 99%. So that hopefully gives just a overall profile of what we do and kind of the sizing of the business.
I don't know, Bill, anything to add?
I would just add that, I think one of the really unique things about CCC is that it's this combination of a vertical software company and a network. You know, with very high levels of subscription revenue and 99% retention. It's really an outstanding business.
Yeah. You know, particularly for, you know, the auto repair side, which is a lot of small businesses. You know, you don't see that type of retention rate,
Mm
... in SMB software. So maybe it's we just think about what's top of mind for customers, right? And obviously, you have an interesting purview into a variety of customers within the base. You just talked about, you know, auto repair shops, P&C insurers, and some of the suppliers, but what is top of mind for them as it relates to running their business in terms of, you know, efficiencies they're after? And how are you thinking about what you can help them out with in terms of the CCC platform?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so the couple of macro trends that are on our clients' minds, I mean, first is just the rise in complexity. So when you think about an auto claim, and a car getting repaired, you know, there's just increased complexity around that, and that can be complexity of the car, it can be complexity of medical procedures with bodily injury related to an auto claim. The ecosystem continues to expand, and there's more and more players that are helping facilitate a claim, and that drives complexity as well. So, our software helping to address that complexity as you know, insurers and auto body shops work through a claim. The second is just a shift in workforce.
So we're seeing a lot of our clients, and it's both on the carrier side and the shop side, where some of the more experienced staff workers are retiring out, and they're bringing in a whole another new level of more inexperienced workers. And so that they're losing a lot of history, a lot of knowledge in that transition, and our software also helps through that transition. And then the third is just inflationary cost pressures that's in the ecosystem. That's the cost to repair a car, the cost of parts are rising, medical inflation for bodily injury that's related to a auto claim, those are all rising.
One of the things that we really do across our clients is help them with operational efficiency and start to help them address some of the cost pressures that they have. Those are some of the macro trends-
Mm
... that our clients are facing.
Got it. And you hit on this in your opening remarks around the acquisition of EvolutionIQ, but talk to us. I mean, this was certainly a larger acquisition, you know, in terms of the price paid. Obviously, pretty interesting space, high-growth asset and everything, but just walk us through the thought process-
Yeah
... on that acquisition and how it fits into the technology stack.
Yeah. I mean, we, we touched on it a little bit, but just if you step all the way back and you think at the most basic level, you know, core CCC is helping our clients facilitate and process an auto claim. And EvolutionIQ, what they do is they use AI to help insurers process a disability claim or a workers' comp claim. And so at the most basic level, there's consistency in software driving efficiency through the claims departments, and helping them get to resolution in a seamless and effective and efficient way of a claim. And so that's. That's at the most basic level. From just a fit perspective, it's a, you know, fantastic technology stack, a really strong leadership team, great team overall.
And so from a cultural fit, it was a really good meshing as well, and then there's a really impactful opportunity as we think about some of what they do, and porting those capabilities over to our clients, so when you think about our auto casualty clients, some of EvolutionIQ's AI and software would be incremental opportunities to cross-sell into that base, and so that becomes really impactful for us as well, and one example is a platform called MedHub, so what MedHub is, it's a medical summarization, medical synthesis platform that takes in both unstructured and structured medical data and brings it all into a portal, and helps the claim handler process that information in a really effective way, and also highlights the things that the claim handler should be focused on.
We don't have those capabilities, and those capabilities certainly are very relevant for our P&C clients that are dealing with auto casualty claims. And so the opportunity there is to bring that technology and cross-sell it into our casualty base, as one example. And there'll be other examples of other technology from EvolutionIQ that we can cross-sell into our clients. But that cross-selling opportunity is a material part of our acquisition rationale, and why we're so excited about the deal.
Right. And is there a way to frame, just on that cross-sell opportunity, obviously, you have most of the large P&C carriers as customers today, but how big could EvolutionIQ be at those customers? Are we talking, you know, tens of millions of dollars in revenue at each customer? How do you just sort of think about that cross-sell opportunity?
Yeah, I mean, when they sell into their modules, I mean, those are meaningful deals. I mean, those can be, you know... they're certainly seven-figure deals. Some of them can push up to eight-figure deals, depending on how-
Mm-hmm
... many modules that they adopt. And so, yeah, these are meaningful size opportunities that we have with our casualty clients to cross-sell into EvolutionIQ, or bringing EvolutionIQ capabilities. Right now, when we start with MedHub, it's a pretty narrow sales opportunity. But as that expands and they continue to build out capabilities that are relevant for the auto side, auto casualty, and roll out more modules, it will become a more, a larger opportunity, and have some sizable deals, sizable opportunities.
Okay, got it. So you last quarter, you talked about some delayed deal timing, which impacted the revenue recognition. Could you expand on that? And is this something that you think is kind of more of a go-to-market thing you need to clean up, or is this just sort of you know the nature of selling something new and AI technology into a pretty conservative industry?
Yeah. I mean, there's two dynamics that played out. So one was they had a couple meaningful deals that were closed and signed at the end of last calendar year. We were expecting implementation to take four-to-six months, the clients to go live, and revenue to start. And so they do have a longer implementation time. It's more like six months, and ours is kind of weeks-
Sure
... or months, and so that implementation has shifted back. Part of what happens is they need client data to build their AI models off of it, and so if the clients are delayed in getting that data, that slows implementation, so the deals were already signed. It really was an implementation cycle time that has impacted when revenue will start, and so it's a 2025 impact and doesn't really play into 2026, because those clients are signed. The second dynamic that played through is there's a couple deals we expected to close in Q1. They ended up closing in Q2, and again, that just shifted the revenue out, but it's not revenue leakage beyond 2025.
And so as we think about 2026 and beyond, and the impact that businesses have, it, you know, we're, we remain consistent with where we've been at the time of the acquisition. And as I said, you know, we, we remain really excited about the strategic fit and the opportunity, and the early discussions we're having with our existing clients about the EvolutionIQ capabilities, it, it's certainly driving a lot of excitement. And so we, we remain really enthusiastic about the opportunity in front of us.
Got it. In recent quarters, you talked about the claims volume headwinds out there in the space, and that impact on at least part of your business. Could you just frame for investors the dynamics you're seeing on the claim volume side, and when do you expect things to get better and normalize?
Yeah, happy to. And I'll just make a couple comments. I mean, one, on the claims themselves, I mean, what we're seeing is we're seeing a decline in claims being filed. We don't believe there is a decline in frequency of accidents that is driving that. It's really around consumer behaviors, and at the lower end of accidents, consumers are choosing not to file a claim. And you can see that in the data. If you look at ISS data, casualty claims were up in Q1 of 2025. So you're seeing where claims are less discretionary, they're more expensive, they have medical bills, those claims continue to get filed, and you're seeing those claims actually grow. And what you're seeing decline are the smaller claims, where it's more discretionary for the policyholder.
And so that's the dynamic that is happening. Our business is 80% subscription-based, which doesn't move with claim volume, and 20% is transactional. Some of that transactional revenue is directly tied to claims, and some of it is correlated to claim volumes, but not directly tied. As an example, our parts business, a component of our parts business goes with percent of GMV. That's not tied directly to a claim, but it certainly is correlated to how many claims are filed and how much work goes into the repair shop. So that's the dynamic that's playing out. We saw in Q1, 9% claim decline, year- over- year. That slightly modified to 8% in Q2.
And when you think about kind of the impact it has on our business model, you know, 9% or 8% has about a one point of revenue drag for us of growth. So we're absorbing that drag as we go through the year. Your question around when we expect it to moderate, and come back to more normalized levels, it's hard for us to predict that. We do. You know, we're continuing to monitor it. As I said, there was a slight moderation in Q2, and we'll just continue to focus on it. You know, overall, when you think about the shape of our revenue and the size of the business, you know, a one point of drag is not overly material.
So even though this has an impact on the growth, it's not a material part of the overall revenue growth equation.
Got it. So we do hear, though, some investors worried about maybe a more structural decline in claims volumes, whether that's from, you know, ADAS, autonomous vehicles, and certainly you have seen multiple quarters now of claim volume pressure. Like, how do you think about the risks around more of a structural decline, and what would that look like theoretically for the CCC business?
Yeah, I mean, back to the earlier point, I'd say what we're seeing now at these heightened levels of decline, we don't believe this is structural. We believe it's a consumer behavior. So, that's our view. When you step back and you look at ADAS and the impact ADAS has had on accidents over time, you know, it's been moderating frequency for years. And so that is just an ongoing trend that the business has seen, and the business continues to grow through. There's a stat, I mean, if you look back from 2014 to 2024, claim volume is down 4% over that long period. So that's just an example of kind of the trend line that that's been happening, and our business has, you know, grown over 100% during that same time.
So again, there's not this direct correlation that we need claims growth to grow the business. Our business model really is around addressing complexity. You know, certainly severity is going up, and severity is somewhat offsetting frequency declines. And what we really do is we focus on cross-selling our clients and making them more efficient and effective and deploying more and more software. And so we think about kind of our attachment rate on how our software attaches to each claim. And so our growth on our long-term model and how we think about the growth of the business is not attached to claims growing. It's really around: how do we improve the operational performance of the business or of our clients and deploy more and more software?
You've talked about a 7%-10% long-term organic growth rate for the business. This year, it's closer to the lower end of that spectrum. What do you need to do to get it back towards 10%?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just to put it in perspective, so we've been public for four years now. The first two years of public, we were in the teens of organic growth rate, so we were above the long-term target that we had. Last year, we did 9%, so kind of towards the higher end of the long-term range. When you strip out EvolutionIQ this year, and you just look at the organic performance, Q1 was 7%, Q2 was 8%. So you're right, we have kinda come down, and we're trending towards the lower end of the range. I'd say there's a couple things playing out. One of it is just deal cycle and deal timing. So new business is not perfectly linear. It's not perfectly linear in a year, it's not perfectly linear quarter to quarter.
It will move around, and those, you know, the timing of new business plays through why one quarter is really strong or why one year could be stronger than another. That's point one. Point two is, we're really focused on these emerging solutions and really see a lot of growth on the back of scaling those up. Today, emerging solutions are about 4% of our total revenue. It contributed just under two points of growth. It was just under two points of growth in Q1. It was just under two points of growth in Q2, but it continues to scale in absolute dollars, and we're also seeing some momentum on some larger clients moving from testing and piloting to signing up and turning into production and starting to drive revenue.
So that gives us confidence around emerging and starting to scale as we go through the second half of the year and get into next year. So that's a real important part of our growth going forward. And then, one of our more established products, like casualty, is another important part of our growth, as we think about the opportunity going forward.
Got it. Okay, and we've talked a lot about EvolutionIQ earlier, but could you just maybe refresh for investors your M&A strategy going forward? Should we expect kind of more of these, you know, mid-size deals, or is kind of the small tuck-in the way you're thinking about it?
Yeah, I mean, we've done both. We did a small tuck-in back in 2021, when we bought subrogation . It was actually early 2022. Safekeep, which was our subrogation platform, that was a small deal. That was a product expansion. It was basically instead of building it, to buy it, to speed to market. So we think about kind of M&A in three buckets. I mean, one bucket is product expansion, so we can take new products and cross-sell them to our clients. We can either build those or we can buy those, and the subrogation was an opportunity to buy. We then have adjacency, which is more like the EvolutionIQ. It's around the insurance economy, but moving us into new adjacent markets like workers' comp and disability, incremental to kind of P&C insurance.
So adjacency is an area. And then third, we'll continue to evaluate international opportunities. You know, the sizing will just depend on the opportunities against those three kind of acquisition themes. And so, you know, we're not calling they're gonna be small or they're gonna be medium. It's more do they fit kind of those rationale, and how is the strategic fit for the business?
Got it. Okay. So shifting gears a little bit to the product side of the equation. So I think you, you've talked about casualty reaching the size of APD, and obviously, you know, EvolutionIQ is part of that. But just walk us through the journey in terms of where casualty is and reaching the size of APD.
Yeah. So, casualty today is around 10% of our revenue, so roughly $100 million. If it... You know, we have 50 clients-ish on casualty. Our insurance business on the APD side is more like $400 million with 300 clients, and so we're just saying if we get similar levels of penetration, that has an opportunity to be a $400-plus million business for us outside of EvolutionIQ being incremental to that.
Mm.
That's how we think about the sizing. It's really around cross-selling our APD clients into our casualty solution. We've made, you know, significant investments over the past several years around the tech stack for casualty. We believe we have a very differentiated solution than what's in the market today. We've invested in new leaders coming in and on the product side and really driving that as well. We have a strong pipeline, really good engagement with clients. It's growing faster than the core business, and so we're feeling good on the momentum. But it's certainly gonna be, you know, multi-year journey to scale the business.
It's not gonna just overnight, one year to the next, get to that size, but certainly the opportunity's in front of us, and we feel really good on, on the momentum that's in the business.
What are the sales cycles and implementations like in casualty? I mean, are these kind of multi-year things where you have to dislodge, you know, some well-established incumbent, or just give us a sense on how easy it is to get in there.
Yeah, I mean, those deals are typically longer than our auto physical damage sales cycles. Some of them are on longer-term deals with competitors, so those play out. There is more switching costs from what the internal IT team needs to do to kind of move from one provider to another. So all that is contemplated, and so that's why part of this is a longer-term journey, and it's not gonna just be flipping the switch, but we feel good on where we are, how we're positioned in the pipeline, that this will continue to be opportunities to scale as we go forward.
Got it. And maybe zooming out a little high level, just as you think about your P&C customers, we've certainly heard a lot of commentary on P&C customers, you know, investing in automation, migrating to the cloud. Obviously, Guidewire, one of your peers, has seen pretty strong cloud growth. And I know I was at a dinner last night with a database company, and they talked about one of the larger insurance underwriters kind of re-platforming their underwriting platform. So it does feel like that digital transformation, AI transformation, is happening. What are you all seeing just at a high level? Is there kind of a greater willingness to engage, adopt new products, or is it still kind of business as usual?
No, I think that's right. I think there is a trend of clients that they recognize that they need to digitize and to improve operations and to provide a better end process for policyholders. And so I think there is more willingness to drive change. I'd say, you know, we've had engagements with our emerging solutions and some of our AI solutions for a period of time, and we are seeing some of those testing and piloting moving into production, turning into revenue, and getting implemented. So we are seeing that the momentum picking up there and moving from kind of the evaluation stage to the buying stage and implementing, and so I would agree with that overall sentiment and kind of how the trend feels with our clients.
Right. And I know that was something Githesh hit on, on the last call, but do you think the timing of those deals, that's kind of still more a 2026 event, but maybe seeing the initial green shoots and-
Yeah
- excitements?
I'd say that's right. I mean, we're starting to see some deals come over the line. We talked about them in Q2, and then moving into production, starting to drive revenue. Those individual deals will continue to scale as the clients expand the use case of those products. And then we believe adoption will drive adoption. So as more clients come on to those new solutions, other clients will engage and continue to drive progress and momentum against it. So-
Right.
Yeah, I think Githesh highlighted last quarter, you know, feeling good about some of those wins and the momentum that's putting into the business, and we just see that continuing as we go through the second half, and into next year. As we talk about it, it's SaaS revenue, and it's going to build. It's not kind of just. They're not large, lumpy deals individually, but it is more the momentum and what we're seeing with clients engaging in buying behavior.
Got it. I wanted to hit on Estimate-STP. I think, you know, that that's been an interesting product. I remember a few years ago, the demos and-
Yeah
... kind of the value it can provide for your customers. But where are we at in terms of that penetration and, you know, how is that sales motion going?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was kind of our flagship AI product that we brought into the market, and for those that don't know what it does, it basically is using computer vision AI to help insurance companies write a line item estimate for repairing a car, and it's using the AI from the photos to write a line estimate, including, you know, part prices, labor rates, the hour of labor it will take to repair it. And so through photos, it comes up with an estimate for the policyholder and for the insurance company.
That was a process that could have taken, you know, half an hour to an hour, and now it's happening in minutes and goes to the carrier for them to look at and approve, and it makes a much more seamless process. That's a product that we've had in market. Today, we have over 40 clients that are using it. We have several top 10. Over the majority of the top 10 are deploying it. I would say it's still early in the scale of adoption on the claim count, so about 4% of claims are running through the Estimate-STP channel. We see that will just continue to scale. We're seeing the carriers adopt it. It's just low in kind of how much volume they're running through it.
We are seeing kind of ranges of outcomes, so we do have a top ten carrier that has adopted and are putting about 20% of their claim volume through. You have some non-standards that are much higher than that. They could be in the thirties or forties, putting claims through. But then you have a lot of other clients that are in the 1% or 2%, just kind of putting a toe in the water and testing it. So we're just in different stages, but that 4% of claim count, we expect to continue to scale as, as we go forward, and that's part of the emerging solutions, and as we think about emerging solutions contributing more in 2026, that's part of the driver of it as well.
Got it. And what are the biggest inhibitors to adopting it? Because, again, I think, in a lot of ways, you, you see the demo, you just... I mean, it's a very clear ROI, right? Fewer labor hours, much more efficient claims processing. What is it just sort of, you know, compliance or legal things, or what's the main roadblock?
Yeah, I mean, it is different carrier by carrier. I mean, some of it can come down just to how are they operationally going to deploy it, right? They have thousands of staff today that are servicing policyholders and helping them process an accident, where they're now going to deploy software, and how do they change their operation around that software that's getting deployed? It's not kind of switching from existing software to new software. It's changing how they operate and how they process a claim.
Right.
So some of it's the operational change management. Some of it is around them getting comfortable using AI to make recommendations. They're ultimately approving those recommendations, but they still have to get comfortable that, you know, the AI is right, and so they do testing between kind of having their staff do it versus our AI and getting comfortable with it as well. So there's a couple different drivers. As I said, we are seeing, you know, some large carriers start to pick it up and adopt and really are kind of highlighting that it's the opportunity that's there as they get to, you know, 20% of volume going through and beyond.
And we know it's scalable and can work at large scale, and so we're excited to see other clients kind of follow that lead.
Yeah. And what other big product or new products, I should say, are you most excited about in terms of being able to cross-sell or positively contribute to growth?
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we talked about, Estimate-STP, kind of being the flagship AI, using computer vision to help write an estimate. We have some of that similar or that same computer vision AI and putting on different parts of the claim process, and that is kind of being sold as, you know, different use cases. So one use case is at the initial claim handler looking at it to determine if it's repairable or if it is a total loss, putting AI to help make recommendations on that. Putting AI on how the carrier communicates with the body shop and looking at re-inspection of the repair order. So it's using that similar, same computer vision AI models, but we're putting them into new use cases.
In each of those use cases, we're kind of selling as individual items. So we think about kind of this intelligent layer that we're putting on top of our APD software, and that remains, you know, an exciting opportunity for us. So that's what we think of as a large growth opportunity across not just Estimate-STP, but this broader AI on top of our APD solutions.
Got it. And then in the final few minutes, I did want to hit on margins and how you're thinking about capital allocation. So, just, you know, this past year, obviously, the EvolutionIQ, there are emerging parts of the business you are investing more in. How should we think about margin expansion going forward, especially in the context of the emerging solutions bucket being a bigger driver of real growth?
Yeah, we've talked about margin progressions being about 100 basis points per year. And if you go back from 2020 to this year, we've improved margin about 600 basis points over that period of time. This year, we're going backwards on margin because we're absorbing the moderate loss that EvolutionIQ has. When you strip out EvolutionIQ, we're still improving our core margins, about 100 basis points this year as well. So when we turn the page, and we go from 2026 and beyond, we're highlighting that we expect to continue to move towards that 100 basis points and get towards the mid-40s. The mid-40s is not a ceiling, it's just a midterm target that we feel good about delivering. The mix of emerging versus established really doesn't play that much into our margin progression.
We feel when we get to scale on emerging, they'll have similar margin attributes as our more established solutions. It's really about the investment and getting them to scale. So overall, the margin story, we're feeling good about.
Okay. And then, yeah, lastly, on capital allocation, obviously, the EvolutionIQ deal this year, you know, used up a good amount of cash, but how are you thinking about buybacks and just the percentage of cash flow that goes, you know, to shareholder returns versus paying down debt?
Yeah
... et cetera?
Yeah, I mean, I think you've seen kind of how we think about our use of cash. I mean, we've done the EvolutionIQ, which was a mix of cash and stock, but then we also announced a $300 million buyback program at the beginning of the year that we're fulfilling against. We're about $170 million or so through that $300 million buyback. So we have used it for M&A, we have used it to buy back shares. For us, it really comes down to just shareholder value and how we think about, you know, what's the best opportunity in front of us to deliver that. M&A is lumpy, and it kind of is time specific. If there aren't deals to do, and we have, you know, the balance sheets in a strong place, that allows us to do buybacks.
If there's deals to do, we'll allocate, if there's a strong strategic fit into M&A as well.
Awesome. Great. Well, I know we're running out on time, but just wanted to hand it back over to you, if there was any final messages you wanted to get across to the audience and close us out.
Yeah, no, appreciate you hosting us. This was a great conversation. I think we covered the high points, and look forward to a day full of meetings.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone.