Matthew Newcomb
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thanks, Chris. Q2 was one of our strongest quarters yet as a public company, showcasing the impact from investments we've made in prior quarters across member acquisition, brand, product innovation and technology. Chime Prime is the latest results of these investments, which in Q2 helped us accelerate revenue growth, accelerate actives growth, including direct depositor growth, accelerate volume growth and accelerate ARPAM growth. Meanwhile, we are also demonstrating the structural operating leverage in our model. In Q2, we grew adjusted EBITDA margin 12 percentage points year-over-year to 15%, with 60% incremental margin and delivered our second consecutive quarter of positive GAAP EPS. As we've shown quarter after quarter, ours is a business model with strong long-term earnings power and now near-term profits. We expect these strong results to continue and are raising our guidance for the year, which I'll touch on in a minute. In Q2, we drove strong results across multiple dimensions of growth, active members, ARPAM and transaction profit. Starting with active members. We continue to demonstrate that Chime is the leader in new checking account openings in the U.S. and in Q2, accelerated active member growth to 20% year-over-year. As a reminder, we have a seasonal business. In particular, tax refund related activity drives a pull forward of member acquisition and reengagement into Q1, resulting in seasonally higher quarter-over-quarter net adds each Q1 and lower net adds each Q2. This Q2, we added approximately 200,000 net new active members quarter-over-quarter, twice as many as we added last Q2 and $1.7 million over the last 12 months or most ever. We ended June with 10.4 million total active members. This accelerating momentum was due to a number of factors, but I'll highlight two. First, Chime Prime.which brings together the best of Chime into a new membership tier is clearly resonating across our member base, particularly higher earners. As Chris noted, in Q2, we added more members depositing at least $3,000 per month than ever before. We've also seen higher retention rates for existing direct depositors since Prime's launch. Second is the continued positive impact from our early engagement initiatives. Such as enabling instant funding and mobile check deposits for new members, which make it easy to get started with Chime. These initiatives are helping us driving more members to Chime and have improved our payback periods to 5 to 6 quarters. But the real power is in the combination. We've made it easier than ever to get started with Chime. And now with Chime Prime, we are clearly showing our members that the more they do with Chime, the more they get from Chime. The result in Q2 was accelerating direct depositor growth, with particular strength in late-stage direct deposit conversions, which hit a record high in the quarter. With this momentum, we now expect to add 1.8 million net new active members in 2026, our largest cohort ever and well above our original goal of $1.4 million for the year. Second is ARPAM. Our direct deposit relationships give us a high-quality, deeply engaged member base and drive strong and sticky ARPAM. In Q2, we accelerated ARPAM growth to 6% year-over-year, reaching $260 in the quarter. Notably, in Q2, we accelerated our ARPAM growth while also accelerating active member growth, driving both stronger quantity and quality concurrently. In particular, we saw strength with Chime Prime members who to date have over twice the ARPAM of our average active member. Chime Prime improves both conversion to and retention of direct deposit relationships drives greater wallet share and helps generate more payments and platform revenue, even net of rewards costs. On the payment side, Chime Prime helped us accelerate purchase and OIT volume growth to 20% year-over-year in Q2. While we are a nominal payments business, which benefits from some degree of inflation, the acceleration in transaction volumes did not just come from higher gasoline prices like many others have reported. Ours is much more broad-based. Year-over-year growth in purchase and OIT volumes, excluding gasoline sales, also accelerated to 19%. Chime Prime is also driving Chime card adoption, which earns higher interchange rates. With credit mix now 27% of total purchase volume. Fueling this growth, we saw incredibly strong member response to Prime's 5% cash-back category of choice for rewards offering. This strong engagement, particularly in the gas category, resulted in modestly higher contra revenue rewards cost than we anticipated in Q2, but we expect those costs to settle lower going forward. In fact, so far in Q3, payments revenue net take rates are pacing to grow 2 basis points year-over-year. More broadly, we're excited about cash back rewards as another lever to maximize growth in transaction profit dollars. We're very pleased with the impact right out of the gate. In Q2, we effectively traded 1 basis point of take rates for 5 points of volume growth acceleration, which accelerated payments and OIT revenue growth to 21% in the quarter. But we think there is still much more to go. We remain very excited about the multiyear opportunity to expand take rates net of rewards costs as we continue to shift more volume to credit. Chime Prime also drives platform revenue, which grew 48% year-over-year in Q2. As Chris noted, Prime members are prequalified for instant loans, our 3- to 12-month installment loan product. This helps fuel origination volume growth up nearly 70% quarter-over-quarter to $300 million in Q2. And we continue to see cohorted loss rates perform very well with substantially lower loss rates for repeat borrowers. In addition, we continue to drive strong MyPay results with $4.5 billion of origination volumes in Q2 at loss rates of 90 basis points. All in all, we more than tripled MyPay transaction profit dollars year-over-year to $73 million in Q2. We've also started testing higher MyPay limits, yet another lever to grow transaction profit dollars and expect to roll these out in the coming months. Finally, I'm excited to announce a new $500 million warehouse facility with Goldman Sachs to fund the continued growth of our liquidity products. This facility is a testament to the strong progress we've already made scaling our liquidity products at low loss rates. The third dimension of growth is transaction profit. Our low-cost operating model has enabled us to offer what we believe is the most compelling breadth of services for mainstream consumers, which, as of Q2, we delivered a 73% transaction margin. Transaction margin grew 4 percentage points year-over-year, driven by strong loss rate performance. Along with the growth in actives and ARPAM, overall transaction profit grew 36% year-over-year in Q2. Importantly, this isn't flash in the pan growth. We believe this is durable growth, underpinned by cohorts of deeply engaged, long-lasting primary account relationships. Across our cohorts, we see over 100% dollar-based transaction profit retention, net of churn. Our cohorts nearly triple in RPM as they mature as members attached to more products over time. And strengthened further by Prime, LTV to CACs are now up to 9x. These attractive unit economics are what drive the structural operating leverage in our business. Strong margin expansion, concurrent with meaningful investments in growth. Non-GAAP OpEx as a percent of revenue fell by 8 percentage points year-over-year, with operating leverage across all OpEx categories. Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin of 15% was up 12 percentage points year-over-year, with incremental margins of 60%. We delivered $102 million of adjusted EBITDA and $28 million of net income. Our second consecutive quarter of positive GAAP EPS. Turning to our guidance. In the third quarter, we expect revenue between $680 million and $690 million, resulting in year-over-year revenue growth between 25% and 27%. We expect adjusted EBITDA between $105 million and $110 million, an adjusted EBITDA margin of between 15% and 16%. For the full year, we expect revenue between $2.725 billion and $2.745 billion, resulting in year-over-year revenue growth between 25% and 26%. And we expect full year adjusted EBITDA of between $465 million and $475 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17%. We now expect an incremental adjusted EBITDA margin north of 60% for 2026. Note that our outlook includes the impact of our recent restructuring announcement. While we will reinvest a portion of payroll savings, this restructuring will also drive further operating leverage, particularly as we head into 2027, and we expect to keep payroll costs flat relative to 2026. Specifically, in Q3 '26, we expect to recognize approximately $16 million to $20 million of net cash restructuring charges, partially offset by a reversal of approximately $9 million to $12 million in noncash stock-based compensation expense for an expected impact to net income of $6 million to $9 million. Before we open it up for questions, I'd like to say a few personal words. After a decade at Chime, I've decided it's the right time to step down as CFO and spend more time with my family, now a family of 5. It has been the opportunity and privilege of my career to have helped build this company from some of its earliest days, and there is so much more ahead. I make this transition when Chime's opportunity is as big as it's ever been. At a moment when the business has incredible momentum, a strong foundation for continued growth and an extraordinarily talented team carrying it forward. I'll be working closely with Chris, Mark and the broader team over the coming months to ensure a smooth handoff. Chris and Ryan, thank you for your trust. And to all my Chime colleagues, thank you for your partnership, your dedication to this great company and for making time such a special place to build.