LMND - NYSE

Good morning or good afternoon, and welcome to today's Lemonade Q2 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Adam, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to the Lemonade team to begin.

Good morning, and welcome to Lemonade's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Joining us on our call today, we have Daniel Schreiber, CEO and Co-Founder; Shai Wininger, President and Co-Founder; Tim Bixby, Chief Financial Officer; and Nick Stead, SVP Finance. A letter to shareholders covering the company's second quarter 2025 financial results is available on our Investor Relations website at lemonaade.com/investor. I would like to remind you that management's remarks made on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward- looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10- K filed with the SEC on February 26, 2025, and our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call represent our views only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. We will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted free cash flow and adjusted gross profit, which we believe may be important to investors to assess our operating performance. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our letter to shareholders. Our letter to shareholders also includes information about our key performance indicators, including customers, in force premium, premium per customer, annual dollar retention, gross earned premium, gross loss ratio, gross loss ratio ex-CAT, trailing 12-month loss ratio and net loss ratio, and a definition of each metric -- why each is useful to investors and how we use each to monitor and manage our business. With that, I'll turn the call over to Daniel for some opening remarks.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Lemonade's results for the second quarter of 2025. And it's a pleasure to report that really across all of our key metrics, our financial performance in the quarter was excellent. On the top line, we delivered our seventh consecutive quarter of IFP growth acceleration with 29% year-on-year growth. And concurrently, our gross loss ratio for the second quarter was 67%, 12 points improved relative to Q2 of last year. And this brings our trailing 12-month gross loss ratio to 70%, our best results ever and squarely within the healthy range of our business model. It is worth noting that just 1 year ago, our IFP was growing at 22% and our trailing 12-month gross loss ratio was 79%. And while neither metric was too shabby, 12 months on both have improved dramatically. This, I believe, is a clear testament to our ability to leverage AI to pinpoint target risks with accuracy and deliver profitable growth concurrently. As a result of these dynamics, our gross profit grew by over 100% in the second quarter, and our gross margin at 39% is among the highest we've ever recorded. And what's more, the growth of our top line eclipsed any growth in our underlying expense structure. And as a result, we saw strong adjusted free cash flow generation of $25 million, more than a tenfold increase relative to the second quarter of 2024. In recent quarters, we have been highlighting Lemonade Car' progress. And in Q2, we continue to see that momentum build. Through the first half of the year, car' growth has significantly exceeded our original financial plan. It has now crossed $150 million of in force premium and continuing to grow. Product enhancements have fueled conversion rate gains and geographic expansion has been another tailwind. Concurrent with that it's important to note that our car gross loss ratio has improved dramatically, with Q2 result of 82%, marking a 13-point improvement relative to last year. Switching gears, we recently announced the renewal of our reinsurance program at similar terms to the expiring program with one important exception, which is that we reduced the scope of our quota share program from 55% to 20%. It is worth underscoring this decision was solely of our making. The confidence to make such a move directly stems from our multiyear track record of improving loss ratios as key products and geographies have become more mature and predictable. In his remarks a bit later on this call, Tim will walk you through a couple of important related nuances on the capital efficiency and accounting. But before that, let me hand off to Shai for an update on our European business. Shai?

Thanks, Daniel. Before I get to Europe, I wanted to highlight a couple of updates to our new Investor Relations website, which can be valuable for those new to the Lemonade story. This morning, we've added an investor presentation as well as a handy spreadsheet with key financial metrics. We hope you will find these helpful. We first launched Lemonade in Europe, in Germany in 2019, and now service over 250,000 customers across 4 key European markets: the U.K., Netherlands, France, and Germany; and 2 products, renters and homeowners. Europe is of growing importance for a few reasons. It yields a diversification benefit to our growth with notably lower CAT exposure and a flexible regulatory environment. In the past few quarters, we've really seen our European business come into its own and is now a meaningful driver of growth for the organization. We concluded Q2 with $43 million Europe IFP, which represents over 200% growth, our eighth consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth and our fourth consecutive quarter of growth rate acceleration. I'm pleased to report that the story in Europe is very similar to what Daniel highlighted in our car business. Growth acceleration has been paired with improvement in underwriting performance. We saw an 83% gross loss ratio in the second quarter, 15% improved relative to last year and roughly 20 points better than where our U.S. business was at a similar scale. This performance is powered by structural cost advantages driven by our AI platform. One great example of this is a technology we call LoCo, our LLM-first no-code insurance application builder. With LoCo, we can rapidly build new products, launch new regions, iterate on pricing and underwriting, and experiment with various dynamic experiences all in hours instead of weeks and without touching any code. LoCo is a powerful platform that enables us to manage our multi-continent insurance company with unmatched efficiency. Where our competitors have large local teams on the ground in the regions they operate and with each region having its own specific legacy infrastructure, our proprietary technology enables us to expand our geographical footprint with unmatched velocity and limited incremental overhead. We are clearly in the early innings of our European journey at Lemonade, but believe Europe is positioned to remain a key engine of rapid profitable growth for years to come. With that, I'll hand it off to Tim, who will cover our financial performance and outlook.

Great. Thanks, Shai. I'll review highlights of our Q2 results and provide our expectations for Q3 and the full year 2025, and then we'll take some questions. In short, our Q2 financial results were exemplary across the board. We remain very much on track with our ambitious goals for positive EBITDA by the end of next year, loss ratio tracking to target, consistently accelerating top line growth with little change in fixed overhead expenses and favorable cash flow dynamics. In force premium grew 29% to just above $1 billion, while customer count increased by 24% to 2.7 million. Premium per customer increased 4% versus the prior year to $402, driven primarily by rate increases. Annual dollar retention or ADR was 84%, flat as compared to the prior quarter, and continuing to show modest downward pressure as a result of our continuing effort to improve the profitability of our home book through targeted non-renewals. We expect ADR to normalize and resume improvement over the coming quarters. Gross earned premium in Q2 increased 26% as compared to the prior year to $252 million, in line with IFP growth. Revenue in Q2 increased 35% from the prior year to $164 million. The growth in revenue was driven by the increase in gross earned premium, a slightly higher effective ceding commission rate under our quota share reinsurance and a 16% increase in investment income. Our gross loss ratio was 67% for Q2 as compared to 79% in Q2 2024 and 94% in Q2 2023. Excluding the total impact of CATs in Q2, roughly 7 percentage points, our gross loss ratio ex-CAT was 60%. Total gross prior period development had a roughly 3% favorable impact, 5% from non-CAT, offset by 2% unfavorable from CAT. We saw this favorable prior period development across all products, with the exception of Pet, with the largest impact in our homeowners multi-peril business. On a net basis, prior period development was in line with gross, including non-CAT and CAT breakdown. Prior year development, which is reported on a net basis, was about $2.2 million favorable in the quarter and about $12.6 million favorable year-to-date. Trailing 12 months or TTM loss ratio was about 70% or 9 points better year-on-year. All of these insurance metrics and more are included in our insurance supplement that you'll find at the end of our shareholder letter. Gross profit increased 109% as compared to the prior year, while adjusted gross profit increased 96%, both driven primarily by premium growth and significant loss ratio improvement. Operating expenses, excluding loss and loss adjustment expense, increased 21% to $129 million in Q2 as compared to the prior year, driven primarily by an increase in gross spend and the impact of the $12 million onetime benefit from a tax refund. Other insurance expense grew 14% in Q2 versus the prior year at roughly half the growth rate of earned premium. Total sales and marketing expense increased by $23 million or 62%, primarily due to increase in growth spend of approximately $24 million. Total growth spend in the quarter was $50 million, roughly double the $26 million in the prior year quarter. We continue to utilize our synthetic agents growth funding program and have continued to finance 80% of our growth spend. As a reminder, you'll see 100% of our growth spend flow through the P&L, while the impact of the growth mechanism is visible on the cash flow statement and the balance sheet. And our net financing to date is about $124 million as of June 30. Technology development expense was up just 6% year-on-year to $22 million, while G&A expense decreased 13% as compared to the prior year to $22 million, primarily due to a onetime tax refund of about $12 million. Personnel expense and headcount control continue to be a high priority. Total headcount is up slightly about 5% as compared to the prior year at 1,274, while the top line FP grew fully 29%. Net loss was $44 million in Q2 or a loss of about $0.60 per share as compared to a net loss of $57 million or $0.81 per share in the prior year. Our adjusted EBITDA loss was $41 million in Q2 versus $43 million in the prior year. Our total cash, cash equivalents, and investments ended the quarter at approximately $1.03 billion, up $11 million versus year-end 2024. With these metrics in mind, I'll outline our specific financial expectations for the third quarter and the full year. From a gross spend perspective, we expect to invest roughly $47 million in Q3 to generate profitable customers with a healthy lifetime value. We expect Q4 spend at a level similar to the Q1 rate and thus totaling roughly $173 million for the full year. This expected quarterly spend pattern is similar to prior years. For the third quarter of 2025, we expect in force premium at September 30 of between $1.144 billion and $1.147 billion, gross earned premium of $267 million to $269 million, revenue between $183 million and $186 million, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of between $37 million and $34 million. Stock-based compensation expense, we expect to be approximately $17 million and a weighted average share count of approximately 74 million shares. For the full year, we expect in force premium at December 31 of between $1.213 billion and $1.218 billion, gross earned premium between $1.036 billion and $1.039 billion, revenue between $710 million and $715 million, and an adjusted EBITDA loss between $140 million and $135 million. Stock-based compensation for the full year, we expect to be approximately $61 million and a weighted average share count for the full year of approximately 74 million shares. Finally, I wanted to make a couple of comments on the reinsurance transition as a follow-up to Daniel's earlier remarks. First, the transition from 55% to 20% quota share does not happen overnight. Each program is risk attaching, which means it covers policies written between July 2025 and June 2026, such that we expect the transition to unfold over several quarters on our P&L in a roughly linear fashion. By Q3 2026, we expect to be ceding roughly 20% of premium. And in the second half of 2025, we expect to cede roughly 45% due to those transition dynamics. Second, a reduction in our quota share program does increase our revenue retention but has no impact on IFP. As a result, we are about to enter a period during which revenue growth rates are expected to outpace IFP growth rates. And finally, all else equal, less quota share increases regulatory capital needs. However, with an improved loss ratio and the expanded use of our wholly owned captive, we are able to offset these pressures such that there is no material change in our capital planning. We have included a slide within the insurance supplement to our Q2 shareholder letter that covers some of these dynamics in a bit more detail. With that, I would like to pass over to Nick to answer some questions for our retail investors. Nick?

Thanks, Tim. We'll now turn to our shareholders' questions submitted through the Say platform. Paper Bag asked, what is your plan with synthetic agents going forward? Will you continue using synthetic agent funding in 2026 and beyond or stop at the end of 2025? Great question. Thanks, Paper Bag. The synthetic agents program has worked precisely as intended when we launched it nearly 2 years ago and has enabled us to drive growth acceleration in a capital-light manner. In 2023, we deployed $55 million on growth. In 2025, we expect to more than triple our total growth spend to $170 million now with an 80% advance from our synthetic agents. And while we do pay our synthetic agent a 16% IRR, the impact on our unit economics is transformational. The IRR on our growth spend is around 50% without the synthetic agent, and that doubles to roughly 100% with the partnership in place. There is a model live on our Investor Relations site posted alongside the materials from our 2024 Investor Day that covers these mechanics in more detail. The net impact of inflows and outflows to and from the synthetic agent leaves us with $124 million outstanding on the balance sheet at the end of the second quarter. We have already announced the 2026 renewal of our synthetic agent agreement with another $200 million of capital available to fund growth investment in 2026. At each renewal, we evaluate all strategic options available to us and we'll continue to do so. But in the near and medium term, we expect to continue to expand this partnership. Emmanuel asked, what is the largest impediment right now, stopping Lemonade from releasing Car to more states? We are currently live with our Car product in 10 states and address roughly 50% of the U.S. car insurance market, a vast market opportunity relative to our current scale. That has been increasing with 2 state launches, Colorado and Indiana, in the past few months. We have plans to continue to increase our nationwide coverage and expect to launch multiple additional states through the end of 2026, such that our 50% coverage metric is notably increased. As we look to the state launch road map, several factors guide us. We evaluate the market opportunity, existing Lemonade customer penetration, and the regulatory landscape. Also, new state launches typically involve higher loss ratios as getting a new state online requires rate adjustments post launch and naturally brings a new business penalty impact. So we manage that strategically as well. I should note that at most other insurance companies, it takes considerable internal resources to launch a new state. But with LoCo, as Shai covered earlier in his remarks, we have substantially reduced the amount of work required by our insurance and product teams to do so, allowing our teams to shift to more impactful initiatives while maintaining our targeted pace of state launches. Emmanuel also asked, does the team believe that even with all of the developments in AI that they are ahead of other AI-first companies in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency of the models? Well, the short answer is yes, we do think so. And you're right, Emmanuel, to focus on AI-first companies as we believe the gap between us and incumbent insurers who are built on legacy systems is very likely to expand as AI development accelerates. We have been AI native since day 1. Relative to new upstarts, that 10 years in market gives us a real data edge, thousands of A/B tests, 10 million driving trips, millions of customer interactions and claims. When it comes to data, there's really no shortcut to that type of depth and scale. By the time generative AI really accelerated in 2023 and onwards, we already had AI embedded across the tech stack with terabytes of proprietary data flowing through the system. We stand apart from incumbents with a single AI system that connects every aspect of the business and from upstarts with the depth and breadth of proprietary data that feeds it. So we believe we're really the only full stack multiline insurance company with the tech stack and data to fully capture AI's potential. And this is playing out in our business outcomes. Our proprietary telematics pricing model now outperforms the off-the-shelf product that many competitors rely on. And over the last 2 years, our overall gross loss ratio improved by 27 points, while IFP grew by nearly 60% during the same period, clear evidence that our AI flywheel advantage is compounding. For additional reading on this, I suggest you check out Daniel's recent Lemonade Turns 10 blog post and the investor presentation just posted to our Investor Relations site this morning to learn more about how AI drives our business performance. With that, I'll pass it over to the moderator, and Daniel and Tim will take some questions from the Street.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer.

Just a few questions around the reinsurance and the reinsurance change because I know a lot of clients have some questions there. So obviously, you're holding more risk, but there is no free lunch. Maybe just talk a little more about the structures you have in place, the way you can manage risk and if there's ways to -- how you manage -- just the different ways that you can now manage the risk. And then there's like a follow-up to that, does this reflect some kind of step function in the company's ability to manage risk? So like why now, I guess, is the question, right? So first is, structurally, how you plan on managing it going forward as this evolves? Two, why now? And then I guess the third is you did say revenue will outpace IFP, especially through this transition. But how should we think about gross profit relative to IFP growth?

Jason, it is a significant change. It's been -- I guess the only constant here that we've been, every couple of years, stepping down the amount of quota share reinsurance since IPO from 75% down to 55%, now to 20%. So in that sense, it's a continuation. But nevertheless, a drop from 55% to 20% is significant, and I think worth spending another few minutes on. The first thing that I'd highlight though, and then I will hand over to Tim to add a bit more color on some of these points, but quota share for us was not predominantly about risk management at all. We can use reinsurance to serve different goals. We have actually other policies in place that do manage risk concentration. So you see when a CAT hits, for example, like the one that hit in Q1 in the California fires, and you saw that our gross loss ratio was much worse than our net loss ratio. That wasn't the quota share that was helping. Quota share, in theory, will produce very similar gross and net loss ratios because you cede X percent of premiums and you cede the same X percent of claims. At first approximation, the gross and the net should be similar. If anything, because some CAT events are excluded from the quota share agreement, you might see slightly worse net than gross loss ratios in quota share. In fact, we saw significantly better net loss ratios, and that was because of other policies that we have in place about risk concentration covering losses beyond a certain dollar amount or too many losses in a particular quadrant or something like that. So we have various policies. Those continue. The policies that we have in place that are helping us protect against risk concentration are not being materially changed. Quota share was in place, as I say, not predominantly as a tool of risk management, but much more so as a tool for capital management. The regulators require that we set aside a certain percentage of our premiums. There's kind of a rule of thumb of 3:1. But when the insurance entities are fast growing and loss-making, it can be more cumbersome still. And once you cede those premiums to quota share partners, it is really their capital rather than yours and their cost of capital are lower. So we saw quota share predominantly as a tool for managing that aspect of our business, remaining capital-light through quota share. As the last few quarters came in and we have consistently lowered and stabilized our trailing 12-month loss ratio, I mean 67% this past quarter, trailing 12 months, which I think is the more dependable metric, if you like, less volatile, less given to the vicissitudes of a particular event. 70% trailing 12-month loss ratio is simply fantastic and perfectly aligned with our long-term goals. And what that has meant is that our insurance entities have moved from being loss-making to profit-making. Rather than consuming capital, they are generating capital. And that is something that changed over the course of the last few quarters as we indeed became cash flow positive, we reported a $25 million adjusted cash flow this past quarter, a tenfold increase year-on-year. It is that more than anything else that's allowing us to take on board less or to utilize less quota share reinsurance. And of course, our quota share partners have been stellar. They've been amazing. They've been with us from the get-go. They are the biggest and most trusted names in the industry. But as you say, no free lunches. When you engage in quota share reinsurance, you are really margin stacking. You are giving up part of your business. You're getting the gains that I outlined before, predominantly capital efficiency, but you are sacrificing some of your EBITDA. And you really want to use, or we really want to use as little of that as we need given our capital requirements. So that more than anything else is what's changed. We've moved from being businesses that are draining cash to those that are generating cash. Low loss ratios have changed the capital requirements significantly in those entities, and that is what is allowing us to be less dependent on quota share, and we made those adjustments. Tim, anything you want to add?

Yes. Just a couple of points on the second part of your question, Jason. One of note is that before we even get to our reinsurance structure, we do take advantage of one of our assets, which is our ability to grow at a very healthy clip, but be very selective about the risks that we take in the business that we write. And so in some ways, we enforce our own level of reinsurance by writing in certain areas of risk and not writing in others. Our risk in Florida, for example, is quite limited relative to a typical incumbent. Our experience in the California fire CAT of Q1 was -- before we even got to reinsurance -- relatively limited because we're choosy about the level of risk we take in terms of high-value homes. And so that's a layer that sort of underpins our reinsurance. Then we layer on reinsurance, of course. The bulk of the reinsurance structure at renewal remains unchanged. The quota share change in terms of its cede ratio was notable. Everything else is more or less in place and continuing. So we have protection against concentrated losses. We have protection against single large losses in our PPR and our FC coverage, and those continue and were renewed at similar structural impact as in the past. With regard to the impact on gross profit and revenue, a couple of things. We included a pretty straightforward example of what $1,000 of premium would look like under the old structure and now under the new structure and how it flows through each of the key P&L items -- line items. I would urge you to kind of look at that in the back of the shareholder letter today. And I think that will be helpful to sort of navigate how the model is expected to evolve, particularly over the coming 4 quarters as the change in the ceding ratio comes more into play. At a very high level, the impact on revenue is greater than the impact on gross profit. Gross profit for many quarters has grown at a very healthy clip, well ahead of the top line growth of IFP and premium, and that's because of -- you're combining 2 elements there. You're combining the benefit of growth as well as the benefit of significant loss ratio improvement. And so those dynamics will continue, but our loss ratio now that it's nicely in our target range, those shifts will be somewhat less than they have been over the past few years, and that's good news. Revenue, on the other hand, will be a little more -- will grow at a faster pace, again, as the reinsurance change rolls in. And again, you should see those dynamics in the example that we shared.

The next question comes from Tommy McJoynt from KBW.

Maybe to simplify the previous question in response, Tim, I think a couple of years ago, you guys put out a slide, an illustrative slide showing the premium leverage that you could write at. Do you have an update on what sort of premium leverage on a gross basis you can write at and then how that changes under this new reinsurance structure?

Sure. I think you're referring to some comments we've made from time to time regarding the capital surplus requirements relative to the premium we can write. Is that the crux of the question, I think?

That's right.

So you're correct to sort of trace the history a bit. When we shifted to a more material quota share reinsurance structure several years ago, one of the primary benefits, as Daniel noted, was a capital surplus benefit. Since then, a few things have happened. Our volatility has decreased. Our trailing 12 months loss ratio has come very much in line with our long-term targets. Our book is much more diverse. And we've put in place a couple of structural aids to captive reinsurers that are wholly owned or partially owned that we can now leverage. And the net of all that is our capital planning is substantially unchanged. How much of that capital surplus benefit we get from quota share versus our own captive entities has shifted somewhat. And so some of the surplus benefit that we give up as a result of the quota share shift, we get to retain more profit, we're able to replace that essentially in whole through our captive reinsurer or captive structures. So net-net, we've talked about a 6:1 target ratio in the past. Historically, we've been above and below that ratio depending on how the loss ratio and the premium growth and some other factors that impact that ratio have changed. But over the coming several year outlook, that ratio target for us is unchanged.

And then I think you made the comment that the insurance entities are -- have gone from a phase of sort of losing negative net income driving losses and sort of capital decreasing to a period of capital generation themselves because of the improvement in the loss ratio. When I look and I sort of reconcile that comment to the consolidated bottom line metrics, whether it be adjusted net income or adjusted EBITDA, that may imply some pretty sizable losses still at the holding company level. So can you just talk about sort of what capital has trended at the holding company level apart from the insurance entities, just as we think about the need for potential more capital at the insurance entities to come from the holding company?

Yes, there is some complexity when you look at each of the parts in isolation. You're correct that the -- particularly LIC, the Lemonade entity is profitable and generating surplus. At a consolidated level is how we kind of manage the overall capital availability. And we've talked historically of apparent capital cushion, which is basically a consolidated level, how much capital remains once we fund the growth plan, once we set aside the required level of capital that we are required today and that we are forecasting to be required based on our growth plans and then what remains basically after satisfying all of those obligations. And that cushion has been more or less steady for quite some time. We've noted a level of around $200 million. That varies up and down, and that continues to be the level of cushion that we're comfortable with. And so at times, the parent company must fund the reinsurance companies. Currently, it's the opposite where there's excess surplus being generated at the insurance companies. But the big picture is we've got more than sufficient capital to satisfy all of those needs with cushion left over for opportunities that arise, for weather events that are unpredictable and all the risks that we understand can come our way.

The next question comes from Jack Matten from BMO.

Just a question on the car loss ratios. And I'm wondering if you can just discuss some of the -- just the drivers of the improvement. Is there any like mix change we should be thinking about with renewal versus new business? And any thoughts you have on loss trends that you're seeing in terms of either frequency or severity in the car insurance line?

Yes. So there is actually a fairly notable difference that we've been pleased to see unfolding where it is typical in the insurance realm for renewal business to be at a more favorable unit economics than the initial policy. And in car, especially for us at Lemonade, we're seeing a much more notable difference, something on the order of 20 percentage points of loss ratio improvement from the first policy to the renewal policy. It is early, and so those -- that continues to develop, but that's a really encouraging sign that we're both choosing risks effectively. And as you see, the overall loss ratio coming down, but also that renewal is a great early indicator that we're doing this well. From a severity and a frequency standpoint, generally across the business, we're seeing -- and particularly in Q2, we saw a consistent theme of reduced frequency, but somewhat increased severity; and severity tends to come in the form of inflation of different sorts, whether it's expected inflation or existing inflation. But the net, as you see in the overall loss ratio trend is that the favorable trends have been winning out and getting that trailing 12 months number down to 70%, which is the headline number, I would say.

Maybe I'll just add that it's not a mix change that is driving this. We're seeing both our new and our renewal business improving significantly. So it's really across the board.

And just on your outlook, it looks like the IFP guidance for the full year doesn't imply much of an acceleration versus the 29% growth this quarter. I guess any reason you wouldn't expect further acceleration this year given I think we're starting to lap some of the home non-renewals in the back half of the year? I mean it looks like you're maintaining the outlook for your growth spend this year as well. So just any color on the moving pieces there.

Yes. I think there's certainly the potential for that. You've seen a couple of quarters, particularly the second quarter, where we were able to accelerate things, things came together nicely. A couple of headwinds that we assume will come our way to varying degrees in the second half. There is some seasonality in terms of growth and higher growth in Q3 versus Q4. There's some churn dynamics that I think moved our way nicely in Q2 that we don't necessarily expect to replicate, although we could see upside there. We continue to move forward with the project. We've called sort of clean the book in our home book, which provides a headwind, but a good headwind. It aids our move towards profitability. We take advantage of an ability to non-renew certain business that no longer fits our underwriting guidelines. And one place you'll see that in our metrics is in our annual dollar retention metrics, which have been flat for a couple of quarters now. We estimate that there's roughly a 4% drag on that metric because of our home efforts to move more aggressively to profitability. So we're kind of balancing top line and the path to profitability. Notwithstanding any of that, we've seen 7 consecutive quarters of top line growth. We'll endeavor to continue that record. It gets a little tougher as we get towards our target cruising growth range of 30% plus, but we'll certainly aim to do that in the second half.

The next question comes from Andrew Andersen at Jefferies.

Just wanted to go back to the car loss ratios. And I think you were saying you see a 20-percentage point improvement from the first policy to the renewal. I think in the past you've also mentioned that you were not expecting any type of new business penalty. And I think that was specific to cross-sells. So maybe you can just kind of level set for us what your -- maybe how much of the car book and how much of your car growth you're thinking of will be from the cross-sells with no new business penalty versus some that is seeing a little bit higher first policy loss ratio.

That breakdown is not something we've sort of disclosed publicly. So I think I would probably point you to our -- some of the stats we shared about Q2 and going forward that we expect to grow the whole car business at a faster pace than the total, and we expect to continue to increase our growth spend for car. Generally, about half of growth overall has come from cross sales. That's not 100% specific to car, but a significant amount of that is cross-sell to car. And so that rough ratio, I would expect to continue as well.

Okay. And then on the ad spend in the quarter, it was just a little bit higher than the guide, and you're keeping the full year guidance. Could you maybe just talk about some of the increased opportunities you saw this quarter that led to the higher ad spend? And maybe just touch on how you're seeing the competitive market for auto in the second half of the year?

Yes. Some of the gross spend is timing shift, and this is not uncommon where we'll see greater opportunity or we'll adjust the timing from one quarter to another where the total year target and goal is right on track, but we see a greater opportunity, and so we'll move from one quarter to another. We're spending more on brand spend and some of that tends to be a little bit more front-loaded because you want to kind of get the visibility out there. At the beginning of the year, we've upped the total spend but quite modestly and the rest has been timing shift. I think in Q2, certainly, we saw some nice upside from certain channels where the -- if you look at the efficiency of the car spend, we were able to significantly increase it on a sequential basis on a year-on-year basis. The efficiency of the car spend, the number of dollars that each dollar of spend brought in was stable. And that's a nice -- when you're doubling or tripling or more of the spend and the efficiency remains stable, that's a great sign. And so we'll continue to kind of push that edge in Q3, which is typically a strong quarter of growth. The loss ratio trend is important. And so we kind of watch how that tracks. But we feels like we have a great foundation for continuance of these car trends in the second half.

And just on the competitive market because it feels like a lot of the industry is reaching a pretty good profitability level and is starting to pivot to growth. What do you -- it seems like your conversion rates are still strong, but maybe how are you just thinking about the competitive market?

Yes. We can grow a great deal and still be a tiny drop in the car ocean. So we don't ignore the competitive dynamics. We tend to want to, where we can, give the benefit of our unit economics improvements or loss ratio improvements back to the customer so that our pricing is attractive. There's obviously, a limit to that. But the competitive dynamics of the market tend to be secondary to what we see in terms of what our LTV models tell us that what are good risks and where the marketing efficiency is strong. So we feel like all systems are go going into the second half.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from Katie Sakys from Autonomous.

I wanted to circle back to the updates and guidance, specifically the full year 2025 EBITDA guide. I guess I was a little surprised to see that that remained unchanged relative to last quarter, especially considering the progress that you guys have been making on both the reported gross loss ratio as well as the trailing 12-month gross loss ratio. So kind of a question there for you guys on whether you're expecting any increasing volatility in the back half of the year that might be informing your stable outlook on full year EBITDA? And then sort of adjacent to that, in reading the shareholder letter, the language on expectations for 2026 seem a little bit different for positive adjusted EBITDA before the end of full year '26. And I think on the last call, you guys had perhaps phrased it as positive EBITDA by 4Q '26. Is there anything to read into the shift in language there?

Yes. On the EBITDA breakeven, no change. Before the end of 2026, we expect EBITDA to be positive. So that's not a change. We have not indicated we expect the full quarter to be positive, although that's certainly possible, but we've indicated no change and expect that before the end of '26. One dynamic to probably highlight is when you look at the expected EBITDA of this year and then flow that into next year and then roll heading towards breakeven, you will see a dynamic where it's not exactly linear. And part of that is driven by our increasing growth spend, which increases the -- adds cost to the cost structure. And when you grow at a faster pace, that premium that you bring in doesn't necessarily or doesn't drop to the bottom line in real time. It drops over the early lifetime of that customer. And so as you accelerate growth, you see a dynamic where the bottom line doesn't change a whole lot, but the top line increases. And that's one of the things, I think, that helps us indicate that we're derisking that bottom line trajectory. Every bit of incremental growth kind of adds to that lifetime value and that cash flow that we expect to spool out over the coming quarters. So the bottom line guidance for this year, you're correct, is unchanged, but it's really that dynamic of flow-through from the top line to the bottom line, which has been the case for quite some time.

Got it. And then perhaps as a follow-up, in kind of thinking about the shifts that you guys have made to the quota share program and expectations for longer-term profitability, is there a point at which your target for a low 70s gross loss ratio might materially come down into something below 70%?

Never say never.

Do you want to take that one?

Yes, sorry. My mic was on mute. I apologize. Katie, what I was saying is never say never, but that's not our inbound kind of bias, if you like. We aim to continue to drive our prices down, killer pricing as a key differentiator, which will drive greater conversion, lower acquisition costs, higher retention dynamics. Because our cost structure is so advantaged, you already see in this quarter what happened to our LAE, which is already perhaps one of the very best in the industry when we are so subscale, gives you an indication of what our cost structure is going to look like already now. And as we scale, our ability to accelerate growth while decreasing our underlying operating expenses, all of these are very strong indicators of our long-term ability to operate at a far, far lower cost structure than our competitors. And then you get a choice, which is do you then price similar to competition and increase your margins, or do you lower prices and accelerate growth? And for reasons that I elaborated at some length during our recent Investor Day, our bias is towards lowering prices, getting the conversion and the growth and the retention that that brings until we get to a sizable scale. So I would not guide or set the expectation that our loss ratio will continue down the trajectory that it has for many, many quarters. We've achieved healthy loss ratios. And at some point, lowering loss ratios more than that just means that we're not being as price competitive as we could be.

We have a follow-up from Jack at BMO.

Just one, I think there was like an $11.7 million like tax refund benefit that you all had this quarter. Just any color on what that was and whether there's anything similar we should think about potentially reoccurring in future quarters?

Yes. That's a onetime tax credit related to the ERC program. So that's not something we'd expect to reoccur.

We also have a follow-up from Andrew at Jefferies.

Tim, I think I heard you say earlier the leverage that you would be running to max is 6:1. Was that on a gross premium basis? And if so, could you provide that on a net as well?

So again, we don't necessarily guide to that. That's just more of broad strokes of what our targets are. Yes, on a gross basis, historically, we've talked about gross written premium in that 6:1 ratio. There's also a dynamic in the regulatory surplus that requires a 3:1 on a net basis, which comes into play depending on how the quota share reinsurance is structured and other sort of accounting dynamics. But again, I would think of those as substantially unchanged. 6:1 on a gross basis, if you directly translate that to net, you get something like 4:1 versus 3:1, but more or less, I would think of it all as unchanged.

Is that just on a U.S. entity basis? Or is that including the Cayman captive?

All of that is on a consolidated basis. If you isolate the Cayman, the ratios are dramatically different. And that's part of sort of the benefit of these different structures that is that all the regulators understand and analyze each other's requirements and approve of them such that this is a pretty common structure. But if you isolate any of the entities and do some math, you're going to get different numbers. Everything that we communicate is, I would think of it as on a consolidated global basis for Lemonade Inc.

We have a follow-up from Katie at Autonomous.

Yes. One more question for me on the nonrenewal program and sort of the efforts to remix the homeowners book. Could you guys give us an update on where exactly in that process you currently sit? How much more remixing needs to be done or how much more of the book is still subject to nonrenewal? And has the change in the quota share structure sort of extended the potential timeline on that process? I guess what I'm really trying to get at is when can we expect to see that ADR level increase north of 84% again?

Yes. So I would think of the impact as being fairly steady. If you look at the back half of last year, the first half of this year, and the expected second half of this year, the run rate impact is more or less the same in each of those 3 segments. I would expect by the end of this year, we would be past the most significant part of it. I would not expect it to necessarily go to 0 in the beginning of the following year. But I think the pace will certainly begin to diminish based on what we know now. This is obviously, something you look at as the book evolves, but I think it will start to dissipate as you get out of the back half of this year. And that is not the only impact on the ADR number, but it is a more notable impact in this period. So I would expect the ADR to have the opposite dynamic where it would continue to be stable and then start to tick upwards based on all of the other dynamics in ADR, customer retention and other improved dynamics. We noted the car loss ratio at renewal. I mean those are the kinds of things that push that number up. So I'd expect that to be more visible as we come out of the back half of this year in the ADR number.

Maybe just to state the obvious, Katie, but in addition to dampening our annual dollar retention numbers, this program also dampens our top line. Our revenue and our in force premium, we are really growing faster than the number that we reported would indicate because we've also got this counter action of nonrenewing part of the book, cleaning the book. So as Tim said, we'll get through the bulk of that by the end of this year. And then there will be, I think, something of an unleash not only of annual dollar retention metrics, but also a bit of a tailwind to our top line metrics as well. And of course, we're doing all of this in service of our bottom line metrics, which is we've always been pretty disciplined as our data comes in and we get smarter about what we should and should not be underwriting, we decide to apply our new kind of insight retroactively wherever we can as well, and that's what you're seeing happening here. The fruits of that have already manifested several times. Our loss ratio is testament to that. Our Q1 loss ratio during the wildfires in California were very strong evidence of why this is all a price worth paying, but we do pay for it in a couple of currencies, ADR being one and top line metrics being another.