Pattern Group Inc. (PTRN) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Pattern's fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to hand the call over to Hamish Chung, VP of Finance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Pattern's earnings call for the fourth-quarter and full-year 2025, our first full year end call as a public company. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations, assumptions, and forecasts about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please refer to our latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information on these risks and uncertainties.

We may also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. We'll focus our remarks today on the key highlights and drivers. Additional detail is available in the earnings release.

Joining us today are Dave Wright, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Jason Beesley, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's earnings call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our Investor Relations website following the call. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions.

I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Dave Wright. Dave, please go ahead.

Thanks, Hamish, and good afternoon, everyone. 2025 was a defining year for Pattern, marked by record revenue, record retention, and expanding profitability as a public company. For the full year, revenue increased 39% to $2.5 billion. Jason will walk through the specifics of our margin expansion, cash generation, and our new share repurchase program in a moment.

But I want to start by outlining four strategic metrics from our results that highlight our accelerating momentum. First, net revenue retention or NRR. We delivered a record NRR of 124% for the year, up from 116% in 2024. As brands work with Pattern, the benefits compound. They are leaning heavier into our platform.

Second, international growth. Expanding our global footprint is paying off. International revenue increased 63% for the full year. That momentum accelerated in Q4 with international revenue up 69% year over year.

Third, non-Amazon growth. Our channel diversification strategy is scaling rapidly. Non-Amazon revenue grew 60% for the full year and surged 94% in the fourth quarter.

And fourth, SaaS services and logistics. We are successfully augmenting our core business of marketplace acceleration. This part of the business grew 58% for the full year and an impressive 162% in Q4. While still a smaller portion of revenue, this performance reflects strong platform build-out, accelerating adoption, and continued expansion into higher margin offerings. Taken together, these results reflect not just growth, but increasing momentum across the entire e-commerce equation.

Stepping away from the specific financial results, I'd like to talk about e-commerce overall. We are entering a new era of e-commerce, where traditional buying channels face simultaneous headwinds and tailwinds. At the center of this shift is the rapid adoption of LLMs and AI-driven discovery, which is fundamentally rewiring how consumers conduct product research and beginning to evolve the purchase path. Today's consumer is highly empowered, using these technologies to instantly synthesize reviews and compare global specifications. This shift is compressing the funnel, moving consumers from research to transaction within a single interface and bypassing the traditional multi-stop shopping journey.

As this evolves into agentic shopping, where agents move beyond research to execute purchase decision, Pattern is uniquely positioned to empower brands in this new ecosystem. In this hyper-transparent environment, brands must focus on product quality and consumer delight to survive. We use our 66 trillion data points to give brands deep visibility into consumer intent and category white space. By partnering with Pattern on the full product life cycle, we arm our partners with the predictive data needed to innovate faster and capture share. This expanding value proposition is a direct contributing factor to our record NRR.

Through this evolution, Pattern's role remains resolutely brand-focused and channel agnostic. Whether a transaction originates from a marketplace search, an LLM query, social commerce, or an autonomous agent, our objective remains the same: ensure our brand partners are optimized and winning the transaction wherever demand originates.

What sets us apart in this environment of both AI acceleration and AI disruption is our moat, built on a foundation of data, international breadth, logistics scale, and speed. In the world of AI, speed is a critical differentiator.

It starts with our data density. Our Pattern Intelligence layer is now powered by more than 66 trillion data points, up significantly from 47 trillion just six months ago. Our technology allows us to execute at a significant scale. In 2025, our automation engine executed 5.53 billion marketplace bid changes and 40 million price changes in real time.

But intelligence alone isn't enough. You have to be able to execute globally. We pair that digital speed with the extensive international breadth of our platform, spanning 22 global offices and supporting expansion across more than 70 marketplaces. This reach is underpinned by our inventory purchase model. By owning the goods and managing the physical goods flow, we provide our partners with a level of agility and quote, skin in the game that traditional service models simply cannot match.

In an era of AI disruption, this operational control becomes a strategic advantage. In 2025, we scaled our operations, increasing shipment volume and density while meaningfully improving speed. Products now reach marketplaces in approximately 1.5 days. Furthermore, our focus on operational efficiency resulted in our Days Inventory Outstanding, or DIO, improving to 72 days, reflecting a 10-day reduction year over year.

Pattern is built for where e-commerce is going. As AI reshapes discovery and automation accelerates execution, our platform combines intelligence with operational scale to help brands win. We are entering 2026 with momentum, a durable model, and a clear focus on profitable growth. We are confident in our ability to create long-term value for our brand partners and shareholders.

With that, I'll turn it over to Jason to walk through the financials. Jason, over to you.

Thanks, Dave, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. 2025 was an exceptional year for Pattern, with strong momentum carrying through the fourth quarter. For the full year, revenue grew 39% to $2.5 billion. In the fourth quarter, revenue increased 40% year over year to $723 million.

We achieved record net revenue retention of 124%, up from 116% last year. Existing brand partner revenue reached a record $2.2 billion, up 42% year over year. New brand partner revenue was $282 million, up 22% year over year, a double-digit acceleration from 2024.

As a reminder, our growth is driven by three primary levers. First, technology-driven optimization remains foundational to NRR and is the primary driver of growth. As brands work with Pattern, the benefits from our ongoing investment in optimizing the e-commerce equation compound. Improvements across content, advertising, pricing, and supply chain drive higher conversion and greater efficiency. For example, we launched a Destiny update that improved traffic performance by expanding the breadth of campaigns we can manage and increasing automation to drive greater speed and optimization.

Second, new marketplaces and geographies. We continued expanding our global footprint and now operate in more than 70 marketplaces worldwide. As Dave shared, our non-Amazon revenue grew 60% for the full year and 94% in the fourth quarter.

That momentum was driven in part by triple digit year-over-year growth in Q4 on Coupang, TikTok Shop, and Walmart. More than two-thirds of our brands partner with Pattern across multiple marketplaces. This diversified presence deepens brand relationships and expands our growth opportunity.

Third, adding product depth. As our relationships with our brand partners grow, we expand the product lines we sell and help launch new products into marketplaces with the benefit of deep brand knowledge and brand specific optimization roadmaps. These expansions accelerated growth relative to 2024 and were meaningful contributors to NRR in 2025.

These growth vectors layer, and the compounding effect is why many of our largest and longest-tenured partners continue to accelerate their growth year after year. In 2025, more than 53% of our revenue was attributable to brand partners who have worked with Pattern for over five years, demonstrating how growth compounds over time.

Turning to operating expenses and profitability. For the full year, we achieved adjusted EBITDA of $153 million or 6.1% adjusted EBITDA margin, reflecting 52% growth year over year. Excluding stock-based compensation, we saw leverage in our operations and G&A expense line. Sales and marketing grew in line with revenue, while we accelerated investment in R&D, which grew 46% year over year. We expect to continue to strategically invest in technology to fuel future growth.

Looking at disaggregated expenses, our variable cost components of cost of goods sold, marketplace commissions and fulfillment grew slightly slower than revenue growth. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $43 million, or a 5.9% margin, growing 59% year over year. We realized some margin benefit in the quarter due to the timing of hiring, with certain roles shifting into Q1.

For the full year, we generated $99 million of operating cash flow, up 41% year over year, and $79 million of free cash flow, up 58% year over year, representing a 52% adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion rate. We ended the period with $289 million in cash and cash equivalents, no outstanding debt, and $150 million of borrowing capacity available under our revolving credit facility. As Dave mentioned, we announced that our Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase program of up to $100 million. We believe our repurchase program demonstrates our confidence in our ability to continue to deliver outsized growth, profitability, and cash flow generation.

To quickly recap, we exited 2025 with record results and strong momentum. Growth in the back half of the year benefited from incremental optimizations across the e-commerce equation, as well as new product launches that performed exceptionally well, enabling us to deliver world-class NRR of 124% in 2025.

We are on pace to eclipse $3 billion in revenue in 2026. Specifically, we expect revenue in the range of $710 million to $720 million in Q1, representing 31% to 33% growth year over year, and total revenue for the year of $3.12 billion to $3.16 billion, up 25% to 26%.

There are a few things to consider as we think about the year ahead. First, we're entering the year with strong momentum, but that means we will face difficult comps in the second half of the year as we lap our record 40%-plus growth rates. We also expect a more normalized cadence of new product expansions in the coming year. And as is typical in our forecasting methodology, we are taking a middle-of-the-road approach in our assumptions for new brand partner revenue in 2026 due to sales variations.

As a reminder, NRR is a trailing 12-month metric. We are extremely happy with our recent NRR performance in excess of 120%. But zooming out, we view 115% as an exceptional long-term target.

As it relates to expenses, we expect to increase our investment in R&D this year as we look to further strengthen our technology moat in AI-driven technology and automation, optimize decision-making, and improve efficiency across the platform. We will also invest to accelerate our go-to-market as we continue to deepen our penetration in existing and expand into new categories, marketplaces, and geographies.

As such, we expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of $41 million to $42 million in Q1, representing 22% to 24% growth. And we expect full year adjusted EBITDA to be approximately $180 million to $182 million or 5.8% of expected revenue, representing 17% to 19% growth.

Stepping back, we are pleased with our results and remain committed to accelerating growth for our brand partners. We have a high degree of visibility into the underlying product performance and consumer behavior on a SKU by SKU basis, which underpins our forecasting methodology. We are operating from a position of strength and are committed to deliver long-term value to our shareholders.

With that, I'll turn it back to Dave before we open the call for questions.

Thanks, Jason. 2025 was a milestone year for Pattern, not just in terms of performance, but in strengthening the foundation of our model. As a newly public company, we demonstrated that we can scale growth, profitability, and cash generation while continuing to invest in our long-term differentiation.

E-commerce is evolving rapidly, driven by AI, automation, social commerce, and global scale, and Pattern is built to operate at the center of that change. Our focus remains clear: optimize the e-commerce equation, remove friction for brands, and deliver measurable outcomes at scale. We enter 2026 with strong momentum and confidence in our ability to deliver durable, long-term value.

Thank you for your support. We'll now open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Eric Sheridan, Goldman Sachs.

In terms of the way you frame the year forward for 2026, can you help us better understand how much of that growth is being contributed by elements of existing brand partners or the potential to expand the scope of brand partners on your platform based on the backlog of conversations you are having today?

Yeah, I'll take that one. Thanks, Eric. When we look at our guidance, there are a few things that we keep in mind here. The first is the second half was great performance, and that was across both existing brand partners and new, as well as we had a lot of great optimizations that hit and some product launches that hit in the second half. So we are pretty excited about all that.

When we look at the future, what we are talking about for the full year is $3.1 billion-plus growing 25% to 26%, with existing brand partner NRR converging to 115% by the end of the year generally as our long-term target that we believe is really strong.

That convergence won't happen immediately in Q1. As a reminder, NRR is a mathematical equation that takes the last twelve months over the prior last twelve months. So as those stronger comps move into the equation on the denominator, that's where that convergence will happen mathematically.

On new brand partners, we really like the performance that we had in 2025. Our guidance takes more of a middle-of-the-road approach, looking at both the 2024 and 2025 growth rates and takes that into consideration. In terms of the pipeline, we got $460 billion in target opportunity list that we're attacking methodically over time, and we are growing sales and marketing resources to attack that. We really like what we are seeing around the world, and we are confident in what we can do.

Maybe just one follow-up then, building upon that. When you think about the exit philosophy, you had very strong growth in Q4 around non-Amazon channels. How should we be thinking about the momentum around non-Amazon channels continuing to build as well into 2026? I will leave it there. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Eric. Yeah, we really -- we think that the growth in the non-Amazon channels just points to how big the opportunity is. We really only started moving into that space in the last five years, and the growth rate continues to increase as we add resources and focus on that. So yeah, we think that will be a nice tailwind to the future year.

And maybe -- Eric, thanks for the question. I'll add a little color here. One thing that is interesting, Jason mentioned the $460 billion in pipeline that we have. For that pipeline, it is a defined brand in a defined geography. So when we look at where that's coming from, 39% of that pipeline is coming from outside the Americas.

And so you can really start seeing -- I guess, for any company like ours, this would be expected. Where GMV is around the world, as we mature and get better and better across platforms and across geographies, we are starting to see even that sales pipeline, those numbers we're tracking, start to normalize more to the marketplaces outside the US and the geographies outside the US, further reinforcing your question.

Colin Sebastian, Baird.

Great. Thanks, and congrats on another strong quarter. Maybe one for David and one for Jason. Dave, obviously, you are benefiting from the moat that you have built with the intelligence layer and the logistics footprint now. But looking ahead, what are the top few areas of product innovation on the roadmap that you think have the best opportunity to move the needle?

And then, Jason, as you sort of lean into some of these investments as we see this year, what's your expectation in terms of when those investments or those initiatives will augment top-line growth, and then maybe ultimately contribute incrementally to adjusted EBITDA margin? Thank you.

Yeah. The roadmap is as exciting as I have ever seen it. And I guess it really comes down to, quite frankly, things that in the early five to eight years of the company, now we are twelve years in. I mean, there were things that we were really excited about that took a year or two. We're able to do some of those things in a month now, or less, just with the capabilities that are available to all companies. You just have to leverage them well.

And then we are advantaged in a significant way by the 66 trillion data points. So I mean, the true differentiation in AI of the future will be data. And so you combine those things, and then we have had a seven-plus year roadmap for a long time and are just starting to realize, wow, we could maybe compress that seven-year roadmap into, I do not know, a fraction of that amount.

So -- and again, our entire roadmap is based on the e-commerce formula for a brand. We're trying to make a brand win on revenue -- and revenue for a brand is traffic times your conversion rate times availability. So again, there is the logistics piece that you referred to. So if you look at last year, we were broken down -- 35% of our growth we believe we could tie to optimization.

21% of that 35% came -- or I guess, 21% came from traffic and 11% from conversion, that equals that 35%. So -- and we're just continuing to look and break down that formula and then do it internationally. So it's quite a complex set of technology we're building, but making faster progress than ever, and it is accelerating.

Great. Maybe just to touch on your question, Colin. In terms of the investments, they are really in two spaces. First is in the R&D expense line, which historically we've grown in line with revenue, and that's to build technology, some of which is capitalized. That is also to do experimental work on how we can optimize the equation using large language models, which also uses tokens. So we expect a bit more growth in that ahead of revenue, and that is what is driving a small deleverage in the margin percentage in the short term.

The other thing that we are doing is we are going to continue to build out our fulfillment capabilities. Last year, we launched a Las Vegas facility. This year, we will launch an East Coast facility. We have a great track record of getting operational leverage as we do that, but in this specific year, there may be less leverage because of the back-to-back launches at facilities.

Now to your question in terms of when will that show up in top line and leverage, I would say in the top line it continues to impress us how fast the tools allow us to run new optimizations. So we're excited to see even top-line benefit in that even in the very near term. As it relates to fulfillment, we'll probably return to leverage in the fulfillment line items and the operations in the following year.

Our general thesis of how we are trying to run this business is that we are looking to drive adjusted EBITDA dollar and free cash flow dollar growth, with a nice mix of profitability and free cash flow generation as we grow very fast. We're less focused on specific margin percentage in one quarter or year. We are focused on the great opportunity that we have to drive that dollar-based growth.

Justin Patterson, KeyBanc.

Great. Thank you very much. I will stick with AI a bit. Dave, could you talk about just how agentic coding has really changed productivity across the workforce and the pace of product velocity, and perhaps just whether that changes your views on long-term headcount needs?

And then just drilling back a little bit more, you know, I'd love to hear about some of the drivers of international growth. We have heard that localization is just getting a lot easier with AI tools. We'd love to hear how that's influencing international.

Yeah. Great questions. Without question, we will gain efficiencies. Of course, there are multiple ways to do that. The primary driver for us -- if you think about our space that is in the trillions, the opportunity that we have to go and chase, and we are two to three billion right now. So it's quite exciting to recognize part of business is right time at the right place, and the right tools and the right technologies that come along to further that.

And the -- if you look at the international side, -- well, maybe I'll just skip the -- in terms of coding, it's not just coding that is being impacted from an AI standpoint. It's almost -- you might almost talk about it as a complete refactoring of all jobs, where you start looking at, okay, what is it -- what are the inputs and outputs of this job, what is the task to be done, and then what can you create skills around and a framework around executing from a technology standpoint and agentic execution, and what can you not?

And of course, there are some things you can't. You can't move the box, and then we're always going to need some people around regulatory, making sure that we're within the guidelines of the law. And the legal framework that we operate in, of course, is quite complex when you start going global.

And then -- but beyond that, I think that we will see not only a little leverage in terms of efficiency, but I think it will become quite staggering. I would imagine we're not going to be the only company in that area. The ones that are chasing and chasing quickly are going to see immediate benefits there.

Bernie McTernan, Needham & Company.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Just had a question on the variable cost of the business. Jason, I know you called out how there was leverage on a year over year basis, but the cost did tick up sequentially as a percentage of revenue. Can you just remind us of the seasonality that we should expect in 1Q, and if that contemplates continued leverage that we have been seeing?

And then secondly, just wanted to follow up on the buyback. It was nice to see the $100 million authorization. The stock is below where the IPO price is at. And should we expect you guys to be buying back stock at these levels?

Sure. Bernie, let me just clarify your question. When you say sequentially, do you mean quarter over quarter when you're talking about variable costs?

Exactly. Ticking up from almost 85% in the third quarter to a little bit over 86% in the fourth quarter.

Yeah, sure, sure. I'll touch on that one first, and then I'll talk more broadly about leverage on the expense buckets, and then I'll go to the buyback. So all marketplaces have slightly higher fees for operating on marketplaces in Q4 versus Q3. So that is just a natural thing that happens when you sell on marketplaces, and we build that into -- all the way we run the business, how we model our deals, all that. There's no real surprise there in terms of a little bit higher marketplace costs in the fourth quarter, particularly around things like storage and deliveries, and things like that.

In terms of how our leverage path has been in 2025, if you take out stock-based compensation and IPO-related costs. We did see leverage on the disaggregated expenses in that sales and G&A line, and our variable components were within a normal variance that we see, as that is really driven mostly by product mix and, specifically to your point on Q4, a little bit of seasonality due to marketplace cost. So we are happy with our leverage. We talked about what it looks like in the future.

Specifically on the buyback, at this point, we think we are in a unique position of one of the few companies that has recently IPO'd that is delivering great growth, great profitability, and generating meaningful cash flow. So our strategy on capital allocation is: first, we are going to invest in growing the business; second, we are going to invest in M&A opportunities as they come that add to our capabilities; and then third, we like having the lever of a repurchase program to return value back to shareholders on that lever as well.

Exactly how we're going to use that and exactly what price we are going to use that will be a facts-and-circumstances, market-driven decision with guidance from our Board. So I cannot speak to exactly how we will do that, but that is the general principle of why we announced the repurchase program, and we hope that it is seen as a sign of confidence in our ability.

Doug Anmuth, JPMorgan.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. One for Jason, one for David. First, Jason, can you talk a little bit more about the category priorities in '26? I think in the past, you have kind of talked about beauty as having some of the characteristics that are similar to health and wellness, but curious on your progress there.

And then David, just on agentic, I know you talked about the benefits of coding efficiencies and a little bit more on the expense side, but you also said that AI is fundamentally rewiring e-commerce and the purchase path. I am curious how this is changing how you're helping brands and customers at this point. And are you seeing that AI-driven traffic is higher intent or has greater conversion versus Google and anything else that has been more traditionally top of funnel?

Yeah, Doug. Thanks. Our category priorities are vast. Health and wellness is where we started over twelve years ago, so it benefits from long brand partnerships with a lot of layered optimizations and a great trust and respect cycle in the go-to-market for new brands. That's really a category-specific cycle, but we are growing in lots of other categories as well.

Beauty, particularly, over 100% growth. DIY tools is another fun one. Generally speaking, the way we think about it is that opportunity list that David talked about is split by brands, and we have direct outreach sales forces that are looking at different ways to reach and get traction in categories around the world. And so we're focused on lots of categories. Those are just a few that I would note.

Okay, thanks, Doug. Real quick on how AI is reshaping e-commerce. It is a fascinating time to be alive. It's very fun to be in our seats.

If you think about the LLMs and how much shopping will take place there, that is one piece of agentic. Probably last week we all thought that OpenAI was really going to double down and make the instant checkout process work. I think that they recently have signaled and maybe they are backing away from that a little bit. We will see where that goes.

It appears that Gemini and others are continuing the path that they were on. So we'll see -- we'll continue to monitor that. I guess, the best way to think about this is that in the last year, Pattern has added 12 marketplaces. And if you really think about and digest these models and these methods, they're quite similar to a marketplace. So for us to add two or three or four or maybe one of them backs off, like OpenAI did maybe it goes from four to three.

The core issue that we're talking the most about with brands is the level of complexity and how quickly it is changing. And not a -- probably day goes by that we do not have a conversation with a brand on what they're looking for and how we can help solve the issues there. And it plays into our moat very well because it requires logistics, not only logistics but one of the things we're starting to invest in quite a bit is the reverse logistics infrastructure because the -- that process often just needs to be taken care of regardless of how they transact there.

So not only do we have the data moat and the ability to execute quickly from a machine learning and tools perspective, but we also have the logistics moat that will allow us to expand quickly globally and help brands wherever the landscape changes or shifts. So we're quite excited about it.

Mark Mahaney, Evercore. Mark Mahaney, your line is open. Please make sure your line isn't muted.

I'm sorry. I'm here. I want to ask about marketplaces. I know you've mentioned in your prepared remarks, Coupang, TikTok Shop, Walmart. Just give a sense of the life cycle of these or how long it takes to get these marketplaces up to material levels. Is this something that you can turn on and off, and is this quarters or is this years to get to where you are with those companies? And maybe that will help us think about your ability to successfully and effectively diversify to other marketplaces going forward.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Mark. Well. I guess a couple of points there. Two that stand out for us that I think are quite compelling that we mentioned in the prepared remarks, one is TikTok that -- and if you look at the fourth quarter numbers, grew 224% for us, and in 2025, overall 482%.

Now they're reasonably small numbers but ramping quickly. I think I'm fine to give an overall number on Coupang, because Coupang in 2024 was zero, and in 2025, our number there was $11 million. So I mean, they can ramp quite quickly, and that is just one case in South Korea. It's a great marketplace, but there are others that can ramp just as quickly.

A lot of it is just maturity for us. I would say marketplace number two for us took a couple of years, and this year we added 12. We are just getting much better, and the platform is more modular, where we are able to add capability. When we build a new marketplace, we build our technology in modules that we stack on core modules that we can do quite quickly now.

John Colantuoni, Jefferies.

Great. Thanks for the questions. Dave, starting with your opportunity in agentic commerce, since Pattern doesn't have internal last mile delivery capabilities and is currently relying on marketplaces for checkout capabilities, maybe you can help us better understand if you're planning to invest into those capabilities to benefit from agentic commerce or if you can lean on your partner's own capabilities in the new channel.

Second, regarding first quarter outlook, it looks like revenue is expected flat to down sequentially versus the fourth quarter, which compares to up more like 4% to 5%, sequentially. In the past couple of years, is there anything about what you're seeing in the first quarter this year that could result in a divergence from historical seasonality?

Okay. Well, first of all, we do leverage marketplace fulfillment when it exists. Now, if you go across the 73 marketplaces, most don't have fulfillment, but we have to solve that problem. Our monthly, you know, D2C or final mile delivery today stands at about 140,000 units a month. So we are building capability there.

In the areas of the world where we don't have capability, of course, we partner. I guess the -- at the end of the day, we're building -- we're the interface for the brand and we're finding the cheapest possible way to operate on a marketplace. If they have fulfillment, we'll leverage it.

Even if a marketplace has fulfillment, like we'll take Amazon as an example, if their oversized offering isn't competitive, we'll fulfill it ourselves or leverage a partner to do it. So I think it's -- another one would be, say, refrigerated products. We handle all of those ourselves because Amazon doesn't have a refrigerated offering. So there's quite a varied set there, but we're getting quite capable, and this isn't year number one on that.

Great. Thanks, John. Thanks for your question. Specifically as it relates to Q1, we're really looking at it in the context of the full year growth and what the shape of that growth will be. Understand your point on the kind of seasonality quarter over quarter, that's really a function of how much Q4 overperformed versus our expectations.

It's pretty impressive. We have a lot of teams working on different growth levers, and virtually every single one of them was above our expectations. So our guidance is grounded in not necessarily over-exceeding our expectations on every single lever, it's more of a middle of the road approach. We guide to the full year at $3.1 billion. We look at the shape of the year on Q1 being probably -- Q1 and Q2 being stronger growth rates than Q3 and Q4.

Mark Kelley, Stifel.

Dave, I'd love to get your perspective on the -- there was an article yesterday that OpenAI is changing its instant checkout to pushing people more towards apps within ChatGPT instead of checking out right inside the app natively. I guess from your perspective, does that change anything from your perspective? Does that kinda signal what's to come for agentic commerce? That's the first question.

And the second one is just a quick one for you, Jason. I think the first question, you walked through the NRR mechanics for '26. Is the way to interpret that is like it kind of maybe slowly trails off and you end the year at 115%? Is that the right way to think through quarter by quarter?

Yeah, great question. That was an interesting change by OpenAI. So I guess we'll see where that lands. I guess -- I will say, first off, this is evolving quickly and changing daily, weekly on the strategy. And so we'll see where that lands.

If you take OpenAI as a specific example, and you dive into -- there's a lot of complexity there. My understanding from them on the shift is they're starting to realize, okay, I need real-time and live inventory. That'll be complicated. I need a reverse logistics process. That'll be complicated.

And I think they're realizing, okay, for now, it's probably better for us to leverage partners here. We'll see if that lasts. I think I will say -- I will repeat back something TikTok told me in a meeting where they said, hey, if I can get you to spend time on my platform, I can get you to buy things. And if you think about where we all are spending time now, we're all spending a significant amount of time on an LLM.

My understanding is the rough number is about 22% of purchases over the holiday season had -- were impacted by LLMs. Of course, there was an instant checkout, but they're being impacted, nonetheless. So that is evolving. It is something that we're, of course, taking very, very seriously regardless of how exactly those flows go because they're going -- in terms of the actual operationalizing of that process, but they're impacting consumer behavior already, and the models today, Google and Google Gemini versus OpenAI, UCP versus ACP, have different philosophies there today and probably will continue to ebb and flow over the years.

And then to your second question, yes, is what we're saying is that long-term goal is 115%. Our guidance takes that into account in terms of a directional space. But mathematically, since it's last 12 months over prior last 12 months, as those tougher comps move to the denominator, that'll put downward pressure sequentially on that NRR metric, not immediate pressure on it, say, in Q1, for example.

The last thing I'll just say is these growth rates are -- while they're slightly lower than prior years, it's always on a larger number. You know, having that law of large numbers pressure on your growth rates is a good problem to have.

(Operator Instructions) David Lustberg, BMO Financial Group.

Was curious if you guys think about some of the new brand partners you onboarded during the quarter? If you could talk about the makeup of that cohort, if it looks similar to your broader cohort, if you guys are expanding on the brands you're working with from different categories?

And then you guys did do a couple of deals in the quarter. Maybe you can kind of just talk through the rationale of those deals and the value prop, the life of the Pattern and the business partners?

Yeah, sure. I'll take that. So first on new brand partners, really good quarter for signing new brand partners across many categories. As well as -- probably if I was to highlight a few interesting things in the quarter, I would highlight we're signing more and more brands to do TikTok Shop. That is an emerging trend.

Brands are more and more interested on having a more optimized experience there for consumers, and it is very complex and still evolving. So we're really on the forefront of that.

The other one I would highlight is we're signing more and more brands outside the US that want to come into the US, which is a fun trend and an exciting trend that we're seeing.

I'll just cover quickly I think you're referring to the two M&A deals that we did in the quarter. The first being ROI Hunter. That's a phenomenal little gem of a business out of the Czech Republic. 89 [percentee], 89 people FTE-wise, managing over $1 billion in ad spend across walled gardens with phenomenal data and a great platform to help expand our brands.

And they have a very interesting way of thinking about advertising, which is very product-specific and very measurable. So we're really pleased to have them join us and excited about the data and the access that gives us.

Secondly is a company called NextWave. NextWave is one of the premier TikTok Shop operators. Matter of fact, we found them from a recommendation from TikTok themselves. And just a phenomenal team, great operators, and have really expanded our capabilities and our affiliate network across TikTok. So we'll see -- we believe we'll see great momentum from those two.

And I guess in terms of philosophy, we'll continue to do that. But most of our M&A, as you watch, you won't see us buying revenue or trying to just optimize. We're not going to be doing acquisitions for financial reasons only. They will always be additive to our overall capability set. And so if you really dive into the guts of those, they're quite impressive adds at a very reasonable price.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions at this time. And that also concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.