CHEGG, INC Q3 FY25 Results

“This quarter marks an inflection point for Chegg with our recent decisive action to streamline our structure, strengthen our balance sheet, and focus Chegg on the large and growing skilling market,” said Dan Rosensweig, CEO and Executive Chairman of Chegg. “AI has created tailwinds for our Chegg Skilling business, and with clarity of purpose, a lower cost structure, and the right assets in place, Chegg is positioned to drive meaningful long-term value for our shareholders.” Despite our current challenges, I’m honored to return as the CEO and Executive Chairman of Chegg. The board and I believe the company is undervalued and see a significant opportunity to rebuild and reinvent Chegg and return it to a growing company with strong adjusted EBITDA margins and cash flow. We split the company into two units: our growth business, Chegg Skilling, which we expect to have sustainable double-digit growth, and our legacy academic services, which will focus on generating cash. This new structure gives us the cash and assets we need to rebuild, and I firmly believe we will create significant long-term value for our shareholders. It’s clear that the rise of AI and the subsequent negative impact on traditional sources of traffic have disrupted almost every direct-to-consumer industry. We are dealing with these realities head on. Two weeks ago, we took decisive action, restructuring the company to enable our academic services to operate more efficiently and generate significantly more cash flow, while repositioning Chegg Skilling to become a larger, more profitable B2B SaaS business. This was hard because of the impact on a large number of employees, but it was a necessary and positive decision for the future of Chegg. Our clarity of purpose and lower cost structure is energizing and gives us the ability to invest in our skilling business, which is experiencing tailwinds, and already generating double digit growth. We’re now in the right categories with the right business model, and are beginning to see momentum from our efforts. The impact of AI has resulted in a large number of companies needing to reskill their employees, especially around AI. The skilling market is already large – more than $40 billion today – and has turned its attention to workforce, AI and language learning. We start from a position of strength. We have two valuable skilling assets. The first in language learning, with Busuu, and the second in skills, with Chegg Skills. Busuu is helping the true language learner, differentiated by its focus on speaking, not just translation. Chegg Skills already has a strong catalog of courses on in-demand topics, which will only get stronger. We are combining them, investing in them, and over time, will expand with additional assets. We plan to report them as a single unit called Chegg Skilling for external revenue reporting, so you can track our progress and growth. In that spirit, Chegg Skilling is ending 2025 with strong momentum, expecting 14% year over year growth and full year revenue of $70 million. Looking ahead, we expect the business to continue growing at a double-digit pace. I’ve spent 42 years in the technology industry, and one constant has been that platform changes bring both incredible disruption and opportunity. We reinvented Chegg and created a bigger, more valuable company, and we can do it again. What started as a textbook rental company transformed into an education technology company that helped tens of millions of students succeed. Our next chapter, Chegg Skilling, is in a very large and growing market. We have the ability to use our skilling assets and our balance sheet to build a great company. And we are excited about the opportunities ahead. I’m confident that Chegg will evolve and thrive and I am grateful for the opportunity to lead our team through the next chapter.

Thank you, Dan and good afternoon. Today, I will be presenting our financial performance for the third quarter of 2025, along with the company’s outlook for the fourth quarter. We delivered a good third quarter, surpassing our revenue expectations, and outperforming our adjusted EBITDA guidance by $5 million, as a direct result of our cost cutting and restructurings. With our strategic shift toward the large and growing skilling market, we are now well positioned to enter the next phase of our growth. In the third quarter, total revenue was $78 million, a decrease of 42% year-over-year. Reduced traffic impacted our business in two key ways. First, it led to fewer subscribers and less subscription revenue. And second, within Skills and Other, it led to fewer sessions, which significantly reduced advertising revenue. As Dan mentioned earlier, going forward we will break out our Skilling Business, which only includes Busuu and Chegg Skills, so you can track our progress. Moving on to expenses, non-GAAP operating expenses were $49 million in the quarter, a reduction of approximately $41 million, or 46%, year-over-year, driven by the execution of our restructurings. Our third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $13 million, representing a margin of 17%. To position ourselves for future growth, we overhauled our cost structure to be more efficient and allow us to invest in future growth. To put this in context, in 2024, our total non-GAAP expenses were $536 million, and we’re on track to reduce them to under $250 million by 2026. Our investments in AI have enabled us to continue to reduce our CapEx, which was $6 million in Q3, down 63% year over year. We anticipate full-year 2025 CapEx of approximately $27 million, with a targeted further reduction of approximately 60% in 2026, while still delivering a high-quality experience that our students expect from us. Free cash flow for the third quarter was negative $900 hundred thousand which was primarily impacted by a one-time $7.5 million settlement payment to the FTC and $5.5 million in severance payments related to our restructurings. Our company will continue to generate strong cash flow, although it will be temporarily affected by $15 to $19 million in cash expenditures for employee transition and severance costs associated with our recently announced restructuring. These payments will occur over the fourth and first quarters. Considering this, we are still on a path to generate meaningful free cash flow in 2026. Looking at the balance sheet, we concluded the quarter with cash and investments of $112 million and a net cash balance of $49 million. In closing, the path has been difficult, but the outcome will be positive. We are now a more lean and efficient company with a Skilling business that is expected to grow 14% in Q4. We believe we are turning the corner and are on a path to future growth and profitability. We look forward to sharing more detail on our February earnings call, including greater visibility into our multi-year growth plan for skilling and how we intend to drive additional value in the years ahead.