Life360 Inc

NASDAQ:LIF

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Jolanta Masojada, executive]

[Audio Gap]

[Operator Instructions] Just a reminder that we'll make forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance, which are subject to material risks and uncertainties.

Some of these risks have been set forth in the risk factors in our filings with the ASX and the SEC. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of today, and we have no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Additionally, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be considered in isolation from a substitute for or superior to our GAAP results.

The agenda for this morning's call will begin with a business update by Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Hulls; and CFO, Russell Burke. COO Lauren Antonoff will then provide a strategy update. After which, Russell will provide details on the first half financials. Chris will then provide some outlook comments, which will be followed by a Q&A session.

I would now like to turn the call over to Chris.

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our H1 '23 results call. I'll start today with a recap of our mission and some user statistics followed by a summary of our H1 result, which shows our best-ever adjusted EBITDA profit performance.

Our mission is to keep people close to the ones they love. We want to stand for family in the same way that Facebook stands for friends and LinkedIn stands for professionals. Families are a huge underserved population. We are well underway in proving that we can leverage our critical mass of engaged users to disrupt the multibillion-dollar safety and security industry and build a membership service that spans all life stages. This slide illustrates the scale at which we are operating and how are we connecting families and saving lives. In this first half of the year alone, we dispatched almost 19,000 ambulances, protected 144 billion miles of driving and send out over 16 billion safe arrival notifications. The testimony on the left is one which we receive every week, showing the impact of our digital product is having in the real world. And as a reminder, of our share scale, we are now arguably the largest source of realtime driving data in the world, collecting more than 7x the miles as Uber. This ultimately opens up significant opportunities to monetize our free user base down the road.

The engagement we are seeing with our user base is clearly demonstrated on this slide, which ranks apps by daily active users. Life360 is ranked in the top 20 apps in the U.S. and fifth in the social network category. This shows not only our size but our relevance lies of families. All the apps that are ahead of us and many of those rank below belong to multibillion-dollar companies with market valuations, which are multiples of hours.

Life360's engagement is also illustrated on this slide, which ranks social and streaming media by the ratio of daily to monthly active users. As you can see, Life360's engagement is best-in-class and well ahead of many multibillion-dollar peers. If you include push notifications, which is how many of our customers interact with 360, in the U.S., we are ahead of even the biggest names in the market.

Turning now to the results. This slide shows how our real-world impact on users is driving progress against our strategic and financial objectives. Our strategy to go our audience has delivered a 29% year-over-year uplift in monthly active users to around $54 million. And as I've just shown, our best-in-class engagement is reflected in the 41% ratio of daily to monthly active users.

We are driving continued membership growth with 17% growth in Paying Circles to around 1.6 million. This was achieved even while raising U.S. pricing significantly with Q2 ARPPC increasing 42% year-over-year.

We saw good growth in Paying Circles despite this increase for existing U.S. Android subscribers implemented in April. We added 62,000 global net subscribers during Q2 '23 compared with 73,000 in Q1 '23.

Android churn was largely in line with our expectations and is returning to baseline levels. This performance demonstrates the loyalty and engagement of our member base and the value proposition of the Life360 offering. This proposition has become even stronger with the Tile membership bundling. We have seen a greater than 10% relative lift in month 1 and month 2 relative retention who have redeemed Tile hardware. That is for those periods, we are seeing more than 10% improvement in the rate of retention. Our international strategy is paying off with particularly strong growth in international Paying Circles, which increased 43%, 44% year-over-year.

International net adds remained at close to all-time record levels. We are seeing particularly encouraging results from the predominantly English-speaking countries of Canada, U.K. and Australia, which saw Paying Circles increased 54% year-over-year.

The launch of triple tier membership in the U.K. is on track for early Q4 '23. Our investment in the international user experience is paying off, with international retention metrics in these key markets closing the gap to U.S. levels.

And finally, we have maintained financial discipline, delivering a 43% uplift in June AMR while at the same time achieving a second consecutive quarter of a positive adjusted EBITDA. Our strategy of balancing fiscal responsibility with prudent investment has underpinned the significant progress we have demonstrated in managing our cost base.

This slide provides a summary of the first half financial performance. Revenue of $139 million increased 39% year-on-year. Subscription revenue performed strongly, up 51%, supported by a 61% uplift in core Life360 subscription revenue.

Hardware revenue increased 31% due to an increase in the number of units shipped and higher ASP. Other revenue reduced 9%, reflecting the strategic shift to a single data partnership from January 2022.

As mentioned earlier, AMR increased 43%, supported by the strong subscription trends. Non-GAAP operating expenses were stable year-on-year due to the cost measures we implemented in January. The positive adjusted EBITDA of $6.2 million reflects a close to $40 million turnaround in adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. As a result of this cost management, increased guidance for positive adjusted EBITDA to $9 million to $14 million for CY '23 from $5 million to $10 million previously.

The momentum in Life360's AMR over the past 3 quarters is illustrated on this slide. Price increases across our subscriber base began in Q3, underpinning a significant step-up in revenue in that quarter onwards. Our June AMR of $249 million is almost 4x larger than at the time of our IPO in May 2019.

I mentioned earlier that we reached 54 million MAU in Q2. This reflects 24% year-over-year growth in the U.S. and 36% in international. The international growth has been underpinned by a particularly strong performance in key predominantly English-speaking territories and the impressive engagement I've mentioned a number of times as shown in the returning monthly active users chart, which reflects our top-tier retention metrics.

Russell will now run through the details of our 3 revenue lines.

[Russell Burke, executive]

Thanks, Chris. Consolidated subscription revenue increased by 51% year-on-year, including hardware subscriptions. Core Life360 subscription revenue growth of 61% is tracking ahead of our full year guidance. However, comparisons will become more challenging in the second half of the year due to the price increases which rolled out from August '22. Subscription revenue now makes up 3/4 of group revenue. Key drivers of subscription revenue growth with a 17% uplift in Paying Circles and 31% increase in ARPPC. International revenue is a small but rapidly growing contributor to subscription. And it continued to grow strongly despite the headwind of negative foreign exchange impacts on ARPC. Lauren will talk more about international trends shortly.

The 17% uplift in Paying Circles reflected 10% year-on-year growth in the U.S. despite the impact of the price increases in Q4 '22 and Q2 '23 and 44% year-on-year growth in International. Q2 net adds of 62,000 was a good outcome given that the price increases for existing Android subscribers resulted in higher churn as we guided to in Q1. We will show later in the presentation how iOS churn has returned to normal baseline levels, and the Android is trending in the same direction.

The chart on the right-hand side highlights the huge uplift in Q2 U.S. ARPPC of 42% to $141 following the price increases.

International ARPPC was stable year-on-year and declined slightly versus Q1 due to the currency impacts I mentioned earlier.

The impact of price increases on our U.S. Paying Circles is illustrated in the chart on the left-hand side of this slide. There is a step-up in the bunkly revenue contribution of all our registration cohorts from late '22. International Paying Circles, with the exception of Canada, have yet to experience a pricing uplift. However, we are seeing strong growth in monthly revenue from a small base driven by Paying Circles growth in key territories.

Hardware revenue increased 31% in the first half, supported by a 7% uplift in hardware units sold and an 11% increase in ASP. The recovery was concentrated in Q2, which benefited from reduced returns and an easier base of comparison to '22 saw the low point of consumer electronics demand. The higher ASP was the result of actions that we have undertaken to change the product mix and also to reduce promotional activity.

Non-GAAP hardware margins improved significantly to 25% due to strengthened retail channel inventory management, and our strategic shift to prioritize margin sales channels.

Hardware revenue guidance for the year of 0% to 5% is based on the challenge of forecasting in the current environment and the significant seasonal skew to the fourth quarter. We continue to view Tile's primary strategic value as its opportunity to drive subscription revenue.

Other revenue saw a small decline of 9% year-on-year, reflecting our transition to a new data partnership in January 2022. We made the intentional decision to trade off growth opportunities for predictability and reduce media and regulatory risk.

Lead generation remains an area of significant long-term growth potential, however, is a limited strategic focus in the short term. We continue to expect other revenue of around $26 million for the full year based on our current agreements.

I'll now hand to Lauren to provide an update on our strategy.

[Lauren Antonoff, executive]

Thanks, Russell. Having now spent 3 months at Life360, I'm delighted to have an opportunity to speak to shareholders and investors today to provide an update on some of our key strategic initiatives.

On the Q2 conference call in May, I spoke about Life360's strong combination of proven product market fit, opportunity for growth and compelling mission to keep people close to the ones they love and help families protect the people, pets and things they value most.

Our 4 key strategic initiatives are designed to make the most of the opportunities before us, and I'll cover these in more detail on the following slides.

First, we continue to invest in our core user experience with features that build engagement and lay the foundation for increased [indiscernible] and long-term growth. Recent initiatives include bringing the Life360 map to life by showing how users are moving, whether they're driving or walking or cycling. These more tailored experiences set us up to amplify member communications and drive engagement levels even higher. Beyond engagement, we're focused on features that encourage safer driving, making a real impact on our [indiscernible] lives.

Having delivered core Life360 subscription revenue growth of 61% in the first half, we remain focused on driving subscriber momentum and levering our proven pricing power to increase monetization. We're finding ways to create greater awareness of the key value propositions of a Life360 membership including in-app member experiences to highlight features such as roadside assistance and the integration of Tiles on to the map. We see further opportunities to increase awareness of the benefits of Tile bundled subscriptions with lots of room left for optimization. For example, we know that those people who take us up on the Tile offer retain at a significantly higher rate. So we're looking for experiences that improve that take rate.

Earlier this year, we established a dedicated international management team based in the U.K. Their focus is on achieving international user experience [indiscernible] to U.S. and preparing for triple tier launch in select international markets.

During the first half of the year, we rolled out free crash detection and enhanced SOS features to international markets, and now over 50% of users have already enabled crash detection, putting this key feature on track to near U.S. levels of adoption. We also enabled global integration of Tile on the Life360 map and delivered ongoing improvements in outperformance, including map load time. As the chart shows, this focus on international user parity is paying off with significant improvement in international retention. Over the past 2 years, we've seen organic month 1 free user retention increased by 26%.

Looking forward, we'll focus on improved localization and investment in the international markets to prepare for multiple triple tier launches in late calendar year '24 and beyond.

We're seeing strong performance in the key markets of Canada, the U.K. and Australia. During the first half, now increased 42% year-on-year with user retention approaching U.S. levels, supporting top-of-funnel growth.

Paying Circles increased 54% year-on-year with minimal marketing investment to date, and revenue increased 54% year-on-year with significant further upside opportunity in ARPPC once triple tier Membership is launched.

These markets are seeing significant improvement in key performance indicators, approaching U.S. levels in terms of engagement, user retention and brand awareness. Despite the limiting marketing investment, the Canada rollout in November 2021 built our confidence that bringing international markets onto our triple tier offer will drive substantial revenue growth. In 2023, we're seeing success from our dedicated international marketing team, and we're scaling investment based on these results. As we've previously disclosed, we'll be launching triple tier Membership in the U.K. during the fourth quarter, and we expect to invest in additional marketing in Q4 to support that launch.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Russell to address cost management and run through the financial results.

[Russell Burke, executive]

Thanks, Lauren. Earlier this year, we undertook a reorganization to deliver more than $15 million in annualized savings. This initiative, along with our discipline on other operating spend, has resulted in stable non-GAAP operating expenses in the first half even as revenues continue to grow strongly. We've reached a pivot point where we're able to leverage scale in the cost base whilst still investing for growth. Operating costs have meaningfully declined as a percentage of revenue from 100% to 72% year-on-year. This has been supported by benefits of scale and increased efficiency without sacrificing the investment that will drive our longer-term growth.

Over time, we expect platform commissions to reduce as a percentage of revenue, and we expect to continue to achieve the greater marketing efficiency. Our strategy of balancing fiscal responsibility with prudent investment has underpinned the significant earnings turnaround that we've delivered in the first half.

Turning now to the detailed financial review. Please note that all the numbers I'll be discussing are denominated in U.S. dollars and are in accordance with U.S. GAAP accounting standards and are unaudited.

This slide shows some retention metrics for our U.S. [indiscernible] members and subscribers. Our overall user retention rates remain at market-leading levels, even as our new registrations continue to increase. Over time, we've seen a significant uplift in month 1 user retention as we invested to improve the user experience. Retention remains at historically high levels and underpins the 24% year-on-year growth in our U.S. MAU.

The lower half of the slide illustrates average U.S. churn over time. As Chris mentioned earlier, the spike in iOS churn, which accompanied the Q4 '22 price increases, has now normalized. The similar spike in Android, following the April price increases, is also trending in the same direction. The temporary uplift in churn has been more than offset by the 42% year-on-year increase in U.S. ARPPC so that we're now seeing a significant uplift in LTV.

This slide shows the cumulative revenue of our quarterly cohorts over time. Beginning in Q1 of 2018, with the length of the line showing the extended period over which we've been able to monetize users. You can see here that in every year, apart from 2020, we've seen the gradient of the line steepen, and thus, monetization accelerate as we have benefited from the improving retention and higher price points. We're just starting to see the impact of price increases in the Q4 '22 cohort.

This slide shows the payback of our performance marketing spend beginning with the 2018 cohort. User acquisition and TV spend increased in Q1 this year, but you can see that the gradient steepens as we accelerate the path to breakeven. Spend reduced slightly in Q2 compared with the prior year, while retaining high levels of efficiency. As planned, we're increasing spending in Q3 during the back-to-school period and plan a further step-up in Q4 to drive future efficient growth. We're continuing to achieve breakeven well within our target of 24 months.

This slide shows the very significant uplift in our U.S. ARPPC over the past 3 quarters as we have principally implemented price increases for all new monthly subscribers beginning in August '22. Price changes for existing monthly iOS subscribers began in October '22 and in April '23 for Android users. As a result, we've seen a meaningful uplift in virtually all of our membership cohorts.

For our newest cohorts, ARPPC is close to $180 with some impact from small mix shift to annual and the lower-priced silver tier.

This is a slide we've shown a few times showing subscription revenue retention by half year period for subscribers who signed up at the end of the previous period. It illustrates the strength of our freemium model, which upsells free users to paid and existing subscribers to higher price points.

Net revenue retention has remained consistently at or above 100% even as the number of, the absolute number of our gross subscriber additions continues to accelerate. This stayed true for H1 '23 even though the comparison base of the second half of '22 revenue was much higher due to the price increases.

Slide 31 contains a summary of our key non-GAAP financial metrics for the first half of calendar year '23. Our full year cash flow and balance sheet are included in the appendices to the presentation, along with the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP operating expenses.

Revenue for the first half increased 39% year-on-year with the key drivers I outlined earlier, specifically more than 50% growth in overall subscription revenue.

Non-GAAP gross profit of $105.8 million increased 59% year-on-year, with overall margins increasing from 67% to 76% and subscription margins increasing from 80% to 85%. Higher pricing contributed to both subscription and hardware margins.

Non-GAAP operating expenses were at virtually the same level as H1 '22 as a result of the workforce reductions undertaken earlier in the year and efficiencies driven across multiple operating expense categories even though this includes the variable impact of commissions.

Research and development expenses of $37.5 million were 14% lower as a result of the reduced head count. User acquisition costs and TV costs of $13 million reduced 4% with other sales and marketing expenses of $9.6 million, down by 28%, largely due to lower brand and PR spend.

Commissions of $20.8 million increased 42% year-on-year, reflecting the higher subscription revenue. For the first half, commissions were 20% of subscription revenue, down from 21% in the equivalent period last year, largely due to mix shifts, including a higher proportion of plus 1-year subscribers.

General and administrative expenses of $18.8 million increased 28% year-on-year, reflecting higher insurance and facilities costs and increased public company-related expenses due to the introduction of SEC reporting requirements. The positive adjusted EBITDA was $6.2 million, represented a $38.5 million turnaround from the adjusted EBITDA loss of $32.3 million in '22, pending from stable operating costs combined with strong revenue growth.

Stock-based compensation of $18.2 million increased from $16.5 million, largely due to grants related to transition arrangements. The EBITDA loss was $14.6 million and net loss was $18.5 million. Other non-GAAP adjustments reflect costs associated with acquisitions and the Form 10 filing in the prior period, workplace restructuring and nonrecurring adjustments related to raw materials write-off, offset by positive adjustment related to membership benefits, which was taken out of adjusted EBITDA.

Now the key measures of cash flow. Operating cash flow of $5.5 million reduced from $38.5 million in H1 '22, reflecting the turnaround in adjusted EBITDA performance and working capital efficiency following the integration of the acquisitions. This includes the positive operating cash flow of $3.7 million for Q2.

Investing cash outflows of $0.9 million related to payments for our internally developed software, and financing cash flows of $19.8 million relate to the final payments associated with the Tile's acquisition. U.S. GAAP rules dictate that we show this is financing even though it is part of the acquisition cost, which is shown in investing in the prior period. Also included in financing are taxes paid for net settlement of equity awards, offset by the proceeds from the exercise of options.

At June '23, cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash was $64.2 million. We had a quarterly low point for cash balances of approximately $61 million following the final Tile escrow payment in the quarter. We also have the last remaining tranche of the Jiobit convertible note payments of approximately $4 million scheduled for Q3.

The GAAP income statement is on this slide, and as mentioned, the reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP items can be found in the appendix.

I'll now turn the call back to Chris, who will discuss the outlook.

[Chris Hulls, executive]

For CY '23, Life360 expects to deliver core Life360 subscription revenue growth in excess of 50% year-over-year, hardware revenue growth of 0% to 5%, other revenue of approximately $26 million, consolidated revenue of $300 million to $310 million, positive adjusted EBITDA of $9 million to $14 million, positive operating cash flow of $5 million to $10 million and positive adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow for the remaining quarters of CY '23.

That concludes our prepared remarks. And now I'll turn over the call to Melissa, who will manage the Q&A portion of our call today.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Thanks, Chris . [Operator Instructions] First up, we have Lafitani.

[Lafitani Sotiriou, analyst]

Lafitani Sotiriou from MST Financial. Congratulations on a good result. Can I kick off with the setting of adjusted EBITDA guidance for the remainder of the year or for the full year? Between the $9 million and $14 million range, could you give us an idea on what some of the big swing factors are before now and the end of the year? So would it be back to store and hardware as the 2 main ones, particularly around the Christmas period? And do you have anything factored in for the U.K. triple tier Membership launch?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Russ, do you want to take that one?

[Russell Burke, executive]

Sure. So Laf, on revenue side, as you know, Q4, particularly for hardware, is seasonally higher. In terms of the expenses, we have planned out the year such that we are investing more in marketing in Q3 and in Q4, which will obviously sort of flow into benefits for next year. That's the primary elements. We're definitely -- we have decided, given the very substantial positive indicators from the sort of international. As we look at the U.K. launch, we are looking at investing a little more in that launch as well, but that's the primary factors.

[Lafitani Sotiriou, analyst]

Okay. Got it. And so with the Tile bundling and some of the commentary around the 10% improvement in the churn rate, are you able to give us an idea on what that may mean in absolute terms. So is that an extra 5,000 subs that you get to keep that you otherwise would have lost per month or any sort of idea so we can try to quantify?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Yes. I'll take that one, Russell. It is very early, but obviously extremely exciting data. I'm going to answer your question a little bit more indirectly and then we can come to the specifics. So as we've long shared, we do longer term investments. We usually have a year where we build, and we're upside down. Because we're forward investing, we have a year where we start to break even and really in the third year is when we harvest. So we are right in the middle of that second year. And so we're sharing this much more as a forward-looking indicator, which is very exciting.

What we need to see though is how this trends over time and ultimately see the gap between retention over a multi-month an ideally multiyear period. So if this holds, it means extremely good things, and it really is validating the acquisition in a pretty big way because the bigger we get, the more the retention is actually more important than top line, but it's very, I'd say, risky to extrapolate what is only a few months of data, and month 3 is just shaping, coming in right now.

So I hope within a quarter, we will be able to have a little bit more insight into what that means long term. But I can say that this has exceeded our expectations in terms of what we would hope to see from the early part of the curve in terms of the churn reduction.

[Lafitani Sotiriou, analyst]

I've got that. And so Chris, just more while I've got you on the overall outlook on net subs growth. We've had a bit of noise in the last year with 2 sets of price increases for the Android and iOS. What do you think is achievable now at the higher price point in terms of the net subs growth in the foreseeable future? Do you could get to previous run rate levels at some point? Or how are you thinking about it?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

At some point, for sure. I think we have said we'd like to get back to the 100,000 mark, and so much of that is driven by back-to-school and the holiday season, which is somewhat out of our control, but back-to-school is starting now, and I hope we'll be able to give a very good update once we see some of those early numbers coming in. And we did mention we are going to be pushing a little bit harder on marketing, in particular with international and whereas when we spend money on paid acquisition, it doesn't influence revenue in the short term because as to build. We do hope it does more on the net add side because we will get getting people into that funnel. And a lot is looking at that new launch of triple tier in the U.K., which will probably not do a whole lot for net adds actually maybe headwind. But in terms of ARPPC, that will really ramp that up. So holistically, there are numbers we think that could drive us to those new levels.

[Lafitani Sotiriou, analyst]

Just two more quick questions. One is on the platform commissions, I can see there's been a bit of a mix improvement with more plus 1 year. And obviously, that would help reduce the overall commission cost and that was called out by Russell. But on top of that, there's supposed to be a broader step-down in the commission structures. Can you give us an update as to where those deliberations discussions are at and how we should think about it from a timing perspective?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Yes. My answer has not changed there. with Apple, it's slowly and then all of a sudden. There's been some interesting back and forth from the Supreme Court side here and appeals and a whole bunch of court stuff that is beyond my specific pay grade in terms of what that all means. But it's pretty clear that Apple, I think, is fighting a losing battle. They know that, but they're being even more silent than normal because I think there is so much of a minefield out there for them with antitrust and all that. So I'm still reticent to make any sort of predictions, but I would say our confidence that over time, we will have more flexibility here and that Apple will have to compete in the market to actually be the payment processor that developers like us want to use is going to happen.

[Lafitani Sotiriou, analyst]

Okay. Got it. And just finally, on the triple tier Membership launch, we've got U.K. flagged later this year, and I think there were some comments made that multi-markets next year. And Australia seems to be going well, but is Australia on the map yet? Or is it just Mainland Europe for next calendar year?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

It's being considered. Obviously, Australia numbers have been pretty impressive. So we're looking at that right now, and that is a possibility.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Next up, we have Chris Gawler.

[Chris Gawler, analyst]

Can you hear me okay?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Loud and clear.

[Chris Gawler, analyst]

Excellent. Firstly, I wanted to ask one on the subscription revenue for the quarter. It looked like it was broadly flat quarter-on-quarter compared to the first quarter. But obviously, you've maintained your full year guidance or assuming that, that accelerates as the year goes on. Is there anything that you'd call out in the second quarter as impacting that headline revenue number? I mean the subs numbers in the AMR were pretty good, but is there anything on timing or monthly versus annual mix or FX or anything you'd call out?

[Russell Burke, executive]

There's not a whole lot, Chris. The main impact is probably an increased mix from international, which is obviously at a lower revenue rate. And International was also impacted by the FX rate. So both of those relate to international, but it doesn't really change our overall view of the year at this point.

[Chris Gawler, analyst]

Sure. And then I wanted to ask a question about operating leverage into FY '24. We've spoken a little bit about that at the last result, in terms of reaching that EBITDA positive and trying to get a level of underlying or should I say adjusted EBITDA positive going forward. Given your current run rate, would it be fair to suggest that you could be start EBITDA positive in FY '24 rather than FY '25 you've said previously?

[Russell Burke, executive]

Yes. Chris, I think that depends on just how we look at growth investments. We are definitely very clearly on a path to EBITDA positive and significant EBITDA margins over time. And really, I think whether that happens in '24 or '25 really just depends on the opportunities that present themselves for that mix of very positive growth with some investment at the time. So it hasn't really changed our view there. We're definitely on that path, but we want to take those growth opportunities where we see them.

[Chris Gawler, analyst]

Sure. And then just one last question for me. Interested to hear a little bit more about conversion and how that's tracking so far in the third quarter. And you've spoken a lot about trying to get back to the level of conversion that you were at before the price increases last year. Just interested to get an update in terms of how some of the other hooks and the flow to get people from free to pay is a moment so far in the third quarter?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

I said it's relatively ongoing steady improvements, and we are focused overall much more net adds and some of the things you do that drive conversion push on retention. So when we look at it internally, the conversation with the team is how do we drive LTV and how do we deliver a great user experience. So there's a bit of a balance between those two things. What we have seen is we have had a lot of improvements on the retention side. We've been leaning into that. But we are continuing to focus on the funnel, both the conversion and the retention piece. And as you've seen, after we get to that initial churn from the price increase and the initial drop-off in conversion, it does pick back up. We're not back to all-time relative levels as expected, but the idea is that the combo of top-of-funnel increases plus smaller improvements in conversion getting back to normal plus retention will be what drives the overall net adds.

[Russell Burke, executive]

And I'd say, Chris, what we are seeing, which is also very positive is really, really good results from some promotional activities where we emphasize the bundling of the Tile product. So that's something that we definitely see as giving us opportunities going forward.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Thanks, Chris. Up next, we have James.

[James Bales, analyst]

This is James Bales from Morgan Stanley. I guess my first question is about the ARPPC numbers. In second quarter, the U.S. ARPPC was down versus the exit rate from the first quarter despite the Android price rise coming through in April. Can you maybe just help us understand the maths there?

[Russell Burke, executive]

Yes. James, I think the main impact on overall ARPPC was definitely from the sort of international exchange rates. And that's, so the biggest impact there is the pullback in the international ARPPC, in terms of the U.S. rate, I think that, that will fluctuate a little bit. We had a relatively small user base for the Android price increases, and we probably haven't seen all of that flow through as yet. So I think we'll see more of that in Q3.

[James Bales, analyst]

Okay. So, can I just understand that. I thought the message that the last quarter was that the Android base was about 25% of total for the U.S. Is -- should we think about those proportions differently? And I guess, secondly, is the timing not when the price rise was effective in April? Is there something else that we should sort of be factoring in there as well?

[Russell Burke, executive]

Sure. So the [indiscernible] basis is around 25% of the overall base. But what's happened with time because we started applying the price increases to new subscribers in August last year, when we got to the price increases for the Android base, that ends up being quite a bit smaller than, for example, the iOS space that we started in Q4 last year. And then the price increases definitely started in April, but by the time they flow through, you're looking to the sort of mid- to the latter part of the quarter. So that's why I say we'll see a little more in Q3.

[James Bales, analyst]

Okay. Got it. And then, looking at the U.K. launch, how should we think about the metrics that you'll be aiming for there in terms of the ARPPC uplift relative to what you achieved in Canada versus the acceleration in Paying Circles growth?

[Russell Burke, executive]

So in terms of ARPPC, I think we'd be looking to at least the same sort of levels, which was, sorry, 70% must uplift that we saw in Canada because to a large extent, it is effectively a price increase with the introduction and launch of the triple tier. And then because we are putting some promotion around it, we -- even with the significant price increase, we're definitely looking to an increase in Paying Circles, albeit that it's a pretty significant price increase that we'll be putting through.

[James Bales, analyst]

Okay. Got it. And then maybe somewhat related to that is you talked to the reinvestment in sales and marketing in the second half of the year and the flow-through of that on to what you'll be paying in terms of commissions, I guess. Can you help us understand the magnitude of how much reinvestment do you expect on the sales and marketing line?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

I can take that qualitatively, and then I'll let Russell chime with the firm numbers. I know you were asking more for the firm numbers, but just more to set the context when we go into a new region, our working theory is that we want to seed awareness of both the product and the new features. And we want to be a little bit looser in terms of the measurability of that. A lot of acquisition is much more art versus science, and we want the team to feel a little bit more empowered to do things that we might not be able to immediately measure, but that we think could work, be a little bit more experimentation minded even with bigger numbers.

So we are figuring out ways to the teams and obviously spend wisely, but how do you get the growth going, and how do we make some extrapolations that behavior we saw in the U.S. will trend overseas, but also if it doesn't hold true, don't worry. So I would assume we will have less effective spending. It should still help top of funnel. And then by next year, we'll have it dialed in. So we'll be able to be a little bit more clear on exactly how much we'll spend and what we expect to see in return. And it's going to be a little bit more realtime as we go. Some of these channels, you get immediate feedback, some of them are slower. So it's tough to give an exact number, but those are, that's a bit of the back story on how we're thinking about it. Russell, not sure if you have anything to add in terms of quantum.

[Russell Burke, executive]

Yes. And James, I'm not sure if you were sort of focused on overall spend or international spend in particular, but, you will see that we -- in the first half of this year, we've sort of dialed back on marketing spend generally as part of the overall sort of drive on operational efficiencies. But we're still being able to get continue to improve the efficiency of that spend. So going into the second half of the year, broadly we are definitely able to increase that level, and it will be higher than the previous year. And then specifically, if you're supporting the U.K. launch in Q4, we will certainly allocate a specific fund for that.

[James Bales, analyst]

Okay. So just to clarify that you expect the marketing spend ex the U.K. to increase half-on-half and year-on-year, and then there will be a budget that's sort of incremental to that spend for the U.K.

[Russell Burke, executive]

Yes. But yes, you're really around the launch for the U.K.

[Chris Hulls, executive]

And some of it just more broadly will be international as a whole because we are seeing some really good results there. Because we've discussed previously, we're going deep in certain areas, starting with the U.K. But as you can see in the numbers, even areas that don't have the triple tier have been doing well, so we do want to more marketing there because we don't necessarily have to do the triple tier before we get big increases in users. And now that we do have the staffing and more of the expertise to test this, we'll probably be testing at acquisition in other regions as well is we already are, and we're going to increase the amount.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Thanks, James. Next up, we have Chris Savage.

[Chris Savage, analyst]

It's Chris Savage from Bill Potter. Most of my questions have been asked. Perhaps just a couple. Probably more for you, Russell, if I can. Just interested, you upgraded the adjusted EBITDA, but you didn't change the operating cash flow guidance. I'm just wondering why when the 2 are obviously related.

[Russell Burke, executive]

Right. So stepping back, a couple of points to make One is that we will absolutely follow our commitment to be positive operating cash flow positive for each quarter going forward.

When you look at operating cash flow for the year, we had some pretty significant outflows in Q1 and to some extent, Q2. But the primary driver of that was the severance costs related to the restructuring, which we're obviously a cash item, but we're not part of adjusted EBITDA.

So if you look at where we are at the half, there is a fairly significant difference between our adjusted EBITDA for the half and operating cash flow. That will absolutely turn around fairly significantly in the second half, and particularly in Q4. Q4 will be quite strongly operating cash flow positive but not to the extent where it will catch up. There still will be those differences. And that's really the reason for the differential between the guidance for adjusted EBITDA and the guidance for operating cash flow.

[Chris Savage, analyst]

Okay. That's good color. So your expectation around year-end cash because I remember you saying the low point in cash was expected to be more in the mid-50s, and you called out that it was $61 million, and probably a bit stronger than what I thought. So is the year-end expectations still between $70 million and $80 million?

[Russell Burke, executive]

I think that would -- that's still a reasonable expectation. Q3 will have the additional roughly $4 million of which is essentially the last tranche of the Jiobit convertible notes from that acquisition. So that will be, obviously, that's outside of operating cash flow, but it will impact the overall cash balance. So I think those expectations still hold fairly well.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Next up, we have Julian.

[Julian Mulcahy, analyst]

Julian Mulcahy from Evans & Partners. Just a few questions for me. Firstly, on the Tile's business. You mentioned you've been chasing sort of higher-margin channels and the average sort of price was higher in Q2 as opposed to how sort of finished last year. So given that, that fourth quarter last year was quite a sharp drop in the average unit price, would you expect that to be similar to where you are at the moment to the final quarter? And therefore, at sort of 0% to 5% growth looks fairly conservative.

[Russell Burke, executive]

Julian, I think, the consumer electronics market has definitely not necessarily recovered strongly. It's come back a little bit. And we have rationalized things where we are -- we have seen some success with some of the sort of specific promotions that we've done with certain retailers. But we're not expecting that at this point to turn around significantly in the balance of the year where we have good expectations to fulfill where we are. But it's -- and particularly because the fourth quarter is such a significant part of the overall revenue base for stand-alone hardware sales, it's a little more difficult to predict.

[Julian Mulcahy, analyst]

Would you still expect a spike in volumes in that final quarter?

[Russell Burke, executive]

Absolutely. that is the traditional holiday period that represents a significant part of the year sales.

[Julian Mulcahy, analyst]

Right. But would that average price be as low as it wasn't that full quarter last year?

[Russell Burke, executive]

We don't expect as low, but there will be a little pressure from retailers to help with promotion, and that's all part of that consideration.

[Julian Mulcahy, analyst]

Right, cool. And with the churn, the Android churn, just looking at that chart on Page 26, it seems to have spiked higher than you with the Android with the Apple sort of customers. So was that just because of the timing of where the U.S. economy was when those price hikes through? Or is there, is it just something different about that Android to demographic?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Take that one, Russell.

[Russell Burke, executive]

So sorry. the Android demographic is slightly different, Julian. You can see that from the chart generally that there is generally a higher churn for Android. The churn spike, therefore, is a little higher, but we're definitely sort of seeing it coming back to the same sort of levels. There probably is a slight impact in terms of the overall economy, but that's not the major factor here. I think that the major factor is just the nature of that demographic. But the important piece for us is that it's definitely coming back to those normalized levels.

[Julian Mulcahy, analyst]

Right. Cool. And just finally, so the free units that you're giving away to new subscribers, are you looking to extend that to existing subscribers at this stage?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

We've been thinking about ways of doing that, that would possibly increase conversion or be a bit of surprise and delight, there's obviously been a shift to focus on financial discipline and leverage, and we want to be careful about doing something that could be quite expensive. So just to do some back of the envelope math, let's just say there's 1 million paid subs actually 1.6 million, but let's say we give $1 million away for free. You're talking about $7 million. So it's we're trying to be very prudent about that and test our way into it, and we do think there are some experiments may want me to do where it's a bit of a giveaway, but it also might result in someone converting over to a higher price tier or retaining. So I realize it's being a little bit vague there. But the short answer is we're still considering it, but it will be in a more measured way.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Thank you, Julian. We're going to hand it back over to Chris Gawler.

[Chris Gawler, analyst]

Just had 1 or 2 follow-up questions, if that's okay. I think following on from Julian's questions just on the Tile business. Say it does surprise to the upside in the fourth quarter given the consumer electronics environment is a little bit better versus the comp, maybe pricing is a little bit better, at what point will you know that? And in terms of how that would flow to your EBITDA guidance, would that just be upside if Tile would say plus 15%, plus 10% or 15% for the year rather than plus 0% to 5%?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

We have been pretty tight with overall inventory management. So I don't think there's necessarily a huge amount of upside surprise. We obviously don't focus as much on the hardware side of things in terms of what drives the business. Really, we've focused so much on making Bio as a tool to drive membership. But yes, there is some level of room even if it's modest. Russell, anything to add to that?

[Russell Burke, executive]

No. Just in terms of when we would know, Chris, it's because really the holiday period in the U.S. starts with Black Friday, you don't really know until the orders coming into that. So it will be definitely Q4.

[Chris Gawler, analyst]

Sure. And then just one last one for me. Just as you push more internationally into the U.K. potentially on other geographies beyond that. Is there anything you would call out from a gross margin perspective of international versus the U.S.?

[Russell Burke, executive]

From what we're seeing so far, the margins will be fairly similar. There's a couple of areas where the sort of service providers are a little more expensive internationally. But given that the biggest part of our cost is technology costs and with had real success at driving that down on a unit basis in the last 12 or 18 months, then we expect to be able to largely keep those margins intact for subscription.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

Thanks, Chris. Next we have Lafitani again.

[Lafitani Sotiriou, analyst]

Just one follow-up question for me. Just in relation to the current quarter. I think at the last quarter, you gave us an update on our net subs growth was going I know back-to-school is really only just so can you give us any commentary on the current quarter?

[Chris Hulls, executive]

In general, things are very much trending expectations. It's -- it would be dangerous to make any extrapolations based on early numbers because we are just starting, but we're feeling very good about what we're seeing so far.

[Melissa Goodell, executive]

And as there are no more questions, I will hand it back to Chris for some closing remarks.

[Chris Hulls, executive]

Nothing much more for me. Thank you, everyone, for joining, and we look forward to meeting with many of you over the next few days.